Summations Only

Well if you could read properly you would see where I have made a categorical statement that wingnut arguments are dishonest. I did not say your were dishonest. You obviously do not see the dishonesty in the arguments. I therefore felt it needed to be pointed out to you. If you are going to use those arguments than you need to own them or at least defend them. The fact that you refuse to defend them and instead continue to resort to personal attacks speaks volumes.I, in fact, do not think you are a jerk and do not dislike you. You seem to be young and misguided. Your prejudices seem to prevent you from looking at many social issues in an objective and dispassionate manner. Hopefully these conversations will interest you in looking at the subject manner in a more intellectual and objective way.Look at the figures and the evidence. Try to look at the issues with your prejudices held back a little. In order to effectively debate you need to not take offense at things and you need to quit responding to unintended slights with such vitriol.I have said this before. Please take it in the manner it is intended.
You need to grow up and debate like an adult.

Do you honestly believe that background checks only have an effect on homicides?
Do you believe that xongsmith advocates for background checks solely to deal with gun homicides?
Reducing the argument to solely homicides is extremely deceptive.and again we have what you stated. If you were indeed intentionally talking of only gun homicides. Your wording was deceptive or incorrect. Killed does not equal(is there a way to make that symbol?) homicide. If you wanted to make that clarification you need to actually say that.
But lets look at your next comment. Your claim that you meant homicides only is completely destroyed by this. Or if you meant homicides and used this next line it shows that you are using a very poor argument. Or one that makes no sense logically. These next lines would only support the original only if they are like things. In order for this to support the homicide angle it would need to be another way homicides are committed.I know you will refuse to admit any flaw in your arguments, but your later claims are making your argument seem even sillier.Edited by Theodoric, : does not equal symbol

Don't really care, but will continue to call you out on errors of logic and evidence.

You are correct. I should have used the word murder here. I did use the word murder earlier. I am sorry I chose an incorrect word.I should have said killing does not equal murder.
(I do not like the latex rendering of .
Looks out of place)Thank you for pointing out the flaw.

Why not? Suicide has been shown to be an act of opportunity in a lot of cases. Studies show it is an impulsive act.

quote:

---

Impulsive acts

​

The scientific study of suicide has partly been an effort to erase myths. Perhaps the biggest fallacy is that suicides are typically long-planned deeds. While this can be truepeople who attempt suicide often face a cascade of problemsempirical evidence suggests that they act in a moment of brief but heightened vulnerability.

​

One of the things that got me interested in launching the Means Matter campaign was that I had been reading through thousands of thumbnail sketches of suicide deaths, to see if a reporting system we were testing was catching the feel for the case, says Barber. I started noticing that, jeez, this death happened the same day that the kid was arguing with his parents, or that the young man had just broken up with his girlfriend, or that the middle-aged guy had gotten word that the divorce papers had come through. That reactivity surprised me, because I’d always pictured suicide as being a painful, deliberative process, something that was getting worse and worse, escalating until finally you’ve got it all planned out and you do it. It hadn’t occurred to me that it could be a cop arguing with his wife, and in the midst of the argument, pulling out his gun and killing himself.

​

This impulsivity was underscored in a 2001 study in Houston of people ages 13 to 34 who had survived a near-lethal suicide attempt. Asked how much time had passed between when they decided to take their lives and when they actually made the attempt, a startling 24 percent said less than 5 minutes; 48 percent said less than 20 minutes; 70 percent said less than one hour; and 86 percent said less than eight hours.

​

The episodic nature of suicidal feelings is also borne out in the aftermath: 9 out of 10 people who attempt suicide and survive do not go on to die by suicide later. As Miller puts it, If you save a life in the short run, you likely save a life in the long run.

---

SourceThe science does not seem to support your gut feelings. Basically fuck 'em? How nice and caring of you.

What avenues would those be?

quote:

---

Suicides outnumber homicides in the United States by 3:1. (In 2010 there were 38,364 suicides and 12, 996 homicides.) Lots of studies have investigated the relationship between firearms and homicide but the potential for reverse causality makes this a difficult problem. More homicides in a region, for example, might cause an increase in gun ownership so a positive correlation between guns and homicide doesn’t tell you which is cause and which is effect. Reverse causality is less of a problem for understanding the guns to suicide link because it’s less likely that a rash of suicides would encourage gun ownership.

​

In my latest paper, Firearms and Suicides in US States, (written with the excellent Justin Briggs) we examine the easier question, what is the relationship between firearms and suicide? Using a variety of techniques and data we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in the household gun ownership rate leads to a .5 to .9% increase in suicides.* (n.b. slight change in language from earlier version for clarity.)

