You kinda messed up the linklink.
Yes just hit the edit window to fix it I was missing the closeing bracket on the /URL
Your cite is 10+ years old and I’m really unclear as to the bias. Has this been peer reviewed. Forgive me for not reading the whole thing since it runs 35 pages. Drawing conclusions like the English ban on firearms is I would argue a decade out of date and not overly relevant to draw a conclusion for today (would want to see something updated since a trend that ends 10 years ago is a trend that ends 10 years ago). Since you’ve obviously read through the cite, can you like summarize the meaningful parts country by country where a country went from largely unfettered gun ownership to a ban? And if you’re really positing that guns are not the problem (not legal gun ownership but the over all level/availability of guns in the US), then what is the problem and what are the solutions?
Otherwise don’t debate and dodge all the inconvenient questions. Keep asking to prove a hypothetical. I see ancedotes and the tired “guns don’t kill people” and “responsible gun owners are not the problem.” Keep cherry picking data to prove a point. But I would appreciate it if you would answer the questions that I cited…
Fact: US has by far the highest rates of both gun ownership, firearm homicides and homicides of any developed nation. By more than 2x.
We have a problem full stop, unless you think leading the developed world by 2x is in fact something we should do?
One commonality between the other developed nations is
a) per capita gun ownership levels
b) every other developed nation has significantly stricter gun regulation laws (I’m pulling this out of my ass since my other cites don’t seem to carry any weight and it is true for the few countries that I know about like Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Japan))
c) no country has gone from the US per capita levels of guns to a significant ban, so there’s no empirical data to give you. But see point b) that the developed (and many emerging market) countries with stricter gun regulation laws have far few homicide and far fewer gun related homicide rates)
d) lawful civilian gun ownership in the US allows for guns to go underground and become readily available for non lawful owners. Posters in this thread boast about when the jackboots come to confiscate their weapon will say they just sold it on to Joe Blow.
I’m not saying that a + b + c + d is 100% correlated with the US murder/murder by firearm rate, but this is the Straight Dope and at least it leads *me *to question the “guns don’t kill people” meme your 10+ year old Harvard pdf notwithstanding. You have another explanation for American exceptionalism in this regard? Eg, leading the rest of the developed world in murders by at least 2x if not 10x?
(Let’s not convolute “lawful gun owners” with the availability/per capita guns in the US. That’ a different debate. And how many of those “lawful” guns have gone through straw purchases or “sold on Craigslist” without any kind of registration or background check? And then used for crimes. Puh-leeeeeese.)
Note you have NO cites…and you refuse to read this one so why should I waste my time.
Claiming that other countries have more strict gun control when you state you really don’t know? Really? (BTW the swiss requirements are simliar to our background checks but only happen once and they do have private sales)
I cannot debate dogmatic beliefs so have a good new year sir.
Glancing over, there seems to be several sections devoted to defending the work of the aforementioned Lott. Take with a grain of salt, I suppose.
And the name of the aptly yclept Mauser led me here:
Excerpts:
And
Make of it what you will, I suppose.
Yet can you make any correlation betweeen civilian firearms ownership rates and homicide? Or are you just dismissing this because it doesn’t fit your world view?
You’re the one who seems to think that emotionally charged language can be a substitute for reason and facts in a debate. :dubious:
“At what number would you begin to care?” is an impossible and perhaps meaningless question to answer. But it’s reasonable to qualify risks by comparison to other risks that impact (or don’t) our decision-making processes. Is it the act of a reasonable person to change their day-to-day life in any way to mitigate the risk? If not, it might just be an insignificant risk.
No, that’s not my intent at all, and I’m puzzled that you would come to that conclusion, since what I’m trying to do is more or less the opposite: I’m trying to take assault weapons out of the discussion entirely, on the basis that they’re misused so infrequently compared to handguns.
