“It’s just not the whole picture,” said Jennifer Doleac, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, who studies the connection between gunfire and crime. “There’s a lot more gun violence than what is reflected in homicide rates.”
The more telling number about gun violence might be “shots fired.” And now, thanks to broader adoption of new technologies, it is getting easier to show just how common gun violence is in America.
Last year, there were 165,531 separate gunshots recorded in 62 different urban municipalities nationwide, including places such as San Francisco, Washington, D.C., St. Louis and Canton, according to ShotSpotter, the company behind a technology that listens for gunfire’s acoustic signature and reports it to authorities.
This may be the best way to measure gun violence in America. – Washington Post
Please retrieve your lower jaw from the floor and return it to its locked position. I understand that this level of intellectual ineptitude is new and frankly awesome in “derpiness”, but we must try to remain calm and collected and not laugh so hard at them.
You have to understand that for the Gun Control Intelligentsia, every shot fired represents nothing but deadly violence. Do I need to remind you about one of the favorite slogans? Gun are specifically designed to kill! If you factor that in, then the study makes sense for them and every shot was done in anger.
My first thought after reading that quoted section was all those shots “in anger” that are popped every weekend across the country at different shooting activities. I went to the IDPA website and found the results of the MVSA Mountain Valley Regional in Hot Springs, Arkansas: 112 stages with a round count of 200 in which 168 shooters participated. That comes out to 33,600 shots fired during the match. Two days of competition netted one fifth of the alleged number of “violent shots” in what passes for scientific study. Yet, no mass killings, no brawls ending in High Noon shootouts among 168 competitive people carrying guns, not one of the usual predictions came to happen… but “shots fired” is a “better way to measure gun violence”… yeah right.
“But Miguel, they do not mean it like that! Besides, those are the results of a very scientific form of measurement by ShotSpotter in urban areas!” And I am not sold on that thing either. I have seen results first hand and where the “spotting” has been off by two blocks and even not recorded at all. I used to work in Miami Gardens where there is a decent amount of gang activity and saw first hand how useless the system was because if you are not only off geographically but arrive to the wrong location between six and none minutes after the fact, you pretty much get less data and results as if the incident was called via 911.
Some years back while enjoying some quiet time in my back porch during an afternoon, I heard several shots nearby three to be precise. My brain made a quick calculation and figured they were within a 4-block radius and they were high velocity rounds, probably .22 LR. I called 911 to report them and cops arrived at my door not long after. I explained what I heard and pointed at the general direction where the shots might have been fired. They replied with no amount of smugness that “no shots had been reported” meaning the ShotSpotter that covers our little patch of Miami Dade did not say anything. I insisted that I had heard shots and added that I was a competitive shooter, well used to gun fire and that if they reluctantly got back in their car and drove towards where I indicated. Some 20 minutes later, I saw them go by again, but this time with two young individuals in the back seat and I could not get officers to make eye contact with me. I wonder why.
So, I am not impressed with this “new” and “improved” way to measure “gun violence” as it is probably more packed with political manure than the Clinton campaign. And I give you one last piece of smoky beef jerky to chew on: “165,531 separate gunshots recorded in 62 different urban municipalities nationwide” in a year’s period. Does that include the celebratory gunfire during the Fourth of July and New Years? That is a bunch of shots right there.
But when your movement is slowly sinking into oblivion, you hold on to anything to see if it floats, even an anchor.
This indicates that they are well aware that their agenda isn’t selling. Normal people might wonder at this point if maybe, just maybe, they had something wrong. Being liberals, their narrative CANNOT be wrong, so they are combining two hallowed liberal traditions: Mangling the language and moving the goalposts.
They just don’t get it.
Anybody want to take a guess as to what most/all of these cities have in common?
Hey Miguel have you seen the norleans idiot in chief admitting that “common sense gun control” won’t stop gun crimes but rather increase awareness among law abiding gun owners of their “responsibilities”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/4g3k35/city_gun_regulations_wont_stop_violence_but_its_a/
The good old “It is a good first step.” is back… [headdesk]
So, when I go to the range and fire 500 rounds at paper targets, that’s 500 incidents of “gun violence”?
Apparently. I will, therefore, hotly deny that I committed 178 individual acts of “gun violence” at the range this weekend. (It was a quick trip. 😉 )
Oh you savage! 🙂
Well, they do need to make up some sort of way to make it look like those icky red states are more violent than their People’s Paradises like Chicago and Detroit.
Guys I hope you’re not slacking off! I did my share this afternoon, driving from Paris to Belgium this afternoon for an IPSC/LVR match. I did approximately 120 rounds of gun violence this afternoon alone!
By the way I have to reload me some gun violence (boolits!).
“But when your movement is slowly sinking into oblivion, you hold on to anything to see if it floats, even an anchor.”
Well said.
So let’s say I’m coming out of a drug store and get attacked by a 300 pound Samoan attorney, stoned out of his gourd on blotter acid and ether and brandishing a Colt Python. He shoots at me but is distracted by the bats and misses. In response, I pull out my Glock and, naturally enough, go for slide lock.
By our standards, that’s *ONE* shooting and it’s straight up self defense. The “shooting to self defense ” statistic stands at 1:1.
By this twit’s standard it’s *FOURTEEN CRIMES* committed versus one recorded case of self defense so, provably, guns are used to commit crimes 14 times more frequently than they are used in self defense.
Or consider this scenario: your 300 lb Samoan Attorney gets into the Japanese bath salts, and comes charging down the hall of your hotel, soaking wet and stark nekkid, while waving a Gerber Mini-Magnum knife and raving about white rabbits. Slidelocking your Glock 43 would be seen by the waterheads as 8 time more violent and wrong than just letting him chop out your pineal gland.
Cazart! Do these people even think?
These people really are stuck out in Bat Country.
The mantra that “Gun are specifically designed to kill!” is often true, but not always. Take pure target practice guns. They are designed for paper, but even competition firearms for the Olympics can kill someone. Of course, I could probably kill someone with a rowing oar, an ice skating boot, or a javelin from the Olympics, too.
Design versus evil intent is the issue here. My firearms are perfectly safe to anyone who is not a threat to me.
So, what they fail to acknowledge is that lethality is the great BENEFIT of firearms. They offer a deadly force threat to discourage those who are intent on violent criminal activity. If my 12 gauge shotgun only tickled and amused a home invader, then it would be worthless. While less-lethal weapons (e.g. knives, TASERs and OC) may be sufficient, they are ultimately all there just so I can get to my long gun.
Standard goalpost moving.
Further This is not only the gun banners moving the goalposts, but Shotspotter. This expensive system was sold to many cities as a crime prevention, criminal apprehension system.
I have NEVER read of Shotspotter accomplished ANY of those things….and I’m typing this from Boston where one of the systems is installed.
So yeah “violence” is now “anything we say is violence”, and Shotspotter is, was, and always has been a “research tool for gun violence”.