You’re speaking out of ignorance of what has actually been studied. Why are you suggesting that these issues hold for the published research? Is it because you have no idea what research has actually been done, and you’re just saying what you would like to be true? You should really ask yourself if that is the way you want to engage in rational discussion with other people. Is Lumpy someone who talks about what he wants to be true rather than what is true?
Specifically, Kellermann et al., 1993 did control for history of prior arrests, illicit drug use and history of someone being injured in a fight in the home. Cummings et al., 1997 used data from legal handgun purchases in Washington state. Grassel et al., 2003 used data from licensed dealer sales of handguns in California. Thus, felons ARE factored out of some studies - either due to the fact that the guns in the data set were legal purchases, or after controlling for history of arrests. These studies find estimates of increased risk associated with a gun in the home that are consistent with one another and with other studies.
Since your objections have been addressed in the research, Lumpy, do you have the intellectual integrity to say that you now find the results compelling?
This is nowhere near what I’ve said. You are either unable or unwilling to comprehend the issues. You seem unable to understand basic aspects of science.
Ok, did any of these studies look at how the owners’ guns contributed to the increased risk? What specifically is happening? PhillyGuy gave a list of some ways gun ownership might be translating into increased risk. Is the actual mechanism such that restricting guns a priori from those with no additional risk factors would result in a significant drop?
Mechanism? You mean like a cause? No, no studies have proven the cause. So far, differential risk due to criminality or engaging in risk behaviors haven’t been supported. The mechanisms Philly Guy speculated about are still consistent with the data.
Part of the problem is that researchers have to work with convenience samples or secondary data, since you guys are preventng the funding needed to carry out the more specific research you then turn around and say is needed. It’s a pretty sweet rhetorical dodge you and the NRA have set up.
OK, then please restate what significance you think these studies have, tell me what it is that I don’t understand? Because from where I am standing, statements like this are basically your way of hiding behind your profession and saying “RESPEKT MAH AUTHORITEH” because you are a scientist. That there is something so fucking complicated about how studies correct for variables that you basically have to be a scientist to understand why you are right and everyone else is wrong.
You have previously implied that because these studies show a correlation between guns in the home and getting murdered, therefore having a gun in your house actually makes you less safe. That it is the presence of the gun that makes you less safe. You have implied more than a mere correlation, you have implied causation.
At some point you have to bring an argument to the table. This is great debates after all.
You keep saying this, but that doesn’t make it true. Your emotional experience is inconsistent with reality - everyone can read what I’ve written, and I think everyone but you can understand it.
By the way, I addressed your ignorance of the basics of science in my prior post. I didn’t even get to your ignorance of regression analysis.
I’ll try this once more - the odds of dying by homicide are approximately doubled when a gun is kept in the household. (You keep calling this a “correlation”, but it is not. It is a measure of association, but not all measures of association are correlations.)
This association is consistently found in multiple studies using different datasets, different populations and different measures not explained by any of the covariates that have been included in studies to date. The hypothesis that the presence of guns conveys this increased risk remains a viable hypothesis. Other hyptheses, like the idea that this association is due to criminality on the part of the gun owners in the data set is not supported by the results.
By the way, I’ve never appealed to the authority of being a scientist. That’s just your emotional reaction. And no, regression analyses aren’t particularly conceptually complex. You are struggling to understand them for other reasons.
Forgive me if I’m being dense but your distinction between association and correlation seems like you are splitting hairs. What exactly is the difference between the association and correlation and why does it make a difference in how the average reader might understand what is being said? Because it really sounds like you are engaging in pettifoggery, semantics and splitting hairs because you don’t have an argument.
OK so tell me how I am fucking up regression analysis when I say it is a method of determining how one variable affects outcomes when you have a lot of variables to deal with. I’m sure there is a more technical definition but how does my understanding display some deep inability or unwillingness to understand science?
When you say “I am a scientist and you don’t understand science and that is why you are wrong” without actually saying why I am wrong, you are appealing to authoriteh. You appeal to authoriteh because you don’t actually have an argument; you have a study that support your notions when you are preaching to the choir but these studies don’t say what you claim they say.