I’ve probably made it clear here before that the status quo on gun laws is fine by me; I certainly wouldn’t advocate for stricter controls on my own initiative. I feel quite safe in my person and being killed with a handgun is very, very low on the list of things I worry about. But I realize that I am demographically advantaged: I’m white, I live in a relatively wealthy and low-crime area, I’m not a drug user, I’m not a member of a gang, etc. I have a lot of sympathy for the view that handguns should be harder to get, with a view toward reducing their ubiquitous availability to criminals. I’m open to discussion in that direction.
Actually, I’m not offering an opinion on statistical analysis, I’m a mathtard, and doing so tends to expose me to mockery and derision. If you are better equipped, then perhaps you can explain the author’s comments on Lott’s errors (if that is what they are). Seeing as you are innocent of such biases as render me incapable of accurate analysis.
I am not free of biases, nor did I ever make that claim.
If you completely remove any of Lotts data from that paper it does little to change the conclusion.
This is why you cannot find a cite that shows a correlation. Because it doesn’t exist despite both sides claims and wishes.
The presence of legally owned firearms has little to no effect on homicide rates overall.
Can you drop the legally owned firearms bullshit? Or at least cite how legally owned (or one time legally owned firearms) are not a significant part of the murders in the US?
I didn’t cite every other fricking developed nation, but if you bothered to check you’ll find that they have significant more controls than in the US. And I pointed out knowledge on a half dozen or so developed nations, so forgive me if I don’t go through and spoon feed each and every developed nation only to be nitpicked on the definition of a developed nation or someone rathole instead of honest debate.
BTW, Here’s a cite on the Swiss regulations from Wiki: Firearms regulation in Switzerland - Wikipedia
It is not very similar to the US as a matter of fact. And having known many Swiss militia army officers over the years (I worked for UBS for 4 years, and a large percentage of the Swiss execs were reserve officers), they would laugh their ass off at your ascertations.
I have cited to you that the US homicide rates and homicide by firearms rate is at least double that of any other developed country. If you want to include Norway, then it’s a serious order of magnitude higher. What more do you need?
I can’t cite a scenario (PROVE to me where a country has gone from US levels to restricted gun ownership) and what that’s done to the homicide rate. Nice strawman.
I love the Harvard study - it’s more than a decade out of date, which alone will call into question its validity for now. And I seriously doubt if you’ve even read it.
Or do you not think that the US has a murder problem? And you’re seriously saying that guns (not legal gun owners) are completely innocent of the issue?
And how different is this from what our instant background checks?
And why lump all states together when they have vastly different gun laws and socioeconomic realities?
Because it lets you make a correlation that doesn’t exist.
You’re asking how many hairs can a man have on his head before he isn’t bald. Of course no one can name a number.
No, you didn’t make the claim, you simply offered the possibility that the reason I don’t simply collapse into abject agreement with you is due to my “world view”.
As for Mr. Lott, it seems that he has feathered himself a comfortable nest being the favorite academic of a particular segment of the political arguments. Further, his standards for candor and unbiased research are not reassuring. Lying douchebag, to adopt the vernacular.
Then, the cherry atop the turd sundae, we hear that efforts to conduct the sort of unbiased research we might all crave, those of us in pursuit of fair and honest debate, are stymied by people who’s minds are made up. Of course, its not impossible that the AMA is in cahoots with the CDC to flim-flam the American public. Rather doubt that, myself.
Given all that, your snapper ending about the non-effect of gun ownership on violent crime pretty much has to be taken as a bald assertion. And, “world view” notwithstanding, bald assertions are not convincing. One would hope.
So, outside of bald assertions, bogus data and aspersions upon my reasoning ability: got anything else?
IOW, “No U”. Wonderful. :rolleyes:
No, as already pointed out, it’s the heart of the subject. If you can’t, or won’t, support the position you’ve taken, that’s your own problem.
Great. However, you just finished saying that the status quo is fine with you. So, can you give us any actual specifics, instead of more of what you call “emotionally charged language” about just what changes you would consider reasonable and responsible? That is what the rest of us are discussing here; well, most of us anyway.
