Are Mass Shootings Increasing in Frequency

[bilby]

Except that mental health statistics are not correlated with shooting statistics. Whether you take a county by county, state by state, or an international perspective, the one factor that consistently correlates with numbers of shootings, is number of guns per capita.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.amp.html

Break it down more. In the US shootings are inversely associated with the number of guns per capita.

Not according to the article I linked above.

More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates.

I am sure that it is possible to find evidence to support your claim; But only if you really like cherries.

The consensus of the evidence can always be ignored if you have a sufficient ideological commitment to a particular conclusion.

 

[braces_for_impact]

According to a quick wiki search, there are now more than twice as many guns per capita in the US than there were in 1968, which would indicate that it's significantly easier to get one now than it was then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country

It may be that there are more regulations now than there used to be, but if that's offset by price drops, round about ways to avoid the regulations and aggressive marketing about how all the colored folk and turrists are going to break into your mobile home and steal your food stamps, combined with a large number of those regulations just being completely ignored, then that increase in regulations doesn't do the things that the right wingers are claiming they do.

That's a common occurrence, seeing as how right wing viewpoints tend to be relatively divorced from reality. I'd say respond to them with facts, but I fail to see the use of such a strategy.

You realize there weren't background checks back then? It was easier to get a gun then than now.

I think the important question is, what kind of gun?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here is a decent timeline of gun control laws in the United States. It shows how (purposely) misleading is the claim that pre-1994 we didn't have gun control OR mass shootings.

In fact, one of the earliest gun control laws was enacted BECAUSE of mass shootings:



Other gun control laws have been enacted because of racism:

Many point to laws passed in the turbulent 1960s, when Black nationalist groups took up arms to defend their communities, as examples of racist implementation.

The leftist Black Panther Party (BPP), whose members carried weapons to guard against police brutality, "invaded" the California capitol building in Sacramento in 1967.

California's then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act shortly after that, prohibiting open carry of weapons in public places.

The following year would see the passing of the Gun Control Act of 1968, signed by then-President Richard Nixon. That law banned "Saturday Night Specials", cheaply-made handguns associated with crime in minority communities, as well as barring felons, the mentally ill and others from owning firearms.

Both of these laws were passed by Republicans and supported by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the most powerful anti-regulation gun lobby group in the US.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/10/gun-control-racist-present-171006135904199.html

Then the NRA changed tactics during the 1970's. Now they are all guns (for white men) all the time.

I am 100% certain that if the majority of these mass murderers were black instead of white, the NRA and the Republicans would be the groups screaming the loudest for gun control... just like they were pre-1970's.

I think this graph tells the story quite well. NRA changes tactics in the mid-1970's and look what happens to mass shooting rates in the workplace, schools and religious killings.

View attachment 14575

Your chart has a far higher number than what are generally considered mass shootings.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In the US shootings are inversely associated with the number of guns per capita.

Source?

Not according to the article I linked above.

More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates.

View attachment 14576

I am sure that it is possible to find evidence to support your claim; But only if you really like cherries.

The consensus of the evidence can always be ignored if you have a sufficient ideological commitment to a particular conclusion.

http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-more-guns-less-gun-violence-between-1993-and-2013/

Yeah, the spin they put on the data is questionable but the basic data is fine.

That rebuttal chart is moving the goalposts. Note that it is gun deaths. The majority of gun deaths are suicide, not murder. Thus showing more total gun deaths when you have more guns isn't showing more gun murders.

 

[bilby]

Not according to the article I linked above.

More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates.

View attachment 14576

I am sure that it is possible to find evidence to support your claim; But only if you really like cherries.

The consensus of the evidence can always be ignored if you have a sufficient ideological commitment to a particular conclusion.

http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-more-guns-less-gun-violence-between-1993-and-2013/

Yeah, the spin they put on the data is questionable but the basic data is fine.

That rebuttal chart is moving the goalposts. Note that it is gun deaths. The majority of gun deaths are suicide, not murder. Thus showing more total gun deaths when you have more guns isn't showing more gun murders.

