Summations Only

But they don't. Sometimes they do make things better for themselves, and no worse for everyone else. It's only in the statistical aggregate that a single gun on the margin makes the entire nation worse off.But that's an incredibly naive statistical inference. Nobody's subject to the national average risk of gun homicide, gun suicide, or accidental shooting. Not even a single American. There's no such thing as the "average person." Everybody is subject to an individual risk of gun homicide, gun suicide, accidental shooting, and risk of homicide in general. Everyone is also subject to the law. Which means that the laws being talked about would apply even to those people for whom their individual risk of homicide is so high that it outweighs increasing their individual risk of suicide or accidental shooting. Particularly if they believe they can, by their own actions (like not shooting themselves to death!) keep those secondary risks low.That's not "faulty risk assessment." It's making a judgement about what's going to happen in the future, and that's not what statistics do. They can help, but they're not the only way or always the best way to do it. Ultimately, you have to exercise your own judgement.But you propose to exercise your judgement for everybody. And that'd be fine, but I don't think your judgement about my future is as good as mine. For one thing, I know a lot more about it than you do. For another, you're not the one with skin in the game.

Nowhere. Where does it say that the list is comprehensive? At last, something you're prepared to agree with me on.

And yet, despite the superiority of statistical "reality" (surely you realize that's a contradiction in terms, statistics is a form of modelling and models are, by definition, not reality) we don't, by law, force all American children to get vaccinations - because the vaccinations would kill some children. And it's not at random; the risk of dying from vaccination is not evenly and therefore unpredictably distributed among children.Similarly, the risk of dying in a situation where a gun might have saved your life is not evenly distributed across all Americans. Therefore it makes no sense to mandate that no American can use a handgun in self-defense. No sense at all. That's just an incredibly naive statistical inference.

But they excluded the most popular round and don't mention it anywhere?

It's mentioned throughout, and featured in the picture, which is captioned "varmint rounds." Did you even read the article? Or did you just read one non-comprehensive list and misinterpret it, because you thought you found something you could contradict me on?

Essencially you're asserting that statistics you disagree with are bullshit and "naive and irrational." You are not, however, showing why Percy's relevant point that households which contain a gun are statistically more likely to be victims of gun-related death is somehow invalid. ...You just did it, again. Measuring the statistical distribution of a given target is how we compare our predictions against reality in the first place.Let's try something similar. It's claimed that smoking causes cancer. Is the most rational way to investigate that claim to take a sample of a few thousand smokers and determine the percentage that gets cancer, and compare that to another sample group who does not smoke? I mean (and I'm pulling numbers out of my ass here for the sake of the point, please don;t bother with your usual tactic of nitpicking irrelevant details to derail the argument), if statistically 100 out of 50,000 smokers get cancer, and only 30 out of every 100,000 non-smokers get cancer, isn't that a fairly strong correlation? Isn't that the very first, most basic step we use to determine whether the claim that cigarettes cause cancer is true? Of course there is no "average person," with 2.5 kids. The "average person" is what we call an abstract concept. In the case of statistics, we use abstractions like the average risk of gun death of non-gun-owners and the average risk of gun death of gun-owners and compare them. These abstractions are calculated by aggregating many real, individual occurrences to get an idea of how frequently a given event, like gun death, actually occurs in reality.Banning handguns actually says "if I posses this handgun, I'm significantly more likely to die a gun-related death than if I do not posses this handgun. Therefore, if I ban handguns, the sum total of gun deaths will be reduced, because fewer people will have guns, reducing that statistical risk. The abstract, average person will be safer."But, of course, you prefer to ignore evidence like that because you have to "defend yourself individually, not statistically." That's a curious interpretation of statistics, crash. Rather I would have thought that the statistically incredibly low chance of winning anything in the lottery, regardless of the jackpot value, means that it's foolish to ever assume any rate of return at all, and that since I cannot afford to purchase tickets representative of a significant amount of the probability space for a lotto drawing, I'd be much better served to just pay my mortgage.You're making this very curious usage of an abstraction, whereby you're using an average to make a rate-of-return prediction for an individual despite the fact that the data distribution is the exact opposite of an even spread, and the typical individual simply loses his money.That's not the same with gun-related deaths. Yes, it's a binary all-or-nothing live-or-die event, but the distribution is far more even than winning the lottery...and nobody is suggesting that the "average person" will die 0.04 times or any such nonsense.We're simply stating that the risk, as in the statistical likelihood of a negative outcome, increases with gun ownership as opposed to the lack of gun ownership. They help in predicting the future. Nothing is certain, everything is probability.I can't look at Jim and Tom and tell whether either of them will be shot to death.But if Jim owns a gun, and Tom does not, I can say that Jim is more likely to be shot to death than Tom. And because I can make that factual statement, if Jim then defends his gun ownership saying that he's "safer" by owning a gun, I can also saying that he's delusional and the raw data proves him to be utterly wrong.You know. Like you.Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.

