Quote :

"Others have tried to argue that it has bearing, but they are just plain wrong, and are making that argument in order to ignore what the text actually says and means. "

To be clear, you're the one ignoring words in the text, to fit your own meaning. You're outright dismissing words that you find uncomfortable. But, i've already addressed this point in my previous post.

Quote :

""For the 20th billionth time, cars are regulated way more than guns, and aren't weapons." And they still kill more than guns. The point that you are missing is not "we should regulate cars"; it's that you are being a horrible judge of risk, as humans are want to do. "

haha are you joking right now...? I can't tell if you're just trying to troll, or if you believe what you're saying.

Quote :

" And blaming guns doesn't get us anywhere closer to fixing it. "

It does actually. Any number of statistics and studies prove this. It's not really in the best interest of the NRA or their advocates to care about studies or proof or rationality though.

3/3/2014 11:54:45 PM

Quote :

"To be clear, you're the one ignoring words in the text, to fit your own meaning. You're outright dismissing words that you find uncomfortable. But, i've already addressed this point in my previous post."

Bullshit, I'm not "ignoring words". You're ignoring their construction, which matters just as much as the words themselves. What part of the 2nd amendment, grammatically, makes the right of gun ownership contingent upon participation in he militia? I'll wait, because surely you can diagram the sentence to show it.

Quote :

"haha are you joking right now...? I can't tell if you're just trying to troll, or if you believe what you're saying."

So you have no response. You are being hysterical about one inanimate object while ignoring the much greater daily risks posed by another. I'd say that's being a horrible judge of risk.

Quote :

"It does actually."

Except it doesn't. And no amount of misleading and trumped up statistics will change that fact.

3/4/2014 12:13:28 AM

Quote :

"So you have no response. You are being hysterical about one inanimate object while ignoring the much greater daily risks posed by another. I'd say that's being a horrible judge of risk. "

There's 60 pages in this thread, if you don't understand why your comparison of guns and cars is deeply flawed, and borderline idiotic, there's no amount of explanation or education that can help you.

Quote :

"Except it doesn't. And no amount of misleading and trumped up statistics will change that fact. "

You are a known science denier, I don't expect you to understand the science in this case either. You're more interesting as a specimen of the typical American, and how they respond to factual information. In the absence of being able to actually inform people like you, politicians might be better off trying to isolate or contain you, I'd guess.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2012/12/firearm-OECD-UN-data3.jpg

3/4/2014 12:23:59 AM

Quote :

"There's 60 pages in this thread, if you don't understand why your comparison of guns and cars is deeply flawed, and borderline idiotic, there's no amount of explanation or education that can help you."

Beautiful poisoning of the well; no actual argument. The length of a thread doesn't support your argument in any way.

Quote :

"You are a known science denier,"

Godwin's law and ad hominem. Can you even make a post without resorting to logical fallacies?

That's a pretty graph, what's your point? At least you're getting only into murder rates now. And then you exclude Mexico. Care to keep posting misleading statistics?

3/4/2014 12:30:56 AM

^ the point is that you are not able to assimilate new information. You and I both are perfectly well aware that cars are used more often than guns, but when controlled for usage, gun deaths are significantly higher. Even without controlling for this, gun deaths and car deaths in the us are very near each other. But rather than accept the reality that we have a gun death problem in the us, you trot out the vacuous and pedantic cliche that more people die from cars so let's ban cars. This would have been an interesting argument if we were both in middle school. But it doesn't hold water against any reasonable thought. It demeans us both, perhaps me more than you, for this idiotic statement of yours to be addressed 60 pages into this thread.

3/4/2014 12:55:20 AM

Damn. Chile straight keepin' it gangsta.

3/4/2014 1:11:57 AM

If cars are just like guns then maybe gun owners should have to purchase liability insurance also.

