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The gun control that works: no guns

economist.com

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Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#61

Post by Erwin »

benjohnson wrote: post #59

Disarming citizes is the frst step to genocide. I trust my neighbor more than the governemnt we elect - just 60 years ago, America rounded up our ethnic Japanese citizens and stuck them in concentration camps. What would gave happened if the war didn't go so well for us in the Pacific?

So why wasn't there violent armed response to the American concentration camps back then? Presumably you were at least as well armed.

What kind of event would it take for you to take up arms against the government now? And whom exactly will you be shooting at?

Let's say that somehow a 100% tax on income above $50k gets passed through legislation tomorrow -- who are you going to shoot to revert this? Or perhaps the next president will order an invasion of Canada to take their natural resources (without which many Americans would die: it's either us or them, and voters agree).

In what countries in the world now would you say that access to guns is helping to maintain democracy and liberty? How well are things going for Palestine or Syria?

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#62

Post by rjknight »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #58
rjknight wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you don't live in the USA (neither do I, in fact). However, the gun debate has a number of parallels with topics that hackers obviously do care about, irrespective of geography. It wasn't all that long ago that cryptography was considered to be a "weapon" which should be regulated. I would not be surprised to see attempts at classifying some pieces of software as "weapons" at some point in the future - botne…

And despite of so many words, I don't care about political problems of USA.

Ah yes, but in a world where the USA is so important, its political problems care about you.

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#63

Post by leephillips »

This article does a fairly convincing impression of being reasonable and balanced. However, a typical sentence is this one:

"And my hunch is that the model found in places like Japan or Britain—no guns in homes at all, or almost none—is on balance safer."

My hunch is that the author did very little real research or any analysis beyond the attempt to compare statistical enumerations that do not seem properly comparable. He's entitled to his "hunches", but they are not useful to me.

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#64

Post by jacquesm »

pingbear wrote: post #47
jacquesm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not a small thing, some estimates put the number of rapes per day stopped due to the potential victim being armed or thought to be armed at more than a thousand. Per day. How does that work in the rest of the world then? I don't see thousands of people being raped here per day , so clearly something else must be stopping those rapes. Really, guns are toys. Get over it. The chances of you facing a life-or-de…

>I don't see thousands of people being raped here per day Because no one reports on it. No one reports on the impoverished of India killing each other when someone cuts in line at the water pump in the morning. No one reports on the gang murders in Eastern Europe that happen everyday. Rape goes on all the time. Just because the West has NGOs and charities dedicated to women's issues and run campaigns and just because…

America is in the West. Last I checked at least.

What you are describing is a country with a disfunctional police force.

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#65

Post by taylodl »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #23
ISL wrote: post #2

A revolution that worked: American Revolution. By some measures, it began in Lexington (the linked Economist column is "Lexington"), when the British government moved to seize citizens' arms. We must better understand how it is that those who would choose to harm many people reach such a decision. Guns are a tool. So was anthrax, in the post-9/11 mail scare, and it could have been much worse. Mutual respect, understa…

Another revolution that worked: the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia - non-violent, no guns. And another: the Egyptian revolution last year. Or the 2003 revolution in Georgia. Or 2005 in Kyrgyzstan, and I could go on. All successful, all non-violent, all more recent than the American Revolution. Seriously, if you think you need guns to defend yourself, you're basically saying you live in a state which has failed w…

So how are things going in Syria?

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#66

Post by benjohnson »

Erwin wrote: post #61
benjohnson wrote: post #59

Disarming citizes is the frst step to genocide. I trust my neighbor more than the governemnt we elect - just 60 years ago, America rounded up our ethnic Japanese citizens and stuck them in concentration camps. What would gave happened if the war didn't go so well for us in the Pacific?

So why wasn't there violent armed response to the American concentration camps back then? Presumably you were at least as well armed. What kind of event would it take for you to take up arms against the government now? And whom exactly will you be shooting at? Let's say that somehow a 100% tax on income above $50k gets passed through legislation tomorrow -- who are you going to shoot to revert this? Or perhaps the ne…

Let us discuss facts and now weird hypotheticals. In the last hundred years, millions of people were killed when governemnts stripped the citizines of their weapons and subsequently murdered them.

