Firepower

[Kevin]

I dunno about you guys, but a 1% hit rate seems well, sucky. I generally support the total abolishment of firearms, but one thing I will insist on, if guns HAVE to be around,  are much stricter criteria for a license. Yearly marksmanship tests, for instance. At least a 30-50% hit rate before you pass. Maybe even psych evaluations. If you only hit 1 time out of every 100 shots, you might as well arm folks with frag grenades, improve their accuracy. Hey, it might kill bystanders as well, but at least they'll blow up the perps. Collateral damage is inevitable.

I don't think you interpreted the statistics correctly, though I can see that interpretation, and yours could be valid. I just don't think it is.

When citizens use guns for protection from criminals, the criminal is wounded in about 1 out of every 100 instances, and the criminal is killed in about 1 out of every 1000 instances.

I take that to mean that when someone pulls a gun to protect themselves the criminal is wounded in 1 of every 100 instances. I don't think that shots are even fired in most of those instances. The gun is pulled the criminal flees. That is fine for most home defenders. The immediate threat is removed. My suspicion is that of those 100 cases, shots were only fired in 10 of them. I would suspect that of the 10 shots fired, at least half were not aimed at the criminal. That being said a 20% hit rate still sucks. Of course the military only wants you to get 57.5% (23 out of 40) and you know the order the targets are coming up (they are also 50 meters or more away, but you have a rifle, eh).

I could be way way off, I'm just remember some things that I heard growing up from my friends dad, who was an officer in a small town (10,000 people). I just seem to recall that in the vast majority case where guns are used in defense shots are never fired. Could be wrong.