Sam, I’ve read Lott, and I’ve read his critics. And I put much more stock in his critics than I do in Lott.
lucwarm:
No, actually I agree with you on that point. But where I suspect we disagree is that I believe CCW is ineffectual, neither beneficial nor detrimental. On a grand scale, that is. Individual incidents will always deviate from the mainline.
No, they have been debunked - then again, cites directly from the Brady Bunch tend to have a very short life on this board.
So, what, you’re not even convinced that any of these things would do an ounce of good, but you want to put them in place anyway, or do you think they’d decrease violent crime but not neccesarily domestic violence? And what are the ‘stricter gun laws’ you want?
Should be illegal for someone convicted of a violent felony (or declared innocent of such by reason of insanity) or involuntarily committed to a mental institution to possess a gun unless they’ve gone through a ‘clearing’ process equivalent to a pardon for the felons (governer of the state declares them OK, or something similar), or a psychological review for the involuntarily committed. People in that group would have a code added to their driver’s license or other ID identifying them as such, and it would be illegal to sell/give a firearms (as well as other dangerous items) to anyone who’s ID bore such a mark. Other than that, see Vermont - no license for concealed carry, no ‘bad gun’ bans, no registration, no import bans, nothing, on anything from a .22 rifle to a good 'ol Ma Deuce. ‘Cannon’ type weapons (artillery etc.) would be subject to restrictions similar to those on dynamite today.
Finally! The last time you criticized Lott, you based your opinion entirely on what Newsweek said about him, rather than his own words. So, you spent some time this past year reading Lott’s book?
Indeed. Spent an afternoon in the library reading it, or at least as much as I could stand. The guy doesn’t know causation from a hole in the ground.
Listen, if your fault with Lott is that he only proves a correllation, not causation –
Then every other study ever done on any aspect of gun control is equally flawed, because while Lott doesn’t prove causation, he accounts for more other factors, and incorporates a wider range of data, than anyone else ever has in any study on the subject of guns, gun control, and possibly even american crime generally.
Thus, if you find Lott’s work insufficiently credible, then you’re stuck having to admit that all other statistical work on this subject is equally non-credible – and, thus, there is absolutely no evidence in favor of gun control.
Setting aside all other moral and philosophical arguments, then, gun ownership is the status quo in America – and thus, to argue effectively for a change in the status quo, you should present evidence in favor of your position. By refusing to accept Lott, you also have to refuse to accept all evidence that might possibly be in favor of your position, as it is all less credible than Lott’s work.
Thus, you’re left with no evidence in favor of your position; and no proof whatsoever that gun control is a good idea. So we should, logically, maintain the status quo of widespread gun ownership.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
**
Right, because a deranged, angry husband would never use his fists or a crowbar. It’s just not as sexy.
It’s much sadder, in my mind, that there’s such a push to render such people UNABLE to defend themselves completely, and prefer them to be meek, submissive victims.
**
Right, because a deranged, angry husband would never use his fists or a crowbar. It’s just not as sexy.
It’s much sadder, in my mind, that there’s such a push to render such people UNABLE to defend themselves completely, and prefer them to be meek, submissive victims.
DIE, HERETIC!!!
Actually, he took a specific example given by anti-rights types, and criticized it for his content. And then he stated his opinion that anti-rights evidence tends to follow the same faulty pattern. He didn’t simply blaspheme all potential anti-rights literature because he didn’t like their motives, and implying he did such is inaccurate. He criticized a specific piece of anti-rights literature and pointed out how they often tend to have the same flaws.
It’s much sadder, in my mind, that there’s such a push to render such people UNABLE to defend themselves completely, and prefer them to be meek, submissive victims.
This is the second comment of this nature. It seems incredible to me that inteligent and informed people would resort to making such unfair and inaccurate statements. To suggest that a person in favor of stricter gun laws is in favor of murder, as previously posted, or prefers people to be meek and submissive victims is inflamatory.
It seems prudent and even productive to debate these tough issues. It is not productive, imho, to pretend to possess the ability to read minds. I have stated that I am in favor of stricter gun laws. It would be impossible for you to know my other thoughts, unless I share them with you. I will state again that I am not in favor of murder. Nor do I prefer anyone to be meek and submissive.
This cite has what appears to be credible info.
It seems that those who disapprove of gun laws repeatedly request those in favor of gun laws to produce statistics of crimes that did not occur. I protest. I think it is impossible to show credible evidence of events that do not occur.
