Why People Fear Guns (An Article from Fox News)

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-08 09:37pm

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly ... 74,00.html

Why People Fear Guns

Saturday, January 03, 2004

By John R. Lott Jr.

People fear guns. Yet, while guns make it easier for bad things to happen, they also make it easier for people to protect themselves.

With the avalanche of horrific news stories about guns over the years, it's no wonder people find it hard to believe that, according to surveys (one I conducted for 2002 for my book, "The Bias Against Guns," and three earlier academic surveys by different researchers published in such journals as the Journal of Criminal Justice) there are about two million defensive gun uses (search) each year; guns are used defensively four times more frequently than they are to commit crimes.

The rebuttal to this claim always is: If these events were really happening, wouldn't we hear about them on the news? Many people tell me that they have never heard of an incident of defensive gun use. There is a good reason for their confusion. In 2001, the three major television networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- ran 190,000 words' worth of gun-crime stories on their morning and evening national news broadcasts. But they ran not a single story mentioning a private citizen using a gun to stop a crime.

The print media was almost as biased: The New York Times ran 50,745 words on contemporaneous gun crimes, but only one short, 163-word story on a retired police officer who used his gun to stop a robbery. For USA Today, the tally was 5,660 words on gun crimes versus zero on defensive uses.

Just take some of the 18 defensive gun uses that I found covered by newspapers around the country during the first 10 days of December:

-- Little Rock, Ark: After the assailant attacked him and his son-in-law with a poker, a 64-year-old minister shot a man dead on church grounds. The attacker had engaged in a string of assaults in an apparent drug-induced frenzy.

-- Corpus Christi, Texas: A woman shot to death her ex-husband, who had broken into her house. The woman had a restraining order against the ex-husband.

-- Tampa Bay, Fla.: A 71-year-old man, Melvin Spaulding, shot 20-year-old James Moore in the arm as Moore and two friends were beating up his neighbor, 63-year-old George Lowe. Spaulding had a concealed weapons permit.

--Bellevue, Wash.: A man shot a pit bull that lunged to within a foot of him and his family. Police said the man's family had been repeatedly menaced in the past by the dog.

-- Jonesboro, Ga.: A father out walking with his 11-year-old daughter was attacked by an armed robber. The police say the father shot the attacker in self-defense and will not face charges.

-- Houston, Texas: Andrea McNabb shot two of the three men who tried to rob her plumbing business on the afternoon of Dec. 1.

-- Philadelphia, Pa: A pharmacy manager fatally shot one robber and wounded another after the robbers threatened to kill workers at the store. The wounded robber escaped.

Part of the reason defensive gun use isn't covered in the media may be simple news judgment. If a news editor faces two stories, one with a dead body on the ground and another where a woman brandished a gun and the attacker ran away, no shots fired, almost anyone would pick the first story as more newsworthy. In 2002, some 90 percent of the time when people used guns defensively, they stopped the criminals simply by brandishing the gun.

But that doesn't explain all the disparity in coverage. It doesn't, for example, explain why, in some heavily covered public middle and high school shootings, the media mentioned in only 1 percent or fewer of their stories that the attacks were stopped when citizens used guns to stop the attacks.

The unbalanced reporting is probably greatest in cases where children die from accidental gunshots fired by another child. Most people have seen the public-service ads showing the voices or pictures of children between the ages of four and eight, never over the age of eight, and the impression is that there is an epidemic of accidental deaths involving small children. The exaggerated media attention given these particularly tragic deaths makes these claims believable.

The debate over laws requiring that people lock up their guns in their home usually concentrates on the deaths of these younger children. The trigger and barrel locks mandated by these laws are often only considered reliable for preventing the access to guns by children under age 7.

The truth is that in 1999, for children whose ages correspond with the public service ads, 31 children under the age of 10 died from an accidental gunshot and only six of these cases appear to have involved another child under 10 as the culprit. Nor was this year unusual. Between 1995 and 1999, only five to nine cases a year involved a child wounding or killing another child with a gun. For children under 15, there were a total of 81 accidental gun deaths of all types in 1999. Any death is tragic, but it should be noted that more children under five drowned in bathtubs or plastic water buckets than from guns.

