Guns in bars

Great Debates
223

Thanks. I’ll read it tomorrow.

I don’t know why you think this is a saving grace for you. No one is making that argument in this thread so you are willfully engaging in a strawman. It casts doubt on your entire argument. It just seems like you really don’t like the NRA. I don’t either - too moderate. Unfortunately they are the best show in town so go figure.

If it follows, there should be some evidence in the 6 states that recognize constitutional carry, right? I haven’t seen any, have you? For some reason you think obtaining a CCW conveys some ability or skill that makes them less likely to engage in risky behavior. I contend it’s the opposite - these folks would already be less likely to engage in risky behavior. What makes your assessment more likely?

You should totally start one! For science. I’ll stick with the NRA, thanks though. My side is winning.

224

I missed commenting on this.

While I agree that there are costs to permitting CCW (in bars, and in general), your anecdotal evidence does not confirm this at all. Your evidence is essentially nothing. Not only do you admit the nature of what you present is dubious, you have made no connection to permitting CCW as the root cause of any of the events. As I stated earlier, you would first need to compare the scenario of CCW against some type of control. Without that it’s meaningless.

You didn’t address the question. What do you mean by diverse? What do you mean when you say “more closely resemble” Can you be specific?

225

How many years will people safely drive high speed limit highways before those that pushed the “55 saves lives” nonsense in the 70’s admit they were wrong?

How many tens of thousands of years will go by before there isn’t anyone left who thinks Jesus is actually coming back?

You simply will not get a satisfying admission of error out of people who were guided by delusional thinking. Whether it’s pride or whether it’s because they really, REALLY, REALLY want what they believed to be true and when confronted by the reality that it simply isn’t true they will not concede to it. NO-MATTER-WHAT!

226

The two examples are different.

Proponents of the “55 saves lives!” and “No CCW in bars” campaigns made falsifiable predictions; those predictions were falsified by subsequent events and calling them on it is entirely appropriate.

“Jesus Will Return!” is (generally) a prediction made in full awareness that it’s not falsifiable; the Bible itself (“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone…”) makes this clear.

Now, I certainly concede that over the years there have been individuals who have undertaken more definitive, falsifiable predictions, and they are indeed properly held to account when these predictions don’t …er… materialize.

227

But both examples work for what the debate is about. The “55” thing is, it was based on mistaken assumptions of cause and effect. In 73/74 after the national limit was established highway fatalities did go down. But the cause was gasoline prices skyrocketed and people simply drove less. Less driving=less accidents. Less accidents=less fatalities. But the pro 55 crowd simply attached the cause to what they wanted it to be. Same holds true to the anti-gun crowd. They don’t want to differentiate between lawful gun owners and unlawful gun owners, lumping all statistics together. They draw conclusions of effect to the cause they choose rather than the reality of the actual cause.

The Jesus thing has to do with the “any day now” mentality. “Any day now” Jesus is going to return. “Any day now” CCW holders will have bloody gunfights in the street. These things could happen “any day now” and because the could hapen (yet never do) they want to base policy on what “could” happen as opposed to what’s actually happening: nothing!

228

No, there are implicit arguments involved, specifically that CCW enhances the carrier’s safety. A single anecdote is enough to refute that assumption.

We’re here to fight ignorance. I make no apologies for refuting arguments made on a monthly basis, especially when that organization has plenty of apologists on this board.

If we had solid data collection, yes. But we don’t. I don’t know of a comprehensive dataset that matches criminal behavior to CCW: there’s only the website I linked to that makes use of media reports.

I don’t know whether a proper test could be made with what we have.

No, I agree with the direction of causality that you stated. But raise the bar for CCW and fewer folk with impulse control problems will obtain a license.

I am not a gun owner.

229

Disagree. Sure it has evidential value. As does the example of mayhem in Ohio, when a CCW creep started threatening folk in a bar. Or the example of the Virginia resident who kept his gun at home when he visited a DC nightclub, then shot a cab driver who shuttled him between another destination in VA. If they permitted CCW bar hopping in DC, who knows what the body count would have been? Or the bar hopping CCW dude who shot his friend in Wisconsin. The examples are legion, if by legion you mean three.

We have incidents. Bone is calling for a cost/benefit. What are the examples of CCW in bars saving lives? What’s so terrifying about admitting they don’t exist?

Don’t get me wrong. The evidence so far is nonsystematic and anecdotal, so I don’t take it too seriously.

230

I’ll give a serious answer here. There was a student working paper on a similar North Carolina law written in Dec 2013 and made available on a professor’s website in Spring 2014. I’d rather have better peer review, but that will have to do. Tack on another year to see if something better comes up.

So I’d say now would be the time when the conversation can commence.

231

You continue to make fundamental mistakes in your argument. A single anecdote is not sufficient to refute the assumption that CCW enhances the carrier’s safety. A single anecdote would only be sufficient to refute the assumption that CCW provides absolute safety. For someone who belittles anecdotal argument you seem rather fond of relying on them.

This is another error. You haven’t refuted anything with your admittedly poor arguments. At best you’ve done some twisting of a tu quoque but really what you’ve attempted has no persuasive value.

This appears to be a non sequitur. You didn’t address the question. What do you mean by diverse? What do you mean when you say “more closely resemble” Can you be specific? Are you avoiding this question on purpose?

232

As a matter of logic no. The idea being that weak evidence beats no evidence. And an assumption implies no evidence at all. Right?

