Yea, The King of Soup posted a study of the number of people who buy gun magazines as proof that gun control saves lives. We have to try to live up to that level of scholarship, forget studies done by actual criminologists and shit like that. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
It’s implicitly biased. Asking gun owners how often they use their guns for self-defense is like asking a dog owner how smart his dog is. Or asking a mother how cute her baby is.
Oh, I see. Your crap cite is o.k. because someone else posted a crap cite. Nice reasoning there.
First of all, it wasn’t my cite. Second of all, it was a study done by a professor of criminology at Florida State University. I’d say that pulls a fuck of a lot more weight than a survey of magazine sales. Third of all, the reason you seem to be dismissing it it because “It was linked on a pro-gun website”. Fourth of all, despite repeated requests, you haven’t addressed any of the thirteen other studies in the link that catsix provided, although I suppose you’ll dismiss them too because they are linked on a pro-gun website. Fifth of all, here is a link to an interview with John Lott, the man who wrote More Guns, Less Crime, a book chock full of statistics, evidence and facts, BTW, one that you might benefit from reading, unless you’re going to dismiss it out of hand because it challenges your preconceived beliefs and requires you to think, where he reveals “During state legislative hearings on concealed-handgun laws, possibly the most commonly raised concern involved fears that armed citizens would attack each other in the heat of the moment following car accidents. The evidence shows that such fears are unfounded. Despite millions of people licensed to carry concealed handguns and many states having these laws for decades, there has only been one case where a person with a permit used a gun after a traffic accident and even in that one case it was in self-defense.” Sixth of all, you’re full of shit.
The NBER is not a crap site, anyway. It is a very well respected economic research institute. As for the article, who knows how good the research is. It is probaby far from impeachable. What happens more often than not is somebody manages to get hold of a data set first, then does some math, comes up with some testable hypotheses and starts running regressions.
WeirdDave’s dismissal of the research is silly, especially considering he hasn’t read the paper, I am sure.
BTW, there are two hypothesis in question here: Does gun control, or lack therof, increase viollent crime and/or homicide or reduce it. And probably at best what can be said about the issue is that there is evidence both ways and that in fact the strongest evidence seems to be that you cannot prove it increases crime and you cannot prove it decreases crime. Proving the positive is much harder.
Damn right. But the talking heads on the news are trying to turn it into one. Which pisses me off, and causes me to defend gun rights when I see the same idiot arguments on the Dope.
Then I have to engage the intelligent ones, to be fair.
One of the things that makes Kleck’s information so interesting is that he actually set out to prove the opposite of the results he got.
Really why is that, have you read the study?
Lott is very popular with the pro-gun folks and his research cannot be dismissed out of hand. But it isn’t the last word on the subject either. But there have been several alterantive studies that question Lott’s research either on their own or directly going to some of Lott’s points. BTW, John Lott is not a criminologist, he is an economist, much like the author of the magazine study.
Whoah, baby! Take a step back from the keyboard.
Weirddave (the guy who doesn’t know the difference between the First and Second Amendments) posted this:
To which I replied that whining about someone else’s cite is not an argument in favor of whatever cite you are espousing.
Let’s not take the ball and run it all the way into the parking lot, o.k.?
Well, WeirdDave didn’t say the site was crap, just the research. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Let me repeat: I have presented no cite of my own, thus I am not trying to defend my cite by dismissing another one.
Second: The methodology of the cite I dismissed was to study magazine sales. I contend that this is not a valid method for determining anything about gun ownership/usage/crimes/etc…
Third: No, I do not think Lott is the end all be all of everything on this issue, but he does present facts, figures and statistics while making a compelling case. That makes him certainly a legitimate contributer to the discussion.
Fourth, I did not say Lott was a criminologist, I said Gary Kleck was a criminologist. Here is my cite.
That was nothing more than hot air. Hyperbole. My only regret was not admitting it sooner, rather than getting riled up by the morons who thought I was serious, and backing myself into a corner out of stubborness.
