Avery Gardiner and Kris Brown (courtesy bradycampaign.org)

“Ms. Mandel’s story about her mother defending their home with a gun is a vivid but uncommon one. Guns in the home, especially if not secured properly, are far more likely to be used in an unintentional shooting or a suicide than for defensive use, and they put children at greater risk.” – Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence Co-Presidents Avery Gardiner and Kris Bown responding to I Wanted to Be a Good Mom. So I Got a Gun [via nytimes.com]

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31 COMMENTS

  2. Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence Co-Presidents Avery Gardiner and Kris Bown responding to I Wanted to Be a Good Mom. So I Got a Gun
    The source says it all.

  3. With the left it’s always “vivid but uncommon.” They ignore the hundreds of thousands (if not more) of unreported defensive gun uses that results in no one getting hurt except for the miscreants pride. The police are only 7-12 minutes away in the city. Men can run a mile in 4 so the police won’t stop them. God help you if you live in rural areas unarmed and a menace shows up.

    • Yet somehow manage to turn a blind eye to every inconvenient statistic about crime and violence there is. Nothing but liars and hypocrites (we may all be hypocrites to some extent, but we don’t have to result to lying about nearly everything to promote our arguments). A truly evil ideology that inevitably leads to mass casulaties.

    • “They ignore the hundreds of thousands (if not more) of unreported defensive gun uses that results in no one getting hurt except for the miscreants pride.”

      Not sure what you mean? Are you saying the media should focus more on brandishing encounters? Or encounters where shots were fired and no one gets hit? Those IMO are not great illustrations of the responsible uses of guns in SD–those are usually either instances of brandishing or of incompetence.

      For civilians, we should only present a firearm when we intend to use it. And when we use it, we should be able to neutralize our targets efficiently.

    • Yes, they are cooking the books. The brady bunch come by their statement that you are more likely to be harmed than defend yourself by taking the number of homicides that occur in a domicile PLUS the number of suicides (funny, people commit suicide at home) and comparing it to the number of *justifiable homicides* that occur in a domicile. In other words, the bradys, et. al, don’t count it as defending yourself with a gun unless you kill someone. All this while believing that if you commit suicide, it is the guns fault.

      • Don’t forget they count drive-by shootings and crack house attacks as random gun violence according to their risk model. Asserting gang members and suburban mothers have an equal risk by way of aggregation and simple average is just lazy and asinine.

        Arguing a gun in the home necessarily makes people suicidal is also ridiculous. Furthermore, data shows policy like waiting periods do not decrease overall suicide cases, it simply shifts the means category for a short period. After that it seems like people understand the law and simply wait a little longer to kill themselves as the number of cases increases.

  4. If they replaced the term ‘defensive use’ with ‘justifiable homicide’ they’d be correct. But that would involve being honest and that makes for poor propaganda. As it is that statement is an outrageous lie.

  6. “Are far more likely”?
    Really? There have been guns in my home since about 1960. The home I grew up in, lived in as a single adult, and as a dad with 3 kids.
    I must go buy a lottery ticket because I and everyone around me must be extremely lucky.

  7. Ok ladies I’m gonna do you both a favor and offer a logic based debunking of your statement here using my own family as an example. You see I have 3 children, 2 boys and a girl, Now since the boys were about 3 they’ve been getting a regular dose of Eddie Eagle and one on one gun training time with me ( the boys are becoming pretty crack shots with their 22s since they’ve finally learned how to aim and to squeeze rather than jerk the trigger) and all but 3 of my guns are kept locked away where they can’t get them. The three that aren’t are kept loaded and in my and my wife’s nightstand. Since we’ve had this arrangement for 5 years with the boys and 3 with the girl no child had ever bothered to touch, pick up, or play with the guns. Why you may ask? Well because they have been conditioned to not touch things that aren’t theirs and specifically to not touch guns. They know those guns aren’t toys and they are not to touch them under any circumstances unless we are with them and we tell them to. Now I know this seems counter intuitive to you and you squadron of hovering harping helicopter moms but by removing the mystery around these objects and letting the kids see what a gun does to objects like stuffed animals and pop cans while correlating that to the effects it would have on a human body (incorrect I know guys but sometimes an over the top reaction like a pop can exploding and telling a child that is what will happen to you or anyone else if they are shot is what’s needed to get the point across to young developing minds) we have 3 kids that all want to exercise their rights and know better than to play with a gun or to point it at people. Sure they still have nerf wars and they still shoot at each other with reckless abandon when water guns are equipped in the summer but once that real gun touches their hands they turn all business and exhibit better muzzle awareness than most police officers.

    Okay on to your point about suicide. You know how to prevent suicide right? Take time and actually interact with your children, no I don’t mean Facebook message them or start liking their posts on social media I mean actually sit down with them and talk about things. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn. Everything from which girls they like (apparently my boys are quite the Kindergarten Casanovas), which boys they like, what subjects in school they like, which subjects they hate, and all manner of things including their problems with bullies or feeling a little down. Then you can use your extensive life experience to coach them through the rough patches like when the girl/boy they like doesn’t like them or when their girlfriend/boyfriend dumps them, when that one a$$hole kids keeps teasing them you can be there to tell them that they are an awesome person and that they should whip that bully’s a$$. See, by taking an active role and actually communicating with my kids and identifying when they are hurting I can actually help them out and lower the risk of suicide.

