The News Thread

[Dak]

Rapes just make the headlines because of the gender and feminism angles. Robberies, thefts, assaults... all of these have significant under-reported numbers too.

I'd like some links to counter mine. There are two types of underreporting: Underreporting by victims and underreporting by police/agencies. Underreporting by victims is generally assessed by confidence levels in the justice system. The US undeniably beats (or at the absolute very least of argumentative quibble ties) the UK in this measure. Based on expose's of the UK systemic issues, the US beats the UK on systemic issues as well. Furthermore, much of the US underreporting is in areas of significant gun restrictions, where violent crime (much of it drug related) and unproductive gun restrictions have gone hand in hand for some time now.

 

[Einherjar86]

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf

 

[Dak]

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf

From 1994 to 2010, the percentage of serious violent
crime—rape or sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated
assault—that was not reported to police declined from 50%
to 42%.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/bcs25.pdf

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/people-politics-law/politics-policy-people/society-matters/race-and-hate-crime-go-unreported-because-people-believe-police-will-do-little

The level of reporting has declined from 51 per cent since the 2007/8 and 2008/9 combined surveys. The report found that the most common reason victims give for not reporting hate crime to the police was because they felt the police could not or would not do much about it.

2010 might have been a shortlived high point.

 

[Dak]

I indicated before that I don't believe that a simple "more guns=less crimes" causation can be drawn, but the converse is definitely not possible. Unfortunately for progressives, every non "ban guns" option to combat crime is increasingly "unprogressive", and so they MUST stick to the anti gun "cannons" to save their sanity.

 

[Einherjar86]

I've stumbled across those, and also this:

https://dispellingthemythukvsusguns.wordpress.com/

 

[Dak]

That blogger did an admirable job trying to compare reporting qualifications, but failed to take into account admitted official qualification issues:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1222138/Crime-figures-One-violent-incidents-classified-police-crime.html

The percentage of attacks wrongly classified as 'no crimes' was 35.7 per cent. Police have now been instructed to re- open the investigations. A full review into the practice will now take place.

Not even a misqualification of crimes to other types of crimes but simply moved from crime to "no crime". Furthermore:

http://www.theendrun.com/larry-pratt-british-gun-crime-stats-a-sham

Britain’s justice officials have also kept crime totals down by being careful about what to count.

“American homicide rates are based on initial data, but British homicide rates are based on the final disposition.” Suppose that three men kill a woman during an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because of problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are eventually dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person homicide, but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. “With such differences in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide rates is a sham,” the report concludes.

Is there any corroboration for this charge? Yes. In an article published years ago, which is still online at their website, Larry Pratt’s organization, Gun Owners of America, not only references the above-quoted article, but also numerous articles published by the Telegraph between 1996 and 2000 with headlines such as:

“Police figures under-record offences by 20 percent”
“Police are accused of fiddling crime data”
Quoting from these articles, They noted the following:

Sgt. Mike Bennett says officers have become increasingly frustrated with the practice of manipulating statistics. “The crime figures are meaningless,” he said. “Police everywhere know exactly what is going on.”
“Officers said the recorded level of crime bore no resemblance to the actual amount of crime being committed.”
See also: “Police fail to report 1.4m crimes”, Jason Bennetto, The Independent, 1 Aug 2000

But that’s only through 2000. Has this problem gone away in recent years? No. An article published by The Telegraph in 2008 explained how “the true level of gun crime” is (still) “far higher than the Government admits in official statistics”:

Figures to be published by the Home Office this week will massively understate the scale of the problem.

Data provided to The Sunday Telegraph by nearly every police force in England and Wales, under freedom of information laws, show that the number of firearms incidents dealt with by officers annually is 60 per cent higher than figures stated by the Home Office.

The blog goes one. Shit from the UK simply isn't as clean as Herr Blogger wishes. Furthermore, even if we wish to claim that the US data isn't clean either (to an equal degree), it more likely comes from anti-gun bureaucratic havens, also not amenable to anti-gun legislative salves.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/18/police-dismiss-one-in-four-sex-crimes-watchdog

The police are failing to record more than 800,000 offences, including a quarter of all sexual crimes, reported to them by the public each year, according to a damning official inquiry.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary says it is an indefensible failure by the police to properly record the equivalent of 19% of the total official police recorded crime rate, and including a third of all violent crime.

