The Realities of Self Defense

The Realities of Self Defense
A common questioned posed is, how often are guns really used in self defense? Are they necessary for defense, or at least are they useful? Why does anyone need to own a gun, a weapon with a 10 round magazine, a machine gun or so on? While the most obvious response to this question is that I personally should not have to prove a need whether or not I should be allowed to own it, but that you should prove a need to why it should be banned, it is possible to prove that there is a certain relative minimum for what's recommended for self defense and, that guns have an overall positive influence on self defense. While the impact of guns as a deterrent is obviously immeasurable (since how many crimes didn't happen obviously doesn't get recorded with forensic evidence), I can point to the correlation that countries with more guns have lower homicide rates. More guns, on paper, points to more guns = lower murder rates or crime, but as a face-value statistic it's meaning is somewhat halted. So, how many civilians use weapons to defend themselves, successfully?

According to a Bipartisan study by the CDC, authorized by Obama, more citizens successfully defend themselves with guns than are likely to be victims of gun violence. [1] "Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010)." Furthermore... "A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun-wielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004)." According to this study done, which comprised numerous other studies, more citizens are likely to be defended by gun violence than victims of them. Even if it's slightly lower, the lowest rate of defensive gun use found by one study was nearly 100,000 cases of self defense a year.

The argument that gun control would be worth it if even just 1 life was saved is obviously, somewhat farcical. They would need to save thousands of lives to outnumber the positive impact guns had on society. Even if banning guns could save 1 life, or 50 lives, it would need to save far more than that to make up for or, break even with how many lives are saved by civilian being allowed to own guns. Whether or not we ban guns or can ban guns, the question of, do guns have a net positive impact on society, can fairly easily be answered by this study. Some might still disagree on this, however.


Refuting the Harvard Study
There are a few studies the refute the claims of hundreds of thousands of people successfully defending themselves with guns every year (which equates to more than are victims of them). According to a Harvard study for instance, "We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense. All reported cases of criminal gun use, as well as many of the so-called self-defense gun uses, appear to be socially undesirable" following with "To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals. " Their entire argument is that because people did not shoot people in self defense, it doesn't count as defensive gun use. The problem with this study is obvious; people do not actually need to shoot others to successfully defend themselves. A criminal that surrenders, runs away or is dettered via intimidation by a gun is a criminal that is not committing a crime and not shot. It is better, more moral, to capture criminals alive than shoot them dead, so disregarding cases of intimidation with guns as being "socially desirable" means of gun use is absurd.

Obviously, not all self defense cases result in something being show. The fact very few people are killed is not evidence that defensive gun use is not useful. For all intents and purposes, if a gun is used to solve a violent confrontation, without violence, where neither the criminal nor the defender is killed or seriously harmed, than this is a good thing. It is disgusting for the creators of this study to suggest that intimidating, rather than shooting a criminal, is somehow less socially desirable. Guns intimidation effect is perhaps their most important use as a weapon. Using a gun in self defense can cause a criminal to shoot you, but simply brandishing a gun was effective between 80 and 95% of the time. [2] Despite the nearly 300,000+ defensive gun uses cases a year, less than 300 [3], or .1%, resulted in the death of a criminal. This means that not only are guns used commonly, but less people are actually dying because of it. You literally only have a chance of less than 1 in a 1000 of ever having to kill someone in self defense, even when a gun is brandished. The scare factor of a gun, or the intimidation factor, is extremely important. Study's like the one at Harvard are obviously an attempt to deliberately manipulate the fact that defensive gun uses rarely result in the death of anyone, which should be regarded as an otherwise good thing.

Intimidation is not inherently bad as the Harvard study suggestions. Police often have a saying, that "violence of action", rather than violence, is a good way to resolve a situation. Acting quickly to overwhelm your adversary so they surrender immediately rather than provoke them in to an immediate shoot-out resolves a situation without bloodshed. A police officer who points a gun in the face of a criminal and then handcuffs them does not kill said criminal even if he intimidates him. However, a police officer who shoots someone results in their death, even if it was justified, which is a less favorable outcome. Therefore if a civilian threatens but does not harm a criminal and escapes unharmed from an attack, it is a victory for both the civilian and criminal. To dismiss these cases as socially undesirable is pedantic, at best, and disgusting at worst.


The Need for high capacity magazines
A common question asked is, not exactly per say why does a person "need" or want a gun for self defense, but why do they want certain firearms? While the definition of an assault weapon bans vary, magazine restrictions are more straightforward, suggesting that only so many rounds are needed in a magazine for self defense. The obvious response would be "why does it need to be banned?", but this won't deter those who believe they are somehow needing to be banned if they are not, needed by civilians. So, does a citizen really need a magazine capacity over 10 rounds?