The gun deaths are covered extensively as well as prominently, with individual cases getting up to 88 separate news stories. In contrast, when children use guns to save lives, the event might at most get one brief mention in a small local paper. Yet these events do occur.

--In February, 2002, the South Bend, Indiana Tribune reported the story of an 11-year-old boy who shot and killed a man holding a box cutter to his grandmother's neck. Trained to use a firearm, the boy killed the assailant in one shot, even though the man was using his grandmother as a shield.

--In May, 2001 in Louisianna, a 12-year-old girl shot and killed her mother's abusive ex-boyfriend after he broke into their home and began choking her mother. The story appeared in the New Orleans Advocate.

--In January, 2001, in Angie, Louisianna, a 13 year-old boy stopped for burglars from entering his home by firing the family's shotgun, wounding one robber and scaring off the other three. The four men were planning on attacking the boy's mother--an 85-pound terminal cancer patient--in order to steal her pain medication.

As a couple of reporters told me, journalists are uncomfortable printing such positive gun stories because they worry that it will encourage children to get access to guns. The whole process snowballs, however, because the exaggeration of the risks--along with lack of coverage of the benefits--cements the perceived risks more and more firmly in newspaper editors and reporters minds. This makes them ever more reluctant to publish such stories.

While all this coverage affects the overall gun-control debate, it also directly shapes perceptions of proposed legislation. Take the upcoming debate over renewing the so-called assault-weapons ban. This past summer CNN repeatedly showed a news segment that starts off with a machine gun firing and claims that the guns covered by the ban do much more damage than other guns. CNN later attempted to clarify the segment by saying that the real problem was with the ammunition used in these guns. But neither of these points is true. The law does not deal at all with machine guns (though the pictures of machine guns sure are compelling)--and the "assault weapons" fire the same bullets at the same rate, and accomplish the exact same thing, as other semi-automatic guns not covered by the ban.

The unbalanced presentation dominates not just the media but also government reports and polling. Studies by the Justice and Treasury Departments have long evaluated just the cost guns impose on society. Every year, Treasury puts out a report on the top 10 guns used in crime, and each report serves as the basis for dozens of news stories. But why not also provide a report--at least once--on the top 10 guns used defensively? Similarly, numerous government reports estimate the cost of injuries from guns, but none measures the number of injuries prevented when guns are used defensively.

National polls further reinforce these biased perceptions. Not one of the national polls (as far as I was able to find) gave respondents an option to mention that gun control might actually be harmful. Probably the least biased polls still give respondents just two choices: supporting "tougher gun-control legislation to help in the fight against gun crime" or "better enforcement of current laws." Yet, both options ultimately imply that gun control is good.

But if we really want to save lives, we need to address the whole truth about guns--including the costs of not owning guns. We never, for example, hear about the families who couldn't defend themselves and were harmed because they didn't have guns.

Discussing only the costs of guns and not their benefits poses the real threat to public safety as people make mistakes on how best to defend themselves and their families.

John R. Lott, Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "The Bias Against Guns" (Regnery 2003).

Opinions? Rants? Raves?

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-01-08 09:49pm

Bad news sells. That's all the media cares about.

... what, you think they're actually in it for our sakes?

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2004-01-09 11:57am

Crayz9000 wrote:Bad news sells. That's all the media cares about.

Remember in "Over The Hedge" when R.J. tried to make a newspaper that only wrote good news? He ran out of stories after a few issues.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2004-01-09 12:04pm

Bad news DOES indeed sell.

P.J. O'Rourke: "Anyone can say 'I've got cancer' and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy?"

As for guns, of course people are afraid of them. It makes sense to be afraid of something that gives any lunatic a power advantage over you. If you're a 6'9 inch, 300 lb linebacker, then a 5'2 inch nerd armed with a lead pipe doesn't scare you even if you have one hand tied behind your back. But replace the pipe with a handgun, and you're suddenly a 300 lb target.