3/4/2014 1:15:33 AM

^^^ At least you tried to get back to making actual points instead of name calling... But then you just went back to name calling. You started to see that it's not only the number of deaths that matter, but you still completely fail to grasp the point, because you continue to point to the number of deaths. You keep making the points regarding "gun deaths," but as long as you include suicides and accidents in that data, which every single person making pro-gun-control arguments does, it tells me you aren't going to be honest. The fact is that we have a violence problem, not a gun violence problem. You have the mistaken belief that getting rid of guns fixes the violence problem, despite countless studies showing that taking away guns doesn't reduce violence. You post graphs of gun violence comparing the US, which has millions upon millions of guns, to countries which have effectively made guns illegal, and then act shocked that guns are used more in the US than elsewhere, and then ignore other statistics of crime rates in those countries. You continuously ignore that a small fraction of the population is committing the violence, mostly with illegally purchased weapons which would never be hit by any law (by definition), while the overwhelming majority of gun owners are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who never misuse a weapon. That's why you have to include suicides and accidents in your skewed statistics: because you can't make a valid point as to why additional laws are needed on already law-abiding citizens unless you include deaths that most normal people wouldn't consider "violence related."

If tougher gun laws made things perfect, then Chicago would be heaven on earth. Instead, you live in a fantasy world where you snap your fingers and guns magically disappear. Meanwhile, those of us in reality see that tons of gun laws here haven't solved a thing, and every new proposal so far continues to trample on the rights of legal, non-criminal gun owners, while doing absolutely nothing to curb violence. You focus intently on an inanimate object that is used in violence and play Polyanna, sticking your thumb up your ass with the fanciful belief that if we just get rid of those evil guns, no one will ever hurt anyone ever again and we'll all live happily ever after. Reality begs to differ.

Why should I listen to any proposal that is spawned from the horrors of Newtown, but which would have done nothing to prevent Newtown from happening in the first place? Every single existing CT gun law was broken in that case, yet, you propose that new ones, ones that wouldn't have even touched this scenario, would have made a difference. Maybe we just need to make a law that makes it illegal to break a law... Surely that will fix everything!

^ when the 2nd amendment no longer says "shall not be infringed," then we'll get to that.

3/4/2014 1:41:48 AM

Quote :

"Damn. Chile straight keepin' it gangsta."

Mexico would be higher than the U.S. on that list, but the chart creators purposefully left them off

[Edited on March 4, 2014 at 6:58 AM. Reason : b/c Mexico has some pretty strict gun control laws]

3/4/2014 6:57:40 AM

I found a chart with Mexico added.

Oh shit the US is still high!

3/4/2014 8:49:52 AM

^ lol

3/4/2014 12:13:05 PM

If anybody can look at that graph and not conclude that gun deaths in america are a big problem and should be addressed, then they're being willfully igorant.

Wonder how bad Mexico and other South American countries would look and how the U.S. would compare if that was a graph of vehicle deaths per 100,000 people? I imagine one might conclude that some countries need to have regulations on vehicles similar to the U.S.'s.

aaronburro seriously is the worst.

3/4/2014 12:30:47 PM

Way not to read anything I posted and just spout the same bullshit talking points. If the only thing you focus on is gun deaths, then you are missing the big picture, and you wind up blaming inanimate objects for larger societal problems.

3/7/2014 12:24:10 AM

You are right about none of us wanting to read anything you write

3/7/2014 6:06:20 AM

Quote :

"If the only thing you focus on is gun deaths, then you are missing the big picture, and you wind up blaming inanimate objects for larger societal problems."

Nobody is solely blaming guns for our unproportional amount of gun injuries and deaths It's not as black and white as you always seem to try to make any issue. You seem to miss the fact that guns are inanimate objects that are designed to kill, and they make killing a person, and especially a large group of people much easier than using most other inanimate objects. Yeah, larger societal issues like mental health treatment and the short-comings of our justice system are a larger problem and need to be addressed, but guns (which are designed to kill) greatly exacerbate these problems and can't be overlooked as insignificant.

3/7/2014 10:31:39 AM

Let's just watch the felonies stack up in RI and CT shall we?

[Edited on March 7, 2014 at 11:25 PM. Reason : -]

3/7/2014 11:24:29 PM

No, I'm not trying to make any point with this post, except who forgets to check for random guns before donating clothes?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/07/chicago-thrift-store-worker-killed-by-gun-hidden-in-donated-clothing/?intcmp=latestnews

3/8/2014 11:38:51 AM

This chart is silly.