You are absolutely right; We shouldn't do anything to lower the death rate, because murder is the only kind of death we should ever care about. And it fits our agenda to claim (without evidence) that the data would be different if suicides were subtracted from it. So different that the correlation would disappear.

And of course, in accordance with the lobbying of the NRA, we should absolutely prohibit the collection of any statistics about gun murders, because that way you can always rely on this rather dubious assumption, and nobody can prove it to be false.

I don't know about you, but when I see an organization that is dead set against the collection of data about something, I tend to think that they themselves believe that the data would be detrimental to their cause. If the NRA seriously believed that the data would not undermine their claims, then they would be clamouring for it to be collected and published.

 

[Hermit]

View attachment 14582

Nicely cherry-picked.

The disastercenter.com has a fairly comprehensive table about all sorts of crimes from 1960 to 2016. Its source is the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. The UCR is produced from data received from over 18,000 law enforcement agencies voluntarily participating in the program. Unfortunately it has no statistics concerning privately owned guns covering that time span, probably because they don't exist.

I used the data in the murder column and turned them into this graph:



Can anyone see a consistent correlation between gun ownership and murder rates? Is it conceivable that the level of privately owned firearms in 1963 was the same as in 2014? Was there an unreported massive reduction in the ten years following 1963, an unreported approximate plateau for two decades after that and an upsurge for the next six years? And what's with the uptick of murder rates in 2015 and 2016?

Looking at total violent crime for that period, a correlation with private gun ownership is equally difficult to imagine.



To me it seems that factors other than gun ownership play a much more significant part in determining murder and general crime rates. This cuts both ways, of course. While the "more guns - less crime" mantra obviously lacks substantiation, a total gun ban won't fix the problem either, but then not many people are campaigning for that. Gun controls, however do make sense. Assault style weapons and bump stocks are only good for killing a lot of people in the shortest possible time. Taking them out of circulation should reduce the toll incurred during mass shootings. A requirement to keep guns locked up when not in use should reduce accidental shootings. The requirement of having every gun registered and its owners identified in a national database should, in conjunction with a national register of individuals who have significant mental problems, keep those things out of the hands of the Elliott and Cruz types. As I mentioned here, of the 292 guns used in the 150 mass shootings since the Texas tower incident at least 167 (57.2%) of mass shooters’ weapons were obtained legally and 49 (16.8%) were obtained illegally. It’s unclear how 76 (26%) weapons were acquired.

 

[J842P]

In the US shootings are inversely associated with the number of guns per capita.

Source?

Lol. You must be new around here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-more-guns-less-gun-violence-between-1993-and-2013/

Yeah, the spin they put on the data is questionable but the basic data is fine.

That rebuttal chart is moving the goalposts. Note that it is gun deaths. The majority of gun deaths are suicide, not murder. Thus showing more total gun deaths when you have more guns isn't showing more gun murders.

You are absolutely right; We shouldn't do anything to lower the death rate, because murder is the only kind of death we should ever care about. And it fits our agenda to claim (without evidence) that the data would be different if suicides were subtracted from it. So different that the correlation would disappear.

And of course, in accordance with the lobbying of the NRA, we should absolutely prohibit the collection of any statistics about gun murders, because that way you can always rely on this rather dubious assumption, and nobody can prove it to be false.

I don't know about you, but when I see an organization that is dead set against the collection of data about something, I tend to think that they themselves believe that the data would be detrimental to their cause. If the NRA seriously believed that the data would not undermine their claims, then they would be clamouring for it to be collected and published.

Once again, moving goal posts.

Suicide is a separate issue with a substantial substitution component. Removing guns doesn't remove other ways of offing yourself. The inclusion of suicides in gun deaths in a discussion of gun laws is a deliberate attempt to make guns look more dangerous than they really are.

 

[bilby]

http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-more-guns-less-gun-violence-between-1993-and-2013/

Yeah, the spin they put on the data is questionable but the basic data is fine.