 

[Einherjar86]

That's interesting. These patterns of misqualification and recategorization raise as many questions as they answer, which is the reason for my continued skepticism.

 

[Dak]

That's interesting. These patterns of misqualification and recategorization raise as many questions as they answer, which is the reason for my continued skepticism.

I was exaggerating when I said 5 times, but I don't think it was a great exaggeration. As I said a short time ago, it's not completely clear that gun liberties reduce crime, but there's certainly no basis for an argument that lack thereof reduces crime. "Mass shootings" get airtime like shark attacks, but in reality neither thing is something worthy of the fear it generates, relative to other dangers.

I've recently grown tired of an "argument" that plays out something like this on Facebook and other social media sites:

P1: "Guns are a terrible and constant danger and need to be banned/more heavily regulated!"

P2: "I'd like to keep access to guns for self defense"

P1: "lolol look at this paranoid pussy. What are you scared of? We are safer than we have ever been."

 

[Einherjar86]

My concerns revolve around the question of guns in relation to violent crime, not just gun violence; you and rms (and maybe others) have already addressed this. rms pointed out that the correlation is between guns and gun violence, and you countered that it's a pretty pointless claim that less guns means less gun violence (obviously this would be true, but there are other forms of violence).

My concern would focus on what exactly we mean by "violent crime," and what kinds there are, which some of the above links help to clarify. However, I also have some lingering issues. First of all, gun violence is often associated with mortality rates; in other words, when guns enter the situation the threat of mortality goes up significantly. Obviously there are episodes of gun violence wherein a gun delivers a non-life-threatening wound, but the probability of mortality goes up.

In situations where someone explicitly wants to cause harm, that person will find a way, absolutely - sharp object, blunt object, other kind of object, etc. The pro-gun argument goes that a gun would protect someone from an attacker with a knife; but it is also much easier to defend oneself against an attacker with a knife even without a gun than it is to defend oneself against an attacker with a gun (I'm not saying it is easy by any means; but the probability of mortality goes down - p.s. I don't have numbers, I'm making intuitive inductions).

Then there are situations in which no bodily harm is intended, such as property crimes. The pro-gun argument goes that if the victim had a gun he or she could have defend his or her property.

All of these arguments are fine, but my point is simply that the threat of mortality increases when guns are introduced into the situation. Mental and physical harm may still result from non-life-threatening wounds or property crimes, but many of these cases don't result in death; yet we still define them as violent crimes (rightfully so, admittedly). So my focus here is on the likelihood of death as opposed to the likelihood of crime itself.

The argument against this would be a kind of reductio ad absurbum: that the situation would result in a free-for-all of property crimes in which no one can protect their stuff against armed criminals. This is a fair point, albeit somewhat extreme; but there are also other institutional responses to the problem that don't involve arming citizens to protect themselves. Ultimately, there's going to be violence in any organized society. It doesn't follow from the premises above that decreasing the amount of guns would inevitably lead to more crime. People commit crimes for a variety of reasons, a minimal amount of which involve whimsy; in other words, most people who commit crimes will commit them whether citizens are armed or not. Institutional deterrence, for all intents and purposes, appears as effective as private gun ownership.

Of course, it may be that private citizens can take care of themselves better than police who arrive thirty minutes after the crime is committed; but now you have the issue of assessing the situation from the other angle. What I mean is, if a private citizen successfully defends herself from an attacker, and shoots that attacker dead, then what does she do? Leave the body? No, I assume some report will be filed; in which case the police will ask what happen, in which case it will be the "victim's" word against her "attacker." And suddenly we find ourselves back in a situation of uncertainty and potential liability.

It's easy to take our definitions of "criminal" and "victim" as absolute and stable; but it's when we begin making concessions that these definitions can be exploited. Obviously that's happening already to the extent that we're offering possibly excessive apologies to criminal behavior; but it can just as easily happen in the other direction if criminal prevention is placed in the hands of private citizens, and it will not necessarily always be the case that the person holding her wallet and the smoking gun is the "victim."

 

[Dak]

All of these arguments are fine, but my point is simply that the threat of mortality increases when guns are introduced into the situation.