The studies don’t say that the odds of dying are doubled if you keep a gun in the house. The studies say that homes with guns in them had twice the rate of murder in the household, don’t they? The way you say it, there seems to be a causal connotation. You seem to imply that you double your chances of someone in your household being murdered when you bring a gun into the house. The studies don’t say this but that is the implication you want us all to draw because it fits your narrative and no one is buying it.
Maybe I missed it. Can you point me to the study that shows a doubling of murder rates in homes with guns where they control for gang membership, prior violence among household members, domestic abuse, criminal records, and prior arrests?
Like I said, I would be willing to bet quite a lot of money that if you forced a random population of 100,000 people to smoke a pack a day, we would see much higher rates of lung cancer than in the general population an increased rate of cancer that is consistent with all those studies that link smoking to cancer. If you forced 100,000 households to keep a gun in the house, do you think that there would be a doubling of murder rate among the household members?
No. The distinction is fundamental, and it becomes apparent in your post (see below) that your gross ignorance of these issues has contributed to your repeated misunderstanding of what we have been talking about all along.
Again, this is coming from your emotional reactions, not from reality. To prove otherwise, simply quote from me where I’ve said what you claim I said.
This is where your ignorance about the basic issues that you call pettifoggery have caused you to persistently fail to understand. And really, just a second’s worth of googling would have cleared this up for you. If you had simply looked to see that the study was not talking about a correlation, but was talking about an odds ratio, you might have just tried to understand what an odds ratio was.
An odds ratio is a measure of association, a descriptive statistic characterizing the association that is present in the data set. It tells you the amount by which the odds of the outcome of the study (e.g., homicide in the home) increase per each unit increase in the predictor variable. Thus, the description “The odds of homicide are 2.4 times greater when a gun is in the home” is the literal description of the coefficient in the regression equation. Where the fuck did you get that the RATE of homicide was doubled when a gun is in the home? That’s a completely different thing altogether. If you had taken one second to try to understand all this, you wouldn’t have continued to repeat the same gross misunderstanding of what people are talking about.
Stop and understand the difference between rates and odds first. Since I’ve already cited three studies specifically in this thread, I’m assuming that you’re now demanding to see a study that includes all of these covariates at the same time. Is that the case? Why are you ignoring what I just explained above about replications, using existing data sets, and so forth? If you won’t even try to grasp these things, why should I bother continuing to try? In fact, I’m sure in a week or a month, you’ll again accuse me of doing nothing but insulting you and of avoiding great debates, despite spending all this fucking time trying to teach you a simple fucking concept.
That’s exactly what the existing studies would fucking say! Jesus Kerist!
Here’s the problem with Kellermann and Grassel’s studies (ignoring the one you mention from Cummings for the moment since I’d have to refresh my memory on that one):
The figures for increased risk of bad outcomes are laughable when the study methodology is examined, like having a control group dissimilar to the test group, not controlling for guns brought into the home from another source, and finding that many other factors presented greater risk factors than firearm existence.
The one I find most absurd is that in each of these studies there is no effort or distinction made between the gun kept by the homeowner and one that is brought in from outside the home. It’s like saying, you kept gun A, therefore you are 2.7 times more likely to be killed by gun B.
Kellermann pushed junk for so long him and his ilk actually got their advocacy restricted. And that leads to this:
You’ve made this assertion before, that the NRA is somehow preventing research but it’s obviously false. You made this assertion more specifically here:
But in using the ellipsis in this fashion, you omitted a key part of the quote:
The unabridged quote reads:
So your complaint is unfounded for at least two reasons:
[ol]
[li]Research wasn’t restricted, advocacy or promotion of gun control was restricted. The CDC is free to do any research it wants.[/li][li]Private sector funding of any flawed research is still on the table. With Bloomberg pledging $50M in 2014, and setting up his own college to do put out any research he wants, it’s laughable to say that there has been any meaningful limitation on research.[/li][/ol]
Regarding the crappy Kellermann studies, I stated this previously:
There have been many discussions about DGU studies, but you, Hentor, have dismissed all of them because you do not accept any study that relies on self reporting:
To which I challenged you and you declined to respond:
So to you, the question of the magnitude of DGU will forever be unanswered, and you can continue to parade Kellermann as the model of scientific accuracy. The rest of us know better. And by the rest of us, I mean the people who are winning in the legislature and in the courts.