That rebuttal chart is moving the goalposts. Note that it is gun deaths. The majority of gun deaths are suicide, not murder. Thus showing more total gun deaths when you have more guns isn't showing more gun murders.

You are absolutely right; We shouldn't do anything to lower the death rate, because murder is the only kind of death we should ever care about. And it fits our agenda to claim (without evidence) that the data would be different if suicides were subtracted from it. So different that the correlation would disappear.

And of course, in accordance with the lobbying of the NRA, we should absolutely prohibit the collection of any statistics about gun murders, because that way you can always rely on this rather dubious assumption, and nobody can prove it to be false.

I don't know about you, but when I see an organization that is dead set against the collection of data about something, I tend to think that they themselves believe that the data would be detrimental to their cause. If the NRA seriously believed that the data would not undermine their claims, then they would be clamouring for it to be collected and published.

Once again, moving goal posts.

Suicide is a separate issue with a substantial substitution component. Removing guns doesn't remove other ways of offing yourself. The inclusion of suicides in gun deaths in a discussion of gun laws is a deliberate attempt to make guns look more dangerous than they really are.

As usual, cherry picking.

As soon as someone mentions suicide, you feel justified in ignoring everything else they posted, and focusing only on the part that you feel able to refute.

You are wrong, of course - a 'substantial' [citation needed] substitution component need only be less than 100% for lives to be saved from suicide by gun control.

But even if it were 100%, you have no reason (other than your prejudice) to expect that suicides are such a large component of total gun deaths, and so strongly correlated to numbers of guns owned, as to cause the correlation we see in the chart to disappear (or even be reversed) if suicides were excluded from the data.

That is an extraordinary claim; But not only do you not have extraordinary evidence - you have no evidence at all.

You don't appear interested in an honest consideration of the facts; rather you appear to be seeking even the slightest rationalization for your preexisting opinions - and you appear to be very easily pleased by the slightest perceived flaw in your opponents' case.

When 99.99% of the evidence says you are wrong, it is dishonest and rather insulting to point to the 0.01% that, if viewed with a squint in a dim light, possibly agrees with you, and say "discussing anything else is moving the goalposts - this is the only valid evidence we have!!"

 

[Loren Pechtel]

View attachment 14582

Nicely cherry-picked.

The disastercenter.com has a fairly comprehensive table about all sorts of crimes from 1960 to 2016. Its source is the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. The UCR is produced from data received from over 18,000 law enforcement agencies voluntarily participating in the program. Unfortunately it has no statistics concerning privately owned guns covering that time span, probably because they don't exist.

I used the data in the murder column and turned them into this graph:

View attachment 14587

Can anyone see a consistent correlation between gun ownership and murder rates? Is it conceivable that the level of privately owned firearms in 1963 was the same as in 2014? Was there an unreported massive reduction in the ten years following 1963, an unreported approximate plateau for two decades after that and an upsurge for the next six years? And what's with the uptick of murder rates in 2015 and 2016?

Looking at total violent crime for that period, a correlation with private gun ownership is equally difficult to imagine.

View attachment 14588

To me it seems that factors other than gun ownership play a much more significant part in determining murder and general crime rates. This cuts both ways, of course. While the "more guns - less crime" mantra obviously lacks substantiation, a total gun ban won't fix the problem either, but then not many people are campaigning for that. Gun controls, however do make sense. Assault style weapons and bump stocks are only good for killing a lot of people in the shortest possible time. Taking them out of circulation should reduce the toll incurred during mass shootings. A requirement to keep guns locked up when not in use should reduce accidental shootings. The requirement of having every gun registered and its owners identified in a national database should, in conjunction with a national register of individuals who have significant mental problems, keep those things out of the hands of the Elliott and Cruz types. As I mentioned here, of the 292 guns used in the 150 mass shootings since the Texas tower incident at least 167 (57.2%) of mass shooters’ weapons were obtained legally and 49 (16.8%) were obtained illegally. It’s unclear how 76 (26%) weapons were acquired.

