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Author
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Topic: Gun Control Again
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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member
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Message 1096 of 5179 (686624)
01-02-2013 4:42 PM
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Reply to: Message 1087 by Percy
01-02-2013 4:02 PM
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Re: Statistical Blindness
You're making the very good point that correlation doesn't imply causation, but in this case we already know several things. We know that guns cause gun deaths. We also know mathematically that 0 guns must correspond to 0 gun deaths and that you cannot have any gun deaths until the number of guns rises above 0. Guns are a prerequisite for gun deaths, and therefore we know that increasing the number of guns increases the number of gun deaths. But we don't know it the 2nd gun in existence would increase the number of gun deaths or stop the 1st gun from being used. Too, there's never going to be such a thing as 0 guns.
I think that at heart your argument is actually the same as Crash's, namely that with increasing gun ownership at some point gun deaths begin decreasing because of the deterrent effect. The available data we have doesn't support this, But the available data doesn't refute it either.
the anecdotal stories aren't worth much, and just a few moments thought about the likelihood of your gun being available and loaded at the moment you need it illustrates the inherent weakness of the deterrence argument. It'd be available if it was on my hip... and Illinois Supreme Court just struck down the ban on conceal-carry here as unconstitutional.
The gun lobby advocates arming even more people, and that's just a recipe for more gun deaths. As you say, anecdote stories aren't worth much. And what matters more is who is armed. Increasing gun regluation will only limit the guns from law-abiding citizens while the people who already don't care about breaking the law will continue to carry them. The gun lobby doesn't advocate arming more people illegally, so you're not really looking at the right recipe. That's why tougher penalties for gun crimes is a better idea. The people who don't care about the law will eventually get caught and be removed from the situation while law-abiding citizens will still be allowed to cause some amount of deterence to crime by carring guns. You could end up with less gun deaths without having to reduce the number of guns nor pass unecessary constraints on lawful citizens.
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 1087 by Percy, posted 01-02-2013 4:02 PM | | Percy has replied |
| Replies to this message: | | | Message 1109 by Percy, posted 01-02-2013 5:35 PM | | New Cat's Eye has replied |
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1488 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: 03-20-2003
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Re: Statistical Blindness
So your position is that US citizens are just more homicidal than those in other comparable nations and that looser gun laws in the US just provide a convenient means for those heightened homicidal urges to be acted upon. Is this correct? I think people who want to kill are going to kill anyway. Nobody's going to stand their crooking an empty trigger finger at their intended target; if they can't get a gun they're going to get a bat or a bomb or something.
You now seem to be saying Americans would be equally homicidal whatever weapon ends up being used. Well, we are. Our rate of knifings, stranglings, poisonings, etc are all higher than other countries, and higher by roughly the same proportion as our rate of god homicides. So the fact that my speculation is unexpectedly consistent with the data is a point in support of it.
But if that is the case then there is no real link between gun prevalence and homicide rate..... Well, no. The link would be that Americans want to equip themselves to commit homicides.
In order to aid understanding can you explain how you would expect the relation between gun prevalence and homicides to manifest itself if gun prevalence went down significantly? I don't know. I'd have to know why it went down. If it went down because Americans were forcibly disarmed, or disarmed by legislation, I'd suspect the rate of homicide to stay roughly constant. If it went down because a number of Americans decided not to kill people anymore, and therefore they had little need for the tools to kill, I'd expect homicides across all categories to go down.
If a decrease in one doesn't equate to a decrease in the other in what way are you suggesting they are correlated? By the same kind of one-way correlation where rain causes people to pack umbrellas, but not packing umbrellas doesn't cause it not to rain.
This doesn't make any sense at all. It makes sense when one phenomena is a driver of the other, but not the reverse. Rainfall drives umbrellas; umbrellas don't drive rainfall. (Maybe not having one makes it rain, though, if you're a devotee of Murphy's Law.)
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Straggler
Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: 09-30-2006
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Re: Statistical Blindness
So it is your contention that America has a high prevalence of guns because you are a particularly homicidal nation. Is that correct? You are effectively reversing the causal relationship being suggested by many others here. Is this correct?
