If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

"violent incidents" means incidents that are violent

100 shootings that kill 1 person each is different than 1 person killing 100 people at one time. the obvious answer the left has to gun violence is 100 instances killing one is better than 1 instance killing 100.

If we look purely at that abstract example, then I understand the objection.

My point is that the proliferation of instruments that facilitate violence will lead to more incidents of violence. In the context of gun violence, the instrument also happens to result in more damage than, say, a knife. So the premise of 100 incidents with one death, versus one incident with 100 deaths, is counter-intuitive to the logic of this context:

i.e. Not only do guns lead to incidents in which more people are likely to be harmed than knife incidents; they also lead to more incidents overall.

if the assumption is that guns are more prone to self/accidental harm than knives, that's about the only difference

Actually, I would venture that intentional harm to others also increases when a particular instrument facilitates violence.

 

[Dak]

I've seen no data to suggest guns increase incidence of violence. They do seem to increase likelihood of success in a suicide attempt, but that's not an objectively bad thing.

 

[rms]

they also lead to more incidents overall.

what is your reasoning behind this, because this doesn't make sense

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Incidentally the CDC recently released data backig an old study showing more than a million reported defensive gun uses per year. Even with exaggeration that is substantial.

Link? There's a CDC study/studies I'm aware of that report between 20k and 40k defensive uses per year depending on the interval, but the million defensive uses one comes from a much more questionable source.

 

[Dak]

Well, I went back to pull the link and now I'm getting a "not found" error, where it was before:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3124326

Here's a Reason article on it:
http://reason.com/blog/2018/04/20/cdc-provides-more-evidence-that-plenty-o

Multiple articles linked to the same source but it's now down for some reason.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Very interesting, Kleck was the guy I was thinking of regarding the old 1mil/yr study, but I didn't know about this new finding. Apparently it was taken down temporarily to factor in that it wasn't technically a national survey but instead one of a dozen-odd states.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

The argument has been that knife attacks are less severe (possibly the case, depending on setting), or that somehow schools/children/society will become safer by removing the guns. Yet we see crime spiking in many civilized countries and everything from bombs to trucks to axes to knives being employed. Ultimately, people kill people, and we can't bubble wrap everything, or even afford to bubble wrap many things.

Spiking compared to what? The prosperous 90s marked by the end of a global bi-polar conflict which ushered in something of an era of good feeling, albeit brief, across the West? Oh wait, the Troubles didn't end until 1998. I'll admit the employment of trucks seems a rather recent development, and one which oddly seems to keep occurring in cities where I'm living, but I just wanted to point this out: these sorts of attacks aren't exactly new, and there's a case to be made that it was just is bad if not worse in Europe from the 60s until the late 90s. The rhetoric that everything was better yesterday really gets under my skin because, in fact, yesterday sucked.

In any case, I have zero interest in this debate. Yes, these attacks will happen with or without guns and they will also sometimes happen with guns when they're already banned. My support, however, of banning semi-automatic firearms from all other than very well trained individuals who must pay exorbitant fees if they want to tickle their little pecker has less to do with these sort of one-off attacks than it does with the everyday violence experienced by thousands of Americans across the country everyday.

 

[Dak]

Spiking compared to what? The prosperous 90s marked by the end of a global bi-polar conflict which ushered in something of an era of good feeling, albeit brief, across the West? Oh wait, the Troubles didn't end until 1998. I'll admit the employment of trucks seems a rather recent development, and one which oddly seems to keep occurring in cities where I'm living, but I just wanted to point this out: these sorts of attacks aren't exactly new, and there's a case to be made that it was just is bad if not worse in Europe from the 60s until the late 90s. The rhetoric that everything was better yesterday really gets under my skin because, in fact, yesterday sucked.

Well I'll be the first to agree that yesterday sucked, at any given point, for a variety of reasons. There's a rampant problem of presentism, which was likely also a problem yesterday, but has not improved. However, even if overall rates are low compared to historical numbers, I can find numerous articles about rising crime in Europe/GB over the last year. My point is that all of these articles on HuffPo et al whining "why can't we be more like Europe???!!" about everything shows a lack of awareness about both current and historical facts. It's not apples to apples to begin with, and Europe isn't a wonderland anyway.

In any case, I have zero interest in this debate. Yes, these attacks will happen with or without guns and they will also sometimes happen with guns when they're already banned. My support, however, of banning semi-automatic firearms from all other than very well trained individuals who must pay exorbitant fees if they want to tickle their little pecker has less to do with these sort of one-off attacks than it does with the everyday violence experienced by thousands of Americans across the country everyday.