Post by **weemadando** » 2004-01-09 09:25pm

Can someone then please pull up the statistics on firearms crimes vs firearms "defense", put them side by side and then compare the ratios to the wordcount ratios.

I'd usually be happy to do this kind of thing, but the moment I do, the gun-toting rednecks will hop down my leftie-queer-loving-commie-freedom-hating-throat and say that I've posted dubious, incorrect or falsified stats...

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-09 09:29pm

weemadando wrote:Can someone then please pull up the statistics on firearms crimes vs firearms "defense", put them side by side and then compare the ratios to the wordcount ratios.

I'd usually be happy to do this kind of thing, but the moment I do, the gun-toting rednecks will hop down my leftie-queer-loving-commie-freedom-hating-throat and say that I've posted dubious, incorrect or falsified stats...

If you'd read the article, you would have seen the stats your looking for, at least rough stats anyways, but more than adequate for the situation:

...guns are used defensively four times more frequently than they are to commit crimes.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-01-09 09:58pm

Frankly the data they are putting up obviously blows donkey balls...

Code: Select all

Activity               Illegal Gun       No Gun     Legal Gun
Street Crimes        74%               24%           14%

Amazingly, there seems to be 112% of street crimes in thier bullshit...which casts a LOT of doubt on the rest of the shit they are spewing about thier defensive gun uses and all that bollocks.
To them, a defensive gun use seems to be any occasion where you had a gun and it made you feel safer...even if it was not used, fired, or even shown. Amazingly, that means its once every few minutes on average compared to just one kid a day getting killed by them in accident and one homocide every half hour.

Now, here's a lovely little idea, why not compare how often a criminal waves about a gun to how often a good god fearing gun owner does and you'll get a better idea....so 30 people or so feel safer in the same time one person is killed in a criminal homocide. Good ratios, based on bullshit comparisons.

Also as a little note, apparently the police only found out about 64.2% of their gun defence incidents. None of this rings alarms on the BS'ometer at all?

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-01-09 10:03pm

Actually that's just the first page of the stuff about "defensive" gun uses they link out to....

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-01-09 10:12pm

The article itself contains nothing much more than anecdotal bullshit about how wonderful guns are because more criminals are scared off than people killed by criminals or some such shit.

That bit I already ranted about is what they offered links to to justify the " guns are used defensively four times more frequently than they are to commit crimes." line.

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-09 10:52pm

Keevan_Colton wrote:Frankly the data they are putting up obviously blows donkey balls...
Code: Select all
Activity               Illegal Gun       No Gun     Legal Gun
Street Crimes        74%               24%           14%
Amazingly, there seems to be 112% of street crimes in thier bullshit...which casts a LOT of doubt on the rest of the shit they are spewing about thier defensive gun uses and all that bollocks.

Uh...what? Are you getting those from the article? If so, please point me to them...

To them, a defensive gun use seems to be any occasion where you had a gun and it made you feel safer...even if it was not used, fired, or even shown. Amazingly, that means its once every few minutes on average compared to just one kid a day getting killed by them in accident and one homocide every half hour.

Erm, what? Big leap of logic there, you're putting words in their mouth.

Now, here's a lovely little idea, why not compare how often a criminal waves about a gun to how often a good god fearing gun owner does and you'll get a better idea....so 30 people or so feel safer in the same time one person is killed in a criminal homocide. Good ratios, based on bullshit comparisons.

I have no idea what you're trying to say...but from what I can tell, you're saying that just because one criminal uses a gun, it doesn't matter how many people have used guns to defend themselves, they should still be banned. And then there's the fact that it is highly unlikely that firearms bans actually lower crime or keep guns out of criminals hands.

Also as a little note, apparently the police only found out about 64.2% of their gun defence incidents. None of this rings alarms on the BS'ometer at all?

Again, I couldn't find that anywhere in this article. Are you pulling this out of your rear, or am I blind?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-01-09 10:55pm

Nathan F wrote:If you'd read the article, you would have seen the stats your looking for, at least rough stats anyways, but more than adequate for the situation:
...guns are used defensively four times more frequently than they are to commit crimes.