The conversation stays on the gun as if it kills people, instead of comparing the 13% of Single Mothers in Britain who had illegitimate babies, and 60% of whom nevertheless work, with the sad situation in America where 35-40% of the Single Mothers do not work, and are collected together in cities with other like-Single Mlthers raising fatherless jkids who go to school and hang out with each other.There is ALSO the diversity issue in the American Cuklture that separates British Single Mothers who are distributed throughoiut the counrty from what is massive Black Drug culture in America.This politically Correct attitude of ignoring the truth because it singles out a particular group is what Bill Cosby fights against.
If the problem is to be solved, the Truth must come to light si we can work on the solutiuon.In other countries, at least half the Single Mothers were married then divorced.
This is quite different from the "way of life" created in America.

I'm curious. If "your own judgement" is not based upon a numerical abstraction of previous experience used to extrapolate trends and thereby predict the course of action that will be most beneficial (you know, using statistics)......what exactly is this mysterious "judgement" of yours based upon? If you're not using the only comparison to reality we have, what's your pattern of thought, other than just a subjective "feeling" that the numbers consistently show to be flat false?Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.

No, plenty of statistics in support of positions I agree with are also bullshit. I've done it in several posts now, but I guess you weren't able to reason from the general to the specific. "Households which contain a gun" is an incredibly broad variety of households, located in an incredibly broad range of regions, containing an incredibly broad range of weapons secured under an incredibly broad range of conditions, etc., such that it makes little sense to base individual decisions about whether to own a gun solely on aggregate statistics. For instance, how am I supposed to apply the statistic about the risk of a gun injuring a child to my own household, where there are no children? Percy's the first to tell you that a gun that isn't present can't cause an injury, but for some reason, the idea that a child that isn't present can't be injured just never occurs to him. Somehow, that idea doesn't count. Are you saying that correlation and causality are the same thing? Yes. Just like the "national average rate of homicide per 100,000 people." So don't hand me an abstract statistical concept and then tell me I'm ignoring "reality." "Reality" and "abstract" are two different things. In fact, they're two opposite things. Yes. It's an incredibly naive interpretation of statistics. That's my point - naively interpreting the statistics in aggregate and assuming continuous outcomes, instead of making judgements on the basis of the recognition that outcomes are discreet, is incredibly fucking stupid. Did you just stop reading halfway through, or something? It's exactly the same with gun-related deaths. Even within the US, state to state, homicide rates range from DC's 25 or so per 100,000 people to New Hampshire's 0.8 per 100,000. They're incredibly unevenly distributed. Except that it's not true.That's the problem we're having, here. I know what you guys are saying. I just think you're wrong. I'm not convinced. I told you what I needed to be convinced - show me even a single country that went from 80 guns per 100 people to 15 guns per 100 people, and thereby reduced homicides (not just gun deaths, but all homicides) per 100,000 as a result - and 600 posts later, you still haven't even tried to do that. Instead you and Percy have just tried to pretend that I don't know how to recognize the Ecological Fallacy.So why would you expect me to be convinced? Why would you expect anyone to be convinced, if you can't provide any evidence that homicides can be reduced by banning guns, not just that homicides stay low in places where they were already low when an already low rate of gun ownership is preserved by a change in the law? But it doesn't prove him wrong. Especially if you don't take into account that Jim is a well-trained gun owner who takes steps to reduce his risk of accidentally shooting himself. If you don't take into account that Jim lives in a high-crime area and might be a target for criminals. Especially if you don't take into account that you're committing the Ecological Fallacy by assuming that Jim's individual characteristics and the circumstances of his life are broadly determined entirely by his membership in the statistical class "gun owner."You would actually be 100% wrong to think that you'd proven anything at all about what's going to happen to Jim. You know, wrong like you've been this entire time.

