I think that is a mistake.

 

By doing that you are only fostering the us-vs-them paradigm and ensuring a longer term animosity. There are a quite a few lefties who are not antigun, but by taking your toys and going home you reenforce the gun issue to the red-v-blue dichotomy, slowly forcing the those not rabidly anti-gun on the left to fall in line with the rest of their party.

 

The shift in attitudes on this issue over the last 30 year has been broad based in the entire political spectrum. Lets not forget the red gang was quite willing to ban guns in 30-40 years ago. The center was anti-gun 20 years ago. You don't win this fight by taking your toys and going home, you win it one person at a time across the political spectrum.

 

Also you don't argue with fanatical anti gun people because you will change their mind, you argue with them for the sake of the audience. This is something our side all to often forgets and we foam at the mouth and call people names and look like asses to the audience. If you look at the original forms of debate, going back to the greeks, it is a form of theater. You have two people arguing and exposing logical arguments in front of an audience not because either it is likely to change the others mind, but entirely to convince the watchers that their side is correct.

 

Act accordingly, always be willing and ready to have the argument. Always be polite, calm, and reasonable. Trap the opponent into his own arguments. Do not get emotional, do not beat your chest, do not appeal higher powers (be it biblical or constitutional). Make a reasoned argument, never give up, let your opponent make himself a fool, and never stop him when he does that. Ask questions of him or her and help them dig a deeper hole where the find themselves arguing against their own ideas.

 

That's how you win this this fight. Taking your toys and going home is for 5 year olds on the play ground. Heck, even then, how did that affect the reputation of the 5 year old.

 

 

I would agree if you were dealing with someone that was actually willing to listen and take in the debate. Most Lefties i have encountered have absolutely no desire to have an adult conversation about the statistics. Seems the end result is always a person insult. When the debate ends up showing they are wrong its usually gets ugly quickly. 

 

If you can find a one that is actually willing to take in the info and at least say they can see your point of view then its worth the time to discuss it with them. Most will never admit your points are valid or that you even have a right to your point of view.

 

People in this country are more polarized then ever. The disdain for opposing views is at an all time high. You can thank the president for making his entire 5+ years in office a "Them Verses Us" situation. 

 

All we have heard is

 

Black Vs White

Baby Killers VS Baby Savers

Rich VS Poor

 

etc etc

A conservative thinks that a lefty is just a person with bad ideas, A lefty just thinks that conservatives are bad people.

 

A conservative thinks that a lefty that can be convinced to change their mind, but you cannot use logic to get someone out of a position that they didn't come to using logic.

 

A lefty believes that only by marginalization, intimidation, ridicule and the heavy force of government can a conservative be prevented from harming a minority.

I would agree if you were dealing with someone that was actually willing to listen and take in the debate. 

 

Again it doesn't matter if the person you are arguing with is listening. You are arguing for the sake of the silent audience that might be listening in without a strong preformed opinion. Always argue with THAT audience in mind, not the person you are arguing with.  Once in the world of social media, it is not longer a conversation, but theater for the audience. 

Also, let go of the left vs right thing and focus on the issue. A heck of a lot of issues are not a left vs right issue, but are being shoved into those boxes for the sake of political power. 

 

We can't make that mistake again or allow it to continue. Stop thinking as "lefties hate guns". If we allow this continue then lefties can take the position of guns are bad because righties like them without thinking the issue through. 

 

The key to success here is decoupling the issue from the rest of the political dichotomy so you don't end up with half the population making a decision on the issue based on their gang colors, so stop thinking of it that way yourself and start promoting the ideas a large picture value that applies across the political spectrum. 

 

It doesn't matter what political gang colors you flash, no one want to be robbed, mugged, raped, or endangered by their government right? The left and the right are not happy with NSA spying, we need need to get the left and the right unhappy with gun laws. 

 

So a leftist "friend" of mine posted all this anti gun stats on Facebook and I would like some help on providing stats to counter this stuff:

 

 

Jay Sweifach

Approximately 7.4 people per day are killed unintentionally by a gun.

A child is killed or injured by a firearm every 30 minutes.

33% of U.S. homes contain a gun; half don’t lock it up.

A firearm is 22x more likely to be used in the setting of suicide, criminal assault, homicide or accidental death than in self defense.

Risk of suicide is 5x greater if a gun is kept in the home.

 

Jay Sweifach Learn about your state’s current gun laws, gun death and injury statistics, and federal public health stats by visiting:

AAP Division of State Government Affairs State Gun Safety Laws

http://www.aap.org/.../state.../Documents/GunSafetyLaws.pdf

Children’s Defense Fund Report “Protect Children, Not Guns”: http://www.childrensdefense.org/.../protect-children-not...

Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence State Scorecard: http://www.bradycampaign.org/stategunlaws/

Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence: http://smartgunlaws.org/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Web-based Injuries Statistics and Reporting System (WIQARS) http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html

CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nvdrs/

 

 

 

Jay Sweifach http://www.aap.org/.../AAPFederalGunViolencePreventionRec...