    All things in life come with risk and the best we can hope to do is minimize it to the point that we deem acceptable. Still, odds being what they are, we cannot stop every suicide and we cannot stop every unintentional shooting there will still be tragedies and there will still be accidents, but by actually taking an active role in our children’s lives we can mitigate the risk. Guns don’t kill on their own and don’t pose any greater risk than driving yet they can give the single mom, the stay at home mom, or any disadvantaged person the ability to meet a lethal or physically advantaged threat with lethal force in order to defend her family. You take that away and you have immediately made that woman a victim. Robbery, murder, rape, it doesn’t matter she is still a victim and is at the mercy of luck and her attacker. She may be lucky enough to survive but nothing will ever replace the feeling of lost security in her own home should she be robbed, beaten, or raped as her children watch. Her home will become her prison and her children will lose their feeling of security as well knowing that at any time her attacker or another attacker may strike again. Ladies say what you want I know the odds and I’ve accepted the risk by letting my wife go armed at home. Should a violent attacker find himself at my door he will later find himself in a body bag. I’d rather deal with my wife having to cope with taking a life than trying to deal with raising 3 kids on my own, helping her cope with being raped in front of our daughter, or (God forbid) coping with her and our daughter being raped in their own home.

  8. More like when minutes count, the police never show up.
    I called the police on two drunk trespasser in their car playing loud music and yelling on my property, I just moved in to the house on 3 acres of land, unknown to me it was a drug house cleaned up and flipped, the guys were looking for the previous druggy home owner.
    The police told me on the phone If it’s not an emergency they’re not pulling resources.
    Well the guys decide they need some Air and proceed to get out of the car while blasting loud music and acting like idiots, I come out on the porch with my 12 gauge rack That B***h and tell them in no uncertain terms to get the f**k off my land before I ventilate their sorry azz. The driver says “hey man we don’t want no trouble” get in their car and leave.
    Police won’t help you when you need them (a few years later) They harass my wife at 8 o’clock at night on her way home from work, she did nothing wrong, the cop says “oh I ran the wrong license plate number when he ran the tags, still ran my wife’s license and registration. 5 min go by then he lets her go AZZHOLE! “said were looking for drunks.

    • My family knew that the police not only can’t protect you, but sometimes WON’T in 1919.

      My grandmother and great uncles were in Chicago for the 1919 race riot (in which future Mayor, Richard J. Daley was a participant) during which the Chicago PD REFUSED to intervene to protect the Black community. I’m probably only here because my great uncles and other returned doughboys armed themselves and defended their communities.

      I learned the same lesson in college in the ’70s, when TWO police agencies in Fulton, Missouri refused to deal with death threats from the idiot “bodyguard” of the drug dealer who lived across the hall. The Fulton PD told us that there was nothing they could do until one of us was injured or killed, but that they’d leap into action as soon as that happened. The County Sheriff told us the same thing… but added that “Missouri has very strong self-defense laws. We took the hint, armed ourselves and made sure that the morons in question knew it.

      Memorize:
      * Police have no legal duty to protect individuals.
      * Police have no legal liability when they fail to protect individuals.
      * Police not specifically assigned as bodyguards have virtually no ability to protect individuals.

      The police don’t protect individuals.  They draw chalk outlines around individuals unable or unwilling to protect themselves.

      If you’re not able and willing to protect YOURSELF, you’re just not going to get protected AT ALL.
      Anybody who tells you different is a LIAR.

  10. Guns in the house raise a lot of dangers, but “Not secured properly” is the key phrase. Store guns in a gun safe, not a trigger lock which allows the weapon to be stolen so the thief can remove the trigger lock off site. You would think Brady would just advocate gun safes for safety but the police inspection to ensure guns are properly stored around children gives me the creeps.

  11. “Mass shootings” are also vivid and uncommon. Far more uncommon than DGU’s. Yet we’re supposed to give up a fundamental right because of how uncommon those are.

  12. I am personally aware of 2 DGU’s that did not involve firing the gun. Both involved female employees. One caught her husband in a sexual situation with their child! She held him at the point of a shotgun until the police came. Other the woman had to draw her handgun on a crazy husband who had threatened to kill her. Both guys went to jail. No one was shot. Justice was served.

  14. In my Contemporary Issues class, my students were always a bit shocked to see our massive and growing gun ownership numbers compared to the inversely proportional drop in accidental gun deaths. Stupid facts messing with gun grabbers arguments.

  15. Guns in the home, especially if not secured properly, are far more likely to be used in an unintentional shooting or a suicide than for defensive use, and they put children at greater risk – Avery Gardiner and Kris Bown

    I do not agree with their assertion. Even if it is true, so what?

    No one is going to suffer accidental/negligent injury/death in my home because we have taken measures which eliminate those risks. And if someone in my home is bound-and-determined to commit suicide, they don’t need a firearm to succeed. We have plenty of rope and linens, ladders, and tall trees that would enable someone to jump from a height and ensure that the rope/linen snaps their neck on the way down. Or they could just step in front of a large truck driving down a road at 55 mph.

    I do not begrudge someone who as determined that they cannot prevent their families members from misusing a firearm and therefore will not keep firearms in their home. That is their choice. Respect mine.

  16. You know, gun stats analysis seems opaque. Maybe this:

    “People who think they need a gun to protect themselves likely to be right.”

    There. FIFY.

  17. So we should just ignore “vivid but uncommon” scenarios with guns?

    Somehow I don’t think these ladies want to do that EXCEPT when it is a scenario where the gun saves lives.

  19. It’s always the homely ones… Are they just Libs and use this to get attention?? Always wonder why most Lib women in “power” of some organization are homely or butt ugly!! Anyone else ever wonder? Is it genetic or what?

  20. achording to the CDC, school shootings have decline 49% since its peak in the mid 90s and guns are used over two million times each years defensively. Also you can’t seem to find any mass shooting done by the blind although Iowa’s deal is all over as crazy. Been carrying forever and nothing, although had to draw nearly a dozen times so far without a shot. Go figure.

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