Garbage. Bone just hand-waved away regression analysis.
Garbage. Bone says the NRA and other more trenchant groups don’t have a stranglehold on Congress on the issue of guns. For the goat rope involving the last time background checks were seriously considered in the wake of Newtown, and how basically Congress sat around looking for the NRA’s permission, see this NYT article. eg “One recently retired congressman from a conservative district told me, “That was the one group where I said, ‘As long as I’m in office, I’m not bucking the N.R.A.’””
You’ll notice in Damuri Ajashi’s and Bone’s posts above there’s some cunning soft-shoeing to shift burden of proof on the anti(gun) side here re guns in homes. Don’t fall for it. The increase in homicides in homes of gun owners puts the BURDEN OF PROOF squarely on the shoulders of those favoring guns. Bone, Damuri, have to jump the bar (and it’s a high one), not those on the other side. It’s one of several sleazy tactics, to get the other poster to assume burden of proof, then sit back and fire off garbage like quoted just above in this post. It doesn’t take Captain Obvious to infer bad things about guns when they’re associated with more deaths in homes which have them. Prove no bad things.
I think guns have become ‘normalised’ in US society. People (many, not all) see guns as just a part of life - a tool, a toy to use as a hobby, or a security device. Like a car, or a camera.
Not only are people carrying them down the street, they expect others to be doing the same. Even those who don’t like guns and don’t want them, know that many folk are carrying. And if a problem arises, a gun is a viable option. Most of the time, it’s not used - but all too easily it is. Similarly, if people get depressed or angry, well, a gun is a possible way to ‘work out the aggressions’.
So when you see stories about 11-year olds shooting each other - that’s just acting ‘like a grown-up’. ‘Mummy and Daddy have guns, and I so I can use them if I need to’.
Sure, they should never be able to get hold of them, but it’s like those times when 12-year olds steal the family car - a car is a normal part of life, so the kids are ‘acting like grown-ups’. Do you really think, even if guns are properly locked up in a house, the kids don’t know where the keys are, and how to get hold of them?
In countries with restrictive gunlaws, guns are seen PRIMARILY as dangerous, restricted, very rarely encountered objects. Nobody (except those who actively do hunting or shooting - both minor activities) even thinks about guns. I still get a minor shock when I see policemen with visible guns in holsters. (And the numbers of civilians killed by Police in those countries is incredibly small compared with then US). We have major investigations if a police revolver is even fired - it doesn’t matter whether it hits anybody.
I think it will have to be tackled as Tobacco was. Tobacco used to be normalised in society - now it has been ‘demonised’ (for want of a better word). If you want to fix the gun problem in the US (assuming people recognise there is one, and maybe the majority are happy with the status quo), it is a three-step process.
Apply the common-sense, restrictive laws.
Education to ‘demonise’ - so that over time (many, many years) the product becomes considered as dangerous, stupid to use, and un-necessary.
Gun buy-back, amnesty - call it what you like - to remove guns from society.
"The term “association” is closely related to the term “correlation.” Both terms imply that two or more variables vary according to some pattern.
It doesn’t seem like I am confusing the two in a way that is leading me to reach
For common usage, the terms are pretty interchangable, aren’t they? Do ANY of these terms imply causation? No? Then what the fuck is the difference between my calling them associations and correlations?
I think you might be the only person that is getting confused by my use of the term rate for odds and correlation for association (or you are the only person who thinks it makes enough of a difference to make such a big deal out of it). Could you explain bow my understanding of what these studies are saying is being affected by my use of the term rate instead of odds ratio?
AFAICT the studies are saying that homicides occurred 240% as often in homes with guns than in homes without guns. How does my use of the term correlation or association change that fundamental finding enough to make my interpretation off base? Isn’t the use of all these terms close enough for purposes of discussion?
If you are making distinctions that don’t actually make a difference then aren’t you engaging in semantics and pettifoggery?
I suppose you could control for each of those variables separately in different studies (I don’t see why you wouldn’t just control for all of them in one study).