1) Why do pro-gun control folks insist on demonstrating relationships between firearms and firearm homocide, rather than overall homicide? The former is a tautology.

2) This particular graph doesn't even show that-- it only demonstrates that the US is an outlier. If more gun ownership meant more homicide, Canada, Switzerland, and Scandinavian countries would be Chile-esque

3) Selecting for wealthy nations concedes the fact that violence rates have much more to do with socioeconomic factors than availability of weapons.

4) Comparisons between countries ignore culture/history geography; why not comparisons between states?



[Edited on March 8, 2014 at 3:26 PM. Reason : ]

3/8/2014 3:14:07 PM

>criticizes graph for ignoring socioeconomic factors
>posts graph that ignores socioeconomic factors



[Edited on March 8, 2014 at 3:32 PM. Reason : at least he posted a source for his graph, you can't even begin to analyze yours]

3/8/2014 3:28:17 PM

Quote :

">criticizes graph for ignoring socioeconomic factors >posts graph that ignores socioeconomic factors"

I criticized the graph for selecting for socioeconomic factors. All 50 states are represented in my graph.

Quote :

"at least he posted a source for his graph, you can't even begin to analyze yours"

Take your pick:

https://www.google.com/search?q=gun+ownership+correlation+to+%22overall+homicide%22+rates&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=54QbU7e4IqL20gH32YDwBw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg&biw=1795&bih=891

[Edited on March 8, 2014 at 4:04 PM. Reason : ]

3/8/2014 4:00:59 PM

^^^

The bar graph isn't to recommend policy, it's to show there's a unique problem in the United States with crime. It's one of the many ways we're exceptional.

That scatter plot is really, really bad statistics too. The single outlier throws off the fit, otherwise the trends look flat for everything but robbery (which would likely have confounding variables for percentage of the population that owns guns). My preceding sentence is also bad statistics. There is more to a statistical analysis than putting something in excel in doing an auto fit.

[Edited on March 8, 2014 at 5:28 PM. Reason : ]

3/8/2014 5:26:56 PM

Quote :

"The bar graph isn't to recommend policy"

Erm.

Quote :

"That scatter plot is really, really bad statistics too. The single outlier throws off the fit"

Welcome to every chart comparing US gun homicides to the rest of the world, ever.

Quote :

"otherwise the trends look flat for everything but robbery"

Flat is "no correlation." You win-- there's no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime rates.

3/8/2014 6:29:08 PM

do you need a graph to see that violent crimes committed with guns turn out worse for the victims than violent crimes without guns, more often than not?

3/8/2014 6:37:08 PM

^ So... we're to turn to hypotheticals now, rather than the data?

I'm looking at homicide rates. Are we to believe that gun homicides are worse than other homicides?

[Edited on March 8, 2014 at 6:58 PM. Reason : ]

3/8/2014 6:44:41 PM

it's not really a hypothetical, it's common sense. it's much easier and quicker for the average person to kill with a gun as opposed to their fists, or even a knife. especially to kill multiple people. and yes, I'm aware of the recent knife attack in China, that was carried out by an unknown number of assailants. one or two automatic weapon wielding assailants could of carried out the same attack. (and to be clear, I'm not against gun ownership, i'm just being realistic)

3/8/2014 7:44:16 PM

Again-- I'm looking at homicide rates.

You're looking at something else.

3/8/2014 8:01:20 PM

^^^^^ you can't really determine that from what you posted :-/

We can determine that we as a country and culture have a problem with gun deaths.

3/8/2014 9:49:09 PM

Quote :

"Welcome to every chart comparing US gun homicides to the rest of the world, ever."

ahahahahaha. btw, where the hell did Boone come from? Last I checked, I thought he was a raging liberal.

^ no, we have a problem with violence. We don't have a problem with an inanimate object. And look, we're back to "gun deaths", because the we can include suicides and accidents.

3/8/2014 10:51:31 PM

I'm still very liberal. Liberals advocate for expanded liberty.

I lump Bloomberg and Feinstein in with Santorum and Palin.

3/9/2014 9:33:35 AM

ok, so you're classically liberal (AKA, smart). I guess I just figured when you were wailing against Dubya back in the day that you were a card-carrying Democrat.