Outside of the military, I’ve pointed a gun at another human being, with the intention of pulling the trigger if they failed to comply with my directions, precisely once. The police and an ADA in Dallas called it a justifiable intervention on my part.
I have pulled my carry piece one other time, and just held it prominiently in my hand, barrel down, until a group of “inner-city youths” had passed by me and the two ladies from work I was escorting to their vehicles at 2AM in downtown Dallas.
I performed this service gratis after a vicious injury assault (lady lost an eye) on our employer’s parking lot, and the security guards were told not to perform escort for “contract employees.” They (security) left the injured lady locked out of the building, asking her if she had a cell phone to call 911; after she passed out from shock, they debated for about 10 minuted before calling 911 to report the assault.
After that, I carried to work, in direct violation of our employer’s policy; but our supervisor/contract administrator was a human being, and simply asked me to unload my pistol in his office and lock it in his desk during work hours, to which I complied.
O.K., since y’all are touting this Kleck survey, let’s look at the alleged incidents (I hope this is the correct survey):
http://www.guncite.com/kleck3ab.html
In NONE of the incidents were the respondents defending against murderers.
Only 22% of the incidents took place outside the home.
In 46% of the incidents, the defender was neither attacked nor even threatened.
And even in the cases where the defender was threatened or attacked, in 15% of those, the defender threatened or attacked first.
Now, GET THIS: in 51% of the cases, THE OFFENDER WAS UNARMED.
And only 17% of the offenders had guns.
So even assuming all the accounts are accurate (which would be quite a stretch, given people’s natural inclination to exaggerate details of personal heroism), the percentage of times where a person actually needed a gun because his life was in imminent danger, is quite low. There are no parallels to the Virginia shooting in the survey.
As is everything you have ever posted.
So a person only has the right to defend themselves if their life is in imminent danger?
What do the terms mean in this; don’t you think that might be important?
For example, 51% of the times you mention the offender was unarmed, as if that should prevent a person being allowed to use a gun for self defense. I guess that is kind of tough luck on the 90 lb woman being raped by the 250 lb guy there. What actually does “attacked or threatened” mean in this survey? If someone jumps out in an alleyway and yells “give me your wallet” does that count under the survey as attacked or threatened? If someone breaks into my house at 3 am, and I pull a gun and tell them to get the hell out before they have a chance to say anything to me, have I attacked or threatened them first? Only 17% of the offenders had guns? So a criminal comes at me with a knife and pulling a gun on him is not justifiable?
It’s not a survey I know much about, but I think you would need to answer these questions and more before trying to make the points that you are attempting to make.
Strawman.
Strawman.
Red herring. Appeal to emotion.
Are you defending the survey or disputing it? You can’t cite it when it agrees with your position but then dispute it when it doesn’t.
Strawman.
I didn’t make any of the assertions you are attributing to me. I only pointed out that this survey does not document as many cases of armed citizens defending their lives against criminals with guns as those who are touting it would have us believe.
Then it cuts both ways. You can’t tout the conclusions as supporting a pro-CCW stance while at the same time questioning the methodology.
Well thanks, lowbrass. I put a dollar in a jar every time you post the word “strawman” on these boards thinking it makes you look clever and I am pretty close to paying for the flight for my vacation next week.
You are a weasle. I never took a position either way on the survey. I specifically said I don’t know the basis of the survey. I just think maybe if you are going to criticize it, and to make the claim you make regarding it that:
you might need to understand the terms of the survey a little bit better. I don’t know how the survey determines threatened or attacked. I wonder if you do?
Yeah, and that paper says:
I’m sure you missed that, and the pages of the report that the authors dedicated to explaining why their numbers grossly inflated the number of DGUs.
Froim what I’ve read today, he owned his guns legally. Non-citizens can buy guns in Virginia.
I only pointed out that this survey does [del]not[/del] document [del]as[/del] many cases of armed citizens defending their lives against criminals [del]with guns[/del]
There, fixed that for ya. You who seems to be obssesed with strawmen are pretty acomplished at arguing against points that your opponents haven’t made.