Guns, Guns Guns

Annachie wrote:
You do realize that more people in the US want stricter gun control laws than want less strict laws, and that this trend dates back more than 20 years.

Looks like you are the one who should be moving.

I am not the one bucking the trend and wanting the Federal Government involved in it in anyway. So why should I move. I like the trends.

People in favor of stricter gun control has been dropping over the last twenty years. People in favor of keeping the same or less has been going up.

[EDIT] I'm not really wanting to change things or pointing out that other nations have it better. [Just to be clear on why I said what I did]

From gallop: http://www.gallup.com/poll/27229/Gallup ... ntrol.aspx

It is currently at 47%(was 67% in 1994) for stricter gun control. 47% is a minority opinion. 52% want the same as current or less that is a majority opinion.

Enjoy,
T2M

[2nd EDIT] PS Also to my way of looking at things the gun control laws seem to have gotten a lot less in those same 20 years so "stay the same" and "stricter" are moving targets in the direction I like. Assault gun ban, gone for example. Recent Supreme Court Decisions such as Heller are another example.

[3rd Edit] And thank you very much by demonstrating how you lie without the lie with statistics and parsing of a sentence.

Spacekiwi wrote:No worries. you aren't the first, probably won't be the last.

Still doesn't excuse it. I don't even like wiki.

Have fun,
T2M

Because gun ownership begins an interconnected web of negatives, we must eliminate gun ownership, right? I think not.

The problem with gun deaths are those that are either untrained in their use, negligent in their use or willfully criminal in their use. Removing all guns effectively makes criminals more leathal and law abiding citizens less safe. Case in point are the recent Muslim killing sprees. Oklahoma, the killer killed one and wounded another before a private gun owner shot him and stopped his killing. Oh, thankfully the killer was armed with a knife. Paris the gun armed killers took 17 before the were stopped by police. It is legal to own guns in France but the permit process is arduous. Had someone at Charlie Hebdo had a gun like was the case in Oklahoma, might lives have been saved? They might well have been.

Removing guns would only reduce problems solved by education and practice but exacerbate the key criminal problem. Educate and train gun owners but don't infringe in their liberty.

gcomeau wrote:

PeterZ wrote:If there is no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime and homicide is a violent crime, it follows that gun ownership is unrelated to violent crime.

Homicides are dwarfed by other crimes in the larger "violent crime" classification. all the signal is drowned out by the noise of the thousands of times more assaults and such than murders that happen.

So no, it does not follow that because no correlation to large broad category therefore no correlation to smaller subcategory.

As already demonstrated.

I suspect that gun ownership is not correlated to incidents of violent crime, but the lethality of assaults committed with a gun.

Quite right, that would be the problem...

That by itself argues for universal gun ownership. If criminals are made more lethal with access to guns, then law abiding citizens need guns to protect themselves from the increased lethality of gun armed criminals.

I'm going to quote myself from a couple days back:


It's all a big interconnected web of negative effects. And the irony is people will point at the result as justification for needing more of what caused it. "Look at all these shootings! It's dangerous out there! You know what that means... we need more guns! For everyone! That will make it better!"

Now let's address this chart.

I ran a quick regression analysis on the state data. I regressed the per capita murder rate against percentage gun ownership and population density. Population density has a much greater influence on murders per capita than percentage gun ownership. On a state by state level the t Stat in for Pop Density was 8.56 and gun ownership was .39. In other words the likelihood that population density is unrelated to per capita murder[rephrased] is some miniscule percentage or assuming one chance per day occurrence the likelihood is once in 1++ billion years. Whereas the likelihood that gun ownership is completely unrelated to the per capita murder rate is approximately 70%[edited from misstated 30%]. Weak correlation to say the least.

The national chart suggests that private gun ownership is unrelated to crime. A state and city analysis suggests that population distribution is a much greater influencer of homicides than gun ownership. When all is said and done, whatever link exists between guns and homicides are greatly overshadowed by other factors. That suggests that there are much more effective ways to deal with homicides and crime than the elimination of guns.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

gcomeau wrote:

thinkstoomuch wrote:So once all gun deaths are done what does that do to violent crime rates.