Stats which are completely unsupported, with nothing more than vague references to "academic surveys" to justify them. Please excuse me while I fall over from shock at this overwhelming weight of irrefutable hard evidence

Do you have any studies which are based on police reports rather than surveys of gun owners asking them how often they thought their guns made them feel safer?

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-09 10:57pm

Ah, I see, you're getting numbers from the 'search' link on the page. You DO realize that that is just giving a general seach for that phrase, and not the source used for the information, don't you? Anyways, you are just tossing aside sources because they don't fit what you want to believe in them, the numbers are there, you can believe them or not, but from my experience, numbers don't lie.

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-09 11:00pm

Sorry for the triple post, but this is something I realized afterwards:

In the first set of numbers you posted, from what I can see, it's taking into effect crimes in which both a legal gun and illegal gun were used, hence the 112% rate.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-01-09 11:00pm

Nathan F wrote:Ah, I see, you're getting numbers from the 'search' link on the page. You DO realize that that is just giving a general seach for that phrase, and not the source used for the information, don't you? Anyways, you are just tossing aside sources because they don't fit what you want to believe in them, the numbers are there, you can believe them or not, but from my experience, numbers don't lie.

Oh really? You have never heard of misleading statistics in sociology? Even when they come from surveys? Surveys which are not even identified by name in the article, and whose methodologies remain a mystery?

I believe we have a winner in the "unbelievably fucking naive" category.

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-09 11:02pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Nathan F wrote:If you'd read the article, you would have seen the stats your looking for, at least rough stats anyways, but more than adequate for the situation:
...guns are used defensively four times more frequently than they are to commit crimes.
Stats which are completely unsupported, with nothing more than vague references to "academic surveys" to justify them. Please excuse me while I fall over from shock at this overwhelming weight of irrefutable hard evidence

Do you have any studies which are based on police reports rather than surveys of gun owners asking them how often they thought their guns made them feel safer?

Those numbers come from a Florida State University survey by criminologists. The Department of Justice puts the number at 1.5 million. Admittedly, the 1.5 million number should have been used.

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-09 11:04pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Nathan F wrote:Ah, I see, you're getting numbers from the 'search' link on the page. You DO realize that that is just giving a general seach for that phrase, and not the source used for the information, don't you? Anyways, you are just tossing aside sources because they don't fit what you want to believe in them, the numbers are there, you can believe them or not, but from my experience, numbers don't lie.
Oh really? You have never heard of misleading statistics in sociology? Even when they come from surveys? Surveys which are not even identified by name in the article, and whose methodologies remain a mystery?

I believe we have a winner in the "unbelievably fucking naive" category.

After I read farther into the search, I find that the surveys and studies are discussed in the third link down. Now, am I the naieve one for looking into more than just the single top link, which is apparently a fairly unprofessional personal page?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-01-09 11:59pm

Nathan F wrote:After I read farther into the search, I find that the surveys and studies are discussed in the third link down. Now, am I the naieve one for looking into more than just the single top link, which is apparently a fairly unprofessional personal page?

You're missing the point, which is that the article itself never names its sources. If you have to do a Google search, then you're only proving the point that the article provides nothing but unsupported jibberish.

BTW, with respect to the State Department of Justice statistic you mentioned earlier, where did you find a link to the original study, so that its methodology could be examined?

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-10 12:27am

Darth Wong wrote:
Nathan F wrote:After I read farther into the search, I find that the surveys and studies are discussed in the third link down. Now, am I the naieve one for looking into more than just the single top link, which is apparently a fairly unprofessional personal page?
You're missing the point, which is that the article itself never names its sources. If you have to do a Google search, then you're only proving the point that the article provides nothing but unsupported jibberish.