"Little pecker" analogies can extend (heh) to many things, not only guns. SJWs love their pens and microphones. Wonder why? Semantic silliness aside, why the fixation on one off attacks? This is the same issue that drives people's greater fear of sharks than auto accidents (and contributes to the ongoing distracted driving issue). Texting while driving is far more broadly dangerous than owning a gun, yet we lack a "national movement" against that.

Back to guns, I've read a lot of criticisms of the old Lott study, which, even if it wasn't problematic, is now pretty old. The problem is that the opponents don't seem to be doing a better job at objective measurement, at least if the following is any indication:

https://www.thenation.com/article/actually-guns-do-kill-people/

The authors of this new paper have taken advantage of cutting-edge statistical techniques. They constructed synthetic control groups for states and used what’s known as a LASSO analysis to pick the best variables for comparison. The important thing to know about these methods is that, no matter the relative trade-offs of the statistical tool, the findings were consistent: When states passed right-to-carry laws, violent crime ended up higher than it would have been otherwise.

The report also found that a right to carry has no deterrent effect on property crimes. (Indeed, in some of the calculations, such crimes increased.) This lack of deterrence isn’t surprising, given that victims of violent crimes fail to defend themselves with a gun 99.2 percent of the time.

I'm not a stats wiz but I know a little something (I'll even stress the little qualifier). First of all they constructed synthetic controls, this raises a red flag as a process ripe for bias. Secondly they used LASSO, which is supposed to help reduce bias in predictor selection, but is not indicated for assessing predictor variables with multicollinearity, that is, predictors which correlate highly with each other, as it can dramatically reduce accuracy. But why would we expect no relation between crime related variables?

I thought it was interesting the writer mentioned that victims fail to defend themselves with a gun almost all the time. That's a statement emblematic of the poor scientific thought in writers. What is not asked is how often are people, who are carrying, victims? Effectively implying that guns don't provide protection for people who don't have them doesn't help make the writer's point.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Well I'll be the first to agree that yesterday sucked, at any given point, for a variety of reasons. There's a rampant problem of presentism, which was likely also a problem yesterday, but has not improved. However, even if overall rates are low compared to historical numbers, I can find numerous articles about rising crime in Europe/GB over the last year. My point is that all of these articles on HuffPo et al whining "why can't we be more like Europe???!!" about everything shows a lack of awareness about both current and historical facts. It's not apples to apples to begin with, and Europe isn't a wonderland anyway.

I can't say I'm surprised that with a quick Google search you can easily find numerous articles about rising crime today, as opposed to, say, the 70s

Europe certainly isn't a wonderland and just how wonderful it is differs greatly on the country in question, but they do get some things right and I think it's fair to question why the US doesn't occasionally to look to other developed countries for potential models for addressing our own social problems.

"Little pecker" analogies can extend (heh) to many things, not only guns. SJWs love their pens and microphones. Wonder why? Semantic silliness aside, why the fixation on one off attacks? This is the same issue that drives people's greater fear of sharks than auto accidents (and contributes to the ongoing distracted driving issue). Texting while driving is far more broadly dangerous than owning a gun, yet we lack a "national movement" against that.

I would hardly call the movement toward gun regulation a national movement, at least when compared with the very real movement against it. And while there's not necessarily a national movement against texting and driving, there are in fact public awareness campaigns which warn of its dangers and action at the state level intended to prevent it.

Back to guns, I've read a lot of criticisms of the old Lott study, which, even if it wasn't problematic, is now pretty old. The problem is that the opponents don't seem to be doing a better job at objective measurement, at least if the following is any indication:

https://www.thenation.com/article/actually-guns-do-kill-people/

I'm not a stats wiz but I know a little something (I'll even stress the little qualifier). First of all they constructed synthetic controls, this raises a red flag as a process ripe for bias. Secondly they used LASSO, which is supposed to help reduce bias in predictor selection, but is not indicated for assessing predictor variables with multicollinearity, that is, predictors which correlate highly with each other, as it can dramatically reduce accuracy. But why would we expect no relation between crime related variables?

I thought it was interesting the writer mentioned that victims fail to defend themselves with a gun almost all the time. That's a statement emblematic of the poor scientific thought in writers. What is not asked is how often are people, who are carrying, victims? Effectively implying that guns don't provide protection for people who don't have them doesn't help make the writer's point.

I need to get off here and torture myself with reading Kant in German, so I'll skip the article, but it's not the first time that I've heard that concealed carry does not actually prevent crime, and it's also something which I don't find at all surprising.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

The argument has been that knife attacks are less severe (possibly the case, depending on setting), or that somehow schools/children/society will become safer by removing the guns. Yet we see crime spiking in many civilized countries and everything from bombs to trucks to axes to knives being employed. Ultimately, people kill people, and we can't bubble wrap everything, or even afford to bubble wrap many things.

i think part of what's happening is where the shooter is completely convinced that no one is going to shoot back
think about it like this
if every school teacher was required to carry a gun to class every single day
(a thing people are actually proposing)
then when someone decides to shoot up a school
the teacher would shoot back
and the death toll would be just 2 instead of 20

 

[Einherjar86]

I've seen no data to suggest guns increase incidence of violence. They do seem to increase likelihood of success in a suicide attempt, but that's not an objectively bad thing.