3/9/2014 3:21:05 PM

^^^

We have a problem both with guns and with violence, yes.

3/9/2014 5:59:16 PM

^ what problem is it that we would have because of guns if there was no violence problem? Noise complaints?

3/9/2014 6:29:27 PM

^ do you just ignore all current events or something?
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/19/study-repeal-missouri-background-check-contributed/?page=all

I like your insinuation too that we should just ignore all crime related issues that don't deal with "eliminating violence".

[Edited on March 9, 2014 at 6:40 PM. Reason : ]

3/9/2014 6:36:27 PM

no, moron, we only have a problem with violence.

3/9/2014 6:40:19 PM

Lol

3/9/2014 6:48:56 PM

^^^That study is ridiculous.

Quote :

"Lead author Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research"

That's the "Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center for Gun Policy and Research," FYI: http://www.jhsph.edu/ .

Webster and Hemenway are the equivalent of the climate change-denying professors on Exxon's payroll. They haven't actually released their data yet (http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/repeal-of-missouris-background-law-associated-with-increase-in-states-murders.html), so we're left to wonder how they managed to get these results.

Here's the raw data, though:



Here's MO compared to surrounding states:



They seem to be focusing solely on the change from 2007 to 2008. Which of course would be dishonest. And of course they're only looking at gun violence.

P.S. the Missouri law in question was a Jim Crow law. Just like NC's still extant handgun law, it required that citizens go to the sheriff and prove that they were of upstanding moral character. You can imagine how that went for black people. Today, it's just a source of income for the sheriff's dept-- certainly not a violence prevention measure.




[Edited on March 9, 2014 at 7:18 PM. Reason : ]

3/9/2014 7:15:03 PM

Quote :

"Webster and Hemenway are the equivalent of the climate change-denying professors on Exxon's payroll. They haven't actually released their data yet (http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/repeal-of-missouris-background-law-associated-with-increase-in-states-murders.html), so we're left to wonder how they managed to get these results. "

The link you posted indicates their results are going to be published in an upcoming journal. You're framing it as if they are being recalcitrant. That's very Glenn Beckian of you.

And the "raw data" you linked does indicate a mulitivariate relationship with gun crimes. If their thesis is isolating the relationship between gun laws and gun crimes, why would they look at anything else? I'm not saying what they did was perfect, I don't know, but nothing you posted demonstrates any type of impropriety.

3/9/2014 8:59:36 PM

Quote :

"Webster and Hemenway are the equivalent of the climate change-denying professors on Exxon's payroll. They haven't actually released their data yet"

So they're more like the pro-AGW climate scientists, then?

3/9/2014 11:16:55 PM

Quote :

"The single outlier throws off the fit"

moron now joins the ranks of dtownral among users whose ever word can be discounted-

(if he wasnt already there this makes it official)

maybe youll have better luck than him in chit chat?

3/10/2014 2:06:40 AM

Ha I guess I'll walk away shamefully if TSBs most respected user says so...

3/10/2014 2:12:29 AM

Snark all you want, really.

3/10/2014 2:56:22 AM

Quote :

"Here's the raw data, though:"

no its not, they state that they are only looking at murders with firearms (which isn't dishonest like you imply):

Quote :

"murders in Missouri committed with a firearm"

also, you need a source for your raw data. they are using UCR data between 1999-2012



[Edited on March 10, 2014 at 9:01 AM. Reason : source?]

3/10/2014 8:58:16 AM

Quote :

"they state that they are only looking at murders with firearms (which isn't dishonest like you imply)"

It's dishonest if their research is intended to have any policy implications, which I assume it is, given that they're the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center for Gun Policy and Research.

Focusing only on firearm-related death avoids the question of whether firearm ownership has any deterrent effect on violent crime, and does nothing to inform policy. We're concerned with murder-- not murder by certain means. Could you tell me why it's preferable from a policy perspective to ignore overall homicide rates?

Quote :

"also, you need a source for your raw data. they are using UCR data between 1999-2012"

So is my chart-- compare: http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_04.html

Only my chart isn't doing things like selecting for firearm death and controlling for overall homicide rates (not even ignoring-- literally controlling for the thing that's most pertinent to the debate), like Webster and Hemenway are known to do.