WTF are you talking about? How in the fuck do you reach THAT fucking conclusion? Because if the studies actually said that then they have really been burying the fucking lead. Where the fuck do they say that if you force someone to keep a gun in their home then their chances of getting murdered have increased anywhere near 240%? If they could actually show that the mere introduction of a gun into a random home increases the chances of a homicide in that home then they have been keeping it pretty quiet.
The criticism is that the studies do not control for a lot for some really obvious things.
Now who need tin foil hats?
We have addressed this myth of the all powerful NRA several times (usually in conjunction with debunking the notion that the NRA is a shill for the gun manufacturers). The NRA has political power because it represents a lot of votes. There are a lot of single issue pro-gun voters, there are very few single issue gun control voters. I’m sorry that democracy isn’t working out for you the way you hoped but that’s just the way that democracy works.
How does repeating a flawed study eliminate the flaw. If you keep measuring the wrong thing, why is it significant that you keep coming up with the same measurements for that wrong thing?
The president CANNOT change the law by executive order. The law didn’t ban research into gun violence. It banned gun control advocacy.
The sort of scenarios I am more concerned with is the gang member who keeps a gun in the home and gets shot by rival gang members. These studies do not distinguish between kid living in shitty neighborhood and gang member living in shitty neighborhood. The studies seem to assume that the gang member got killed because of the gun in this bedroom and not because of his gang affiliation. IOW, the studies do not seem to adequately account for variables that might both increase the the chances of owning a gun AND increase the chances of getting murdered.
The burden of proving what? Your side presented evidence in the form of these studies and I call your side out when you claim these studies say things that they don’t actually say. I can show a link between ice cream consumption and the murder rate, you would infer that ice cream drives people to murder rather than assume that hot weather might drive increases in both ice cream consumption and murders.
Thats just the thing, you are inferring things that the studies don’t say. The studies invite you to believe those things but they don’t actually say them. Because they can’t.
The studies literally do say that the odds of dying by homicide in those studies were doubled or tripled for people who kept guns in the home. That’s what the odds ratio statistic is. FUCKING TRY TO UNDERSTAND THIS!
You keep saying that you understand this, then you turn around and say things that show you do not understand it. When you’re saying that the studies don’t say what the studies literally do say, it’s not pettifoggery to tell you you’re wrong and explain to you exactly how you are wrong.
The criticism you’re responding to regards factors that were LITERALLY controlled for in the study. You simply don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about with the claims you are making here. I’m not sure you’re struggling with “factors,” “controlled for,” “studies” or what here.
I think the argument is that there is reverse causality. A gang member owns a gun because he is a gang member. He is killed, not because he owns a gun, but because he is a gang member.
You say that the study controls for his risk of being killed because of his gang affiliation. But it seems not to control for the fact that he owns a gun because of it. IOW, am I at a greater risk of death in the home because I keep a rifle for sporting purposes? a pistol for self defense? a shotgun for rabbit hunting? The only way those weapons could possibly increase my risk of death would be if I lived with a crazy person who took my gun and murdered me.
It seems as if the study does not control for the reasons for gun ownership or the link between the purposes of the gun ownership and the death. If a person owned a gun solely because of his high risk lifestyle and the gun did not play a part in his death, then it shouldn’t be counted at all when seeing if owning the gun was dangerous.
I don’t have my cite-fu handy, but I believe that deaths related to accidental discharges are minuscule. And those can be solved by observing basic gun safety rules. If I follow the gun safety rules, then I shouldn’t be lumped in with guys who get drunk and play Russian Roulette.
The study fails to account for this and just assumes that the mere presence of a gun is somehow statistically worthy. Unless you account for the reasons why the gun is there and its purpose in the death then the study is no more useful than citing the presence of a toaster in the home.
I didn’t read the study, but the assertion has been made that the study would count as a “gun in the home” homicide a killing which had no relationship or relevance to the gun itself. (the 45 year old chubby white guy I posted about earlier). Do you dispute that?
IMHO, that makes the data as useless as finding a correlation between homicides and toasters in the home.
Further, it has been alleged and not yet rebutted, that the study does not take into consideration the purpose of having the gun in the home: it treats a guy that has a cheap old pistol on the coffee table exactly the same as the 45 year old chubby white guy with a hunting rifle. Do you dispute that?