Which studies have dissimilar control groups and how do they differ?
You also seem confused about what having other covariates in the model means. Having other factors in the model that are associated with the outcome means that the study is controlling for important contributing variables. It’s exactly what you and others are crying about! If they accounted for the effect of guns in the home, then there would be no significant association, but they do not. I can explain further if you don’t understand. You may laugh about the science, but it appears that you’re laughing out of either ignorance or desperation.
You are free to imagine that the guns are brought into the home from another source, since the studies so far do not have a direct measure of that. But studies have included measures of potential mechanisms for this imaginary effect – history of engagement in criminal behavior, history of illicit drug use, socioeconomic status, history of violence in the household… The effect is replicated across samples with various controls for potential mechanisms. In addition, approximately 75% of homicides in these studies are committed by someone known to the victim, and in some studies the effect is not present for people who live alone.
Since controlling for varieties of risk behavior and environmental factors does not explain the effect, your imaginary “outside gun” effect hinges on the idea that people who have a gun in the home AND who live with other people are simply more prescient than similar people in similar situations who opt not to buy a gun OR who those who live alone.
You’re free to continue to clutch this explanation until there is data to test it directly, but it becomes more implausible with continued replications across various studies. I’ve no doubt you will, and I suspect that when studies are done that do have that data, you’ll just handwave that away as well.
First, the NRA is an advocacy group – of course they decry science that goes against their position as “advocacy.” The suggestion that all the science is not science is a conspiracy theory. Get your tin-foil ready!
Try to understand this, please. I think you might be able to. Replication is a key to science; something that can be measured reliably should be replicable. So far estimates of DGU based on self-report are not reliable (e.g., they generate estimates between 50,000 to 2.5 million!). Specific examination of self-report reveals problems of telescoping and magnification, problems of implausible reporting (e.g., one person reporting 50 incidents), and evidence that the majority of reported DGUs in such studies are illegal. Again, so you might grasp that, there is manifest evidence of unreliability in the measurement and evidence for the mechanisms of that unreliability.
Besides which, you’re doing a fine job in your “positive gun news” thread of showing that the number of DGUs in a year would be somewhere around 110. If we generously allow for your method catching only 10% of the actual incidents, perhaps there are upwards of 1,100 DGUs per year! Good job, buddy! Thanks for your hard work!
It was quoted in the post above (second quote box).
There is no confusion, but thanks for your fake concern. If you think having double or triple or more risky behaviors among the test group than of the control group is a good basis to compare, that’s great but it’s pretty clearly a crap study.
Since I’ve already shown you selectively quote items to present your position more favorably, forgive me if I am skeptical. Of course it’s easy to replicate results when the same weaknesses and flawed methodology is employed. Being consistently wrong is no virtue.
Like I said, it’s a fatal flaw in any study that doesn’t distinguish between the gun that is in the home and one that is brought from outside the home. If you don’t understand that, then I can explain further but I think you might be able to understand it.
A few points:[ol]
[li]First, there was no suggestion that all the science is not science. [/li][li]Second, this section is completely unresponsive to the part that you quoted. Were you selecting text haphazardly or did you forget to make your point?[/li][li]Third, it’s a given that the NRA has not prevented any actual research, and that the CDC is not prevented from doing research. They are prevented from doing advocacy.[/li][li]Fourth, there is plenty of dollars available for research if it is desired.[/li][li]Fifth, your assertion that, “you guys are preventng the funding needed to carry out the more specific research” is false.[/li][/ol]
Again, the problems here are multi-fold.