​

Even if one thinks that suicides don’t cause gun ownership one might imagine that they are correlated due say to a third factor such as social anomie. We have an interesting test of this in the paper. If suicides and gun ownership were being driven by a third factor we would expect gun ownership to be correlated with all suicides not just gun-suicide. What we find, however, is that an increase in gun ownership decrease non-gun suicide. From an economics perspective this makes perfect sense. As gun ownership increases, the cost of gun-suicide falls because guns are easier to access and as the cost of gun-suicide falls there is substitution away from non-gun suicide.

​

Put differently, when gun ownership decreases other methods of suicide increase. Substitution among methods is not perfect, however, so when gun ownership decreases we see a big decrease in gun-suicide and a substantial but less than fully compensating increase in non-gun suicide so a net decrease in the number of suicides.

​

Our econometric results are consistent with the literature on suicide which finds that suicide is often a rash and impulsive decision—most people who try but fail to commit suicide do not recommit at a later date—as a result, small increases in the cost of suicide can dissuade people long enough so that they never do commit suicide.

​

The results in the paper appear to be robust but the data on gun ownership is frustratingly sparse due to political considerations.

---

SourceThe author is no liberal. Alex Tabarrok teaches at George Mason University, a famously libertarian-inclined economics department. He’s a fellow at the libertarian Mercatus Institute and one of the lead authors of Marginal Revolution, one of the web’s most famous libertarian-inclined blogs.

It truly amazes me how right wingers lose all ability for critical thinking when it comes to anything that threatens their dogma. There are quite a few intelligent people like Coyote that throw out the ability to look at data and evidence subjectively when neither conforms to their political beliefs.There is not much difference between creationists and right wingers. For the creos religion trumps facts and evidence, for rightwingers political dogma trumps facts and evidence.The fact that an intelligent or reasonable intelligent person would uncritically post a link to an article on Breitbart is amazing in itself.This is the stable of pathological liars like James O'Keefe. Breitbart, himself, was known for his lies and racebaiting. He is someone that should not be discussed in polite company. If there was a hell he would be rotting there.Now to the article. Lets look at the original USA Today opinion piece by James Alan Fox, the criminologist.Moms, mayors offer misguided message on guns: ColumnBreitbart is posting a very inflammatory headline. The whole premise of the piece is not summed up in the headline.Breitbart is banking on the fact that most of their fans can't or won't read past the headline.The opinion piece nor the breitbart article says much about gun control.

quote:

---

Posting armed guards at school doors, running children though lockdown drills, and surrounding classrooms with cameras and metal detectors

---

Sure sounds like what the NRA is advocating.
I guess I do not see how Coyote thinks either the article or opinion piece is supportive to rightwingers.Now I have to sanitize my computer because I actually clicked on the link to Breitbart

Boy assumptions and assertions abound in one small sentence.How do you know Coyote was responding to Dr. A? If he was it was it had absolutely nothing to do with what Dr. A posted. And as I said earlier I am not sure how the article can be easily interpreted as being pro-gun.Badly described bare link?More evidence, looks like an adequate description. If you have an issue with a bare link state that. Calling it badly described is just not accurate.

Evidently you are using the word data differently than how most people do, because the article did provide data.You can look up the definition on dictionary.com.

The whole article is data. Not sure what you think data is.Do you mean the actual pieces of data from the study?No I can not give you that, but the article is data and provides data.

WTF?What's with the juvenile posturing?

Strawman? or did you not read or not comprehend any of it?
The article did not talk about bicycle accidents at school did it?If you say that you're ultimate goal is saving kids lives, and then you focus on things that will save less lives, then you're either stupid or lying.But then again you never said you had a goal of saving kids lives did you?

That is data. Maybe data you do not like but it is data.

It isn't unsupported. The author of the study is presenting the results of his study.
Are you claiming that Prof Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research is misrepresenting the raw data? Why would he put his reputation at risk and lie?I cannot believe you are going this far out on a limb to call this unsupported assertions when this is going to published in the next issue of the Journal of Urban Health.I will go along with your sudden need that everything has to be published in order to be data. Lets hold off until this is published and then you can tell me how it is unsupported and is meaningless.You can do a web search on this study and there is a lot of data on it already.This again goes to my argument that rightwingers are no different than creos. You can do a web search on this study and there is a lot of data on it already. Of course you will not, and you will continue to deny the results and scream. No data, no data.