FL more concealed weapons permits over time less violent crime over time.

Chicago less access to legal firearms more crime. Washington, DC the same. L.A. The same. The list goes on and on and on.

You have a wonderful one dimensional view. Once guns are gone life is good. Except in the US it doesn't work that way.

And Zimmerman has his skull broken open on a sidewalk by a thug. Thank you for your support for a civilized society. US Ain't there. Sorry people are people sort of. Culture is not culture.

"Good to be sure."
T2M

Cities (or even states for that matter) are not islands unto themselves, using them to try to figure out the impact of gun laws is an exercise in futility.

Cities have no border controls. It doesn't matter if you make guns illegal in one city if people can drive an hour and go buy one then bring it back in with no checks performed.

There is a slightly higher ability to regulate by state because simple distances involved act as a kind of quasi-barrier... but not much of one. if you want real effect you need controls around the are you're trying to regulate. Which means you need federal action.

And violent crime has trended down nationally, so pointing out it trended down in cherry picked cities means nothing. "Violent crime" is subject to many more influencing factors than homicides and there has been no real demonstrated correlation between gun ownership rates and violent crime in the US.

This:



Is a relationship with almost 0 correlation. Violent crime spikes massively while gun ownership rates rise, then plummets drastically while it continues to rise.

pokermind wrote:Simple fact the Constitution was designed to protect the rights of the minority from a capricious majority. As one of the founders said, "Why should we trade one tyrant two thousand miles way for two thousand tyrants living a mile away?"

If we want to make decisions based on what the founders wanted... the founders wanted to protect the people from the government turning tyrannical by (among other things) giving the government no standing army of any real significant size and making the militias comprised of that armed citizenry the *primary military force of the nation*. Reasoning that if your primary military force is a citizens militia it's kind of hard to turn tyrannical over said citizens.


And that citizenry being armed came coupled with just a few other requirements. It was absolutely NOT "Hey, if we just hand guns out to everyone tyranny is defeated forever because guns are tyranny repellent! Hooray!". That first half of the 2nd amendment used to actually be paid attention to contrary to modern mental gymnastics used to try to pretend it doesn't exist as anything other than decoration.

So please don't appeal to the intentions of the founders when trying to defend a position in favor of unrestricted rights to bear arms that comes coupled with essentially *zero* discipline or organization or responsibility being imposed upon those bearing them. That has nothing to do with what the Founders had in mind.

Back a while when Islamic extremists attacked a shopping center in Utah they were stopped by an armed citizenry, but not in France,

Oh please, I'm pretty sure France will trade it's many many thousands of extra still breathing citizens that it's policies on the matter have given it over the US over a once in a blue moon event in which an armed citizenry could sometimes possibly prevent a handful of deaths.

PeterZ wrote:I ran a quick regression analysis on the state data. I regressed the per capita murder rate against percentage gun ownership and population density.

I'm very sorry you wasted your time. But as I already said earlier... in the very post you were responding to in fact:

"Cities (or even states for that matter) are not islands unto themselves, using them to try to figure out the impact of gun laws is an exercise in futility.

Cities have no border controls. It doesn't matter if you make guns illegal in one city if people can drive an hour and go buy one then bring it back in with no checks performed.

There is a slightly higher ability to regulate by state because simple distances involved act as a kind of quasi-barrier... but not much of one. if you want real effect you need controls around the are you're trying to regulate. Which means you need federal action."


For example, let's say you're trying to establish a no guns area in a much more local setting. Let's say, Around one part of a room. Your job is to keep any guns from getting inside that part of the room.


Approach 1: You establish checkpoints at the entrances of the room and make sure no guns get in.

Approach 2. You draw an imaginary circle around the part of the room you're responsible for, declare "hey everyone, no guns allowed in here", and then dump a hundred guns into the rest of the room and walk away and never check anyone crossing your imaginary line.


How long do you think it is before you have guns *all over* your gun free zone in both these cases?


Approach 1 is the National level. There are border controls.

Approach 2 is the city and state level. There aren't any border controls.



