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Author | Topic: Gun Control Again | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1465 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
So he's an idiot for a different reason. I've come to the conclusion recently that the entire US government needs to be impeached. All of it. He's just another reason for it. But who says it WAS valuable work?
You're just another gameplayer here, trying to find some way to trip me up. I'm not going to read all of a Wikipedia article, I even suspect somebody added the bit about valuable work, just as Dr. A once did between my pasting something and reading it again. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Adminnemooseus Administrator Posts: 3974 Joined: |
Times up.
AdminnemooseusOr something like that.
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Admin Director Posts: 13014 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 1.9 |
I'm not sure why the thread was closed, so I'm reopening it while I explore the reasons.
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
herebedragons writes: I understand the justification for comparing figures from similar countries. What my concern was is the objective criteria for such exclusion/inclusion. For example, I would not have included Israel on the list because of all the social unrest regarding the Palestinians. Taking Israel off the list because it is insufficiently like the other countries sounds fine. I wasn't sure about Turkey, either.
Of course, we are not trying to submit our findings for publication, but without a more rigorous method of deciding which countries to include, it is not much use as a statistic. My goal wasn't scientific rigor but merely to show that a clear correlation emerges if you compare like with like instead of lumping western democracies with third world dictatorships and every other kind of country. I disagree that "it is not much use as a statistic." It lacks scientific rigor, but everything we do here lacks scientific rigor. We're not conducting scientific studies and typing our results into discussion threads here, but nonetheless we make every effort to say things that are accurate and true. A comparison of guns versus gun deaths for western style democracies tells us something true about the world, certainly much more true then that graph at the Guns in Other Countries webpage. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Faith writes: No, I don't spend time trying to analyze statistical data no matter where it comes from. If I can't rely on the analysis given then forget it. It's actually pretty simple, but before I get to that let me comment on this:
But some of my problem looking at graphs has to do with their brightness because of my eye problem. I can't look at them very long. I'm sorry you have an eye problem, but doesn't your monitor have a brightness control? Anyway, a disability doesn't excuse you from providing evidence for your positions, nor is it an excuse for ignoring the evidence provided by others. You must figure out a way to read and understand the evidence people are providing to you before replying. You can't keep begging off every time evidence rears its ugly head. Okay, now about how simple this is. We're not analyzing statistics, we're just looking at a simple graph. This graph from Guns in Other Countries is useless for a couple simple reasons that can be easily explained. Click on it to enlarge. You can make it even larger by clicking on -+, which increases the size of any browser page, including the images. Click on -0 to return the browser page to it's original size. And turn down your monitor brightness. Here's the graph:
The problems:
So using the exact same data provided by the above chart for just western style democracies I obtained this scatterplot:
I provided HBD my list of countries (see Message 3023), he plugged it into his statistical analysis tools, and in Message 3027 he described that he had found a positive correlation. More guns mean more gun deaths. Further confirmation that more guns mean more gun deaths was provided in some studies that Tangle described in Message 3041:
These studies reached independently consistent results: A gun in the home increases the probability of gun death, and there are more homicides where guns are more available. The second study I listed was of "26 high-income countries," and I was curious how well that list corresponds to my own list, so putting them together:
Maybe HBD would be kind enough to redo his correlation study with just the 26 countries from the paper to see if he obtains similar results. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Typo. Edited by Percy, : Fix
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1465 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
But I don't know why that chart keeps coming up. I think I've said I accept that it's useless, and accepted that the site itself is useless too. But then I also said I don't trust statistical discussions anyway because there are too many ways the numbers can be misconstrued. Not that theoretically there couldn't exist a really good statistical study that does take the important things into account, but for now I'm sticking to the philosophical style arguments.
