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EvC Forum Side Orders Coffee House Gun Control Again

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Author Topic:   Gun Control Again
Tangle
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Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(4)
Message 976 of 5179 (686163)
12-29-2012 2:26 PM
Reply to: Message 969 by crashfrog
12-29-2012 1:34 PM


Re: Statistical Blindness
Crashfrog writes:
But kevlar? The notion that private citizens should be forced by their government to allow themselves to be shot is absolutely insane, and just another example, in your case, of the meek, learned helplessness that attends UK-style utter disarmament of a people against criminal predation. People should just be able to break into your house. People should just be able to shoot bullets into your body. People should just lie down and accept all of that, bear all of that physical risk, because it's the cop's job to do something about it, not yours; yours is to lie down and pray that they get there in time. If not? Well, that's life, I guess.
You know Crash, for an intelligent guy, you don't half talk a pile of absolute, unequivocal shite at times. I mean really great steaming piles of it. This has to be post of the month.
So why not kevlar backpacks?
Why would anyone admit to being content with a situation were the children go to school wearing kevlar? When did your precious freedom turn you country into Beirut?

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

This message is a reply to:
 Message 969 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 1:34 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 978 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 2:41 PM Tangle has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 977 of 5179 (686164)
12-29-2012 2:30 PM
Reply to: Message 974 by onifre
12-29-2012 2:15 PM


Re: ...one idiot to another....
All I'm saying is, most people are not in danger so it follows that most people don't need to carry a handgun around.
Right, and as a result most people don't carry handguns. In fact, increasingly, less and less people have guns at all.
So, problem solved. What's the issue?
It is NOT rational to carry a gun as you stated earlier.
For them? No, of course not. As a result, they don't.
Can you reference someone (an average citizen) that needs to carry a handgun while walking around...?
Even if you're a jewelry store owner, who tend to carry guns, they can instead hire a security person who's job requires them to carry a gun, to do the job.
Well, then I guess I can reference your security person, because now he needs to carry a handgun while walking around to do his job.
But it seems inefficient and expensive to hire someone to carry the gun, and if your law now allows people to carry handguns if it's their job to do so, I would wonder why the jewelry store owner wouldn't simply change his own job description from "jewelry store owner" to "jewelry store owner and private jewelry store owner security guard", thereby obviating both your proposed law against firearms carrying-around and the need to hire a security person to stand there with a gun.
Those people, the largest group of vitims, shouldn't be carrying guns.
Probably not. But they shouldn't be carrying knives or be trained in MMA, either. In fact we can't give them any tools for self-defense. But the people who care for them should be allowed the tools they need to defend them.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 974 by onifre, posted 12-29-2012 2:15 PM onifre has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 988 by onifre, posted 12-29-2012 7:04 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 978 of 5179 (686165)
12-29-2012 2:41 PM
Reply to: Message 976 by Tangle
12-29-2012 2:26 PM


Re: Statistical Blindness
You know Crash, for an intelligent guy, you don't half talk a pile of absolute, unequivocal shite at times.
So disprove it. Try to remember that I've been to the UK a dozen times in the past two decades, all over the country, talked to citizens of Great Britain from all walks of life. How often do you visit the States? Try to remember that of our two countries, only one of them parks missile batteries on the tops of city apartment buildings and exposes its citizens to video surveillance any time they're outside of their homes - most of it privately owned and subject to no privacy protection whatsoever. Try to remember that stuff when you try to tell me that disarmed cops are worth not even being able to buy pepper spray, and that a disarmed people have nothing at all to fear from government intrusion into their lives.
Try to disprove any of the above. I fucking dare you. If you could, you would have done it by now. Instead it's obvious you're full of what you people call (I think) "complete bollocks."
Why would anyone admit to being content with a situation were the children go to school wearing kevlar?
What's wrong with kevlar? My wife has some here at the apartment, part of her Army kit. I had a spool of it as a kid my mom got from Edmund Scientific, which was sort of the Sears-Roebuck catalog for me as a kid. Seems perfectly safe to me, durable as all hell. Why wouldn't kevlar be good for a backpack?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 976 by Tangle, posted 12-29-2012 2:26 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 980 by Tangle, posted 12-29-2012 3:15 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 981 by hooah212002, posted 12-29-2012 3:15 PM crashfrog has not replied
 Message 999 by Dr Adequate, posted 12-30-2012 12:31 AM crashfrog has not replied
 Message 1010 by Larni, posted 12-30-2012 11:24 AM crashfrog has replied

