shots, hitting him five times. She ran out of bullets but bluffed that she would continue shooting if he came any closer, at which point he fled the home.
And it’s not just older women who use guns defensively. Here’s a case from last fall involving a young girl.
—Durant, Oklahoma (October 19, 2012): A strange man rang the doorbell of a twelve-year-old girl’s house. When she didn’t answer he went to the back door and kicked it down. The girl called her mother, who told her to get the family’s gun, hide in the closet, and call 911. When the man tried to enter the closet she was hiding inshe shot and wounded the man.
I understand that, compelling as it is, this is all just anecdotal evidence, so let’s turn back to the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey to see what the data says about attacks specifically on women.
It’s not even close. The probability of serious injury from aggravated assault is 2.5 times greater for women who offer no resistance than for women who resist their attacker with a gun. In contrast, the probability of a woman’s being seriously injured was almost four times greater when resisting without a gunthan when resisting with a gun.
While both men and women benefit from having a gun, the benefit for women is much larger. The reason for that is pretty simple: Attackers are almost always men, and the difference in strength between a male attacker and a female victim is bigger, on average, than the difference in strength between a male attacker and a male victim. Having a gun therefore makes a bigger relative difference for a woman than it does for a man.
You can also see this difference with people who carry concealed handguns. According to research by John Lott, murder rates decline when either sex carries a concealed gun, but the effect is particularly pronounced for women.An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by three to four times more than an additional armed man reduces the murder rate for men.
So women and guns are not oil and water, far from it—but let’s address Hemenway’s quote specifically because he seems to be alluding to domestic violence incidents that occur in the home. In that case, women shouldn’t be fearful of a gun in the home; they should be fearful of dating or marrying men with criminal records.
Murders of wives by their husbands by any means are, thankfully, relatively rare. While the FBI doesn’t break down its data bythe type of weapon used, about4.6 percent of all murders (603) in 2010 involved wives being murdered by their husbands.Given the number of married women (about 63,150,000 million), the overall rate was infinitesimally small (0.0009 percent).
But this is not really the right statistic to be looking at. The focus should not be on the gun, but the man. Few murderers are committed by previously law-abiding citizens. While studies are hard to come by, a 1988 report looked at the largest seventy-five counties in the United States and found that approximately90 percent of adult murderers had previous criminal records as adults. A 1983 study by Gary Kleck and others looked at national data. They wrote: “The FBI is rather vague about the types of crimes for which offenders were previously arrested or convicted. However, in special computer runs for the 1968 Eisenhower Commission it was determined that 74.7 percent of persons arrested between 1964 and 1967 for criminal homicide hada record of previous arrests for ‘a major violent crime or burglary.’ ” But they made another important point as well: “Because most violent acts are not reported to the police, and many do not result in any kind of officially recorded action (arrest, conviction, or imprisonment), official records of the previous violence of homicide offendersrepresent only the tip of the iceberg.”
The bottom line is that a criminal record is usually more of a risk factor for violence than is gun
And it’s not just older women who use guns defensively. Here’s a case from last fall involving a young girl.
—Durant, Oklahoma (October 19, 2012): A strange man rang the doorbell of a twelve-year-old girl’s house. When she didn’t answer he went to the back door and kicked it down. The girl called her mother, who told her to get the family’s gun, hide in the closet, and call 911. When the man tried to enter the closet she was hiding inshe shot and wounded the man.
I understand that, compelling as it is, this is all just anecdotal evidence, so let’s turn back to the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey to see what the data says about attacks specifically on women.
It’s not even close. The probability of serious injury from aggravated assault is 2.5 times greater for women who offer no resistance than for women who resist their attacker with a gun. In contrast, the probability of a woman’s being seriously injured was almost four times greater when resisting without a gunthan when resisting with a gun.
While both men and women benefit from having a gun, the benefit for women is much larger. The reason for that is pretty simple: Attackers are almost always men, and the difference in strength between a male attacker and a female victim is bigger, on average, than the difference in strength between a male attacker and a male victim. Having a gun therefore makes a bigger relative difference for a woman than it does for a man.
You can also see this difference with people who carry concealed handguns. According to research by John Lott, murder rates decline when either sex carries a concealed gun, but the effect is particularly pronounced for women.An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by three to four times more than an additional armed man reduces the murder rate for men.
So women and guns are not oil and water, far from it—but let’s address Hemenway’s quote specifically because he seems to be alluding to domestic violence incidents that occur in the home. In that case, women shouldn’t be fearful of a gun in the home; they should be fearful of dating or marrying men with criminal records.
Murders of wives by their husbands by any means are, thankfully, relatively rare. While the FBI doesn’t break down its data bythe type of weapon used, about4.6 percent of all murders (603) in 2010 involved wives being murdered by their husbands.Given the number of married women (about 63,150,000 million), the overall rate was infinitesimally small (0.0009 percent).
But this is not really the right statistic to be looking at. The focus should not be on the gun, but the man. Few murderers are committed by previously law-abiding citizens. While studies are hard to come by, a 1988 report looked at the largest seventy-five counties in the United States and found that approximately90 percent of adult murderers had previous criminal records as adults. A 1983 study by Gary Kleck and others looked at national data. They wrote: “The FBI is rather vague about the types of crimes for which offenders were previously arrested or convicted. However, in special computer runs for the 1968 Eisenhower Commission it was determined that 74.7 percent of persons arrested between 1964 and 1967 for criminal homicide hada record of previous arrests for ‘a major violent crime or burglary.’ ” But they made another important point as well: “Because most violent acts are not reported to the police, and many do not result in any kind of officially recorded action (arrest, conviction, or imprisonment), official records of the previous violence of homicide offendersrepresent only the tip of the iceberg.”
The bottom line is that a criminal record is usually more of a risk factor for violence than is gun
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