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Monday, April 15, 2013

Daily Kos: Guns Rarely Used to Kill Criminals or Stop Crimes

Daily Kos: Guns Rarely Used to Kill Criminals or Stop Crimes:


Guns Rarely Used to Kill Criminals or Stop Crimes

That is the conclusion of Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use, a new study just release by the Violence Policy Center that is subtitled "An Analysis of Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Crime Victimization Survey Data."
The report analyzes national data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program’s Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
In an email sent out by Josh Sugarman, executive director of the Violence Policy Center and co-author of the study, he quotes from the study that
“The idea that ordinary citizens need access to extraordinary firepower in order to adequately defend themselves against criminals has become the default argument against a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity  ammunition magazines.   This new data exposes the fallacy of such arguments and clearly demonstrates that the frequency with which guns are used in self-defense in the real world has nothing in common with pro-gun assertions that firearms are used millions of times each year to kill criminals or stop crimes.  In fact, a gun is far more likely to be stolen than used in self-defense.”
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