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hooah212002
Member (Idle past 823 days) Posts: 3193 Joined: 08-12-2009
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Re: I missed out on New Years Eve fireworks (and two people died)
A firearm is a perfectly rational defense against someone attacking you with their fists. Just like chopping someone's hand off is a perfectly rational justice for theft. If you don't want your hand chopped off, don't steal. Chopping someone's penis off is a perfectly rational justice for committing rape. If you don't want your penis chopped off, don't commit rape. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot how we are trying to send humanity back in time to being less civilized. The wild west was such an enlightened time, as was the dark ages. I guess we've not learned from history and will just keep being a murderous blood thirsty species.
"Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off." -Dawkins
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1488 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: 03-20-2003
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Re: Statistical Blindness
You are effectively reversing the causal relationship being suggested by many others here. I think it's more consistent with the data, yes. High ownership of firearms doesn't explain why more people get stabbed here, for instance.
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1488 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: 03-20-2003
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Re: I missed out on New Years Eve fireworks (and two people died)
Just like chopping someone's hand off is a perfectly rational justice for theft. I'm not saying it's justified as a punishment, Hooah. I'm saying that somebody punching you is using potentially lethal force, so it's morally permissible to use lethal force to defend yourself.
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Tangle
Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: 10-07-2011 Member Rating: 4.7
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Re: Statistical Blindness
xongsmith writes: You have it wrong here - what I wanted you to do was to get off the -1,-1 versus 0,0 shit and look at the non-USA data. CS said it looked like buckshot. One of the purposes of finding a trendline is to project it out. So find the non-USA trendline (including Argentina and the other 9 countries Dr.A had!) and project it out to the USA gun ownership value for X and see what kind of Y it comes up with. What kind of confidence do we have in the non-USA line? What if it matched anyway - would we still be right to make the claim that they are proportional? Argue from there. The original data and graphs plus comments and other reactions to it are here: http://mark.reid.name/iem/gun-deaths-vs-gun-ownership.html
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 1095 by xongsmith, posted 01-02-2013 4:38 PM | | xongsmith has not replied |
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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member
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Re: Statistical Blindness
Because that still doesn't seem to explain the correlation between high gun prevalence and high homicide rate. The data in Message 693 shows that there really isn't much of a correlation to speak of:
quote:
So I looked into reducing murder rates, thanks to the links from T12C in Message 685:
List of Countries by intentional Homicides Number of guns per capita I grabbed the top 20 countries by number of guns per capita, and then looked up their intentional homicide rate:
Here's the plot:
Doesn't look like any correlation to speak of to me. The linear trend line had an R2 value of 0.2. I don't think that gun control can be predicted to reduce the murder rate.
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Percy
Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: 12-23-2000 Member Rating: 4.8
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Re: Statistical Blindness
crashfrog writes: But again, both CS and I have several times asked, what's the point in being concerned about gun deaths specifically? Dead is dead. Homicide is homicide, and I can't see the social interest in merely shifting gun homicides to an equivalent number of knife homicides, rat-poison homicides, necktie homicides, or bare-hands homicides. I think you're basing this on your belief that the US is inherently more homicidal than the rest of the world, and that if you took away their guns people would simply find another way and the same number of murders would still happen. I haven't seen any data supporting this. Naturally some murders would still happen, some wouldn't.
You're broadly interchanging "gun deaths" and homicides and, it feels to me, hoping we won't notice as you switch back and forth. By "homicides" you mean "gun homicides"? If so, then I can only guess you're referring to the large number of gun suicides? Hopefully when it makes a difference I get the nomenclature right, but could you step the paranoia down another notch? Not everyone out there is a diabolical bastard plotting ways to underhandedly manipulate discussion at obscure discussion boards. About unintentional gun deaths, according to the statistics I've seen they are a small percentage of the total, maybe a couple percent, so since they're not the focus of discussion it matters little whether they're included in the overall figures or not. If by "homicides" you instead mean "all homicides", then no, I'm not confusing "gun deaths" with "all homicides".
