It's not so much "Someone can stop them".

It's "Who's going to rob a place where everyone is packing."

It really raises the threat-risk assesment of committing crimes.

That's not so. In fact, it seems that most incidents take place in so-called "gun free zones". Nobody could bring a gun into Columbine High School or onto the Virginia Tech campus- nobody but Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, or Cho Seung-Hui, that is.

A quick googling of "homeowner shoots intruder" reveals thousands of unique results of home owners defending their house against burglaries:

http://newsok.com/homeowner-shoots-kills-intruder-in-lincoln-county/article/3422809

http://www.kc3.com/self_defense/lasvegas.htm

http://www.northescambia.com/?p=13991

http://www.kmbc.com/news/18530438/detail.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/101707dnmetintruder.347b80b.html

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/132122

http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dws/txcn/houston/stories/khou091012_jj_lima-shooting-homeowner-speaks.20e01a937.html

http://www.wptv.com/content/news/centralpbc/wellington/story/Wellington-homeowner-shoots-intruder/d_T1H9bIB0Kfgmgfa8LIyQ.cspx

http://www.news4jax.com/news/13661941/detail.html

http://www.kdhnews.com/news/story.aspx?s=21834

http://www2.counton2.com/cbd/news/local/article/elderly_homeowner_shoots_intruder_in_holly_hill/39631/

________________

These were all unique incedents of homeowners shooting intruders from various news oulets over the past 3-4 years.

Those are just a very small sample of news reports about this kind of stuff. The first example is probably the most interesting, as its the 911 call of a man breaking into a womans house, and she waits 10 minutes for police to arrive. With no police in sight, she shoots the man, killing him.

The fact of the matter is this:

News reports love to report about the murder of innocent men and women, especially in large quantities. It makes for better ratings. How often do you think news outlets are going to care about 'homeowner shoots scumbag'?

Even with my local news, they report (what I would seem dozens of times) homeowners defending their houses  by killing, or scaring of intruders with firearms. However, they never mention it more than a quick 30-second blurb.

Oh, and these are just instances of homeowners shooting robbers. Not concealed & carry owners, or store clerks defending their property. If you google "store clerk shoots robber", you will find 3 times as many incedences of clerks killing robbers (about 50,000 homeowner reports on google vs. 143,000 store clerks)

....So when someone posts about homeowners defending their houses, everyone gets silent?

Why is that?

Also. As to why you don't hear stories about people "doing good" with firearms, but only the murders, sprees, etc., keep in mind that there's only so much available news space--only so many spots on the 11 o'clock news; only so much room on the front page of a paper or site. Somebody has to make choices about what to report/what to cover. And what to leave out.

While I don't want to get all conspiracy theory about "media bias" or whatever, I *have* heard that journalists describe themselves as liberal (as opposed to conservative) by a fairly large margin. If the people making these sorts of decisions believe, at their core, that guns do more harm than good... doesn't it make sense that such a preconception would affect their choices?

Maybe you're only hearing one kind of story because that's all they're choosing to tell you.

donathos -

You are exactly right. If you google news stories about people using guns for good purposes -

- Hunting for food and donating it to local food banks, or using it to thin out over-populated species as opposed to factory farming
- Scaring off attackers, rapists and others WITHOUT resorting to violence (these often go unreported)
- Defending homes from burglaries, home invasions and murders
- Defending stores and businesses from robbers and madmen

And so on, you find MANY stories about this kind of activity, but there is never in-depth reporting going on. Just quick blurbs in the media. But when there is a random homicide....The media reports on it for hours on-end. Why?

It doesn't help the perception of gun owners when they do this. For example, you have concealed carry laws in states like Florida and Ohio. You can legally carry a sidearm everywhere that is not federally-owned property. Yet despite these laws, you don't hear anything about major waves of crime, or psycopaths with these permits....Despite the fact there are litterally hundreds of thousands of Ohioans with the permits, there are few if any negative incidents with this kind of law.

In my opinion guns should never be illegal. It will only give criminals an even bigger advantage over the average guy/girl. It will mean a criminal can rape/kill/rob people withe even greater ease. If everyone had the same gun it would be like nobody had a gun.

This is also coming from someone who has had close family members be victims. So I will admit it changed my view on it. If my sister had a weapon to defend herself she might have not have gotten raped years ago.

That is the most illogical statement of the year so far. If everybody has a gun people are going to end up being shot, if nobody has a gun then nobody ends up getting shot.

Registration and restriction of guns in countries often correlates to the amount of gun deaths in a country.

@MrStick. From the OP I kind of got that he wasn't talking about home invasion, he was talking about the massacres that are all too common these days. People going on shooting sprees in malls, schools, army bases.

army base in texas - no one had guns because they were in the medical area, hence the shooting spree happened there where no one could defend themselves

school - no guns, no one can defend themselves

malls - generally no one brings guns to the mall, no one can defend themselves.

people at home - have guns, can defend themselves and it has been proven to work even when the cops take over 10 minutes to show up to an invasion.

criminals may be dumb enough to commit a crime, but they tend to be smart enough to know where the weak/easy targets are. While the statement might be slightly illogical, he is right that if everyone has a gun, then everyone is on an even playing field. If guns are outlawed, then the criminal has the advantage, as the black market will provide more than enough illegal guns and ammunition for people willing to pay.

besides, once we outlaw guns, these massacre will just move into the pipe bomb category, as they are more than easy enough to make. Heck, terrorists use bombs now, and they have been fairly effective.

But your chart doesn't say anything about the actual event of crime and the correlation of gun ownership to it. Your chart makes as much sense as a chart showing that more cars in a country = more auto accidents.

The fact is that more firearms per capita is correlated with less overall crime. Does it matter if guns are used more in crimes if less crimes are comitted overall?

How about this chart that shows overall gun deaths per country, per capita?

In 'high' areas, there are severe firearm restrictions:

• Mexico - 15.0 guns per capita. Heavy restrictions on anything military-calibre
• Brazil - 8.8 guns per capita. Requires registering of firearms, owners only above 25 y/o
• Russia - 9.0 guns per capita. Heavy regulations on guns, and many types of bans

And so on.

Oh, and you have the UK gun ban:

Interesting that the UK homicides are either stagnant or up since the ban, and injuries are way up.

Ultimately, if you want to restrict firearm usage, you need better education and employment. Unemployment and a higher GINI coefficent are far better predictors of violent crime, firearms or not, than if a country bans or severely regulates firearms. As Nordlead has said, criminals prey on weak and defenseless targets....No better place than schools and malls which have concealed carry bans.

Interestingly enough, we have two bank branches where I live. One branch banned concealed carry firearms, and the other promotes the fact that they allow concealed carry. Guess which branches never have been robbed? Guess which one has been robbed multiple times since their policy went into effect?