Summations Only

Shouldn't you be saying that to Percy? He's the one who thinks those laws are already enough evidence of it working. I haven't made that argument.It should be interesting to see what happens in Chicago this year though. They finally struck down the handgun ban as being unconstitutional and granted us the ability to concealed carry. According to the anti-gunners, we should see a huge spike in gun deaths. I wonder how its going to pan out.

You still haven't gotten your seemer checked?

You mentioned Illinois. Chicago is in Illinois.The point is that looking at the state level doesn't get to the root of the problem. In Illinois, we have a bunch of people concentrated up in Chicago and they are shooting each other left and right while the rest of the state, with the remaining ~75% of the population, is getting along pretty well without shooting each other much at all.The gun laws in Illinois were passed because of all the gun violence in Chicago. They didn't work. Chicago still has terrible gun violence. But if you look at it from the state level, then you're bringing in all the other people in the state that didn't have the gun problems in the first place, and you're diluting the real problem that lies in Chicago. You're getting a false sense of the laws "working" because you're looking at it from too far away. That table doesn't tell us anything about how strong the gun control laws for each state are. How are you judging their strength? Do you have a resource for that? It be interesting to lay out the firearm death rates with some quantification of the strength of a state's gun control laws, even if we just did a scale of 1 - 10 or something, and see just what kind of correlation is really there. Stronger penalties for minor gun crimes. You gotta get the guns out of the hands of the criminals, or get the criminals out of the public. Passing rules for the law abiding citizens to obey doesn't do anything to the people who aren't obeying the laws in the first place. You gotta lock up the people who are actually using guns for criminal activity, for a long time.

Okay, so I went to your chart and pulled all the numbers into Excel. Then I went to this website:http://smartgunlaws.org/...ate-scorecard-why-gun-laws-matterAnd pulled all the states scores, which were A - F. I assigned a value of 5 for the A's and a value of 1 for the F's (2 for D, 3 for C and 4 for B).Here's the plot with the trend line.ABE:So I screwed that all up. I'm redoing the data, I got the numbers jumbled.ABD:Alrighty, here's the corrected data:

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State | Number of Deaths | Letter Grade | Grade Value

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Alaska 20.4 F 1
Louisiana 19.2 F 1
Alabama 16.2 D 2
Mississippi 16.1 F 1
Wyoming 15.6 F 1
Montana 15.4 F 1
New 14.9 F 1
Arizona 14.6 F 1
Nevada 14.5 F 1
Arkansas 14.4 F 1
Oklahoma 14.4 F 1
Tennessee 14.4 F 1
District 14.2 A 5
West 14.1 F 1
Missouri 14 F 1
South 14 F 1
Idaho 12.8 F 1
Georgia 12.6 F 1
Kentucky 12.4 F 1
Utah 12.2 F 1
North 11.6 F 1
Florida 11.5 F 1
Oregon 11.4 D 2
Michigan 11 C 3
Texas 11 F 1
Colorado 10.8 C 3
Indiana 10.8 D 2
Virginia 10.8 D 2
Kansas 10.5 F 1
Vermont 10.3 F 1
Pennsylvania 10.1 C 3
Delaware 9.9 B 4
Ohio 9.9 D 2
North 9.5 F 1
Maryland 9.3 A 5
South 9.2 F 1
Washington 8.9 C 3
Wisconsin 8.6 C 3
Illinois 8.2 B 4
Nebraska 8.2 D 2
New 8.2 D 2
Maine 7.9 F 1
California 7.7 A 5
Iowa 6.8 C 3
Minnesota 6.8 C 3
Connecticut 5.9 A 5
New 5.2 A 5
New 5.1 A 5
Rhode 4.6 B 2
Massachusetts 4.1 B 2
Hawaii 3.2 B 2

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Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : Fixed image link

No, I do not.

I dunno, ask him. I live in Illinois. I care mostly about the state that affects me directly. Percy brought up Illinois as an example of gun laws working. I'm simply disabusing that notion.You agree with me, but your arguing with me and not him. Weird.

Looking at gun crime from the state level doesn't tell the whole story.In Illinois, most of the gun crime is focused in one spot in the state while the rest of the state looks really good. 2/3 of the murders occur in 1/4 of the population. There were 145 kills per million within Chicago, but only 27 kills per million in the rest of the state. So when you look at it from the state level, with the average kills per million being 54, you're getting a false sense of the problem.Someone might go: "Oh look, they've got strict gun laws and they have a low amount of gun deaths" but that doesn't realize that the gun laws completely failed to solve the problem. People are still shooting each other left and right in Chicago, its just that the rest of the state is so good that it brings the average down to a level that doesn't seem so bad. The truth of the matter is that the gun deaths in Chicago are outrageous despite all the gun control laws we have. Percy used Illinois as one of the examples of a state with strong gun control laws having a lower firearm death rate. He's glossed over the fact that the gun laws in Illinois completely failed and the gun crime is outrageous, its just that its all concentrated in one area of the state so when you look at the state as a whole you get a different picture than if you look at what they actual problem is.

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marc9000 writes:

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Though the NRA and other pro-gun advocates might disagree with me, I wouldn't mind seeing a few states, like New York, or California, or Illinois take the lead on satisfying every anti-gun advocates desires, up to and including a complete ban of privately owned firearms. Then everyone in the entire country can watch how it works.

I'm all in favor of this experiment, but I think there's already enough evidence. If you look at this table of firearm death rates by state, it looks like the states with stronger gun control laws tend to have lower firearm death rates. New York, California and Illinois have rates of 5.1, 7.7 and 8.2 respectively, while your own state of Kentucky is 12.4. Tennessee right next door is 14.4. Alaska, Sarah Palin's home state, is 20.4. Alabama, home of the redneck, is 16.2.