Federal Policies to Keep Children Safe

www.aap.org

Since the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. tha...t took the lives of twenty students and six educators, the Academy has been engaged in a thoughtful, organization-wide response and call to action to assure the future safety and protection of our nation’s children.

 

Jay Sweifach ABOVE - resources that you can use to write to your state representatives.

 

 

 

OK, Point 1. 7.4 accidental firearms deaths per day. That's 2701. Taking numbers from the gun grabbers themselves for 2010 (becuase that's the most current year data collection is complete and published for, 2011 is preliminary), you had 606 accidental firearm deaths. So lie number one. Source the gun grabber group uses is WISQARS, which is the same I use in general.So the real answer is approximately 1.66 per day. 

 

point 2. A child is killed or injured by a firearm every 30 minutes. That would be 17,520 juvenile firearms deaths or injuries. For 2010 deaths, unintentional deaths children 1-14 = 62 for 15-19 it is 72. Total unintentional deaths for 'kids' for 2010 is thus 134. Those are accidents, totals are 2700 if you include legal intervention, accidents, homicides, and suicides. 1762 homicides, 749 from suicides. According to wisqars, for 0-19, the non fatal injury rate for a firearm is  15,576.  So their number is actually a bit low if you are using the latest year of across the board completed stats. 15-19 homicides are 1554, based on some statistical analysis of gang violence, the CD has found a rate ofr gang related homicides that are between 27 and 42% of all homicides for that age range. Between 0-25% of those homicides occurred concurrent with other crimes. The vast majority were retaliatory homicides against other gang members. 

 

point 3. 33% of homes owning a gun is a not a fact. It is a guess likely obtained from the general social survey. Which is a cold call self reporting survey done over the phone that takes substantial time. When gallup still asked about firearms ownership in presidential election exit polls, their numbers came out to about 45%. Gallups phone survey shows a more or less flat slope from 1996 to now pretty much toggling between low 40s ownership and high 30s for percent of household ownership.  There is simply no reliable data on this out there. If you look at the scatter plot for the GSS, you will see that the rapid downward slope comes in around 1993-1994 when there was all sorts of banning talk, the AWB, things like waco and ruby ridge, and maybe.. just maybe people don't like answering questions about their ownership of firearms to the man. But the last GSS was 2012 (it's every 2 years) and in that year, GSS came up with 32% and change, and gallup came up with 43%

 

 

point 4. "Guns kept in the home are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal unintentional shooting, criminal assault or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense." This is more play on this type of gun grabber stat. First off, this is meant to imply that guns are useless for self defense. However, to believe that, you also have to believe that every single use of a firearm for self defense results in a shooting injury or fatality. That is VERY, VERY far from the truth. Additionally, the 22x number is very debatable. There ahve been multiple studies like this based on the same exact data sets, and they come up wiht very different numbers due to their statistical methods. There is no clear cut best statistical method to date. 

 

point 5. I have a hard time believing that risk of suicide is 5x greater if a firearm is in the home when firearms account for about 50% of successful suicides. It may be 5x more likely to succede than any other method, but it is hardly outpacing all other methods combined by  500%. Once again, CDC numbers as well as a gun grabber study by u penn. SOmeone is lying with statistics. 

Ask him to define what child means and if it includes every drug dealer under 21 shooting up his buddies or himself (hint: it does which is how they twist statistics)

 

Also where did he get the 30min number? His own study (http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/28/500-kids-die-7500-injured-by-guns-yearly) leads to less then half that assuming you believe it.

 

Also a ton of number contradicting some of his self defense numbers here: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

 

Bingo!

 

I had a discussion with a Brit now living Down Under who cited some statistics and asked the old question - "why do you Americans feel the need to stroll around shooting each other?  12,000 people were shot and killed last year alone, whereas we only had 38 deaths in the UK".    And then he added a comment that gang violence should not count.

 

His worldview actually includes the idea that we are all pulling out weapons in the Walmart parking lot and shooting each other at random, but none of it is to be marginalized by the thought of Zeta bangers on Chicago mowing each other down for turf.

 

But this is the same guy who wants carbon taxes so the Toga islands don't go underwater.

Dana Loesch did a hell of a job commenting on Diane Sawyer's piece "Young Guns":

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSk1UkqBx58

point 4. "Guns kept in the home are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal unintentional shooting, criminal assault or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense." This is more play on this type of gun grabber stat. First off, this is meant to imply that guns are useless for self defense. However, to believe that, you also have to believe that every single use of a firearm for self defense results in a shooting injury or fatality. That is VERY, VERY far from the truth. Additionally, the 22x number is very debatable. There ahve been multiple studies like this based on the same exact data sets, and they come up wiht very different numbers due to their statistical methods. There is no clear cut best statistical method to date. 

 

 

 

Can't believe I left out the good bit on this one. OVer the years, there have been a number of studies done. The smallest number was derived from FBI statistics of  ~80,000 defensive firearms uses per year. Giovne how they collected the data, which was via law enforcement, this is likely under-representative. From interviews with criminals, numbers between 200,000 to 2,000,000 have been determined for defensive uses by applying statistical models to inmate surveys regarding criminal acts and their interactions with firearms.