Summations Only

In your discussion with Percy you are at least asking relevant questions about the kinds of situations that are involved, such as where you ask this: What I've been pointing out is that this kind of information is not getting the attention it needs when discussing gun control issues in the US. To get USEFUL information about gun deaths you need to make this sort of distinction, and you may need to get into racial profiling as well, at least "culture profiling."I've been making ONE point: The good guys are being penalized for the problems that are caused by the bad guys and gun control is not focused on making the distinction. If a distinction was clearly made between the different groups then maybe we could talk about how to reduce gun deaths of the bad guys without penalizing the good guys.As for the "hate crime" statistic I don't know how it would affect the gun control questions, but I suspect it would affect the laws about "homophobia" which just like the gun control laws may be penalizing the good guys for the problems caused by the bad guys. In this case I don't know who the bad guys are because the Wikipedia article is very careful to avoid racial profiling or any kind of profiling, but I'm wondering if it's perhaps the large Muslim population in DC or perhaps the black population. I suppose it COULD be the white population but I'm guessing it's not. But it's the white Christian business owners in the west who are being penalized for "homophobia" although they aren't killing anyone.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is true. That's why you need to understand what the numbers and the analysis say and not overstep what the data indicate. Two problems. 1)It includes data with null values. Null values are not zero, there are "no value." Where would a country with a null value in gun ownership belong on the chart? Nowhere... not at zero gun ownership. If it has a value for gun ownership but a null value in death rate, it is placed on the chart at the appropriate place according to gun ownership but represents death rate as a value of zero, which it is not. There were 79 such data points - 40% of the data included in the chart!2) There is no analysis of any trend in the data. You cannot just look at a chart like that and say there is any statistically significant trend. The maker of that chart did not do any data analysis, just presented a chart that seemed to look like it said what he/she wanted it to say. Most likely incompetence.HBD

I am glad you are in on this discussion because you do seem to understand something about statistics. Percy was just going to throw out that whole site for lying but incompetence is less incendiary.In an earlier post to Percy you made a remark about how "Faith" supposedly wrongly understands that graph. But Faith had never spent time on that graph, Faith was interested in the analyses written in the article. I don't appreciate being criticized for something I didn't do. Thanks.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

How about an example?

I thought I gave examples.Every time this subject comes up, which is usually when some crazy person kills a bunch of people, it's always the NRA guys, or people supposedly representing NRA thinking, who are interviewed on the talk shows and skewered by, say, Piers Morgan -- glad he's gone -- or Rosie O'Donnell, and when statistics are brought up such as on a thread like this, no distinctions are made between bad guys and good guys so that the higher gun crime statistics in the higher crime areas are all part of the argument to reduce guns in the country as a whole, and the people who get penalized for that are the good guys, such as my brother, or the NRA people. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry, I misunderstood what you had or had not asserted about that chart. I see now you just posted a link to the site. When supposed data is presented in such a misleading fashion it sends up red flags and brings the whole presentation into question. Incompetence has the same effect as lying but without the same intent. Either way, the site looks like propaganda, not a factual analysis of the effect of gun ownership.HBD

And where have I done that? Seems to me I've kept my remarks general enough not to violate the "data," which in any case I've been saying are NOT trustworthy.As I said, I am not going to become a statistician. The problems are too much for me to take on. If I can't trust a particular analysis I simply don't trust any of the statistics.

I am talking about examples of gun control regulations that unfairly target good guys?

Because the NRA always has something to say when the subject of gun control is brought up? The NRA injects themselves into the discussion just as do those in favor of gun control.The NRA is essentially the 'Gun Institute' for the gun manufacturing industry. Most of their money comes from the gun industry. So when the public or the media deals with the topic of gun control, for whatever reason, the NRA is going to demand to be interviewed.If those guys did not get interviewed, would you not then be complaining that it's only the politicially correct, gun control freak panty-waists who get interviewed?Your question makes no sense. It certainly does not demonstrate any particular bias in media coverage that the NRA gets a chance to speak their minds.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I mentioned some recently. My brother's getting his vehicle searched because of the law that requires him to report his gun ownership on his driver's license. Those who don't obey that law don't get searched.Also the atmosphere created by gun control thinking in general that make open-carry people, who are perfectly legal, subject to police hassles.Also the fifteen year old girl I mentioned who said new laws designed to reduce gun crime have only succeeded in preventing her from getting the kind of gun practice she needs to qualify for a shooting scholarship to Harvard.I'm sure there are many others but the general atmosphere created by the gun control discussion is relevant because the gun control advocates always target the good guys and don't take the bad guys into account. This is why the Second Amendment is always an issue.

The REASON the NRA gets into it is BECAUSE of the attack on gun rights that always follows on a shooting by a madman. If the gun control advocates bothered to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys the discussion would be very different.OK, then the NRA WANTS to be interviewed. But the reasons are the same: it's because their good guys are always under attack for the actions of the bad guys.Meanwhile absolutely NOTHING is getting done about the shootings by the madmen or in the high crime areas.