hooah212002
Member (Idle past 802 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


(2)
Message 979 of 5179 (686169)
12-29-2012 3:06 PM
Reply to: Message 975 by crashfrog
12-29-2012 2:24 PM


Re: Larry Correia's Blog on Gun Control
I had no idea Total Recall was about a utopian future that we should strive for with armed guards every 15 feet just so you, too, can carry a gun.

"Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off." -Dawkins

This message is a reply to:
 Message 975 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 2:24 PM crashfrog has not replied

Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(3)
Message 980 of 5179 (686170)
12-29-2012 3:15 PM
Reply to: Message 978 by crashfrog
12-29-2012 2:41 PM


Re: Statistical Blindness
Crashfrog writes:
Try to disprove any of the above. I fucking dare you.
Sorry Crash, this kind of 'and anyway, your sister smells' playground, deranged ranting is beneath argument - I'm not touching it. (At this point, the child may claim a win if he likes.)
What's wrong with kevlar?
Well it's jolly useful on the battlefield - is that what you are expecting your schools to become? (If so, I think your kids will be needing full body armour, I don't think you can rely on your armed lunatic only shooting your kids in the back.)

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

This message is a reply to:
 Message 978 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 2:41 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 990 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 8:17 PM Tangle has replied

hooah212002
Member (Idle past 802 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


(2)
Message 981 of 5179 (686171)
12-29-2012 3:15 PM
Reply to: Message 978 by crashfrog
12-29-2012 2:41 PM


Re: Statistical Blindness
What's wrong with kevlar? My wife has some here at the apartment, part of her Army kit. I had a spool of it as a kid my mom got from Edmund Scientific, which was sort of the Sears-Roebuck catalog for me as a kid. Seems perfectly safe to me, durable as all hell. Why wouldn't kevlar be good for a backpack?
So you want to outfit schoolchildren just as you would US Soldiers just so you, too, can carry a gun? Why should schoolchildren have to be outfitted with fucking kevlar? Did we get transported back to the Wild Wild West? Is the US pushing itself to be a third world nation rife with war where kids have to worry about mortar bombings and shootings ....
just so you, too, can carry a gun?

"Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off." -Dawkins

This message is a reply to:
 Message 978 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 2:41 PM crashfrog has not replied

Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 982 of 5179 (686176)
12-29-2012 3:36 PM
Reply to: Message 975 by crashfrog
12-29-2012 2:24 PM


Re: Larry Correia's Blog on Gun Control
I think under almost every possible circumstance it's a bad idea to have someone carrying a firearm in a room with children
But I think that's one of those notions people have who imagine things happening that don't actually happen in reality. Concealed weapons are generally worn under clothing, there's no reason for anyone to know they're there. If the training is good they should have all the safety measures down pat.
From what I've read and heard from people I know who are really into guns (which I'm not though my father and brothers had guns so I'm not unfamiliar with them), and most particularly the author of that blog post (which I'll link again in case you might finally want to read it), this is really the best solution. He has instructed thousands of teachers in concealed-carry, among them teachers in Utah who have been armed for years already.
And here's that picture again i think says so much, a Mom or a teacher toting a rifle in Israel in the presence of school children. That ought to show that it's not dangerous to have firearms around children. You just have to know what you're doing.
Picture worth a thousand words
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 975 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 2:24 PM crashfrog has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 985 by Tangle, posted 12-29-2012 4:47 PM Faith has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 983 of 5179 (686178)
12-29-2012 3:42 PM
Reply to: Message 967 by crashfrog
12-29-2012 1:24 PM