BTW, with respect to the State Department of Justice statistic you mentioned earlier, where did you find a link to the original study, so that its methodology could be examined?

http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/165476.pdf <-- DOJ Report, the part on defensive gun usage is near the end. As for your first statement, we are in agreement that the author should have cited his sources, however, after the sources are found, it's shown that what he says is mostly correct.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-01-10 12:37am

Nathan F wrote:http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/165476.pdf <-- DOJ Report, the part on defensive gun usage is near the end.

Ah, thanks. Did you notice that the "1.5 million DGUs" statistic is an extrapolation from an original survey in which just nineteen people reported a genuine DGU? And did you bother reading the part where they said:

National Institute of Justice wrote:The results still suggest that DGU estimates are far too high. For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in which a woman defended herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated from NCVS (exhibit . For other crimes listed in exhibit 8, the results are almost as absurd: the NSPOF estimate of DGU robberies is 36 percent of all NCVS-estimated robberies, while the NSPOF estimate of DGU assaults is 19 percent of all aggravated assaults. If those percentages were close to accurate, crime would be a risky business indeed!

NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases.

The evidence of bias in the DGU estimates is even stronger when one recalls that the DGU estimates are calculated using only the most recently reported DGU incidents of NSPOF respondents; as noted, about half of the respondents who reported a DGU indicated two or more in the preceding year. Although there are no details on the circumstances of those additional DGUs, presumably they are similar to the most recent case and provide evidence for additional millions of violent crimes foiled and perpetrators shot.

Classic case of selective quoting, Nathan. You cite the reference, apparently without realizing that it actually torpedoes your claim by showing that the DGU survey results are grossly exaggerated, collected in a flawed manner, involve a sample size which is much too small, and lead to conclusions which are grossly out of line with figures from much more reliable sources. One woman cited in the survey actually claimed to use her gun defensively fifty two times in the past year alone; where does she live? Mogadishu?

As for your first statement, we are in agreement that the author should have cited his sources, however, after the sources are found, it's shown that what he says is mostly correct.

No, it isn't. If anything, what we find is a consistent pattern of grossly dishonest behaviour on the part of statistics-wielding gun activists, since this "2.5 million DGU" statistic is so widely quoted and yet it is quite obvious that few if any of its proponents have seriously looked at it.

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-10 12:46am

Darth Wong wrote:
Nathan F wrote:http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/165476.pdf <-- DOJ Report, the part on defensive gun usage is near the end.
Ah, thanks. Did you notice that the "1.5 million DGUs" statistic is an extrapolation from an original survey in which just nineteen people reported a genuine DGU? And did you bother reading the part where they said:
National Institute of Justice wrote:The results still suggest that DGU estimates are far too high. For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in which a woman defended herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated from NCVS (exhibit . For other crimes listed in exhibit 8, the results are almost as absurd: the NSPOF estimate of DGU robberies is 36 percent of all NCVS-estimated robberies, while the NSPOF estimate of DGU assaults is 19 percent of all aggravated assaults. If those percentages were close to accurate, crime would be a risky business indeed!

NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases.

The evidence of bias in the DGU estimates is even stronger when one recalls that the DGU estimates are calculated using only the most recently reported DGU incidents of NSPOF respondents; as noted, about half of the respondents who reported a DGU indicated two or more in the preceding year. Although there are no details on the circumstances of those additional DGUs, presumably they are similar to the most recent case and provide evidence for additional millions of violent crimes foiled and perpetrators shot.
Classic case of selective quoting, Nathan. You cite the reference, apparently without realizing that it actually torpedoes your claim by showing that the DGU survey results are grossly exaggerated, collected in a flawed manner, involve a sample size which is much too small, and lead to conclusions which are grossly out of line with figures from much more reliable sources. One woman cited in the survey actually claimed to use her gun defensively fifty two times in the past year alone; where does she live? Mogadishu?

Point conceded, but (you knew that a 'but' was coming

), why does the study fail to actually provide any numbers or statistics that show that it was in error, instead of just accusing it of such. Now, I'm not saying that the original statements were correct, but by not giving numbers against what is said, it is just as bad as the apparent misquotes in the original article. Neither side is in the clear in this issue.