I don't think that is really true. But if your whole argument is that honest, law-biding citizens should not be stripped of their rights to have a gun(s) for recreational purposes, I would not have an argument with you. I own a couple guns myself, and I enjoy shooting and hunting (although I don't have the time or the place to do so anymore).But that is not the whole of your argument. You believe that if more people carried guns in public situations and were free to use them to kill "bad guys" that the crime and violence situation would be better. That is the major point I take issue with.I also object to creating some kind of demographic that suggests that inner-city blacks (or whatever other demographic you might suggest) are the bad guys that should not be allowed access to guns, while rural whites are the good guys who should be armed to protect the country from the "bad guys." And along the same lines, I object to anything that devalues the lives of those in these high-crime areas and suggests that their lives being lost are not important enough for us to make significant changes to our gun laws. As if my "right to own a gun" trumps another's right to not be killed needlessly by a gun.I also disagree that the answer to all of this is to introduce more guns or to make guns more available and accessible. You don't reduce violence by introducing more violence.Another point to make here is that the major source of guns used in the commission of crimes are obtained illegally, often by stealing them from the honest citizens and selling them through pawn shops and the black market. If the source of these weapons dried up, the criminals would no longer have weapons to use. One gun control regulation I would support is that gun owners would need to demonstrate that they have adequate means to secure their weapons from theft and misuse.HBD

And by the way you referred to a particular Congressman in answer to my questioning whether the NRA really opposes research, and he information about that Congressman is that he was instrumental in preventing funding of a particular research bill ON THE GROUND THAT IT WAS POLITICALLY BIASED. Seems to me that's a fair reason for objecting to some research proposals.It's not that hard to bias statistics, as this recent discussion between HBD and Percy indicates, and not even intentionally, just because you aren't making meaningful distinctions, are lumping different situations together and so on. If you aren't looking at the right data and are too willing to accept data that supports your bias what good is your research?.

Hello Faith, I hope you don't mind my butting into this conversation.My question to you would be how do we distinguish between the good guy and the bad guy? How do we distinguish between the always good guy or the good guy that goes crazy and shoots his family? How about the bad guy that decides for whatever reason to give up his evil ways and uses his gun to protect a group from another bad guy with a gun? How about the law enforcement officer who, even though he knows his stepson is depressed and possibly suicidal, forgets to lock up his service revolver.How do we tell Johnny the 1st grader how to distinguish between a good guy or a bad guy that is walking into his school with a gun? Do we tell him to go about his business until he gets shot and can now tell that the guy is bad?It's the middle of the night and our car is broke down. Our cell phone is dead. How do we distinguish between the home of a good guy who will offer assistance and the home of the former good guy who decides you're a danger and shoots without asking questions?How do we figure out that the patient we're seeing for depression might be a danger to himself or others if some organization dedicated to furthering the sales of the gun industry lobbies for law prohibiting us from discussing with our patients the possible ways they may have of doing harm?How do we really know how gun ownership correlates with gun crime if the above-mentioned organization also lobbies to stop any studies into the question?I know a lot of good guys with guns, I'm related to many. They go about their daily lives without feeling the need to carry a gun into the local Quickie Mart. They don't publically wish vile and disgusting things to happen to women who are worried enough to meet with a few other women in a local coffee house to discuss gun violence. They have absolutely no problem with gun control efforts because they agree that background checks, and safety training, and insurance, and safety measures are a part of being a responsible gun owner and in no way tramples on their right to own their guns.

But obviously that isn't my argument. Recreational use is part of it but that is not the reason for the Second Amendment. I know avid hunters who have trained their children in hunting, but again that is not the reason for the Second Amendment and not a major part of my argument. Yes, that is a big part of my argument. But you could put it the other way around too: NOT being allowed to carry guns in any situation where they want to is an unfair restriction on the good guys. AND it certainly does let the bad guys get away with it in those situations. Why do you want to restrict the good guys at all? They are not the problem. You jump to conclusions a lot. Individuals qualify for guns, not whole communities. Responsible individuals within the inner-city areas who want to own guns and are willing to get trained to use them properly should be encouraged to do so in my opinion. If more did that then that all by itself might reduce the crime statistics in those areas. Which gun control is NOT going to accomplish. Tell that to the DC people who are trying to solve the crime problem. GIVE the good guys the guns in those areas if they can't afford them, take them to the gun range to practice, take them to classes to learn about how to use guns safely.The point about comparing communities and populations is to stop using statistics to penalize the good guys for the crimes of the bad guys. The good guys WITHIN the inner city crime areas are also penalized although this might not be so apparent because they are most likely too fearful as well as too poor to possess a legal gun anyway. Right, by your reasoning we should take away all the guns of the good guys so that the bad guys will be the only ones who have them and can go on shooting the people whose lives you think I devalue. MAYBE if your logic made any sense you'd have a point but depriving the honest citizens of the nation of their guns to protect a few criminals is stupid no matter how you cut it. "Devaluing lives" is just typical leftist emotion-raising accusatory rhetoric that accomplishes nothing but disarming the good guys. That is empty rhetoric again, absolutely meaningless and unsupported. Where are YOUR statistics by the way? And I strenuously disagree with you. You are talking about GUNS again, rather than the PEOPLE who possess the guns. Change your focus from guns to people and you might see that it's not about HOW MANY guns there are, it's about where and when and who, and that when you focus on these things instead of the tool itself you might begin to see how the POTENTIAL for violence really CAN prevent violence, or how actual violence in the right hands at the right time can prevent violence against innocents. Except that you are focusing on the "source" of the guns instead of on the criminals. But it's good that you are at least thinking about the criminal side at all. But you immediately go wrong here: Sounds good superficially, but unfortunately in practice such well-meaning ideas usually end up penalizing the good guys in totally unnecessary and useless ways. How about just keeping your focus on the criminal side of it instead, and try to figure out how to interrupt the sequence from that side? Focus on the pawn shops and the black market perhaps.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.