If you want to present evidence that CCW enhances safety, you can do so. So far nobody has in this thread, at least this year.

I certainly do not apologize for characterizing anecdotal arguments as such, even when they are my own. Nor do I apologize for digging up scholarly work.

Not sure what to say here. When a bogus and high profile argument is constantly made, I don’t have a problem bringing it up in a forum dedicated to fighting ignorance.

Quite honestly no. I will attempt to respond to you, but clearly we’re not understanding one another.

This will be long winded. Sorry. I simply don’t know where the miscommunication arises.
[QUOTE=MfM]
My hypothesis though is that gun owners exhibit riskier behaviors than those who do not own guns. CCW folks though are closer to the non-gun owning group, at least to the extent that there are special requirements involved. It follows that when such requirements are loosened that CCW folk will more closely resemble the wider gun owning population.

…Sort of. I’m saying that CCW folk surveyed from 1996-97 are likely to have taken a gun safety course. As the population of CCW folk becomes more diverse, I expect that they will tend to more closely resemble the wider gun toting population, relatively speaking.
[/QUOTE]
There are 3 groups. Gun owners who are not CCW, CCW gun owners and those who don’t own guns. As I understand it, CCW gun owners during the 1990s (an era which the Wintemute paper covered) typically had to jump through some hurdles to receive a permit. Those hurdles have been lowered over time in certain certain states. The diversity refers to the variance in permitting requirements. Alaska and Vermont for example don’t restricted concealed carry, as I understand it.

I would hypothesize that in Alaska, the CCW group would more closely resemble the remainder of the gun owner population: in Hawaii or California where CCW hurdles are higher I’d expect CCW and non-CCW gun owners to differ more. In what way? Specifically, the metrics I had in mind were the ones from the Wintemute paper: they include alcoholism, binge drinking, drinking and driving, etc. I also mentioned seat belt use upthread.

That’s the hypothesis. As noted earlier I don’t know whether it can be tested because we don’t have a solid baseline for CCW propensity to engage in the risky behaviors listed.

233

No. This is very poor. First - anecdotes are not evidence - weak or otherwise. Second, an assumption does not imply no evidence. Third, safety enhancement argument has not been made.

So you are good with the strawman. You’re right - there isn’t much to say. If you are willing to engage in poor arguments, knowing they are poor, there is nothing much to accomplish. It seems like willful ignorance to me.

234

Unless the anecdote isn’t true, it’s a data point.

235

Bone. Bricker resuscitated this thread based on the premise that no mayhem had occurred following passage of the OP’s legislation. If we consider similar laws passed across the various states, that claim was false. You only need one example to show this. I gave 3. Plus a paper. And caveats.

Strawmen arguments refer to attacks on arguments that nobody makes, as opposed to arguments that are made all the time, every bloody month. They do not rely exclusively on one particular venue or another.
Don’t get me wrong. There is certainly much that can be discussed regarding my examples of problems connected with guns in bars. Furthermore, I invite Bricker and others to dig up examples of guns saving lives in bars: I didn’t come across any. So while I dug up some evidence and academic work at Bricker’s implicit invitation, I don’t pretend to have the final word.

True, but concerns of the randomness and size of the sample apply, just as accuracy does.

236

Which of your three would have been different if the Virginia law had not been passed?

(Let’s pretend that each of your three happened in Virginia under Virginia’s legal system).

In other words, which were examples of acts that happened because Virginia passed a more permissive law concerning CCW in bars?

237

That is a good and fair clarifying question, Bricker. As noted earlier, restricting CCW events to a single venue (bars) cuts down the sample size a lot. So the three examples cover CCW-in-bars policy for any state. I believe that is a valid exercise. I invite you to find examples of CCW-in-bars saving lives in any state. Then we can do a rough comparison. Of course we’re restricted by the vagaries of media coverage.

One of the examples occurred in Wisconsin. One occurred in Ohio. The third occurred in Virginia: the CCW homicidal maniac liked to carry around his gun, but was prevented from doing so, because DC doesn’t allow CCW in bars. A cab drive brought him home, he picked up his gun and took the same cab to a friend’s house where he had left his SUV. Tragically, he had lost his cash and ended up shooting the cab driver dead. I had the impression that he was going to his friends house to party, but I see that’s not the case. So while the lack of CCW-in-bars kept the killer from bringing his weapon to a DC bar, the Virginia CCW law ended up having little effect on the error cascade that evening. I might plead for 1/4 or 1/2 point on that one.

I claim a full point for the Ohio case, but the perp was only brandishing a weapon and making lethal threats: there was no bloodshed. That said we do have an example of a CCW holder leaving a bar and coming back with a weapon to deal someone he had been arguing with. Under the simple “No guns in bars” rules, it’s reasonable to speculate that the moron in question would have resorted to fists, not bullets.

I see I mangled the Wisconsin example. Wisconsin doesn’t allow guns in bars. Zero points for the murder by the CCW holder who had been bar hopping. My bad. (States that permit CCW guns in bars include Tennessee, Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.)

Let’s revisit a few of the 2010 claims:

Comment: it’s true that CCW folk can disobey the law not to drink. But apparently they can do that anyway even in states like Wisconsin that ban guns in bars. Though to be fair, the perp claimed he had left the gun in his vehicle anyway.

It appears that this sort of characterization of the subsequent Virginian drinking environment displayed less than perfect verisimilitude. AFAICT we simply have not observed open gunfire between multiple armed CCW holders in bars.
Kudos to Bricker for posing the counterfactual.