Cherry picked? What you're quoting isn't my data, but what I was replying to!

Furthermore, you're still missing the point. Your data is across time. I'm talking about across states.

Furthermore, what you are saying about how their weapons are acquired is only useful if your argument is that civilian possession of firearms should be prohibited. And if they are you're faced with all the people that will die because they can't defend themselves--well above the number who die in mass shootings.

You're trading high profile deaths for more low profile deaths. Out of sight makes it ok?

 

[bilby]

...
Furthermore, what you are saying about how their weapons are acquired is only useful if your argument is that civilian possession of firearms should be prohibited. And if they are you're faced with all the people that will die because they can't defend themselves--well above the number who die in mass shootings.
...

[citation needed]

This sounds to me like grade 'A' prime quality all-American Bullshit.

Do you have ANY evidence to back up this extraordinary claim? I have lived in two countries where civilian possession of firearms is restricted, and their ownership for the purpose of self defence is prohibited. I have NEVER heard of a bona-fide case of someone who died because they did not have a firearm with which to defend themselves. Not one.

Yet you claim that there should be well above the number who die in mass shootings. How the FUCK do you arrive at this bizarre conclusion?

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate, the US Intentional homicide rate is 4.88 per 100,000 population per annum. Yet the rate in developed nations where people cannot defend themselves is not higher, as your assertion predicts; Australia's rate is 0.98; that in the UK is 0.92. Where is the massive saving of life in the US due to people defending themselves with guns? Where is the loss of life in the rest of the OECD due to people being prohibited from doing so?

Your claim here has to rank as about the most implausible claim I have ever heard someone seriously make, outside the context of religion. You must have some truly compelling evidence for this claim - please share it with us.

 

[TV and credit cards]

...
Furthermore, what you are saying about how their weapons are acquired is only useful if your argument is that civilian possession of firearms should be prohibited. And if they are you're faced with all the people that will die because they can't defend themselves--well above the number who die in mass shootings.
...

[citation needed]

This sounds to me like grade 'A' prime quality all-American Bullshit.

Do you have ANY evidence to back up this extraordinary claim? I have lived in two countries where civilian possession of firearms is restricted, and their ownership for the purpose of self defence is prohibited. I have NEVER heard of a bona-fide case of someone who died because they did not have a firearm with which to defend themselves. Not one.

Yet you claim that there should be well above the number who die in mass shootings. How the FUCK do you arrive at this bizarre conclusion?

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate, the US Intentional homicide rate is 4.88 per 100,000 population per annum. Yet the rate in developed nations where people cannot defend themselves is not higher, as your assertion predicts; Australia's rate is 0.98; that in the UK is 0.92. Where is the massive saving of life in the US due to people defending themselves with guns? Where is the loss of life in the rest of the OECD due to people being prohibited from doing so?

Your claim here has to rank as about the most implausible claim I have ever heard someone seriously make, outside the context of religion. You must have some truly compelling evidence for this claim - please share it with us.

But the US is already awash in these weapons. So while Loren is not likely to have evidence to support his claim, the number of weapons currently in the US does make it plausible.
If all the world were a campground, the US would be the idiots who thought it would be a good idea to setup and build their campfires in the dried field of grass.

 

[RavenSky]

What do these and so many other cases have in common? They are the byproduct of a tragic myth: that millions of gun owners successfully use their firearms to defend themselves and their families from criminals. Despite having nearly no academic support in public health literature, this myth is the single largest motivation behind gun ownership. It traces its origin to a two-decade-old series of surveys that, despite being thoroughly repudiated at the time, persists in influencing personal safety decisions and public policy throughout the United States.

Undergirding gun advocates’ rhetoric touting the millions of defensive gun uses every year is the assumption that these uses are necessarily good. However, most cases of defensive gun use are not of gun owners heroically defending their families from criminals.