No. Reading the study renders that beyond dispute. Is there some reason you cannot read the study?
I can guarantee you that the editors and peer reviewers of a journal would not publish a study with such a meaningless association. Can you offer a reason why they would? Are you another conspiracy theorist? Seems to be a perspective infecting many gun advocates here.
Again, there are multiple studies that we have been discussing. Some include measures of how firearms were stored. Some include measures of gun type (e.g. handgun vs. long gun). Those factors don’t explain the effect.
What hypothesis do you propose that would make the purpose of gun ownership relevant to explaining the effect?
I am not a conspiracy theorist. However, it is beyond dispute that many intellectuals do not support gun ownership and have a reason for reaching these results. I’m not saying they are doing it with a malicious purpose; many things can be chalked up to laziness. By counting my 45 year old chubby white guy scenario as a “homicide in the home where a gun was present” is at best poor methodology and at worst a deliberate attempt to skew the results.
My suggestion? In order to count for an elevation of risk for gun ownership, the gun must have either been used in the homicide or otherwise related to the killing. A gun locked in the closet when a homicide occurred has no more relation to the homicide than any other object in the house.
Do you know how journal editing and peer review works? The level of scientific malpractice you’re proposing would take a conspiracy, and publishing work of such low quality would soon render a journal like the New England Journal of Medicine in disrepute. Do you think the New England Journal of Medicine is in disrepute? You are theorizing a conspiracy, like it or not.
It does very clearly answer the question of whether having a gun in the home helps protect the family. It does not - the odds of dying are at least twice as high for those with a gun in the home. Apart from that, you seem to be ignoring what I said about the stratified post hoc analysis.
Totally. The study controlled for things like the case group having higher rates of illicit drug use, household fighting, and members of the household being arrested. Compared to the control group in this study, the victim group had significantly higher rates of renting (70% vs. 47%), living alone (27% vs. 12%) [Table 2], consuming alcohol and various issues at home and work as a result, household illicit drug use (31% vs. 6%), household fighting, and members of the household being arrested (52% vs. 23%) [Table 3]. In other words, the victim group had a riskier lifestyle. But of course, that was all controlled for!
Might as well take the victim group from only 3 time felons and the control group from suburban housewives. It’s absurd to think, oh, we selected a control group completely different than the victim group, but hey, we controlled for it! At what point would such a disparate group render the results meaningless in your mind? You have already dismissed a comparison of homicides and toasters so at least there is a baseline.
Do you know how many accidental gun deaths there are each year without looking it up? Serious question.
I have read the study. The study makes no effort to distinguish a homicide with a gun that is in the home or one that is brought into the home by another person. That is what I think **UltraVires’s **example is highlighting.
It is critically important to determine if the gun used in the homicide in the case examples were actually kept in the home. The above would be a ludicrous statement if all of the homicides were with a gun from outside the home.
Here is what Kellermann states in response apparently in 1994:
But of course, this was an error. It took Kellmermann 5 years apparently in 1998:
From 62% it was inflated to 93%. Only…a 50% increase. Maybe they controlled for that? I guess Kellermann could have suffered from a counting error.
This is highlighted further in a future study that Kellermann did. in 1998, Kellermann published “Injuries and deaths due to firearms in the home.” That study found:
14.2% is quite a bit different than 62%. But, replication! I wonder what would explain such a dramatic difference.
The director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Mark Rosenberg stated that he
So not necessarily a conspiracy. Just enough bad science disguised as advocacy restricted. Research on the other hand, has always been permitted, contrary to what you previously asserted in error. Care to walk that back or are you going to omit discussion of that one as well?
In another bit of irony, consider how Kellermann established gun ownership. in the control group. It was through interviews. It was a scripted process, but it was through simply asking the people that were designated as the controls. I know for a fact that myself, and a very large portion of the gun owning community would deny ownership of a firearm to someone asking. But the kicker is, the control information was obtained through interview. But wait, who was it that said they didn’t trust self reporting?
It seems like you only don’t accept self reporting when it doesn’t align with your ideology.