Well, it’s certainly possible that “shall issue” CCW is not beneficial. But assuming that (1) “shall issue” CCW is neither beneficial nor detrimental; and given that (2) many people would like to carry concealed weapons; and (3) in many jurisdictions that don’t have “shall issue” laws, the process of obtaining a CCW permit is very political and corrupt . . . why would anyone oppose such laws?
Again, it’s frustrating to me that people would oppose these sort of laws. And it makes me question their motives.
And you think you are innocent of such tactics?
You’ve been presented with a good amount of evidence in this thread, yet you’re choosing to ignore it for some reason (or have simply missed it).
Calenth:
“Only”? Sheesh, there is a proven correlation between the ancient people of China banging on drums and the sun coming back out from an eclipse.
Lott’s problems, however, are simply GIGO. Start with his data on defensive gun use–they guy incredulously takes at face value polls in which people were asked whether they had used a gun defensively (in the last year, if I recall). Problem is, that data made little effor to to distinguish between an actual DGU and a situation in which the person merely had a gun that contributed nothing to the resolution of the situation. There’s a rather crucial difference between pulling a gun on a guy who’s broken into your house and yelling “Hey, get away from my car, asshole!” while carrying a gun that never even leaves your pocket. Or, for that matter, picking up a gun to check an unexplained noise in the backyard, when the noise might have been just a raccoon trying to get into a trash can. Yet Lott takes nearly all of 'em at face value, with the result that he massively overstates the defensive utitlity of guns.
And that, frankly, is all I have to say about More Guns, Less Crime. I don’t have the book, and I ain’t going to the library for the sake of further dissecting its minutiae.
While my statements may be proved inaccurate or unfair, I have not stated or implied that those disagreeing with me are in favor of murder or would prefer that victims be submissive or weak. Yet twice in this thread this has been an accusation made either against me or those that have similar thoughts.
I find this to not be meaningful but an attempt to invite an inflamatory response. Or, am I wrong yet again?
I have spent some time reading other threads on this topic. Hats off to the pro-gun folks. You seem to be better at debating than I and are well informed on this issue. All of your research and cites are credible while the ones I have presented are dismissed or…I’m sorry…the term is “debunked” 
Just because you present compelling arguments does not make you right. This only establishes that you debate better. Is my position outnumbered? Seems that way.
Nobody responded to my protest either? How do you provide
evidence of crimes that have not occurred?
How about this reasoning: I mean since we are talking constitutional issues and all…
Before we decided to abolish slavery, were the abolitionist asked to provide evidence that slaves were entitled to be treated as something other than property? Or did we finally recognize that we were behaving and thinking poorly?
Recognizing these facts as their Achilles’ heel, the National Rifle Association and other pro-gunners have—fronted by tame academicians—disseminated wildly inflated numbers supposedly showing handguns to be an effective form of self-defense.219 As noted earlier in this report, their methodologies are dubious and their numbers evaporate under scrutiny. Although handguns are marketed primarily for their self-defense value, bringing one into the home has exactly the opposite effect and places residents at a much higher rate of risk than those living in a gun-free environment.
Riboflavin - Should be illegal for someone convicted of a violent felony (or declared innocent of such by reason of insanity) or involuntarily committed to a mental institution to possess a gun unless they’ve gone through a ‘clearing’ process equivalent to a pardon for the felons (governer of the state declares them OK, or something similar), or a psychological review for the involuntarily committed. People in that group would have a code added to their driver’s license or other ID identifying them as such, and it would be illegal to sell/give a firearms (as well as other dangerous items) to anyone who’s ID bore such a mark. Other than that, see Vermont - no license for concealed carry, no ‘bad gun’ bans, no registration, no import bans, nothing, on anything from a .22 rifle to a good 'ol Ma Deuce. ‘Cannon’ type weapons (artillery etc.) would be subject to restrictions similar to those on dynamite today.
I agree with this idea. Wouldn’t it be more difficult to enforce a law of this nature without including legislation that would address guns sold in secondary markets? For instance, the one gun a month concept. What about people that purchase guns legally and then subsequently are convicted of felonies or found to be mentally unstable? Would licensing and registration benefit law enforcement?
Oh btw, I am not ignoring the evidence presented here. I have read and considered all of it. Still, I am able to hang on to the assumption that guns should be regulated more than they are currently regulated.
minty, it seems to me that you are overly dismissive of Lott because you don’t want his conclusions to be true. The information on DGUs is such a small proportion of the book that dismissing it on those grounds is like dismissing All The President’s Men because we don’t know who Deep Throat was.