Rahvin, if you don't know how to make judgements, I'm not going to be able to explain it in a post.

So in Britain, 60% of single mothers do work, whereas in America 40% of them don't?Well, that sounds like a stark contrast, to be sure, but just to put that into perspective, could you use your math skills to tell me what percentage don't work in Britain, and what percentage do work in the US?

...Language Skills...The math is not the problem.
My Language skills need be sharpened.I made the point a little more clear as you can see.The comparison between Single Mothers in Britain and in America reveals that only half of those Single Mothers (25%) had illegitimate babies because they were never married.
And, half at least again of those do not depend upon the Government for assistance.Then we compare the murder rates and see the correlation between America's Single Mother population and that of Britain.The evidence supports a focus on these children, not the fewer guns in England.Edited by kofh2u, : No reason given.Edited by kofh2u, : No reason given.

Forget the law for a moment, just follow the logic. Most people are not in danger, as you said and I agree with. So, it follows that most people don't need to walk around in their day to day lives with a handgun.It's not rational for most people to need a gun, just like it is not rational to walk around with a life vest to avoid drowning.A "few" people should however walk around with a gun. Those people are in law enforcement, which is taking applications for those who want to protect the masses. So what "few" people and where do they live, where it makes sense for them to carry a gun all day long? The right people ARE armed in NYC - we call them cops. Are paraplegics at greater risk of being killed or assaulted? I'd like to see those numbers.- Oni

Ok, and again, I have already said my initial plan was flawed in that I didn't add making handguns and assault rifles illegal. What global trend? I read that, it just seems like total bullshit. There is no global trend to shoot less people with guns. In fact, in the US it seems like the other way around. Please tell me you recognize the correlation there? This is just NRA talking points, CS. Hunting is ingrained in our culture, sure, but walking around with handguns like you're in Die Hard is NOT ingrained in our culture. Those people who do that are in the minority. I don't know why that matters. It would be a state to state thing. The goal has been to reduce the amount of people who carry concealable weapons and assault rifles. A total reduction. This will have, I believe, the effect of ALSO reducing the amount of deaths due to guns. But not the only thing I'm focused on. One, there are alternative means of self-defense. Let's recognize that. Two, I'm saying let's create a law that reduces the amount of guns on the street so that that "one guy" doesn't feel he needs a gun. You're the one who said the bigger guy would best the little guy to where little guys need guns. All I'm asking is where is this taking place and how common is it? Well, maybe, that remains to be seen. But at the very least a ban on assault rifles will happen and stricter gun laws will happen as well. Innocent people. Violent criminals are delt with by law enforcement.- Oni

Yes, I understand. The personal feels much more real to you than statistics, but the reality is that percentages and probabilities based upon statistical sampling are a much, much better way to understand what is going on in the larger world outside our personal lives. Statistics help us understand whether the extrapolations we make based upon our own personal experiences and feelings have any validity, and often they don't. That's the lesson of the shark versus lightning risk assessment.The factors that make gun ownership dangerous are not difficult to understand. The same people who forget their wallets and keys and lose their tempers also own guns. Did you (the impersonal you) remember to remove the shot from the chamber? Did you remember to set the safety? Do you never accidentally point it at someone? Is it locked in the gun cabinet? Is the key to the gun cabinet in a safe place? And its copy? How many people know where the keys are? Or is the gun in a drawer somewhere?Then there's that first year of owning a gun, and you're all excited and do everything by the book, but it gets old after a while and you visit the shooting range less and less, and after a few years you're not sure where the gun even is. In some households everyone is sane and stable, other households not so much. Or maybe they start out sane and stable, then things change. Or maybe the household goes through good periods and bad periods. Do you have a temper? Anyone in your household have a temper? Do you have any mental issues? Anyone is your household have mental issues? Then sometimes there are visitors and guests.And that's why households with guns are less safe than those without. No, I'm only advocating my position just as you're advocating yours. My position is that gun ownership makes one less safe, not more.--Percy