That's a feature, not a bug.

Institutional deterrence, for all intents and purposes, appears as effective as private gun ownership.

I'm not sure exactly what institutional deterrents you had in mind, but crime focused things like Broken Window Policing haven't been met with any greater enthusiasm.

At the other end of the spectrum you have welfare sometimes framed as an "anticrime" economic initiative, but it's quite expensive.

it will not necessarily always be the case that the person holding her wallet and the smoking gun is the "victim."

This is true, but is this really common enough to warrant a position of concern? A quote from one of Burroughs' work (that my sig also came from) which has been circulated in the last few years to the point where I really hate to bring it up, still captures the sentiment of your average gun-owning American: "After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it."

And who takes the guns? People with guns. I know, I know, we need to just be able talk about "smart regulation" (I don't know why smart has to be tacked on - who is going to say they are in favor of dumb regulation?): Yet no smart regulation is offered. We already have background checks. Do we need to run Social Media checks?

 

[Einherjar86]

That's a feature, not a bug.

That depends purely on your expectations as to how something should work.

I'm not sure exactly what institutional deterrents you had in mind, but crime focused things like Broken Window Policing haven't been met with any greater enthusiasm.

At the other end of the spectrum you have welfare sometimes framed as an "anticrime" economic initiative, but it's quite expensive.

I don't have anything specific in mind. I just mean that I don't think crime would be affected whether we armed every citizen or relied upon some form of systematic deterrent. You might say that people have the option to defend themselves if armed - but that doesn't reduce violence, merely redirects it.

This is true, but is this really common enough to warrant a position of concern? A quote from one of Burroughs' work (that my sig also came from) which has been circulated in the last few years to the point where I really hate to bring it up, still captures the sentiment of your average gun-owning American: "After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it."

The point is that if you reverse the situation there would be no way to know. There would just be more dead bodies.

I also don't put much stock in Burroughs's political opinions. The guy very likely shot his wife while staging a William Tell act. He saw guns as a fun pastime. I don't really share his political views; he's a fearful dystopianist, like Orwell before him. Great writer, though.

And who takes the guns? People with guns. I know, I know, we need to just be able talk about "smart regulation" (I don't know why smart has to be tacked on - who is going to say they are in favor of dumb regulation?): Yet no smart regulation is offered. We already have background checks. Do we need to run Social Media checks?

I'm not advocating that anyone take guns away. I'm just arguing against injecting more of them, especially in institutional spaces such as hospitals, schools, etc.

 

[Dak]

The point is that if you reverse the situation there would be no way to know. There would just be more dead bodies.

More, or different?

I'm not advocating that anyone take guns away. I'm just arguing against injecting more of them, especially in institutional spaces such as hospitals, schools, etc.

Despite being pro-gun as it were, I'm not saying we should forcibly arm everyone to the teeth (for example, arming teachers that wish not to handle guns is stupid). But I think people should be able to decide the level of protection they think they need. I think smart policy, if we are going to be subsidizing shit left and right, would be to provide free annual firearm/safety/response training for people who wish to utilize it.

 

[Einherjar86]

More, or different?

Um... both?

Despite being pro-gun as it were, I'm not saying we should forcibly arm everyone to the teeth (for example, arming teachers that wish not to handle guns is stupid). But I think people should be able to decide the level of protection they think they need. I think smart policy, if we are going to be subsidizing shit left and right, would be to provide free annual firearm/safety/response training for people who wish to utilize it.

Well, I'm not sure. Being as general as possible, I think access to firearms should be carefully regulated and I'm not sure how exactly "free" training would be. Can it be done? Probably... but it introduces new possibilities for potential criminals.

 

[Dak]

Um... both?

In the finite amount of outcomes for attempted assault/burglary, putting guns in the hands of the potential victims swings the balance of power from 100% with the prospective criminal to hopefully at least even for the potential victim. The odds are undeniably better. If arming the populace increases deaths because a lot of criminals and a few less, or even a few more victims died (hard to know if it's actually more, due to the unknown negative outcomes prevented via successful self defense), I see that as a clear positive.

Well, I'm not sure. Being as general as possible, I think access to firearms should be carefully regulated and I'm not sure how exactly "free" training would be.

Free as food stamps lol.