I think there's evidence to suggest that developed countries with more guns tend to have more violent incidents than developed countries with fewer guns.

what is your reasoning behind this, because this doesn't make sense

My reasoning is that there are more guns per 100 people in the United States than there are in China. But even barring this statistic, why doesn't it make sense?

 

[Dak]

I can't say I'm surprised that with a quick Google search you can easily find numerous articles about rising crime today, as opposed to, say, the 70s

Europe certainly isn't a wonderland and just how wonderful it is differs greatly on the country in question, but they do get some things right and I think it's fair to question why the US doesn't occasionally to look to other developed countries for potential models for addressing our own social problems.

There's literally nothing about Europe that equivocates to the US other than a percentage of genetic relation. Geography, genetic/cultural heterogeneity, dispersion, wealth, etc. are all different, and these are all hugely relevant for policy. Plus Europe as a whole isn't even succeeding with the government addressing of social problems across time. There are a handful (IE 5ish) succeeding on the short term, with radically different geographic, dispersion, cultural, and genetic makeups.

I would hardly call the movement toward gun regulation a national movement, at least when compared with the very real movement against it. And while there's not necessarily a national movement against texting and driving, there are in fact public awareness campaigns which warn of its dangers and action at the state level intended to prevent it.

I'm talking about the Parkland shit shoved in our collective faces in the last couple of months.

I need to get off here and torture myself with reading Kant in German, so I'll skip the article, but it's not the first time that I've heard that concealed carry does not actually prevent crime, and it's also something which I don't find at all surprising.

Well, there are additional factors at play: Having the option to get a license doesn't mean people get one, and having a license doesn't mean people use it, and using it is a fraction of total existence within the other restrictions. I've had a permit for years and can't practically use it because on any given day A. I've gotta frequent a place a gun isn't allowed B. It's only allowed locked up in my vehicle. Why fucking bother? I literally only have it for distance travel, on a practical level, at this point. Or if I needed to go somewhere dangerous I wouldn't normally go. All of that to say that I wouldn't be surprised if CCW laws didn't lead to a measurable decrease in crime: Crime has a low baserate in 99% of places, guns are somewhat outlawed in the high crime places, and concealed carry is limited even with permit.

I think there's evidence to suggest that developed countries with more guns tend to have more violent incidents than developed countries with fewer guns.

https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/ever...tween-gun-ownership-and-homicide-1108ed400be5

This isn't "violent incidents" but....

 

[Einherjar86]

https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/ever...tween-gun-ownership-and-homicide-1108ed400be5

This isn't "violent incidents" but....

I can cite studies that suggest otherwise, including this one:

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/

I don't think it's worth getting into a pissing match over it. I just think it makes sense that more guns correlates to more violent incidents.

 

[rms]

My reasoning is that there are more guns per 100 people in the United States than there are in China. But even barring this statistic, why doesn't it make sense?

Stat doesn't really seem relevant but for your claim to be valid, you are asserting guns inherently make the average citizen more violent. And the average violent citizen almost certain to use it in a crime.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

 

[Einherjar86]

Stat doesn't really seem relevant but for your claim to be valid, you are asserting guns inherently make the average citizen more violent. And the average violent citizen almost certain to use it in a crime.

My original claim was that the proliferation of guns (i.e. their increase in number) will lead to a higher rate of violent incidents. So stats are relevant, since pointing to examples like the U.S. and China would seem to support my claim.

Now, there are exemptions to the claim. For example, Switzerland has way more guns per 100 people than China does, and yet they have a lower homicide rate. But China also has a much higher poverty rate, and Switzerland's guns are way more regulated. So there are intervening factors, of course.

All I was suggesting is that more guns do tend to result in a higher rate of violent crime (and Switzerland does in fact have a higher rate of gun crime than China, if I'm not mistaken).

 

[Dak]

Switzerland's guns are way more regulated [than China's].

I haven't looked up the laws in those countries but I find this hard to believe.

 

[Einherjar86]

Citizens in China simply don't have that many guns. Switzerland allows and encourages widespread gun ownership, but that ownership is strictly regulated and monitored.

 

[Dak]

Citizens in China simply don't have that many guns. Switzerland allows and encourages widespread gun ownership, but that ownership is strictly regulated and monitored.

Wouldn't restricted ownership be a part of regulation?

 

[Einherjar86]

Chinese regulation is virtually a ban. I distinguish bans from regulated ownership.