It's difficult to determine need; a person only needs something to achieve a particular goal. As a person, I want to survive ,but is my life somehow necessary to the continuation of the United State,s the world or even the universe? Asking me whether or not I "need" to live is a bit insulting and, quite frankly an existential crisis that, at this moment ,cannot be answered objectively. What I can argue however is the recommended minimum amount of rounds required for self defense. How does one accurately determine exactly how many rounds are "needed" for home defense?

A good baseline might be asking ourselves how many are needed by police. If the average citizen is as well trained and possesses as good of marksmanship as the police, than it stands to reason they would not need significantly more than the average police officer. According to a report released by the NYPD, only about 1 in 6, to 1 in 10 rounds fired by police hit their target at ranges as close as 3-30 feet, depending on the year. [Page 4] On average, there were two police officers per suspect shot, and 10-15 rounds fired total per suspect. Not every single round fired, even by a trained marksmen, will hit their mark, and not every round is a kill or incapacitation shot. A person could be shot in the hand, arm, ear or other area that does not result in death or serious injury, and a person even when shot in a generally fatal area can often can fighting for quite some time. Reports by police of shooting suspects, multiple times, sometimes even up to 9 to 10 times, without the suspect going down are not uncommon. 1 round doesn't always do the job, and landing even 1 round can be difficult even for a trained marksmen. How would the average civilian fair?

If it takes the police on average 10-15 rounds to resolve a gunfight, this might be considered the bare minimum needed. Therefore, banning of 15 rounds or less per magazine might make sense. But these police have the advantages of numbers, preparation for a fight, body armor and in general training. The average civilian is likely not as good a shot, not traveling in packs of trained men, and don't possess the other advantages such as being informed of a shooting before hand. A person who can mentally prepare themselves for an attack in advance is far more likely to succeed than someone who is taken off guard. A person who doesn't realize a burglar is breaking in to his house has mere seconds to respond, where as police officer often times have minutes to drive down to the scene and respond after the 9/11 call informing them of the situation is made. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that civilians would need more ammunition than this in a gunfight as their lack of mental preparation, ensuring good marksmanship will cause them to falter further. However, the average civilian will typically face off against more than in target. Nearly 48% of all violent crimes involve a gang, and because gangs are defined as organizations with 3 or more people, it's very likely that the average home owner will need up to 10 rounds per suspect or, 30 rounds, in order to potentially survive a shoot-out with these individuals. This is just a minimum recommended level based on how many criminals there will be. 

The convenience of carrying a single magazine is more important for a civilian, than a criminal. In theory, a person could wear a tactical vest, that is garments designed specifically to hold on to magazines, to allow a user to reload. Because reloading can take under 2 seconds, if one had 30, 10 round magazines on them (totaling 300 rounds), it would make little difference if they had a 30 round magazine or a 10 round magazine. But, if a person grabs their gun and only has as many rounds are loaded in it, say in a reaction to hearing a window break (but at the time the home owner is unaware if it's a burglary or just an accident), than it can be severely limiting. Civilians don't have hours to prepare for an attack. While a burglar can afford to "gear-up" ahead of time because, they are the assaulter, the defender has mere seconds to figure out what's going on and then respond back. He likely does not have time to put on all his combat gear and be ready to go in a moment's notice. Therefore, for a criminal, the limitation of a 10-round magazine is more or less irrelevant. Not only due most violent criminals travel around in large groups carrying multiple weapons, but they also have a nearly unlimited amount of preparation time before hand. A civilian who simply grabs their weapon and goes doesn't have 30 magazines strapped to them, but a criminal could. Unless a person wore clothing with bullets in it at all times, even when he slept, he could never be prepared 100% of the time. Keeping a single loaded gun by the bedside table is a lot easier than expecting to carry hundreds of rounds everywhere you go. So, in the case of self defense, a civilian has whatever is in his gun at that exact moment, most likely squaring off against multiple suspects. A criminal has whatever he has planned for at least hours in advance. In fact, most americans aren't even armed at all. 

In this mindset, civilians need even more ammunition than criminals or police, since they are usually outnumbered, worse trained and worse prepared for a situation. This puts the minimum at around 30 rounds, even if they were as well trained as a police officer, with the real numbers likely being higher. Therefore, banning high capacity magazines would be a detriment to civilians, and have very little impact on criminal activity. This is on top of there being no reason for a ban in general. Bear in mind, the NYPD statistics showed a 1 in 6 to 1 in 10 hit ratio with 69% of the time the target being under 2 yards away.  19% of the time the suspect was between 3 and 7 yards away, and 11% of the time they were 8 or more yards away. This means that literally two-thirds of the time they were missing this often at ranges under 6 foot, or an arm's reach away. Bear in mind that inside a house distances can be greater than this.