Kleck himself admitted in 1997, in response to criticism of his survey, that 36 to 64 percent of the defensive gun uses reported in the survey were likely illegal—meaning the firearm was used to intimidate or harm another person rather than for legitimate self-defense. His conjecture was confirmed by a Harvard study showing that 51 percent of defensive gun uses in a large survey were illegal according to a panel of 5 judges. This was even after the judges were told to take the respondents at their word, deliberately ignoring the tendency of respondents to portray themselves in a positive light.

Let’s assume for a moment that Kleck and Getz’s estimates are accurate. Rather than being a boon to civilized society, then, these estimates of 1 million to 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually would instead indicate an epidemic of irresponsible gun owners—millions! Lucky for us, despite what the NRA’s favorite criminologists claim, this clearly isn’t the case.

The myth of widespread defensive gun use is at the heart of the push to weaken already near catatonic laws controlling the use of guns and expand where good guys can carry guns to bars, houses of worship and college campuses—all in the mistaken belief that more “good guys with guns” will help stop the “bad guys.” As Wayne LaPierre of the NRA railed in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.”

But the evidence clearly shows that our lax gun laws and increased gun ownership, spurred on by this myth, do not help “good guys with guns” defend themselves, their families or our society. Instead, they are aiding and abetting criminals by providing them with more guns, with 200,000 already stolen on an annual basis. And more guns means more homicides. More suicides. More dead men, women and children. Not fewer.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-gun-ownership-myth-114262?o=1

 

[RavenSky]

Harvard Injury Control Research Center

We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.

Guns are not used millions of times each year in self-defense

Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments, and are both socially undesirable and illegal

Firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense

Guns in the home are used more often to intimidate intimates than to thwart crime

Adolescents are far more likely to be threatened with a gun than to use one in self-defense

Criminals who are shot are typically the victims of crime

Few criminals are shot by law-abiding citizens

Self-defense gun use is rare and not more effective at preventing injury than other protective actions

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

 

[Hermit]

Cherry picked? What you're quoting isn't my data, but what I was replying to!

I did not say they were your data. I said the data were cherry picked. The author showed the time period where murder rates went down, the levelled out. Not only is that not even a correlation, but he snipped the years where murders were up without providing data for a corresponding downturn in the rate of private ownership of guns. My timeline just pointed that failure out.

Furthermore, you're still missing the point.

The point being what? Ah, right. The point was that

In the US shootings are inversely associated with the number of guns per capita.

I'll get to that presently.

Your data is across time. I'm talking about across states.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, as I just illustrated, but OK, doing it your way, I have pasted state by state murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rates per 100,000 inhabitants into a spreadsheet and matched them with state by state gun ownership rates. Unfortunately, the data for the former were gathered in 2015 and the ones for the latter in 2013, but I don't think the time difference would have caused any significant distortions in the relation to the two sets. If you can do better, feel free to provide the sources.

Then I created a chart to illustrate the data and let the spreadsheet's algorithm add a trendline. Here's the result:



Says the opposite of what you assert doesn't it?

Worse still, in regard to your assertion

the average gun ownership of all states with a murder rate of less than two per 100,000 is 31.8% while

the average gun ownership of all states with a murder rate of more than seven per 100,000 is 41.4%.


Your assertion is well and truly fucked.

 

[bilby]

...
Furthermore, what you are saying about how their weapons are acquired is only useful if your argument is that civilian possession of firearms should be prohibited. And if they are you're faced with all the people that will die because they can't defend themselves--well above the number who die in mass shootings.
...

[citation needed]

This sounds to me like grade 'A' prime quality all-American Bullshit.

Do you have ANY evidence to back up this extraordinary claim? I have lived in two countries where civilian possession of firearms is restricted, and their ownership for the purpose of self defence is prohibited. I have NEVER heard of a bona-fide case of someone who died because they did not have a firearm with which to defend themselves. Not one.

Yet you claim that there should be well above the number who die in mass shootings. How the FUCK do you arrive at this bizarre conclusion?