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Here's your correlation: I don't think that's impressive at all. Is that what you thought it would look like? Considering that Connecticut already had very strict gun control laws (they got an A), and a low amount of gun deaths across the state (6th place at 5.9), can you see that those things don't affect the gun deaths like those at Newtown?Edited by Catholic Scientist, : Fixed image link

What's that?

All over the place.The one the guy bought at a licensed dealer probably came straight from the manufacturer.The one the guy bartered from his gang brother has probably been around a bit more.I'd bet there's some vatos that got theirs right out of mexico.

No, not really.I don't think consistency is a worthy endeavor, though. You don't have to travel far to see that the U.s. is inconsistent. What doesn't work in some places might work in another. Our diversity is one of the beauties of America.And I certainly won't like letting those buffoons at the federal level decide. The shit they put out that I actually pay attention to makes them look like they don't know what they're talking about. Its not just guns, that SOPA crap made me think that they didn't even have a basic understanding of how the internet works, let alone the capability of governing it well.Well shit, I guess that makes me against it.Don't get me wrong, the Feds have their place. And we're doing pretty well so far. They don't do well with the particulars (which is understandable if you're gonna go with a partisanship ), but you gotta admit that from their view its a jumbled mess down here. Sometimes things are better left with the localities that probably have a better understanding of what particulars should work.One last thing, I think the founding fathers were genius to look at the situation of governing a body of people and realize that you don't give the governing body the control of the guns. Thank God they put that shit in our Constitution.

Of course not. But all self-defenses have the capacity to be lethal.That's why when you say that the average person should not have the capacity for lethal force, then what follows from what you are saying is that they will be unable to defend themself at all. Because all of the defenses have the capacity for being lethal.If I'm wrong, then provide me with a mode of defense that cannot be lethal. I don't think that. As I said before, you could use your fist, or say, a frying pan. But again, those have the capacity to be lethal. So if you remove the average persons' capacity to use lethal force, then they cannot use those things to defend themself.Now, what can you use to defend yourself that does not have the capacity to be lethal? Lethal force is not the only defense but all defenses have the capacity to be lethal. Running away is not self-defense. Its retreating. Okay, well that's not what you've been saying so far. Capacity. The capacity for being lethal. That's what you said. That's what we're talking about. Because people have a fundamental right to self-defense. Or your property, or the well being of another person. Depends on where you are and what the local laws are. What you are doing is glancing over all of the most dangerous elements of a crime to strip it down to the least threatening description possible so that you can make the resulting action look as bad as possible. That's not an honest assessment, that's a biased smear.If someone robs a store with a gun and the clerk shoots them, then they didn't get shot for just "burglary". They assaulted a person with a deadly weapon and that person defended themself. The robber didn't get punished for committing a crime, he assaulted a person who defended themself. There is no judgement of guilt, a person acted in their own self-defense. People have a right to be able to defend themselves.

You're welcome. That's the second chart I've put together for this thread. It didn't stop you from insulting my efforts though They way you talk about it makes it sound like you think the correlation is much stronger. Its hard to get a "count" of the guns that are out there, but I did find percentages of gun owners at this site:A Look at Gun Ownership by StateUsing those numbers with the death numbers from that other page gets you this: That's a much better correlation than the gun law strength one.Here's the numbers I used:

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percentage | state | deaths

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0.517 Alabama 16.2
0.578 Alaska 20.4
0.311 Arizona 14.6
0.553 Arkansas 14.4
0.213 California 7.7
0.347 Colorado 10.8
0.167 Connecticut 5.9
0.255 Delaware 9.9
0.245 Florida 11.5
0.403 Georgia 12.6
0.067 Hawaii 3.2
0.553 Idaho 12.8
0.202 Illinois 8.2
0.391 Indiana 10.8
0.429 Iowa 6.8
0.421 Kansas 10.5
0.477 Kentucky 12.4
0.441 Louisiana 19.2
0.405 Maine 7.9
0.213 Maryland 9.3
0.126 Massachusetts 4.1
0.384 Michigan 11
0.417 Minnesota 6.8
0.553 Mississippi 16.1
0.417 Missouri 14
0.577 Montana 15.4
0.386 Nebraska 8.2
0.338 Nevada 14.5
0.3 NewHampshire 8.2
0.123 NewJersey 5.2
0.348 NewMexico 14.9
0.18 NewYork 5.1
0.413 NorthCarolina 11.6
0.507 NorthDakota 9.5
0.324 Ohio 9.9
0.429 Oklahoma 14.4
0.398 Oregon 11.4
0.347 Pennsylvania 10.1
0.128 Rhode 4.6
0.423 SouthCarolina 14
0.566 SouthDakota 9.2
0.439 Tennessee 14.4
0.359 Texas 11
0.439 Utah 12.2
0.42 Vermont 10.3
0.351 Virginia 10.8
0.331 Washington 8.9
0.554 West 14.1
0.444 Wisconsin 8.6
0.597 Wyoming 15.6

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I don't know. I don't know anything about how the mentally ill are treated.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : Fixed image link

My first reply to the OP:

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We shouldn't be talking about gun control in the wake of this.

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We should be talking about our mental healthcare program.

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Stuff like this:

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As someone earlier noted, you *are* taking the Faith approach. Denying the obvious with a straight face is a rhetorical device, not evidence in your favor.

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He and Catholic Scientist are like a two-man "The Onion", but focused on gun issues. For many of their messages, nothing more need be said.

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I've now created three original charts for this thread. Is this one better: I could see the other one, even in your quote. But the other one was a .png and this one is a .jpg, could that matter? How?