re is it really apples to apples lawful vs unlawful use of guns in article apr husc harvard edu kim scws harvard edu john kim writes i have been convinced of the right of americans to an effective self defense but something strikes me as odd among the pro rkba arguments presented here the numbers comparing hundreds of thousands indeed even a million of instances of law abiding citizens deterring criminal activity seem valid to me likewise the number of gun caused homicides each year about year however it is surprising that the evil antigun empire darth vader breathing sound effect here never tries to compare all legitimate gun defenses vs all gun crimes instead it s always all legitimate gun defenses which includes cases in which the criminals are shot but not killed and cases in which the criminal is not here vs just criminal gun homicides which only includes case sin which the victim died why is this of course it wouldn t be unreasonable to say that in each crime already measured involving guns the consequnces are already known and it is safe to assume that a gun based bank robbery last week will not suddenly turn into a gun basd robbery homicide whereas in the legitimate gun defenses one may assume that all those criminals who were deterred would have committed more crime or more serious crimes had they not been deterred i think its an attempt to show lives saved v lives lost all other gun related crimes don t result in lives lost on the other hand its impossible to know how many of the successful self defenses prevented lives from being lost in other words the lives lost is pretty clear its the homicide and non negligent manslaughter number while the lives saved is some percentage of the successful self defenses clearly that percentage doesn t have to be real high to show that lives saved lives lost as a semi related point check out kleck s point blank i believe it goes into some related areas it also is well written and informative case kim kim husc harvard edu michael phelps external mjp vnet ibm com internal mjp bwa kgn ibm com mjp at kgnvmy and last but not least a disclaimer these opinions are mine