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate, the US Intentional homicide rate is 4.88 per 100,000 population per annum. Yet the rate in developed nations where people cannot defend themselves is not higher, as your assertion predicts; Australia's rate is 0.98; that in the UK is 0.92. Where is the massive saving of life in the US due to people defending themselves with guns? Where is the loss of life in the rest of the OECD due to people being prohibited from doing so?

Your claim here has to rank as about the most implausible claim I have ever heard someone seriously make, outside the context of religion. You must have some truly compelling evidence for this claim - please share it with us.

But the US is already awash in these weapons. So while Loren is not likely to have evidence to support his claim, the number of weapons currently in the US does make it plausible.
If all the world were a campground, the US would be the idiots who thought it would be a good idea to setup and build their campfires in the dried field of grass.

It doesn't take long for guns to go out of circulation. The whole of Europe was awash with military hardware, including all kinds of firearms, in 1945. Some were handed in and destroyed; most were not. But guns and ammo buried in grandad's allotment don't pose a serious threat to anyone.

People still find WWII guns and ammo in the personal effects of deceased persons who have been keeping them since the war. These days, it's mostly pistols, which are easier to conceal. But as showing one off in public would, for seventy years, invite a massive police response, they simply don't get used. People who find them generally just hand them in.

That's the main benefit of gun control - in the UK, criminals know that carrying a gun gets you massive police attention, and sharply increased sentences. If an Englishman sees something that looks like it might be a gun, he calls the emergency number and the police response is huge and rapid.

In the US, law enforcement have to assume that a glimpse of a gun might well simply indicate an ordinary and perfectly lawful situation. In the civilised world, they do not - and that difference changes the behaviour even of hardened criminals.

 

[bilby]

In addition to the above, in the rare event that a mass shooting occurs in Europe, the police can safely assume that anyone seen with a gun, other than the police themselves, is the perpetrator.

The presence (in the USA) of possible "good guy with a gun" wannabe heroes, just makes the job harder for law enforcement.

If you are unfortunate enough to be caught in such a situation, and you pull out your gun to defend yourself, then at best you will make life harder for the cops. More likely, the cops will shoot you, on the assumption that you are the instigator of the situation; and even if they don't, one of your fellow wannabes might. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares. If people are being massacred and you are there with your gun drawn, you are asking to be shot.

Oh, and of course the perpetrator (the only person who knows for sure that you're not one of the bad guys) will also be more likely to target you if you present a threat.

Having a gun in such circumstances doesn't make you a hero; it makes you everybody's target.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Do you have ANY evidence to back up this extraordinary claim? I have lived in two countries where civilian possession of firearms is restricted, and their ownership for the purpose of self defence is prohibited. I have NEVER heard of a bona-fide case of someone who died because they did not have a firearm with which to defend themselves. Not one.

How many of your murders are not done immediately?

Yet you claim that there should be well above the number who die in mass shootings. How the FUCK do you arrive at this bizarre conclusion?

I'm looking at the number who kill in self defense, figuring that a good percentage of such cases were a lethal threat. (Unfortunately, the data is going to be contaminated by rapes.) There are roughly 10x as many who are shot but don't die. This gives us a ballpark answer of 2,500/yr. Mass shootings are under 100/year, though. If even 4% of those self defense shootings are about people who were actually trying to kill them the self defense is ahead.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-gun-ownership-myth-114262?o=1

Kleck's data leaves a lot to be desired.

Note, however, that his data includes a lot of cases that didn't involve a lethal threat in the first place. Things like showing a gun to run off a thief.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments, and are both socially undesirable and illegal

Firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense

Guns in the home are used more often to intimidate intimates than to thwart crime

But this is something you can avoid--serious domestic violence doesn't just appear out of nowhere.

Adolescents are far more likely to be threatened with a gun than to use one in self-defense

Obvious cherry-picking.

Criminals who are shot are typically the victims of crime

Most criminals are shot as a result of disputes between criminals.

Few criminals are shot by law-abiding citizens

~2,500/yr is few?

Self-defense gun use is rare and not more effective at preventing injury than other protective actions

It's not like you get to choose only one.