this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Data is Beautiful

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[–] [email protected] 194 points 3 months ago (42 children)

So in short, in the 433 cases, 12 of them is stop by good guy with gun and 42 of them is stop by good guy with massive balls.

So by the statistic provided we should give everyone massive balls instead of gun to stop gun violence.

[–] TrickDacy 35 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I wish we could win this argument with logic, but I'm certain the fanatics will immediately latch onto the narrative that guns are being used by good guys already, but we obviously need more guns and less restrictions on them them to get those numbers up.

With Republicans, any fact against them is either ignored or bastardized to say the opposite of what it actually says.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, there's rarely any logical sense being made because to them gun is a right, not privileges, and once privileges turn into right it take a dictator to take that away.

But then again, jailing people in shitty prison where most right are taken away is a okay 🤷

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 3 months ago (2 children)

So in most cases the bad guy with a gun is stopped by a bad guy with a gun (himself).

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago

The Hitler strategy, classic.

[–] AA5B 13 points 3 months ago

Right.

  1. That means “good guy with gun” argument is wrong
  2. That means mental health intervention can prevent a much larger proportion of these tragedies
[–] GaMEChld 92 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I read "The police shot the attacker 98 times" with a different interpretation at first lol.

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[–] BedbugCutlefish 80 points 3 months ago (6 children)

I agree with the point this is trying to make, but I don't think it does its job.

Like, the whole argument from the 'good guy with a gun' crowd is about stopping them early. You'd need to cross reference each of these catagories with 'how many people did the mass shooter kill'. And, this would really only be a strong argument vs the 'good guy with a gun' point if the 'shot by bystander' result had no fewer average deaths.

Additionally, it's easy to clap back with 'well, yeah, our society doesn't have enough "good people" trained with guns, that's why it's only 5%!'

Again, I don't agree with those points, it's just that this chart is pretty bad at presenting an argument against them.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Also, the data needs to include how many people are accidentally shot by guns through improper usage and storage.

From the numbers I have seen, far more children are killed accidentally by good-guy-guns then they are saved by those very same guns

[–] SkyezOpen 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We need good kids with guns to shoot the bad kids with guns!?

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[–] TrickDacy 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

it's easy to clap back with 'well, yeah, our society doesn't have enough "good people" trained with guns, that's why it's only 5%!'

I agree. It's pathetic how shit arguments that make no actual sense are allowed to fly by millions of people.

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

The other problem with the "good guy with a gun" is how many people does an attacker need to kill before you are the good guy killing the bad guy? One? And what if you didn't witness it? The "good guy" with the gun attacking another guy with a gun without knowing what's going on, are they still the "good guy" in that scenario? It's a mess.

The whole thing stems from fallacious logic. Arming everyone doesn't stop bad guys murdering people, at best it might curtail the length of some attacks and at worst it causes innocents to die as so-called "good guys" try to save the day and make it worse.

Prevention is the way forward, as then 0 people die. And the best way to do that is no one has guns (not even most police; just a small subset of specialist police). That is an anathema or sacrilegious to Americans, but it's the approach taken in many democratic and free countries in the world.

If the chart is trying to make a point, it's making the wrong one anyway.

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[–] TheTechnician27 67 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Okay, so I'm not the only one who read "shot the attacker 98 times" and for a split second imagined this scenario where 131 times, the attacker was shot a gratuitous and strangely precise number of times, right?

[–] pyre 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

this has me laughing uncontrollably... it's so specific but also because it's the police, it's not impossible. god there's tears in my eyes from laughing

[–] TheTechnician27 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"Shooter is down. Three clean shots to the chest. Johnson, put 95 more in him, and we can all go home."

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (2 children)

This one's only counting active mass shooters. When it's still a lesser shooting with under 4 victims, the odds of a vigilante rando with a gun - that is, a citizen packin' heat and not a cop off the clock - stopping the violence is about 1 in 7000.

So, once a year in America.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

There are two different categories: "active shooter" and "mass shooting".

An "active shooter" has strict definitions and is tracked by the FBI. These are the events depicted in this graph. An active shooter is someone trying to kill people at random in a public place. The number of casualties is irrelevant. A few years back a guy tried to attack a courthouse in Texas and was killed by a cop before he even got a shot off. That still counts as an active shooter.

A "mass shooting" has no single definition, and media and government organizations that use the term set their own parameters. Many of them define it as "four or more people killed or injured", regardless of circumstances.

