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Author | Topic: Gun Control III | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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According to a study covered in this piece at Ars Technica gun injuries drop during NRA conventions. By 20% nationwide and a whopping 63% in the hosting state.
If the NRA want to help reduce gun violence they should hold more conventions!
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
I guess this is an example of critical thinking where you come up with objections to an opposing position. That is a very small start.
You need to go further and do the analysis before you can say that there is something wrong with the data. You might consider, for instance, that population density is already considered and should largely account for the effects of inner cities anyway. And you don’t even mention that. But let’s do a little analysis. The easy one to consider is New York. Let’s simplify by saying that half of the population is in the city and assume that there are no homicides in the rural areas - the cited homicide rate of 4 per 100k in the state would then come out as 8 per 100k in the city. That’s still notably less than the 14 per 100k quoted for Kentucky. If we use a population of 9 million for the city and 20 million for the State it still comes out as less than 9 per 100k. That really isn’t looking good for your argument. Arguing that Kentucky has a higher proportion of people living in inner cities than New York State seems odd - and that is what you were saying. That it would have to be higher than the proportion in New York City is even less plausible. Never mind the fact that Alaska is even worse than Kentucky.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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I’m quite definitely right that by the quoted figures the city of New York has a lower rate than the State of Kentucky, let alone Alaska. That’s simple mathematics.
Your problem is that you are no good at actual critical thinking. Which is why boasting that you are so much better than the rest of us was a very silly thing to do. If you were you would know to dig into the figures. Do they include suicides, for instance ? Where guns are available they are often used to commit suicide, and it’s not unlikely that poor rural communities might have a high suicide rate. I won’t say that is the answer without checking it, but it seems worth checking. That is what real critical thinking involves.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
In my opinion the extreme Conservatives are gearing up to destroy democracy. Elections are tyranny if their preferred candidates lose. That’s why they want guns, that is the reason for the hate and the lies.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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Trump was clearly speaking about the Unite the Right protestors, which included White Supremacists and Nazis. Anyone involved on that side was at the least willing to ally with such people. That’s the point of it.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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quote: Percy’s scenario wasn’t hypothetical. As is quite obvious if you read his post.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Which doesn’t change the point. You tried to answer a real story with a contrived hypothetical scenario.
quote: No, it certainly isn’t obvious that that was your point. You know I was willing to believe you didn’t read Percy’s post carefully and simply assumed that he was talking hypothetically. And apologising for that mistake would have been a good response. This is just digging yourself deeper.
quote:Percy’s story wasn’t a “what-if”. quote:And I am sure that many people who left guns lying around would ask the same question to justify keeping their guns. The real question is what benefits does gun ownership offer society to offset the cost. I don’t see that we lost anything worth having here.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Even if it was - and it isn’t - responding with a self-serving “hypothetical scenario” is still a lousy answer. Playing “what-if” games is no way to deal with facts.
quote: That would be better but still poor. Percy’s point is these events are inevitable given widespread gun ownership and they don’t all happen to involve “idiots”.
quote: But that isn’t a strawman. You really did dismiss Percy’s point as a “hypothetical scenario” which could be countered by inventing your own. That is the “substance”.
quote: That doesn’t even make sense.
quote: And you still make no sense. Why would the military have any special insight ? The fact that I am living in a country with highly restrictive firearms laws and no signs of any serious ill-effects from that surely speaks louder than anything the military could say.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: You really do jump to irrational conclusions. The point is that a real example is better than a purely invented one. Do you really not understand that ?
quote: Nope. I’m suggesting that simply inventing scenarios is not an adequate answer to a real example.
quote: So legislation against wide-spread gun ownership would be a good idea ?
quote: You are going to have to do better than throwing the word “hypothetical” around without any clear point.
quote: Are you suggesting that the gun owner shouldn’t be held responsible? After calling him an “idiot” ? Percy’s point is that people will make mistakes, and widespread ownership of guns means that people will make mistakes with guns.Curbing gun ownership - and public carrying of firearms - will obviously reduce the occurrence of those mistakes. quote: No, I believe that very little utility has been lost by the restrictions we have here.
