anyone else notice they are claiming/insinuating only 4 percent of recorded gun incidents are for self defense?
This one is actually believable. If 90%+ of all self-defense "uses" of a gun don't involve shooting the gun but merely displaying it or even making reference to having it, then I'd expect that most self-defense "uses" of a gun never get recorded. How many self-defense "uses" of an OCd gun does even the carrier himself never know about because a bad guy saw the gun and decided to select a different victim? OTOH, dead bodies don't get ignored and victims of rape and robbery tend to make reports, so most criminal misuse of guns gets recorded, I'd expect. I'm not saying the claim is correct and given the source, I'd easily believe it isn't. I'm just pointing out how it might be correct.
As another example, the antis like to claim a person is X times more likely to injure themselves or a family member with a gun than to kill an intruder. Look at the numbers. If we accept that 90%+ of all self-defense "uses" of a gun don't involve firing it, and if a large proportion of those shot in self-defense actually survive (call it 50% just for kicks), then we realize that only 5% or fewer of criminals who break off an attack because of the self-defense use of a gun are actually killed. It could well be down in the 1% range or lower and probably is if we accept a million or more crimes stopped each year by an armed LAC couple with only a few dozen self-defense shootings.
Now, ignore the numbers and look at the fundamental problem with the comparison being made. This is a case where even if the numbers were accurate the "fact" is worthless because it is the wrong fact to look at. The fix was in when the initial comparison was made. It is a bit like deciding whether seat belt usage saves lives by comparing how many miles are driven compared to how many times a seat belt is needed. Obviously, a seat belt isn't needed until a crash occurs. We all recognize the proper statistic for seat belts is something like the odds of surviving a crash when wearing a seat belt compared to odds of surviving a crash when not wearing a seat belt. (None of which should be taken as me supporting legal mandates for adults to use seat belts.)
Or imagine if we gauged the effectiveness of police based on how many criminals they killed, rather than on how many crimes they solved or how what the overall crime rate is when the police are on the job vs when they are on strike, etc. The job of police is not to kill people, indeed we'd prefer they not kill anyone. Their job is to act as a general deterrent to criminal conduct, to investigate crimes and make arrests. Police killing someone (no matter how justifiable) is not a measure of success, it is in some degree, a measure of inability to effect an arrest or stop a crime without someone ending up dead...a measure of failure if you will.
In similar fashion, dare I say we don't carry guns to "kill bad guys", but rather to defend ourselves from bad guys. On occasion, that defense may result in a dead bad guy. But dead bodies is neither our goal nor the correct metric to use, so making any comparison to how many bad guys get killed by good guys is totally bogus from the get go, no matter what the underlying numbers are. We know that. The folks who gather stats should be smart enough to know that, and probably are in most cases. Clearly, they are using numbers (sometimes accurate, sometimes made from whole cloth) to push an agenda.
IOW, they are lying even in those cases where the underlying numbers are accurate. They lie by telling people that the numbers they present are the numbers that matter. Sometimes they compound that lie by using inaccurate numbers as well. But generally, the big lie isn't the numbers, it is which numbers they claim are important.
Another big lie in the linked lesson plan is the entire premise that RKBA should be subject to popular debate. Imagine the reaction to a similar lesson plan dealing with marriage benefits for homosexual couples. I think the RKBA community needs to borrow their line, "Civil/Constitutional rights are not subject to popular vote."
Charles