First, there have been 13 surveys(excluding Kleck) that made an attempt to measure DGU. The lower range you mention of 50K is from the NCVS that did not even ask about DGU. To include that as part of the sample set is misleading. Was that your intent? Of the 13 surveys, 11 attempted to quantify the number of DGU. The range was approximately 775K to 3.6M. Each survey had different methodology so you would expect quantification to differ. There is more discussion at the link if you follow the secondary link - I think you should be able to do that:
Second, specific examination and evidence that the reported DGU was illegal is only true if you rely on Joyce and anonymous evaluation. Joyce as a reliable source is about as absurd as me expecting you to believe the NRA. At some point gun control advocates and yourself will come to the realization that Joyce, Bloomberg, Kellermann, Hemenway, and their ilk are simply tainted.
Third, you’ve neglected to indicate any measure of DGU that would be acceptable. Can you conceive of any? If an unarmed person starts trying to kick in my door, and through the window they see me display a firearm so they run off, no shots fired, no police report - do you consider that a DGU? If yes, how would that be captured by any study you’d accept? If no, why not?
I think a great thing that has come out of that is highlighting your counting ability! First, you estimated slightly less than 1 per week:
Realizing your mistake, after it was pointed out of course, you revised your estimate to about 1,100 DGU per year:
(my bold in each of the three sections above)
And now, you’ve revised yet again, this time moving downward to 110 per year. First I thought it was a typo, but you eliminated that possibility with your 10% extrapolation. So let’s see, about 50, then, about 1100, then, about 110. What was that you were saying about replication?
This is *almost *like Kellermann revising his 1986 study stating that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend, or acquaintance than it was used to kill someone in self defense, then 7 years later revising that number to the 2.7 times you are so familiar with - replication! *Almost *except Kellermann’s errors were paid for by the CDC - yours are free! Well, they used to be funded by the CDC. Pity it took them so long to wise up.
Wait, you’re talking about the other factors that differentiated cases and controls in a case-control study? Bwahaha! Of course the factors that differentiated people who got killed from people who did not are things that increase the risk of homicide! Wow! I had no idea what you were referring to, but this is classic!
And, after accounting for those factors in the Kellermann study, the presence of a gun STILL increased the odds by 2.7.
When the condition being studied in a case-control study is homicide, the cases experience homicide and the controls do not.
You’re tying yourself to the NRA’s assertion about scientists engaging in advocacy. I elided that for space, since what else is the NRA going to say. It makes no difference, but keep running with that one, champ.
However, even if you handwave away case-control methodology, you can look at ecological time-series studies or cross-sectional studies, which all reveal consistent estimates of the increased risk associated with having a gun in the home.
Yes, please explain further, because I’ve made my position clear. Controlling for measures of the things that would “bring a gun from the outside” into the home does not eliminate the risk associated with guns. So, apart from the factors that have been included in studies, who is bringing these guns into the home?
Just all the science that finds an increased risk associated with having a gun in the home.
No, go back and reread and maybe you’ll get it.
The NRA has clearly prevented funding. Obama didn’t issue an Executive Order based on a fantasy. If you’re ignorant of that, there’s little reason why anyone can take your opinions on the subject seriously. Or is Obama in on your conspiracy too?
See above - Obama’s in on it too! Tin foil hats at the ready!
You’re repeating yourself.
You’re omitting everything below 750K? Even Damuri Ajashi isn’t so patently obviously selective in picking cherries. Try again.
Yes, the judges included as raters in the study ARE ALSO IN ON THE CONSPIRACY! YIKES! Everyone is conspiring against you poor gun types.
And Weibe, Dahlberg, Anglemeyer, Horvath, Rutherford, Miller, Azrael, Grassel, Wintemute, Wright, Romero, Ikeda, Kresnow, Cummings, Koepsell, Grossman, Savarino, Thompson (among others) and the editors at the American Journal of Public Health, the American Journal of Epidemiology, Injury Prevention, the New England Journal of Medicine (among others) and all the peer reviewers of the articles (among others). Truly the conspiracy is dizzying!
Why would there be no police report of an attempted break-in? But, yes, that would be a legitimate DGU.