The overwhelming majority of the book is the county-by-county crime data over a period of, what, two decades? Or a decade and a half, something like that. The raw data on violent crime, property crime and the demographic data is there for anyone to use, but nobody has been able to produce a result different from Lott’s without serious, serious data mining. The defensive gun use data isn’t even a part of that data; it’s irrelevant. The results definitely show changes in the violent crime rate that are significantly different from what would be expected in the “shall issue” counties. There’s no disputing that.
If the crime rate in those areas falls at a rate faster than what would be expected simply due to a falling national crime rate, there is some reason for it. If you can point to someone who accounts for it based on data as extensive as that used by Lott, and comes to a different conclusion, please do so.
“Correlation does not equal causation” is a great mantra, and one that should be used by any skeptically-inclined person, but at some point, the causation has to be explained by something. Lott has provided a plausible explanation based on exhaustive data; nobody else has done so.
Finally, I suspect that Lott knows “causation from a hole in the ground” at least as well as you know the law. Disparaging a person’s academic credentials because you don’t like their conclusions is a pretty shitty way to debate.
jacksen, that Violence Policy Center link is . . . well, up front, the VPC is not some kind of think tank. It’s a gun-control advocacy group, pure and simple. And when it starts in the very first paragraph with a sentence like, " By what right do civilian handgun owners—a minority of one in six—think they are entitled to threaten the rest of us with this relentless violence?" we can see where they’re going. The overwhelming majority of civilian handgun owners don’t threaten anyone with anything; that’s simply inflammatory rhetoric.
Two paragraphs later they simply toss out “handgun deaths per 100,000 population” stats without accounting for any other factors such as population, population density, poverty rates, historical data involving gun ownership, etc. They end that same paragraph with the utterly stupid sentence, “As public health researcher Susan P. Baker has noted: ‘People without guns injure people; guns kill them.’” Apparently they expect this sentence to simply stand, and hope that nobody will examine either the rate of violent crime committed without guns that results in death, or the rate of injury from firearms as compared to the death rate. For all we know, the injury rate is 10 times the death rate.
And they keep doing it: “For example, for every time in 1998 that a civilian used a handgun to kill in self- defense, 51 people lost their lives in handgun homicides alone.” For one thing, why are they examining only 1998? Maybe that year was statistically anomalous. For another, why are they limiting it to people who “used a handgun to kill in self-defense?” How many people were able to successfully defend themselves simply by displaying their gun or announcing an intention to use it? How many people were able to defend themselves by using a handgun to injur rather than to kill?
“Out of the 7,875 handgun homicides reported in 1998, only 95 (1.2 percent) were justifiable handgun killings of an assailant previously unknown to the person defending themselves.” How many were justifiable handgun killings of an assailant known to the person defending themselves? A comparatively small proportion of violent crimes are committed by total strangers anyway, so seeing that fact reflected in then handgun homicide statistics is not at all surprising.
And they acknowledge that fact in the next paragraph! “Considering what the FBI has been reporting year in and year out—that most gun deaths do not take place in the course of felony crime, but result from arguments between people who know each other . . . " Great! So then why are we supposed to be surprised by the “previously unknown to them” tidbit above? Of course, they then go on to say: " . . . it is clear that a handgun purchased for self-protection poses the gravest danger to the very persons it is supposed to protect.” Um, no, that isn’t clear at all. Are we classifying spousal abuse as “arguments between people who know each other?” Or disputes between drug dealers, or other criminal cohorts? Or are they dishonestly trying to characterize most shootings as, “No, I said I want to watch 'Wheel of Fortune,” dammit! BLAM!"
Phil, I note that you don’t dispute my characterization of Lott’s misuse of DGU statistics. Seems like a rather fundamental error for a statistician, doesn’t it? That’s just one example of Lott picking and choosing the numbers he plays with, or “data mining,” if you prefer. For further reading, try this collection of links from a pro-gun guy. I particularly recommend the Tim Lambert critique.
That’s because I don’t have the book in front of me and can’t comment accurately without referring back to it. In any case, his conclusions about the crime rates in “shall issue” counties are not based on DGU stats – at all. So the conclusions cannot be dismissed on that basis.
Oy vey, Tim Lambert. A while back, in another gun debate thread on this very message board, Tim Lambert came to argue for a bit (he was evidently asked to register by the anti-gun person who was losing the debate). He does know statistics, but he comes with an agenda in mind, and he actually likes the Kellermann surveys, the very same surveys that were key in Congress’s decision to cut the CDC’s funding and forbidding the CDC from engaging in any more “firearm research”.
Take his opinions with a wheelbarrow of salt.
Take Congress’ opinions with a salt mine of salt.