So, is someone expecting approach 2 to be an effective test case to use to monitor the effect of areas with "gun control" vs areas without gun control going to get meaningful results? (Ignoring the sample size limitations). No, no they are not.

On the other hand approach 1 is a much more effective test case. You get actual regions of real controls compared against actual regions without controls.

And if you missed it we've seen that chart too.


http://static2.businessinsider.com/imag ... s-guns.png



But hey, if you want to look at comparative population densities of *that* chart feel free.

(Spoiler, Europe has really quite high population densities. And yet...)

gcomeau wrote:

PeterZ wrote:I ran a quick regression analysis on the state data. I regressed the per capita murder rate against percentage gun ownership and population density.

I'm very sorry you wasted your time. But as I already said earlier... in the very post you were responding to in fact:

"Cities (or even states for that matter) are not islands unto themselves, using them to try to figure out the impact of gun laws is an exercise in futility.

Cities have no border controls. It doesn't matter if you make guns illegal in one city if people can drive an hour and go buy one then bring it back in with no checks performed.

There is a slightly higher ability to regulate by state because simple distances involved act as a kind of quasi-barrier... but not much of one. if you want real effect you need controls around the are you're trying to regulate. Which means you need federal action."


For example, let's say you're trying to establish a no guns area in a much more local setting. Let's say, Around one part of a room. Your job is to keep any guns from getting inside that part of the room.


Approach 1: You establish checkpoints at the entrances of the room and make sure no guns get in.

Approach 2. You draw an imaginary circle around the part of the room you're responsible for, declare "hey everyone, no guns allowed in here", and then dump a hundred guns into the rest of the room and walk away and never check anyone crossing your imaginary line.


How long do you think it is before you have guns *all over* your gun free zone in both these cases?


Approach 1 is the National level. There are border controls.

Approach 2 is the city and state level. There aren't any border controls.



So, is someone expecting approach 2 to be an effective test case to use to monitor the effect of areas with "gun control" vs areas without gun control going to get meaningful results? (Ignoring the sample size limitations). No, no they are not.

On the other hand approach 1 is a much more effective test case. You get actual regions of real controls compared against actual regions without controls.

And if you missed it we've seen that chart too.


http://static2.businessinsider.com/imag ... s-guns.png



But hey, if you want to look at comparative population densities of *that* chart feel free.

(Spoiler, Europe has really quite high population densities. And yet...)

Please, don't conflate gun control vs the presence of guns.

The analysis shows that the presence of guns are only very weakly related to homicides. I do not discuss gun control or analyze gun control but simply analyze the impact of the presence of guns on homicides. The data supports the idea that the simple presence of guns are not strongly linked to homicides.

The data reflects real world distribution of guns. If guns have a strong positive correlation to homicides, variances in gun ownership will be tied more strongly to variances in homicides. That is not the case. I am not trying to argue for the best way to achieve effective gun control. I am trying to assess the impact of gun ownership on homicides in the US using real world data.

Real world data suggests that your assertion that gun ownership has a strong positive correlation to homicides is in error. This brief analysis suggests a weak relationship at best. That there are other much more powerful contributing factors to homicides than gun ownership. If you truly want to reduce homicides, deal with those factors. If you simply don't like guns, use another argument to persuade people. This one doesn't work.

Btw, that last link just says the presence of guns are related to deaths caused by guns. That's like saying the presence of cars is related to deaths in/by cars. True but useless information signifying nothing.

Better to analyze guns to all homicides or attempted homicides. That stat captures the risk of death caused by the availability of guns.

gcomeau wrote:

pokermind wrote:Simple fact the Constitution was designed to protect the rights of the minority from a capricious majority. As one of the founders said, "Why should we trade one tyrant two thousand miles way for two thousand tyrants living a mile away?"

If we want to make decisions based on what the founders wanted... the founders wanted to protect the people from the government turning tyrannical by (among other things) giving the government no standing army of any real significant size and making the militias comprised of that armed citizenry the *primary military force of the nation*. Reasoning that if your primary military force is a citizens militia it's kind of hard to turn tyrannical over said citizens.