Can it be done? Probably... but it introduces new possibilities for potential criminals.

Nah, they have the military for that.

 

[Einherjar86]

In the finite amount of outcomes for attempted assault/burglary, putting guns in the hands of the potential victims swings the balance of power from 100% with the prospective criminal to hopefully at least even for the potential victim. The odds are undeniably better. If arming the populace increases deaths because a lot of criminals and a few less, or even a few more victims died (hard to know if it's actually more, due to the unknown negative outcomes prevented via successful self defense), I see that as a clear positive.

This just circles back to my point about the uncertainty in the aftermath of violent incidents. It starts to look like the Wild West.

Free as food stamps lol.

I'm not sure why I put "free" in quotes. I wasn't emphasizing the economics of it, I was prefacing my comment on making it safe.

Nah, they have the military for that.

Ha, you're right. And when free firearm training becomes a thing, you can bet they'll go straight there. Beats having to join the military.

 

[Dak]

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/08/25/homeschooling-in-boston/

The Boston Public Schools, meanwhile, have begun to view homeschooling as one of the many laboratories in which it can explore new teaching methods. “These people are looking to do instructive, nontraditional education. It’s all different types of people from all incomes,” says Freddie Fuentes, the executive director of educational options for Boston Public Schools. Fuentes, who personally helps parents with academic plans, finds that many homeschooling parents want “very deep, expeditionary learning” for their children. “A lot of them are looking at innovative ways of learning,” he says. “We as a school system need to think about innovation and the cutting edge.”

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

Obama Preparing More Executive Actions on Gun Control:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...bama-preparing-executive-actions-gun-control/

-------------

And another interesting piece from NR: Irrelevant Gun Control, again it's a little dated, but whatever ...

Since he was reelected to presidency in 2012, Barrack Obama has been trying sporadically to sell gun control. His plan has three parts. He would like to prohibit all American fro purchasing modern semi-automatic sporting rifles, which he calls "assault weapons"; he would like to limit the size of magazines that are commercial available; and he would like to force the states to run background checks on any consumer who obtains a firearm form a private seller or friend. In the wake of the double murder that shook Roanoke in August, the president reiterated his commitment to these proposals. In this he was joined by the governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, and the democratic party's presumptive 2016 presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.

In and of themselves, Obamas coveted policies are difficult to justify. Despite the prominent role they play within the gun-control debate, "assault weapons" are used so rarely in crimes that no records are kept.Because they are passed by most mass shooters-"universal background checks" are of questionable practical use, except perhaps as a back door to gun registration. There is little to love in Obama's agenda here.

As a specific response to the shooting in Virginia, his approach is even worse. In that case, the shooter bought a standard handgun--not an "assault weapon" by any description. He passed a background check and submitted to a waiting period. And he did not use a large number of bullets or reload. Indeed, at no point did the shooter's conduct so much as intersect with the reforms that American are told are necessary in order to forestall future tragedies. Typically, defenders of the right to keep and bear arms observe caustically that in a country of 350 million guns, those who are determined to kill will almost always be able to do so regardless of the contours of the law. They are correct, of course. But that case does not need to be adumbrated here. Had every single one of president Obama's rules been in place, this murder would have gone down identically.

If they were serious about reducing violence in America, the more vocal denizens of the gun-control movement would likely refrain from tinkering impotently around the edges of a much-cherished constitutional right, and instead look into the neglected question of mental-health reform. They might propose that anybody who has reasonable cause to believe that he is providing someone who poses and imminent danger to others with access to a weapon be liable for prosecution. They might insist that to have prior knowledge that a person represent such threat is to have a legal responsibility to inform the authorities. They might look into the connection between lax commitment laws, an absence of necessary medication, and random acts of violence that we see on the news. Above all else, they might try to do a better job of tailoring their remedies to the illness at hand. Consistency can be a virtue in politics,but we should not mistake Pavlovian hysteria for credible public policy.

 

[rms]

I cannot take your long quote seriously as it is riddled with spelling errors like a 13 year old wrote it

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

... but you forgot to put a period at the end of your sentence there ... hurrdurdurudur.

Go tune in to your history channel documentaries bro. Now GIT!

 

[rms]

Who knew periods and other punctuation fell under spelling errors