Re: Statistical Blindness
crashfrog writes:
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.
Sure, but we don't make decisions in the statistical aggregate that apply only to the nonexistent "average person.' We make decisions that apply to real people's lives, who experience conditions as a result of individual circumstance and not aggregate statistical inference. You're committing the Ecological Fallacy and hoping none of us will notice.
But I didn't commit the ecological fallacy by making inferences about individuals. The argument I made, and that you quoted, is that personal experience and feelings are a poor way to understand the larger world outside our personal lives. Statistics are much better for that purpose. You feel safer with a gun, then you extrapolate that to the population at large and conclude that the more people with guns the safer everyone will be, but when we measure this statistically we find this conclusion is wrong. Statistics tell us that most people who believe themselves safer after purchasing a gun are wrong. I am not committing the ecological fallacy by claiming I know which individuals that would be.
And you don't know, either. Unless you have some special circumstances, you have no idea whether you're safer or less safe with a gun in the house. But if you believe you are safer, then statistics say you're more likely wrong than right.
But I did notice, because like you I'm familiar with the act of lying by statistics. Excuse me, unintentionally misleading by the act of statistics.
Poor impulse control?
My position is that gun ownership makes one less safe, not more.
I don't disagree with this position. My point is that, regardless of this position being true, it doesn't follow that a lack of gun ownership makes everyone more safe instead of less.
Well of course it doesn't make everyone more safe. We're talking statistically (or at least I am), and statistically this is so obvious as to go without saying.
Under some circumstances, not owning a gun will make you demonstratively less safe. And that these circumstances are statistically significant enough not to legally preclude gun ownership.
Would I be correct in guessing that the statistical significance of the dangers of not owning a gun is something you *feel* is true, rather than something you have evidence for?
From your next Message 968:
Only if you can't tell the difference between a function and its first derivative. I can, which is how I know you're wrong.
One could spend all one's time defending oneself against the stuff you make up, but why bother.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 967 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 1:24 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 984 by Faith, posted 12-29-2012 3:48 PM Percy has replied
 Message 991 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 8:26 PM Percy has replied

Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 984 of 5179 (686179)
12-29-2012 3:48 PM
Reply to: Message 983 by Percy
12-29-2012 3:42 PM


Re: Statistical Blindness
May I recommend the blog post I keep linking that Coyote originally posted, because one thing he discusses is statistics that don't actually become statistics, such as thwarted criminal acts that don't get recorded because no crime actually got committed and no gun was actually discharged, although the gun in the hands of a potential victim was the reason for the aborted crime.
Here, I'll quote him:
It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually banning effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more to stop crime than to cause crime.
I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time when a gun is produced in a legal self-defense situation no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop.
Clint Smith once said if you look like food, you will be eaten. Criminals are looking for prey. They are looking for easy victims. If they wanted to work hard for a living they’d get a job. So when you pull a gun, you are no longer prey, you are work, so they are going to go find somebody else to pick on.
So many defensive gun uses never get tracked as such. From personal experience, I have pulled a gun exactly one time in my entire life. I was legally justified and the bad guy stopped, put his gun away, and left. (15 years later the same son of a bitch would end up murdering a local sheriff’s deputy). My defensive gun use was never recorded anywhere as far as I know. My wife has pulled a gun twice in her life. Once on somebody who was acting very rapey who suddenly found a better place to be when she stuck a Ruger in his face, and again many years later on a German Shepherd which was attacking my one year old son. (amazingly enough a dog can recognize a 9mm coming out of a fanny pack and run for its life, go figure) No police report at all on the second one, and I don’t believe the first one ever turned up as any sort of defensive use statistic, all because no shots were fired.
So how often are guns actually used in self-defense in America? http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html
On the high side the estimate runs around 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year, which dwarfs our approximately 16,000 homicides in any recent year, only 10k of which are with guns. FastStats - Homicide
Of those with guns, only a couple hundred are with rifles. So basically, the guns that the anti-gunners are the most spun up about only account for a tiny fraction of all our murders.
But let’s not go with the high estimate. Let’s go with some smaller ones instead. Let’s use the far more conservative 800,000 number which is arrived at in multiple studies. That still dwarfs the number of illegal shootings. Heck, let’s even run with the number once put out by the people who want to ban guns, the Brady Center, which was still around 108,000, which still is an awesome ratio of good vs. bad.
So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. Or to put it another way, the Brady Center hates guns so much that they are totally cool with the population of a decent sized city getting raped and murdered every year as collateral damage in order to get what they want.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 983 by Percy, posted 12-29-2012 3:42 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 997 by Dr Adequate, posted 12-30-2012 12:07 AM Faith has replied
 Message 1017 by Percy, posted 12-31-2012 9:31 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 1309 by Straggler, posted 01-20-2013 9:12 AM Faith has replied

Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(1)
Message 985 of 5179 (686185)
12-29-2012 4:47 PM
Reply to: Message 982 by Faith
12-29-2012 3:36 PM


Re: Larry Correia's Blog on Gun Control
Faith writes:
Picture worth a thousand words
Sure is.
Perhaps you've forgotten for a moment that Israel is at war with enemies literally a stones throw away from them, that they are being attacked by rockets and bombs most days of the week and until a few weeks ago were on the brink of invading them?
Is this the vision of America you have?

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

This message is a reply to:
 Message 982 by Faith, posted 12-29-2012 3:36 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 996 by Faith, posted 12-29-2012 11:59 PM Tangle has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 986 of 5179 (686187)
12-29-2012 4:49 PM
Reply to: Message 971 by crashfrog
12-29-2012 1:44 PM


Re: Statistical Blindness
Here's a chart where I eyeballed the points from Dr A's chart to a website that does best fit of scatter plots (Scatterplot - NLVM):
The line is very similar to Dr A's, r=0.724 shows a fairly strong linear relationship.
The problem with Coyote's chart was that it included dramatically different countries possessing poor baselines for comparison, and it jammed all the similar countries up against one axis. Dr A's chart attempts to compare countries that are roughly similar, namely close approximations to western style societies.
Since zero guns must by mathematical necessity correspond to zero gun deaths, and since the line can only rise from the 0/0 origin, and since the data supports a linear relationship, you're missing both data and a mechanism behind your position that increasing the number of guns would cause gun deaths to decrease.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 971 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 1:44 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 994 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 8:56 PM Percy has replied
 Message 1019 by xongsmith, posted 12-31-2012 11:59 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 987 of 5179 (686192)
12-29-2012 5:42 PM


Just as an aside, I wasn't aware of this:
Gun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe. Switzerland does not have a standing army, instead opting for a people's militia for its national defense. The vast majority of men between the ages of 20 and 30 are conscripted into the militia and undergo military training, including weapons training. The personal weapons of the militia are kept at home as part of the military obligations; Switzerland thus has one of the highest militia gun ownership rates in the world.
Firearms regulation in Switzerland - Wikipedia
It strikes me that this is more in line with what the originators of the US constitution had in mind.