How could you develop a database of murders that didn't happen?...It beggars belief to suggest that it doesn't ever happen... No one is arguing that it doesn't happen. As I pointed out to Faith in Message 1017:
Percy in Message 1017 writes: But no one is arguing that guns are never successfully used for self-defense. The point is that the number of gun deaths is proportional to gun prevalence. What you're offering as a counterargument isn't a counterargument at all, it's just additional relevant information. Even if we assume your counterargument that taking away our guns will leave us helpless before criminals is totally true, it doesn't change the fact that gun deaths are proportional to gun prevalence. Your solution to the crime problem, increasing gun prevalence, will only increase gun deaths. For the sake of making a point let me grant Crash's position that fewer guns means higher crime rates. To most of the rest of the civilized world where life is more precious than money trading higher crime rates for lower death rates would be an excellent tradeoff. ... It is also important to note that guns used to thwart crimes are not often used in the defense of one's life. It is rare when the criminal's intent is murder. The goal is usually robbery, rape, etc. This is why I keep referring to the irony of the gun-lobby argument. They want to arm the citizenry and put everyone's life at greater risk in order to thwart crime whose predominate goal is coercion and theft, not murder. Anyone who believes life is most precious above all else but supports the gun lobby has some serious inner contradictions to work out. About this:
Eternal vigilance is required for a gun to be an effective deterrent, but a gun once owned is a threat that never ends. That's really a ridiculously stupid thing to say, and I would say it typifies the fetishistic fear and power gun opponents frequently attribute to firearms. It's actually an incredibly true thing to say, as gun owners are not some breed of superhuman, and so they get angry or drunk or careless or whatever just like all human beings. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Clarify paragraph on gun homicides versus gun deaths.
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Percy
Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: 12-23-2000 Member Rating: 4.8
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Re: Statistical Blindness
crashfrog writes: I was explaining why the best-fit line makes sense by describing what we know must be mathematically true, that 0 guns must correspond to 0 gun deaths, and that the line can only rise from there.
Yes, I heard you the first half-dozen times, and my reply is again to remind you that there - 0,0 - is precisely where the line does not rise from. I don't know how to be any clearer than that. It doesn't go anywhere near 0,0, much less rise from it. I'm talking about two different things. One thing is the best-fit line. The other is an ideal mathematical relationship. Then I compare the best-fit line to the ideal mathematical relationship and describe how the best-fit line is consistent with what the ideal mathematical line would lead one to expect. --Percy
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 1093 by crashfrog, posted 01-02-2013 4:25 PM | | crashfrog has seen this message but not replied |
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Straggler
Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: 09-30-2006
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Re: Statistical Blindness
You could have made things a lot lot clearer and saved a lot of time wrangling about statistics if you had simply and explicitly stated that your position in this thread is that high gun prevalence in the US is the result of high homicidal tendencies in the US population and that (in your view) the causal relationship is the exact reverse of that more commonly put forward.
Crash writes: I think it's more consistent with the data, yes. Could you link to the data that led you to this conclusion?
Crash writes: High ownership of firearms doesn't explain why more people get stabbed here, for instance. What is the rate of knife crime in the US? (compared to the UK - for example)? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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hooah212002
Member (Idle past 823 days) Posts: 3193 Joined: 08-12-2009
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Re: I missed out on New Years Eve fireworks (and two people died)
I'm saying that somebody punching you is using potentially lethal force, so it's morally permissible to use lethal force to defend yourself. And I am showing you how that sort of thinking is exactly the same as the sort of thinking that leads to hands being chopped off as punishment. It's backwards and barbaric to think that the path towards enlightenment or high society goes through more guns and more killing.
I'm not saying it's justified as a punishment I get the feeling that you debate in absolutes and can neither think outside the box nor can you recognize allegory. Next, you'll claim I am misrepresenting you in that you "never said it was justified as punisment".
I'm saying that somebody punching you is using potentially lethal force. Sure, if you get into a fight with Bas Rutten or Mike Tyson. But in reality, the escalation of shooting someone who punches you is extremely fucking cowardly.
"Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off." -Dawkins
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Straggler
Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: 09-30-2006
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Re: Statistical Blindness
The US has a homicide rate more in line with a second world, or even developing, country than what you would expect from the worlds wealthiest nation. This seems to demand some explanation. And to most of us in the Western world but outside the US the US fixation with guns seems a very obvious factor. The OECD countries in Dr A's graph are the ones that would be used for most social comparisons. Is there any reason to treat guns differently and instead compare the US with places in the Middle East and suchlike?
Crash writes: The data in Message 693 shows that there really isn't much of a correlation to speak of Well why didn't you tell Crashfrog that when he was talking about correlation?
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Percy
Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: 12-23-2000 Member Rating: 4.8
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Re: Statistical Blindness
Catholic Scientist writes: But we don't know if the 2nd gun in existence would increase the number of gun deaths or stop the 1st gun from being used. Say you have a gunless population of one million. You give a gun to someone at random and the odds of gun deaths increase. You give a 2nd gun to someone at random. What are the odds of those two guns coming together in the same place at the same time? Now add a 3rd gun and figure the odds of any two of them coming together in the same place at the same time. Now add a 4th gun...well, you get the idea. Until you get thousands and thousands of guns in the population the odds of any two of them appearing together at the same place at the same time is minuscule. In other words, the odds of a person with a gun being threatened by someone who also has a gun is minuscule. You can pretty much count on the line on the graph of guns plotted versus gun deaths to rise linearly for the first few thousand guns. You and Crash are arguing that at some saturation point guns produce a deterrent effect. This argument is hampered by a couple of factors: lack of data, and lack of realistic scenarios. The reason for the lack of data is obvious and not anyone's fault, but the data is still missing and so one cannot argue that if there were data that it would support their position. The lack of realistic scenarios has been described before. Several times. Criminals are ready, you're not. Criminals pick the time and place. Carrying concealed is an enormous pain in the neck, and in many situations it isn't practical or even possible. Guns in the home are locked up, unloaded and useless for home defense, and if they're not then they're incredibly dangerous because of aforementioned reasons that I'll just summarize as "people are stupid." The fact of the matter is that a gun is more likely to be used against family, friends, intimate others and co-workers than anyone else. Under most circumstances, bringing a gun into a home makes everyone less safe.
That's why tougher penalties for gun crimes is a better idea. I'd agree with you if it were gun crimes I was worried about, but I'm worried about gun deaths, and I think the penalties for murder are pretty tough already. And anyway, the deterrent effect of laws has got to be pretty poor for crimes committed while someone is angry or scared or threatened or drunk or on drugs or some combination. So if you do end up carrying your gun on your hip as you're out and about, when the criminal sticks a gun in your face pull out your wallet and not your gun. Your life is far more precious than money. --Percy
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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member
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Re: Statistical Blindness
The US has a homicide rate more in line with a second world, or even developing, country than what you would expect from the worlds wealthiest nation. Some parts of our country are like the second world...
This seems to demand some explanation. And to most of us in the Western world but outside the US the US fixation with guns seems a very obvious factor. Well what do you know? I don't think it has anything to do with a fixation with guns. I know a lot of people with gun fixations and none of them have killed anybody. People who kill each other are mostly the ones who live in the parts of the country that are like the second world. Its not the "having guns" that causes people to kill somebody.
The OECD countries in Dr A's graph are the ones that would be used for most social comparisons. Dr. A's graph was of countries with a high HDI. Message 663 Doesn't having a high homicide rate reduce a country's HDI regardless of how many guns are there? I don't see how cherry-picking the data points helps establish a causal relationship between gun ownership and gun murder. The plot of the OECD countries looks like this:
And that has the problem of looking strictly at gun deaths in particular. I think Mexico lends weight to the problem being who has the guns rather than just how many there are. If you remove the outliers, it looks like this:
I don't see any correlation at all in that one. Plots taken from here: http://mark.reid.name/iem/gun-deaths-vs-gun-ownership.html
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