The problem with the term "mass shooter" (and the reason why the FBI doesn't use it) is that it's overly broad. Guy goes nuts and kills his family before offing himself? Mass shooting. Robocop shoots four guys in the dick? Mass shooting.

EDIT: It's worth noting that the linked source clarifies that the graph shows all active shooter incidents between the year 2000 and 2021. This throws off your calculation significantly.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 months ago (4 children)

The really crazy thing about the graph is that there are 433 fucking datapoints!

[–] Harvey656 13 points 3 months ago

Even crazier, the graph is two years old.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

Don't forget when cops shoot the good guy with a gun!

Here are a few I could find quickly. There's at least one more that I just happen to recall that didn't come up because I can't seem to remember where it happened. I think it was more recent than any of these. And I'm quite sure there are many more than that, this was just the most time I was willing to spend googling at the moment.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/560798-police-chief-hails-good-guy-with-a-gun-after-officer-kills/

https://www.bet.com/article/eokrmr/black-man-kaun-green-disarm-shooter-shot-by-police

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/12/good-guy-with-a-gun-comes-to-rescue-police-kill-him/

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/nra-quiet-police-shoot-black-armed-good-guy-with-a-gun-alabama-ca37e7e5475a/

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[–] Agent641 44 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Statistically, we need more bad guys with guns, to stop themselves.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Sooo technically most of the time a "Bad guy with a gun" is stopped by a "Bad guy with a gun".

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's why you should make sure they all have access to guns.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Had a little trouble reading this at first, I was like, "The cops showed up and shot the person 98 times? Police brutality is so ridiculously out of hand!." Then I realized I was reading it wrong, but decided the statement was still valid.

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[–] WoahWoah 40 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I feel like if police arrive on scene, they're probably shooting whoever has a gun, "good guy" or "bad guy." Cops seem pretty jumpy. Perhaps if we could make the good guys and bad guys wear differently colored hats?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (14 children)

Cops seem pretty jumpy

Come on, it's not like a cop would yell "SHOTS FIRED" because of a falling acorn and proceed to empty his clip, would it?

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[–] TankovayaDiviziya 37 points 3 months ago (15 children)

You know what, the American obsession with guns has never been anything to do with "protection", it's about being ammosexual.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago

The really sad thing about this graph is the fact that 433 active shootings barely covers half a year

[–] ZILtoid1991 34 points 3 months ago (4 children)

> died by suicide

Sometimes even bad guys with a gun stop themselves.

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[–] menemen 25 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Is there a statistic how many bystanders were hurt by armed citizen bystander?

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago

The fact that there are 433 data points means it's not working

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun... In an action movie, in real life, there's kinda too much chaos going on for anyone to differentiate between the "bad guy" and the "good guy", or for the "good guy" to know the situation.

I've heard of more times where someone tried to play hero and was gunned down by the police who mistook him for the real shooter than I have any reports of "Hero Gunman slays horrible villain"

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[–] einlander 23 points 3 months ago

What about the times the good guy with a gun is shot by the police?

[–] AA5B 21 points 3 months ago (17 children)

Wow, 12/433 “good guy with a gun. That’s higher than I expected! However you still need to compare to deaths caused by “careless guy with gun” plus “scared/angry guy with gun”, which includes the latest school shooting and is much much higher

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[–] BilboBargains 18 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The 133 real heros are the attackers that stop the attack by leaving the scene of the crime promptly to avoid incarceration.

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[–] Fedizen 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

I think republicans should pivot into "only a good guy with a truck can stop a bad guy with a gun" because it makes as much sense.

"if the teacher had a 4x4 mazda truck they could run over the attacker if the school was a fully paved parking garage. We should consider making the school cooridors driveable"

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[–] xantoxis 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

This one actually demonstrates some flaws in this graph format. Maybe it's just how it's expressed this time, but, here are some insights you might gain from this presentation that aren't actually the case:

  • "the police shot the attacker 98 times" which just sounds like a normal headline about how police handle things.
  • Very near that branch, you can accidentally see "the police died by suicide 38 times"
  • and, similarly, "the police surrendered 15 times" which is a surprise because I thought that only happened at Uvalde.

Like, I get what is trying to be conveyed here but the format requires a lot of work for my brain to parse and makes it harder to understand.

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[–] huzzahunimpressively 12 points 3 months ago (19 children)

I'd like to know how many times a civil with an AR-15 has saved the day.

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