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

onifre
Member (Idle past 2951 days)
Posts: 4854
From: Dark Side of the Moon
Joined: 02-20-2008


Message 988 of 5179 (686202)
12-29-2012 7:04 PM
Reply to: Message 977 by crashfrog
12-29-2012 2:30 PM


Re: ...one idiot to another....
Right, and as a result most people don't carry handguns.
Enough people carry handguns. Also, just to be clear, this is dealing with your statement that those who did carry them were acting rationally. They are not.
In fact, increasingly, less and less people have guns at all.
That's an interesting point, since we are also not seeing an increase in crime rates due to it. Which is what some claim will happen if less and less people carry guns.
But, I don't know how accurate that staement is. I've seen the other angle (that more people are carrying guns) too being made, and if I'm not mistaken the number of people getting concealed weapons permits is increasing.
So, problem solved. What's the issue?
If the "problem was solved" we wouldn't be having this debate.
Well, then I guess I can reference your security person, because now he needs to carry a handgun while walking around to do his job.
But it seems inefficient and expensive to hire someone to carry the gun, and if your law now allows people to carry handguns if it's their job to do so, I would wonder why the jewelry store owner wouldn't simply change his own job description from "jewelry store owner" to "jewelry store owner and private jewelry store owner security guard", thereby obviating both your proposed law against firearms carrying-around and the need to hire a security person to stand there with a gun.
I'm all for people who's job it is for them to carry weapons to do so. I also have no issue with the jewelry store owner going thru the security training needed to be a gun-carrying-security personel and thus him/herself being a licensed security person.
That's a far cry from citizens walking around with guns though. If that's your only reference of a person who needs a gun then we've narrowed it down to a small group of people. I'm all for that.
But the people who care for them should be allowed the tools they need to defend them.
If you think it's rational to hire a trained security guard for every mentally challenged person, and that's the world you think you live in, then I won't argue that with you. You're free to believe what you want. I don't see the need for that though.
- Oni
Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 977 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 2:30 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 993 by crashfrog, posted 12-29-2012 8:44 PM onifre has not replied

onifre
Member (Idle past 2951 days)
Posts: 4854
From: Dark Side of the Moon
Joined: 02-20-2008


(3)
Message 989 of 5179 (686203)
12-29-2012 7:24 PM
Reply to: Message 948 by Coyote
12-28-2012 9:40 PM


Guns for whitey
Based on this, we need more trained and armed honest citizens, not fewer.
What you mean is we need more armed white citizens. No one wants to put more gun in the hands of people in black neighborhoods or hispanic neighborhoods where the crime rate is ridiculously high. Where they already have lots of guns. Putting more guns in the hands of the "good ones" isn't going to make those neighborhoods better or safer. Those neighborhoods need less guns.
This is what those statistics forget to address, the fact that it's not poor people from violent neighborhoods who by in large are good people who they want to give more guns to, so their neighborhoods become safer. What the NRA wants is more white people to arm themselves to protect them against violent minorities from those poor neighborhoods who find themselves, often enough, in the position to break into a home and steal a tv. The law now says you can shoot that poor hispanic kid for trying to take your tv.
Let's be honest here on who you want to see have more guns.
- Oni

This message is a reply to:
 Message 948 by Coyote, posted 12-28-2012 9:40 PM Coyote has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 992 by Coyote, posted 12-29-2012 8:33 PM onifre has not replied
 Message 1006 by kofh2u, posted 12-30-2012 8:20 AM onifre has not replied
 Message 1009 by Faith, posted 12-30-2012 10:09 AM onifre has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 990 of 5179 (686206)
12-29-2012 8:17 PM
Reply to: Message 980 by Tangle
12-29-2012 3:15 PM


Re: Statistical Blindness
Sorry Crash, this kind of 'and anyway, your sister smells' playground, deranged ranting is beneath argument - I'm not touching it.
Well, we can't all rise to the soaring eloquence of "you don't half talk a pile of absolute, unequivocal shite."
Well it's jolly useful on the battlefield - is that what you are expecting your schools to become?
No, I'm expecting that we can't just wave a magic wand and not ever have another school shooting ever. But for some reason you find it risible to recognize that reality. Why is that?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 980 by Tangle, posted 12-29-2012 3:15 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1002 by Tangle, posted 12-30-2012 4:45 AM crashfrog has replied

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