Agreed wholeheartedly

gcomeau wrote:And that citizenry being armed came coupled with just a few other requirements. It was absolutely NOT "Hey, if we just hand guns out to everyone tyranny is defeated forever because guns are tyranny repellent! Hooray!". That first half of the 2nd amendment used to actually be paid attention to contrary to modern mental gymnastics used to try to pretend it doesn't exist as anything other than decoration.

So please don't appeal to the intentions of the founders when trying to defend a position in favor of unrestricted rights to bear arms that comes coupled with essentially *zero* discipline or organization or responsibility being imposed upon those bearing them. That has nothing to do with what the Founders had in mind.

Not quite. The 2nd Amendment is not a right parceled out by a sovereign government to its dependent population. Not in the slightest.

The 2nd Amendment is a prohibition issued by a sovereign people to the agents of government it appoints to represent them in very specific ways.

The difference lies in where sovereignty is recognized to come from. Most parliamentary systems hold that parliament/government is sovereign and the people are a responsibility of government. The US, Brazil and I believe Poland recognize that sovereignty comes from the citizenry and they lend authority derived from that sovereignty to the agents of government.

So the entire idea of government giving unrestricted rights is laughable in this context. They don't have the power to give any rights in the US. They can only take those rights away from we the people, its citizens. Since we, the people, are sovereign anything government does requires our permission. We have processes in place to grant such permissions as needed. Without that permission government can't do jack.

So, yes, that's exactly what the founders had in mind. We the citizens did not cede back our right to bear arms to our government. What we do with that right is not subject to government regulation/restriction without due process. What we do with guns and how we impact others with our guns is subject to government regulation. The distinction is important.

Annachie wrote:Invictus, you are so wrong on the effect of our gun laws that it must be a deliberate and concious choice on your part to ignore everything related to the topic.

Would you care to specify? Perhaps with an example?

Might seem contrary, but I don't think, looking at the history and the current state of affairs, having an armed populace did deter tyranny. All it did was slow it down. Kind of like the frog in the pot, so long as it happens slow enough, it won't notice when the pot starts to boil. Consider this;

1. The American Revolution was kicked off by a number of things, including a tax on tea to repay the French and Indian wars (Please correct me if I'm wrong in the specifics) How do you think those colonists would have reacted to being told that they had to surrender a quarter of everything they earned to the crown? And yet, slowly but steadily, that's what has happened. It started with a 2% income tax after your civil war, became a permanent fixture with the 16th amendment, (which passed, in part, because "It's only 3%!"). How much of what you earn are you allowed to keep by your government?

2. The fourth amendment says;
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
So, how is it legal to have you computers and data seized without warrant? "Its not paper." Ask yourself, if you changed the text of the amendment to read "Persons, houses, data, and effects", would it change the spirit of it at all?

Guns don't defend against tyranny. But they can help you defend yourself from direct violence.

Just my opinion anyway.

Invictus wrote:

Annachie wrote:Invictus, you are so wrong on the effect of our gun laws that it must be a deliberate and concious choice on your part to ignore everything related to the topic.

Would you care to specify? Perhaps with an example?

First off. Alice is an exception to just about everything when it comes to law and order.

Invictus wrote:I live in Australia, and, as has been pointed out, while Australia and New Zealand are very similar culturally, we went in completely different directions since Port Arthur. In Australia, we banned semi-auto rifles and restricted other firearms. In NZ they didn't. You'll find that the rate of mass killings in both nations is very similar. So despite almost two decades of firearms restrictions, the net effect has been negligible.

Firstly, you'll find that NZ banned similar weapons in 1992, along with tightening of their gun laws in general.
Secondly, and somewhat annoyingly, NZ crime stats are difficult to find. Homicides are down 30% or so from 1991, but they don't differentiate between gun and non-gun ones so grain of salt there.
Thirdly, Mass shootings in Australia before 1996, about 1 a year. (Mass shooting being 5 or more in one incident) Since, 1 (about 4 months ago)
Fourthly, the deaths from guns (Including suicides and accidents) has more than halved since 1996.