As for your first statement, we are in agreement that the author should have cited his sources, however, after the sources are found, it's shown that what he says is mostly correct.
No, it isn't. If anything, what we find is a consistent pattern of grossly dishonest behaviour on the part of statistics-wielding gun activists, since this "2.5 million DGU" statistic is so widely quoted and yet it is quite obvious that few if any of its proponents have seriously looked at it.

[/quote] Point conceded above, but still, I've yet to see any numbers that actually disprove the 2.5 million. So, as it stands now, we are at a stalemate. Neither side has reliable statistics to prove or disprove the issue at hand as discussed in the article in question.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2004-01-10 12:54am

Nathan F wrote: I've yet to see any numbers that actually disprove the 2.5 million. So, as it stands now, we are at a stalemate.

You apparently have forgotten about the burden of proof.

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2004-01-10 12:57am

DPDarkPrimus wrote:
Nathan F wrote: I've yet to see any numbers that actually disprove the 2.5 million. So, as it stands now, we are at a stalemate.
You apparently have forgotten about the burden of proof.

I've given numbers from studies, apparently the only studies in this area. They have been accused of being inaccurate. No numbers have been given to actually disprove these studies. Now, as I said, it's probable that the numbers in the study aren't wholly accurate, but, until another study is done, all the numbers that can be provided have been. It's the DOJ's turn to do their own study to showus the actual numbers.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-01-10 01:16am

Nathan F wrote:Point conceded, but (you knew that a 'but' was coming ), why does the study fail to actually provide any numbers or statistics that show that it was in error, instead of just accusing it of such.

Actually, it does. It notes that if the DGU claims are taken as fact, then the number of defensive gun uses during sexual assaults actually outnumbers the total number of rape cases in the US. Not only does this prove that the numbers are in error, but it proves that they are grossly exaggerated.

Now, I'm not saying that the original statements were correct, but by not giving numbers against what is said, it is just as bad as the apparent misquotes in the original article. Neither side is in the clear in this issue.

Wrong. By showing that the entire "1.5 million DGU" figure is based on a survey in which just nineteen people reported a genuine DGU, the criticism of the statistics proved that they were basically worthless. When the sample size is too small, what you have is garbage.

JUST NINETEEN PEOPLE, Nathan. Think about it.

Point conceded above, but still, I've yet to see any numbers that actually disprove the 2.5 million.

Read the portion I quoted. They do provide numbers which disprove the 2.5 million, and they are taken from real crime statistics, not surveys.

So, as it stands now, we are at a stalemate. Neither side has reliable statistics to prove or disprove the issue at hand as discussed in the article in question.

In other words, your statistics of millions of DGUs are worthless. Hence, the whole argument of this thread (that this overwhelmingly irrefutable data is being ignored by the press because of the Giant Liberal Conspiracy) is bullshit.

Skelron · Post by **Skelron** » 2004-01-10 01:24am

You seem to miss the point the study disproves itself. It uses too small a sample group, it uses obviously false data. 'Fifty two times in the last year' and the like. It is therefore a bad study. It has no worth, If guns are used more often to stop Rape, than Rape occurs then you have a seriously flawed study. A Serious attempt to study this issue would have noticed this fact and realised that the information and method used to conduct the study was wrong.

They would have gone back and started again, re-examined the methods they used and tried to spot the flaw, from that they might have tried again, and this time been more careful. Instead they produced information for one purpose only, to present 'Evidence' for their side of a debate.

From any position of a Social Science this is a meaningless study, and should not be used in any rational debate.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2004-01-10 04:07am

At least in the paper that I work at, and in all of the other local papers, this isn't an accurate reporting of the statistics on gun use coverage. We've covered LOTS of incidents during which law enforcement officers have used firearms to stop criminals. We've also covered at least two stories in the past year during which a private citizen used a firearm to stop a violent crime. We've covered lots of shootings (all of which on the "out of county" side of paper), but I think we do a pretty fair job of showing both "sides" of this issue (I use that in quotes because I didn't even think about that bias until I read the article).