3/10/2014 12:25:15 PM

Speaking of outliers if you take out the US from the statistics, in first world countries more guns correlates with less homicide, from way back on page 24:

http://thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=633422&page=24#15662679

3/10/2014 12:42:44 PM

Quote :

"It's dishonest if their research is intended to have any policy implications, which I assume it is, given that they're the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center for Gun Policy and Research. "

not if their research is intended to investigate the connection between the changes in gun laws and gun murder and violence which happens to be what they explicitly state.

Quote :

"Focusing only on firearm-related death avoids the question of whether firearm ownership has any deterrent effect on violent crime, and does nothing to inform policy. We're concerned with murder-- not murder by certain means. Could you tell me why it's preferable from a policy perspective to ignore overall homicide rates?"

this is making the assumption that homicide method is interchangeable, and you certainly haven't shown that to be true.

guns are the weapon in the majority of homicides, so policy dealing with guns is certainly one worthy avenue among others if your goal to reduce total homicides

your problem is that you are assuming a conclusion that they are not making, then making your own assumption (without support) to criticize your own conclusion that you have assumed they make


[Edited on March 10, 2014 at 2:55 PM. Reason : ,]

3/10/2014 2:52:48 PM

Quote :

"not if their research is intended to investigate the connection between the changes in gun laws and gun murder and violence which happens to be what they explicitly state. "

Their headline: "Repeal of Missouri's Background Check Law Associated with Increase in State's Murders." Note that they don't modify the word "murder"

Their first paragraph: "Missouri's 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgun law, which required all handgun purchasers to obtain a license verifying that they have passed a background check, contributed to a sixteen percent increase in Missouri's murder rate." Again, no modifier.

It's not until the fourth paragraph do they mention that the dependent variable is firearm related murder: "The increase in murders with firearms in Missouri began in the first full year after the PTP handgun law was repealed"

They then go on to use the two variables interchangeably. Wouldn't you expect more-precise language from researchers?

Quote :

"this is making the assumption that homicide method is interchangeable, and you certainly haven't shown that to be true."

If studies only select for firearm homicide, we'll never know the degree to which methods of homicide are interchangeable.

Quote :

"guns are the weapon in the majority of homicides, so policy dealing with guns is certainly one worthy avenue among others if your goal to reduce total homicides"

Again-- could you tell me the merit in researching gun control measures' effects on firearm violence, rather than overall violence? If one variable's as easy to research as the other, why would you avoid the one that most-directly addresses the question everyone wants to know?

And if you'd like to defend controlling for overall homicide rates, that'd be great, too.




[Edited on March 10, 2014 at 6:36 PM. Reason : ]

3/10/2014 6:34:31 PM

clearly, the only gun problem in America is that not enough people have guns!

3/10/2014 7:47:44 PM

theyre gonna fix that in new england, just watch

3/10/2014 8:24:41 PM

bttt for the best gun salesman in the country



[Edited on March 12, 2014 at 9:47 AM. Reason : image post fail]

3/12/2014 9:46:23 AM

Quote :

"Wouldn't you expect more-precise language from researchers?"

its a press release, so this is exactly the precision you should expect. your complaints are about your own conclusion you are drawing, not theirs.

Quote :

"Again-- could you tell me the merit in researching gun control measures' effects on firearm violence, rather than overall violence? If one variable's as easy to research as the other, why would you avoid the one that most-directly addresses the question everyone wants to know?"

if speed is the cause of traffic accident fatalities in the majority of cases*, then research into things that effect speeding is worthwhile even if it ignores other factors. other studies can look at other factors, and those will be helpful too, but that doesn't mean that looking at the largest cause is not helpful. if only all-encompassing meta-studies that review every possible factor are worthwhile, then we have almost no worthwhile academic literature on pretty much any subject.

can you seriously not understand that?

(*i'm just making this up, no need to argue about if its true. its probably not)


[Edited on March 12, 2014 at 11:36 AM. Reason : *]

3/12/2014 11:33:15 AM