Based on what I stated earlier, if one purchased a gun illegally, they would be part of Group B. In my state I don’t need to run a private sale through a dealer, I have done so many times. If someone wouldn’t pass a background check so they bought a gun from someone other than a dealer to avoid the check, that is an illegal purchase.
Further, it looks like nobody else wants to have a serious discussion of any positive change as they are quibbling over cites, and turning it into a binary “ban everything it’s for the children” vs. “don’t touch my stuff” discussion. I tried to set some common ground that we could all work from so that the emotions and everything else could be set aside.
No I am saying that the reason you refuse to provide any cite is the data doesn’t fit into your “world view”
The fact that you admit that you don’t understand numbers and then complain about the cite purely based on source instead of content fits with this.
No, I was giving a reason that those Republicans were acting foolishly, you are looking for a massive “gun lobby” conspiracy to hide how dangerous guns are and there isn’t one.
You are the one calling for guns to be banned, YOU are the one who should be able to show some place in the world that reducing the number of guns lawfully held by the public significantly reduced homicides OR that the number of homicides is even tied to the rate of firearm ownership.
This is NOT a high standard and yet you can’t provide it at all and now you are trying to win the debate through attrition.
As an honest debate, I don’t think you can split legal versus illegal ownership. Since, of course, there is a huge problem with straw purchases that end up in circulation.
It’s like saying the “legal” gun owners aren’t a problem. Well, “legal” owners are in fact a problem if that allows firearms to get into circulation and used for crime.
Care to address how to fix the straw purchases problem?
Here ya go: Police figures show unexpected 8% drop in crime | Crime | The Guardian There’s a link there to a nifty PDF that really goes into detail.
The one country that has reduced the number of firearms significantly is the UK and Wales. Homicides has fallen to a 10 year low as of financial year 2008/2009. Coincidently enough your cited Harvard Study ended 10+ years ago, so I guess now we can safely ignore that one.
Interestingly enough, they included this paragraph on circumstances of the homicides. One thing that jumps out to me about England and Northern Wales is that most of the murders take place with a knife, and 53% were due to a quarrel, revenge attack or loss of temper. Even worse when the victim is acquainted with the perp. It’s not unreasonable to think that there might have been more murders if there were firearms available. That would explain to a certain extent the much higher firearm and murder rates in the US.
Circumstances of the homicides
Further information is collected on the circumstances of the homicides. This shows that around a half (53%, or 346 offences) of homicide cases in 2008/09 were due to a quarrel, a revenge attack or a loss of temper. This proportion was higher where the principal suspect was known to the victim (61%), compared to when the suspect was unknown to the victim (42%). Seven per cent of homicides (45 offences) occurred during robberies or burglaries and four per cent (25 offences) were attributed to irrational acts8. As at 24 November 2009, the apparent circumstances were not known for 26 per cent of homicides (168 offences recorded in 2008/09. (Table 1.06). This figure may decrease as police carry out further investigations.
RA - how do you want to handwave away that England put in strict gun controls starting from 1988, and now homicide and homicides by firearms are at a 10 year low.
Nope, because the US homicide rate is at a 50 year low with more states allowing carry and without a England style confiscation.
Sure it is still higher but it if was the gun ban in England that caused murder rates to drop how to you explain it in the US, or the rest of Europe including countries with large amounts of guns?
Which is different how, perzackly?
Not quite. I don’t pretend to be gifted in statistical analysis with attendant mathematical models. Doesn’t mean I “don’t understand numbers”. Actually, not even close.
Interesting news! So, that article in JAMA was total bullshit, then? And you propose to prove this…how? Or do you propose to simply stamp your foot and insist that it is so? Your rebuttal consists of “Nunh-unh!”? Concise and to the point, I’ll give it that.
Nope. Never said any such thing. Tell you what, I just got myself a nice bottle of Irish whiskey for New Years. You provide a cite of me saying that, and I’ll paypal you the cost of one for yourself. And you have to put up? Nothing. Totally a gift. One cite, all it takes, me saying “ban all guns”. Take your time, the limitation on this offer is eternity. You’ll need it.