quote: But it also argues for restricting the more effective means of killing. The mosque shooter in New Zealand went there precisely because New Zealand has less restrictive gun laws than Australia, which nicely illustrates the point.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Try reading in context. Restricting the means of killing does make it more difficult for the crazies.
quote: I am suggesting that society weighs up the pros and cons of allowing said items to be sold. I wouldn’t be surprised if the arithmetic came out rather better for those items than it does for guns. And, in fact, we do restrict many potentially dangerous items far more now than we did when I was young.
quote: I never said prevent. But certainly Australian gun law was restrictive enough that the “crazy” person decided to go elsewhere, even though it was obviously less convenient in other ways, and I’m sure he’d rather have done his murdering in Australia.
quote: If this New Republic article is accurate, Russians are allowed to carry rifles for “self defence” ! Also, the laws aren’t that well enforced with about twice as many illegal guns as legal. As for France I never said that gun laws were a panacea, and a well organised terrorist cell should be able to obtain weapons that are not that easily be available. But death from terrorist attack is hardly the only or the most important issue here.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
It doesn’t say that anyone was killed with a single shot. One person - perhaps the shooter - survived long enough to be taken to hospital. Details are lacking.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Or he shot them in the head after they were down. We just don’t know.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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quote: Maybe you do, but you’re on the same side as those who don’t agree. Alex Jones springs to mind after his coverage of Sandy Hook.
quote: I’d say that means that you want school shootings to go on. None of them are exactly plausible threats. But then I have to remind myself that you are a complete moron who apparently believes utter rubbish if it suits him.
quote: Not being a complete moron, of course I believe obvious truths.
quote: But you did make it up. And that’s hardly the most ridiculous claim you’ve made up. Facebook didn’t censor it, they flagged it as misinformation. Because it is. And it needed to be flagged as misinformation because unthinking gun supporters didn’t think enough to see that it was utterly ridiculous.
quote: There is no reasonable chance of it, no. Even states better equipped than WWII Japan either have no motive or better things to do with their military than ship it across an ocean to where it can be hammered to pieces. Or risk nuclear retaliation. And I note that you obviously have no respect for the US military. Armed citizens are only a factor if the military can’t stop the invaders. Yet you think that the Taliban could launch a successful invasion of the U.S.?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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quote: Of course real threats outweigh paranoid delusions. No sane person could think otherwise. Not to mention that the US has a large and well-equipped military and a National Guard.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: OK so you are one of those people who doesn’t really care about the deaths.
quote: So you’re fine with people egregiously lying about Sandy Hook. But you hate people telling the truth about climate change. Maybe you’re one of those people longing for the breakdown of society so they can get down to the real murdering. They’re right-wing gun nuts, too,
quote: If someone doesn’t want action taken to prevent school shootings and tells stupid lies to try to stop it, it’s pretty clear that they want school shootings to continue, Pretty simple. Even you should be able to understand it,
quote: Yawn. No solution is perfect. But making it much harder to obtain the weapons would certainly help.
quote: Presumably you mean that they are actually opposed to children being murdered, unlike you,
quote: Flagging just means that they labelled it as misinformation. That isn’t censorship.
quote: Neither of them were invasions and armed civilians could do nothing to stop Pearl Harbour. As for 9/11, allowing guns on flights means that the terrorists can take their guns on flights. I think we all know that isn’t a great idea. And armed civilians on the ground aren’t going to do anything about it.
quote: The whole idea that the Taliban could launch a successful invasion of the U.S. unless there were armed civilians to stop them reveals a profound contempt for the US military.
quote: So obviously you can’t defend your original claim. And armed civilians wouldn’t be much use against most surprise attacks either. They wouldn’t be any use at Pearl Harbour. I doubt they would be much use in a real 9/11 situation either - not if the terrorists had guns too. Which they would if you allowed guns on planes.
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