The Blog About Guns

[Subdeacon Joe]

http://theblogaboutguns.blogspot.com/?m=1

 

Some good stuff there.

http://theblogaboutguns.blogspot.com/2013/10/999-of-gun-owners-didnt-shoot-anybody.html?m=1

 

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

99.9% of Gun Owners Didn't Shoot Anybody Last Year ... Right?

Today, someone dared me to provide a link to back up the claim in the
title. After some searching on Google came up fruitless, I decided to
do some research of my own. So here are the accurate numbers as of
2012:



The number of guns as of 2012 is estimated at 94.3 per 100 Americans (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country and their linked resource is http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publications/by-type/yearbook/small-arms-survey-2007.html). If we pretend that everybody has one gun, that means that 294,952,452 people own firearms.

Math time: 312,780,968 x .943 = 294,952,452.8 (rounded down to 294,952,452).



The number of firearms-related deaths in 2011(the latest year I can find) is estimated at 32,163, total. That's at http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states,
by the way. However, that isn't from 2012, so I'll round that up a
bit, to 40,000. I do not believe that 40,000 people in the United
States died from bullets last year, but rounding it up gives gun-control
proponents a nice safe handicap. If we pretend that every
firearms-related homicide was done in the manner of a single person
killing a single person instead of any multiple-death shootings, we have
40,000 gun owners who shot somebody last year.



More math: 294,952,452 gun owners total - 40,000 gun owners who shot
someone = 294,912,542 gun owners who didn't shoot anybody last year.
294,912,542/294,952,452 = 0.9998646 x 100% = 99.98646%.



Huh. That seems wrong. There are WAY fewer gun owners than that,
right? After all, many gun owners own more than one gun. I'd know, I'm
one of them.



Let's try the numbers again with 100 million gun owners. That's a much more conservative number.



100,000,000 gun owners total - 40,000 bad guys = 99,960,000 good guys.
99,960,000/100,000,000 x 100% comes out pretty easily to 99.96% of gun
owners who didn't shoot anybody last year.



Hmm. Still too easy. Let's take an even lower number, maybe 80,000,000. Yes, I'm pulling this out of thin air.



80,000,000 gun owners - 40,000 bad guys = 79,960,000 good guys. 79,960,000/80,000,000 x 100% = 99.95%.



So there are some cold, hard numbers that seem to prove my claim pretty
handily. Hope y'all had a nice read, and have a nice day.

[Virgil Ray Hality, SASS# 37355]

Interesting stats-play. I bet if one looked at law abiding gun owners (taking criminals out of the mix) we would be at 5 "9s".

[Subdeacon Joe]

Interesting stats-play. I bet if one looked at law abiding gun owners (taking criminals out of the mix) we would be at 5 "9s".

 

He does that. "However, that isn't from 2012, so I'll round that up a bit, to 40,000. I do not believe that 40,000 people in the United

 

States died from bullets last year, but rounding it up gives gun-control proponents a nice safe handicap. If we pretend that every

 

firearms-related homicide was done in the manner of a single person killing a single person instead of any multiple-death shootings, we have 40,000 gun owners who shot somebody last year."

[Virgil Ray Hality, SASS# 37355]

He does that. "However, that isn't from 2012, so I'll round that up a bit, to 40,000. I do not believe that 40,000 people in the United

 

States died from bullets last year, but rounding it up gives gun-control proponents a nice safe handicap. If we pretend that every

 

firearms-related homicide was done in the manner of a single person killing a single person instead of any multiple-death shootings, we have 40,000 gun owners who shot somebody last year."

 

I saw that. Interesting play with numbers, but,"air math" does not work for me. I would rather tell a story filled with emotion. One that shows how safe and sound I live knowing I can protect myself when the need arrises.