Study official records, since there would be a police report of attempted break-ins.
[Edited all the silliness about my counting]You’re coming up with a couple-few cases of DGUs per week. Even if you’re only getting 10%, you’re coming up somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 cases a year. Keep up the great work, champ!
The cases had double, triple, or greater instances of risky behavior of the control group. That’s like saying, let’s compare homicide rates between two time violent felons and suburban housewives with no priors…see, the felon group committed more homicides, it must be guns! [hentor]Bwahahaha [/hentor] - actually, hysteria seems unbecoming.
Actually, it’s what Congress said. The NRA among other things has a lobbying arm, yes. But who ultimately determined the funding for advocacy should be restricted was Congress. Good try though, Turbo!
Who knows? The studies don’t care and make no attempt to address this fatal flaw.
Yes, the ones that are based on crap methodology. Find one that doesn’t have these fatal weaknesses and I’d be glad to look at it.
Nice - now you’re channeling Elvis?
Still sticking to this falsehood? The NRA has no power to prevent funding. Congress did that. The NRA could have supported the efforts, but I think you may be confused on who has authority to prevent funding. Maybe re-read it and you’ll get it.
Same conclusion - you’re still wrong about funding.
No, I’m saying that surveys not designed to capture DGU, wait for it…wouldn’t be the best place to capture DGU! Tough concept I know. Yes, the NCVS came with lower numbers and those are fine for my purposes, but you deny the validity of those as well, right? They are based on surveys so they must be suspect of course. Let me know if you accept the NCVS as a starting point. Talk about handwaving.
I think some critical thinking is in order. When looking at the CDC funded advocacy, you have to look at some of the history. Here is some commentary on the history, including the Obama Executive orders:
So yes, if you continue to rely on agenda driven research with the goal of eliminating guns, it’s no surprise the results are consistent. And consistently flawed. Replication ftw!
Is it beyond your comprehension that not all crimes or attempted crimes are reported? Would an absence of a police report negate your conclusion that the hypothetical would be a DGU?
I know it’s easier for you to omit discussion about your failures of counting. Keep it up the great work, sport!
Yes, those factors did diffentiate those who were killed from those who were not. AND controlling for those differences, guns still increased the odds of being killed by 2.7. That means that in the regression equation, when thngs like illicit drug use were held constant at their baseline value - no drug use, guns still add significantly to the explanation. Google regression analyses if you need more help getting it. There are even tutorial videos - you could pause them and take notes if it gets too hard for you.
You undermine any remaining shred of apparent reasonableness you may have had trying to sell us on the idea that Congress is independent of the NRA. Nobody believes that for a second.
Only conspiracy theorists like yourself see this as fatal. Normal people see it as a study with limitations that has been since bittressed by replication through multiple different methods.
Yet, they are published by multiple research teams in multiple peer reviewed journals. Oh yeah, the conspiracy is afoot!
So why the Executive Order? Oh yeah, Obama’s in on the conspiracy. No wonder you need guns - everyone is out to get you!
Good luck escaping the conspiracy. Keep checking those windows and doors, little guy!
Do these studies exclude homicides where ownership of the gun played no role in the homicide?
IOW, imagine a 45 year old chubby white guy who owns a hunting rifle locked in the gun safe in the closet. He is the victim of a random home invasion (the invader does not know he owns a gun). The homeowner struggles against the invader and is killed with a knife (or the invader’s illegally owned gun).
Is this type of death counted as a “gun kept in home” death by the study?
So, the control group had two, three, or more times less incidents of risky behavior like drug use, past criminal activity, etc. than the case group, but that was “controlled for”. Right. Why not simply use a control group that was more similar to the case group? Having wildly dissimilar control group is simply sloppy agenda driven science.
It’s obvious that the NRA lobbies congress. Many groups lobby congress. For you to stretch that into some relationship whereby Congress is somehow beholden to the NRA is ludicrous. Congress responds to voters. And you talk about conspiracy theories. Good one! I’ll weep for the loss of your apparent high esteem you previously held for me.
