WTF is it with all the gun threads lately?

[SViper]

I had stopped contributing to this thread because the pro-gun arguments had gone full circle and ignored previous posts on the thread, but as this looks more interesting, I'll respond to it.

snip...

Thank you for your well-thought response.

I do agree with you that unless all violent crimes are went over with a fine-tooth comb, a lot of authors are going to use correlations to make statements. I am also a big proponent of the saying "correlation does not equal causation." The authors also make similar admonishments to their findings:

Thus both sides of the gun prohibition debate are likely
wrong in viewing the availability of guns as a major factor in
the incidence of murder in any particular society. Though
many people may still cling to that belief, the historical, geo‐
graphic, and demographic evidence explored in this Article
provides a clear admonishment. Whether gun availability is
viewed as a cause or as a mere coincidence, the long term
macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely
throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or
declining murder rates. Whether causative or not, the consis‐
tent international pattern is that more guns equal less mur‐
der and other violent crime. Even if one is inclined to think
that gun availability is an important factor, the available in‐
ternational data cannot be squared with the mantra that
more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less
death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data
consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns
equal less violent crime.**

The authors argue against the statement "More guns equal more crime; less guns equal less crime," which I think they make a good argument against it.

While it is a stretch to correlate the UK gun ban with violent crime, the paper they use as reference to the statement

Without suggesting this caused violence, the ban’s ineffective‐
ness was such that by the year 2000 violent crime had so in‐
creased that England and Wales had Europe’s highest violent
crime rate, far surpassing even the United States

is published by Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=187198). This paper only describes the hard numbers of violent crime, not their relation to the UK gun ban. John Lott and David Mustard made the correlation between the violent crime rates and the UK gun ban.

Something else I found interesting is that the US is pretty unique internationally in their gun control environment:

As indicated in the preceding footnote, the notion that more
guns reduce crime is highly controversial. What the contro‐
versy has obscured from view is the corrosive effect of the Lott
and Mustard work on the tenet that more guns equal more
murder. As previously stated, adoption of state laws permit‐
ting millions of qualified citizens to carry guns has not resulted
in more murder or violent crime in these states. Rather, adop‐
tion of these statutes has been followed by very significant re‐
ductions in murder and violence in these states.

and

In sum, though many nations with widespread gun ownership
have much lower murder rates than nations that severely restrict
gun ownership, it would be simplistic to assume that at all times
and in all places widespread gun ownership depresses violence by
deterring many criminals into nonconfrontation crime. There is
evidence that it does so in the United States, where defensive gun
ownership is a substantial socio‐cultural phenomenon.

 

[rudeguy]

For a first time or newer owner, I'd suggest the 19 over the 26. While the 26 comes with an extended magazine with the pinky grip, the 19 felt better in my hand and was still small enough to conceal and carry. I'd like to get a 26 also but will wait till I get my CC permit.

Couldn't find any shields local to me to try out.

I can't find a Shield either. With all the talk of them lately, I might have bought one of those instead of the CW9.

The G26/G19 debate is all personal preference. If I could only pick one, it would be the 26. Its dead on accurate even with a pinky hanging off. Now compare a 27 to a 23 and the 23 wins every battle. The 26 is concealable, accurate, reliable and downright sexy. The 19 is a damn good gun for someone who is confident enough to not worry if he is printing or not.

 

[HypX]

Geez...

I'm getting a headache reading this (and other) gun threads. There is so much misinformation and opinions based on fallacy it makes my head spin.

This should be a required reading for anyone posting in one of these threads: http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

It's a paper published at Harvard Law called

WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE?

A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AND SOME DOMESTIC EVIDENCE

Edit:

So many gems in the article, including:





And my favorite:

I'm sorry that "study" is either fraudulent or so poorly implemented it might as well be. A rebuttal:

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=45085

Most incompetent pro-gun "researchers" tend to try to use at least slightly subtle methods for distorting and misrepresenting data. A good example is Gary Kleck, comparing estimates of defensive gun uses arrived at using one very loose methodology versus gun crimes estimated using a tighter methodology in order to come to the absurd conclusion that there are more defensive gun uses than criminal gun uses, despite the fact that any "apples-to-apples" comparison shows that there are far more criminal gun uses.

But Kates and Mauser raise the bar by simply using false data. It makes propagandizing so much easier! As has been pointed out on this board before, the authors quote the homicide rate of Luxembourg as 9.01/100K. Of course, as anyone even marginally knowledgeable about international crime statistics knows, this is completely out of the question, unless there were some kind of anomalous mass killing in that year. It is common knowledge that the only first-world nation with a homicide rate even close to that is the USA (which, not coincidentally, has far higher gun ownership than any other first-world nation).

What happened was there was a decimal point error: the Luxembourg homicide rate is actually 0.9/100K. Now, if this was some number hidden away in some table, maybe it wouldn't matter much. But it's not: they refer directly to this supposedly sky-high homicide rate of Luxembourg in the text, and they even highlight the number in Table 2. And with good reason: if that actually were the homicide rate of Luxembourg, then it would deserve to be highlighted.

This leaves us with the standard two possibilities for pro-gunner propaganda:
1) (Dishonesty) Kates and Mauser knew the number was bad, but chose to highlight it anyway, perhaps because it felt so good, for once, to have a statistic that didn't have to be further manipulated in any way in order to support their case.
2) (Incompetence) Kates and Mauser really didn't double check the number despite the fact that even an amateur would instantly be able to spot this as way out of line with reality.

To be honest, I'm not sure what the answer is. For most people I'd say dishonesty is the only possible answer, because it's such an egregious error. It would be like a climate scientist citing an increase in temperature of 8 degrees Celsius as opposed to 0.8 over the last century. But, based on the quality of the rest of this paper, along with other things I've seen by Kates and Mauser, in this case it is possible that these guys are actually clueless enough to slide by with the incompetence defense.

What's an order of magnitude between friends?

 

[Kroze]

Is this the typical ATOT'er now?

Here's me the other day