It's unfortunate that this topic always comes up in reaction to a horrific tragedy. The first take always comes from what sound to me like hysterical unthinking gun control fanatics who can't analyze anything coolly but just react and lash out and have no sense of responsibility for what they are saying. They are loudly and ignorantly and self-righteously contemptuous of people who defend guns. The effect on me is fear they'll be influential enough to get the government to confiscate guns altogether and completely do away with the Second Amendment which is meant to protect us from the government above all, and the government has not inspired any trust in me for years anyway. It's not that I'm a big gun fan in general, although I do know lots of responsible gun owners. I don't have guns myself and am in fact not really comfortable around them despite my family experience with them. But this rhetoric is alarming so I join the battle against what seem to me to be truly unthinking people who are reacting hysterically from their own personal fear of guns and don't know one thing about the realities involved. They push laws through that do nothing for the problem they're supposed to address and just make life more difficult for gun owners. Yes I know there are some people who are for gun control who are familiar with guns, but I'd bet the vast majority haven't a clue, but they want to tell those who know guns how to run their lives. The equation you keep making between prevalence of guns and gun deaths just hits me as simpleminded, and I really don't mean to be insulting with that, I just don't see it as relevant. Even if the statistics did prove it, that is not a reasonable way to approach this issue. I don't know why I'm saying all this. I think I need a break. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1465 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I meant to get to a different point in that post. What happens is that the loud anti-gun rhetoric does scare the gun people and that's why there is always a run on the gun stores in the wake of these tragedies. And instead of getting a sensible approach to how gun safety might be improved, (even if guns aren't really THE problem the rhetoric makes them out to be), the result is an escalation of gun ownership and pro-gun rhetoric and a digging-in of the gun people against the push for gun control. If you really want to promote gun safety, screaming about guns after a gun tragedy is NOT the way to go about it.
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7
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Faith writes: As usual that would only penalize the good guys for the problem caused by the bad guys. You keep railing on in message after message about good guys and bad guys, but as Asgara points out later on, in most cases it's not possible to know who the good guys and bad guys are. Most bad guys were good guys right up until they murdered someone. Here are some recent and/or famous examples:
So could you please stop dividing the world into the good guys and the bad guys? The reality is that you cannot know who the good guys and the bad guys are, or when a good guy will become a bad guy.
If the statistics are skewed by crime-infested areas... Why are you arguing anything about statistics after having just earlier stating that you're ignoring statistics. Why are you mentioning crime-infested areas, anyway? The concern is that more guns mean more gun deaths, that the presence of a gun in the home means greater danger for the residents. No one's talking about crime or bad guys. The dangers of bad guys having guns are obvious. We're talking about the dangers of good guys having guns.
Saw a You Tube interview of a fifteen year old girl who has been shooting since she was eight and hoped to get a shooting scholarship to Harvard, but some new stupid niggling law that restricts her practice is going to prevent that. You've been duped again. Harvard is part of the Ivy League and does not give out athletic scholarships. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7
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Faith writes: But I don't know why that chart keeps coming up. I think I've said I accept that it's useless, and accepted that the site itself is useless too. But then I also said I don't trust statistical discussions anyway because there are too many ways the numbers can be misconstrued. Not that theoretically there couldn't exist a really good statistical study that does take the important things into account, but for now I'm sticking to the philosophical style arguments. You're insisting on ignoring the statistics so you can continue to ignore that more guns mean more gun deaths. Any decent person would put a higher value on human life than gun rights. --Percy
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ringo Member (Idle past 432 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
Personally, I don't think gun safety in the US can be improved much. It's a bit like trying to prevent drowning in the mid-Atlantic: there's just too much water to ever make it "safe".
... instead of getting a sensible approach to how gun safety might be improved.... Faith writes:
There are two good ways to prevent more drownings after a drowning tragedy: learn water safety or stay out of the water.
If you really want to promote gun safety, screaming about guns after a gun tragedy is NOT the way to go about it.
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NoNukes Inactive Member
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I've come to the conclusion recently that the entire US government needs to be impeached. All of it. Surely that's a rant for another day. In the meantime, trying to impeach Jay Dickey would be a bit pointless. He's no longer a member of Congress.
