gun violence and gun control statistically - on topic

[sfzombie 3]

i have been scouring the internet for raw data that i can use to make an informed opinion on the matter, and guess what? i can't find any. i tried the fbi and dept of justice, they don't provide any raw data, just the sources. i tried several other sources as well. it looks like the data doesn't exist in raw form anywhere that i can find. true, i've only been looking for four hours, but it's kind of frustrating. i thought there were places where i could find, say, the amount of homocides involving guns for different periods of time. i hear you guys all the time on here saying things like, where's your source? i did find a very thorough bar graph which says absolutely nothing, even in the graphs it takes someone saying, "the red spike is the us". i want to see the raw data and compile it myself.

if i recall correctly, they tried banning assault weapons and high capacity mags from 1993 to 2004. i hear the same rhetoric calling for another in january. i want to see a comparison on how effective it was. personally, i think it's a load of crap. i work for a school system with card keys to enter the school. in one, the door has been propped open for two months because the lock is broken. in all of them, when you push a button, the office will buzz you in without walking to the door. in most of them, there is a glass between the two doors, some have even been replaced with glass with no wire in it-real entry deterrent there to a man with a gun. from the few stats that i could find, it seems that our schools are not very dangerous now. i have a 4th grader in school and want him to be able to go to school and not get shot.

and as for me, the weapons of choice that i choose for home defense are all bolt action military rifles, semi auto pistols, and a pump shotgun. and my son is a pretty good shot with his .22.

http://kitswv.com

[Fast 0]

This is an interesting take on how data should be collected and a different way of looking at this stuff

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/treat-gun-violence-like-disease-medical-college-expert-says-la843qj-184351771.html

Quote

Treat gun violence like disease, Medical College expert says

Mike De Sisti
Physician Stephen Hargarten, chief of the Emergency Department at Froedtert Hospital, believes it is time to treat gun violence as a public health emergency.

By Bill Glauber of the Journal Sentinel Dec. 20, 2012
EMAIL PRINT (101) COMMENTS
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Mike De Sisti
Physician Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, says guns are products and, just like cars, they should be made safer.
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"We can predict this weekend that someone is going to get shot," says Stephen Hargarten, chief of the Emergency Department at Froedtert Hospital.

Hargarten is sitting on a stool inside the emergency room. It is quiet, a slow morning. He is reflecting on the cost of gun violence in America, amid a season of mass shootings.

Aurora, Colo. Oak Creek. Brookfield. Newtown, Conn.

During his career, Hargarten has treated hundreds of gunshot victims. But it was on a Sunday morning in August when he confronted the carnage of a mass shooting for the first time, as he and others treated patients ferried in from the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek. Seven people died, including the gunman. Three others were hospitalized with wounds.

He says he began to apply public health disease outbreak science to the phenomenon of mass shootings.

"Deaths-per-cases are really high for this," he says, comparing the Sikh temple shooting's case-fatality ratio to an outbreak of the Ebola virus. It's roughly the same, he says.

"The Ebola virus is a very, very scary, very deadly virus," he says.

Hargarten, 63, has thought long and hard about guns in America. He directs the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He speaks with precision about the technical aspects of bullets, injury patterns and human tissue.

The recent spate of mass shootings has sparked a crisis, he says.

"But if you think about it, it's an endemic problem that is happening every week," he says of gun violence in America, including homicides and suicides. "There have been over 400,000 people killed with guns the past 15, 17 years. That's a lot of people. And it happens daily. It happens with regularity in communities such as Milwaukee. So how do you get your head around it? By the initial reaction, it's a public health emergency."

More than a decade ago, he and Trudy Karlson, then an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, co-wrote the book "Reducing Firearm Injury and Death: A Public Health Sourcebook on Guns."

Back in the early 1990s, Hargarten offered three proposals to reduce deaths from handguns: urging the use of trigger locks; an indicator to show that a gun is loaded; and a lock mechanism that allows only the owner to have use of the gun.

To Hargarten, a firearm is a product. That is an important distinction. A product can be amended or improved by "a target of interventions," he says.

Think of cars. Over the years, cars have been made safer, through such things as seat belts and air bags.

"Apply that to guns," he says.

"Why is it that we need hollow-point bullets? Why not develop the kind of bullets that are being developed where when it's fired, it just knocks down the intended target. It achieves your goal, not to kill but to render the individual inoperable for a valuable period of time to get other strategies in place," he says.

Nobody wants a felon or a child or someone with mental health problems to have access to a firearm, he says.

"I asked second-graders about guns and gun violence, and a second-grader said a gun ought to be designed where there is a lock so nobody can get it unless you know the combination," he says. "That's a second-grader. So there have been efforts by manufacturers to think about access to the authorized user only. So, why not design firearms that can only be accessed by the licensed user?"

He has more ideas.

What would he tell President Barack Obama, who has tasked Vice President Joe Biden to oversee a panel to produce recommendations to reduce gun violence?

For starters, Hargarten says, bring in others beyond law enforcement to examine the issue. He lists the National Institute of Justice, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institutes of Health.

He also says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should lead investigations into outbreaks of mass shootings.

"Right now, there is no system for these outbreaks to be fully investigated like there are for massive car crashes, plane crashes," he says. "I'd say we need authorization so that from here on in, every mass shooting is fully investigated by the CDC and the information is cataloged from a public health forensic epidemiology viewpoint."

He also urges an expanded and strengthened National Violent Death Reporting System that links data from a variety of sources, including law enforcement, coroners, medical examiners and crime labs. Eighteen states, including Wisconsin, are in the system.

"It should be in all 50 states so that we have a better understanding of these events," Hargarten says.

Hargarten is hopeful that science can be used to help the country tamp down gun violence.

"I think there are moments when things can have progress," he says. "I think this may be one of those moments. I'm not naive to think it's going to solve everything. But I think people are going to look back 100 years from now and go, they had what? You could carry any kind of a gun anywhere you wanted to? Really?"

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

[kawisixer01 0]

I'm not sure where you found difficulty. If you google "FBI violent crime stats" it takes you right to the UCR page. Same with the ATF. http://www.statisticbrain.com/cite/" cites their source at the top of each page. http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp[url] also cites it's sources.

[sfzombie 3]

like i said in my post, i want the raw data, not the sources. it took me 2 hours sifting through the sources to find some data, and it wasn't given in any standard form, and had different types of data included. these statistics are compiled by people who sit around all day getting paid to do this, i do not. i just wanted to get the raw data used and download it so that i could sift through it in my spare time.
and the link you sent me does nothing at all except point to a website where the data is compiled from different sources. i clicked on the link for crime statistics and it showed a table with info from the fbi, the same info i saw on the fbi site. i wanted to see if there were any sources with the stats broken down, so that i could see if guns were any more or less involved in crime, before during, and after the brady bill.
it doesn't exist. therefore, whenever someone spouts off statistical support of any position on this matter, you can call bullshit with confidence that the numbers are slanted to support the stance.
i challenge anyone to prove me wrong on this one, i would like to see the raw data for myself. i think if i could get through calculus with an a in college, i can figure out statistical analysis.

http://kitswv.com