Not caring about whether the gun was present in the home or was brought from outside is a pretty egregious oversight. The fact that this weakness is repeated throughout multiple studies is sloppy agenda driven science.
So the executive order stated the exact same thing that I did, that research is not prohibited. It never was. Advocacy was prohibited. Which is exactly what I stated in post #589. Your claims that 1) the NRA prevented research and 2) that the congress is controlled by the NRA are false and you are wrong.
So you are unable to conceive of a scenario where an attempted break in would not be reported? That seems like a failure of your proposed methodology. ** My example stated that the event was not reported to police. How would that ever be counted in any DGU study you’d accept?**
Your suggestion of studying official records, like police reports is interesting. This is what Kellermann did in a 1995 study. He assessed the frequency of DGUs in home invasion crimes based upon their examination of police reports in Atlanta. Of course, the forms that the department filled out did not include a place to call out victim weapon use and relied on whether victims volunteered that information, and that it was properly identified. The officers at the time were not trained or required to ask crime victims about such things and therefore information about victim weapon use would not be expected to be recorded with the same frequency it occurred. Based on this, Kellermann concluded that DGUs almost never occurred in connection with home invasion crimes. This type of agenda driven research is so transparently weak, but it’s the same type you suggest.
It is especially duplicitous that you handwave away any DGU estimates because they use user surveys, when Kellermann also relies on surveys to establish rates of gun ownership. It’s like the methodology is acceptable when it yields results you prefer, and unacceptable when it yields results you would like to ignore. But maybe it’s like the whole counting thing that you had trouble with. There are videos that can help you improve - I suggest Sesame Street. Hang in there, I know you can do it, chief!
Then the study seems flawed. What if we tweak the facts a little and our 45 year old white guy with the hunting rifle in the closet is knifed to death while on vacation 500 miles away (but still in the U.S.) in a botched robbery. Does that count in the study as a “gun kept in the home” death?
Did it reduce suicides by 80% or did it just make people find a different way to kill themselves. I am guessing not many people who really want to commit suicide give up just because they don’t have a gun.
Are you saying the US should be just like Australia or is just like Australia? Australia is also one of those countries that has has Queen Elizabeth as a monarch should we emulate that too? In other words aside from both countries having people there isn’t much comparison between the two countries and since they don’t have our Constitution is is a moot point anyhow.
While you were looking up stats did you happen to find any stats showing the drop in gun violence and violent crime in US states opening up concealed carry laws to make it easier?
Did you happen to see how much higher violent crime is in strict gun law states as opposed to states with more liberal or easier gun laws? I suspect for example California crime rate is much higher than Vermont’s violent crime rate per capita.
Are there any other parts of the Constitution you guys want to radically change?
For example, I knew a guy that was murdered after he mouthed off to a bigger meaner dude- should we restrict the 1st Amendment?
Speaking of the monarch. I have buddies of mine that are with Metropolitan police in the UK. Some expressed concern post terrorist attacks in Paris because the UK frankly doesn’t really have a great way of responding to stuff like that not quickly that is for sure.
How about we enforce the gun laws we have on the books? How about we do all the common sense simple things that can be done to reduce gun violence in the US before we alter our Constitution.
Sort of like taxes- A lot of folks say OMG raise taxes we need more programs. None of those people ever say but FIRST lets get rid of all the waste fraud and abuse in the system THEN if we still need to raise taxes we can do it without worrying about just giving them more money to waste.
It is my experience that the rabid anti gun types in the US are extremely dishonest about their agenda. doesn’t take much research to figure out what they really want. Hint- read their own words and writing.
Either provide proof that the NRA is owned by the gun manufacturers or admit that you are dishonest and have no business trying to debate constitutional issue.
You can’t just toss out BS like that and then go about your business like you have any credibility on this topic.
Show me the documents proving the that NRA is owned by the gun manufacturers.
And I am not talking donations or funding etc etc. you clearly said the NRA is owned by the gun manufacturers. Prove it or just become another anti gun fable teller.