But who says it WAS valuable work Jay Dickey said that. One good think about wiki articles is the footnotes to more authoritative sources. In this case footnote 5 is a pointer to an editorial written by the former Representative.
You're just another gameplayer here, trying to find some way to trip me up. I'm not going to read all of a Wikipedia article... I'd have to say that you played yourself. You did your own research, picked out the article, read what you thought was helpful and posted what turned out to be a quote mine. Yet somehow your error is my fault.
I even suspect somebody added the bit about valuable work I sometimes suspect that people have made changes to wikipedia during debates, but rather than announce such an look like a paranoid lunatic, I simply check the revision log. It would take 5 seconds worth of work to check that because wikipedia records revisions and their dates to prevent malicious editing. In this case, the article has not been edited for months. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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NoNukes Inactive Member
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The spirit of the question is why the NRA is always ATTACKED at these time That's not what you asked, but here is an answer to that question. Perhaps he NRA has earned the negative reputation they have on this issue. I noticed that you yourself found a list of possible gun control measures worth consideration although you did not commit to any of them. Most people, including most gun owners find the list mostly reasonable. However the NRA opposes all of those measures and all gun control legislation. I believe the primary reason for that stance is that the NRA spokespeople primarily represent gun manufacturers rather than the gun owners in general. Gun owners are not some monolithic block. Only the most extreme gun owner is totally on board with what the NRA advocates.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
What happens is that the loud anti-gun rhetoric does scare the gun people and that's why there is always a run on the gun stores in the wake of these tragedies. 'Anti-gun rhetoric' apparently means any talk at all about gun control regulation, however rational. Given that it's pretty much impossible to do anything about the run on gun stores. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7
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Hi Faith,
I'm replying to this message again because I forgot a point. I originally said that any decent person would put a higher value on human life than gun rights, but I should have added that I understand that you believe you are acting decently because you believe more guns means fewer gun deaths, not more. But all the evidence says that more guns mean more gun deaths. And it isn't like this is a surprising counter-intuitive result. On the contrary, it is precisely what one would expect. More guns mean more opportunities for gun accidents, more occasions when a gun is available when tempers flare, more times when children find guns, more occurrences of guns turning up in the hands of the mentally ill, more incidents of anger and frustration turning to firearm violence, more opportunities for a fragile situation to turn deadly. To defend your position you've chosen a course that involves claiming you don't understand statistics, and that statistics can't be trusted anyway. But without statistics you can't know whether your claim that guns prevent gun deaths is true. Simple decency demands that you advocate a position on so important an issue out of knowledge rather than ignorance. So how are you going to get statistics you can understand and trust? Well, one thing we know for certain is that the NRA is not going to help you obtain this valuable information, because as this New York Times article relates, the NRA works hard at discouraging firearms research. The landmark event occurred in 1996 when the $2.6 million allocated for CDC firearms research was taken away and only returned when it was reallocated to traumatic brain research. After this experience the CDC has shied strongly away from firearms research, and other research organizations within government took note. But studies still take place despite this handicap, and a few have been cited here. There can be no doubt that more guns means more gun deaths. Anyone who values human life above all else understands that we have to find means to reduce the number of guns in our midst. Of course, if you still think more guns don't cause more gun deaths then your welcome to debate the issue, but that will require statistics. Your argument that statistics are political and can't be trusted is just a position your forced into because the data is against you, not to mention the incredible irony that the source of your distrust is the incredibly screwed up data presented by a website that you cited yourself. --Percy
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I did find an interesting study (The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981—2010) that appeared in the American Journal of Public Health. It found that "for each percentage point increase in gun ownership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9%." Did you see the other part?
quote: That's over five times the correlation for gun ownership - a five-to-one relationship. How come you're not pointing out that more blacks means more gun deaths? Or is that not vapid enough for you? ABE: Look how different your argument looks if you swap in the equally justified claim:
quote: Doesn't look so good, does it? Edited by Cat Sci, : No reason given.
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