To think it "can't happen here" is is not historically unsound - gernocide came frightengly close here in America, and it happened in 'civilised' socialist Germany and communist Russia. The diference that I can find, is we had an armed population tht would have revolted had our Japanese citizens been murdered. To think that we're just better people is hubris.

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#67

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

taylodl wrote: post #65
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another revolution that worked: the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia - non-violent, no guns. And another: the Egyptian revolution last year. Or the 2003 revolution in Georgia. Or 2005 in Kyrgyzstan, and I could go on. All successful, all non-violent, all more recent than the American Revolution. Seriously, if you think you need guns to defend yourself, you're basically saying you live in a state which has failed w…

So how are things going in Syria?

Considerably more dead on both sides than during the non-violent revolutions.

Just think, if you'd given the Egyptian's guns that could have been a bloodbath too.

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#68

Post by glenra »

jacquesm wrote: post #40
abrown28 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere presence of my shotgun in my 5' tall female friends hands prevented her from being raped. A knife wouldn't have worked... need a bit of skill and strength. Kung Fu wouldn't have saved her... she's 5' tall and not strong. A gun is a force equalizer. People like you bemoan the fact that anyone can pick up a gun and use it to deadly effect without any training. I can say without reservation that that makes me v…

For this to make sense you have to look at statistics, not individuals. Statistically speaking your argument holds no water, but I'm happy for your friend. In her case it worked out well. But that's the exception, unfortunately. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121216092406AA... "People like me" like to judge things on a wider basis than the exceptions confirming the rule.

The anti-gun studies tend to be pretty terrible as a rule. Including that one. Have you looked into any of the studies on the other side?

Suppose a woman in an isolated place avoids a rape via one of these methods: - credibly yelling "go away - I've got a gun!" - brandishing a gun - aiming a gun at the attacker - firing a "warning shot" - firing at the attacker, but missing

...and the attacker runs away.

She's not likely to report this to the authorities. The attacker certainly isn't going to report it. So a study of "shooting incidents" won't include it. A study that starts by looking at cases where somebody was actually shot is counting most of the social costs but only some of the social benefits of gun ownership.

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#69

Post by jacquesm »

glenra wrote: post #68
jacquesm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this to make sense you have to look at statistics, not individuals. Statistically speaking your argument holds no water, but I'm happy for your friend. In her case it worked out well. But that's the exception, unfortunately. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121216092406AA... "People like me" like to judge things on a wider basis than the exceptions confirming the rule.

The anti-gun studies tend to be pretty terrible as a rule. Including that one. Have you looked into any of the studies on the other side? Suppose a woman in an isolated place avoids a rape via one of these methods: - credibly yelling "go away - I've got a gun!" - brandishing a gun - aiming a gun at the attacker - firing a "warning shot" - firing at the attacker, but missing ...and the attacker runs away. She's not li…

You can fantasize situations until the cows come home, but until you get some hard numbers involved it doesn't amount to anything. Are we going to count cases where people were wounded? Where guns were used but no shots were fired?

How many dead people is worth how many raped women? And so on.

And when you've done all that you're going to have to compare with countries that have gun control in place, look at the rape incidence before and after the change (if there was one) and do a plain comparison of rape incidence in countries with and without.

Those studies have been done, but since you're going to dismiss those with 'anti gun studies tend to be pretty terrible as a rule' it probably won't matter much.

Keep at it. How many dead will it take? Until one of your family is murdered? Or will you still stand by your claim even then?

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#70

Post by glenra »

jacquesm wrote: post #69
glenra wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-gun studies tend to be pretty terrible as a rule. Including that one. Have you looked into any of the studies on the other side? Suppose a woman in an isolated place avoids a rape via one of these methods: - credibly yelling "go away - I've got a gun!" - brandishing a gun - aiming a gun at the attacker - firing a "warning shot" - firing at the attacker, but missing ...and the attacker runs away. She's not li…

You can fantasize situations until the cows come home, but until you get some hard numbers involved it doesn't amount to anything. Are we going to count cases where people were wounded? Where guns were used but no shots were fired? How many dead people is worth how many raped women? And so on. And when you've done all that you're going to have to compare with countries that have gun control in place, look at the rape…

In other words, you didn't even look at the details of your own study and whether it related to the post you were responding to, you just did a keyword match to see that it reached "the right conclusion". Got it.

If you never look at anything the other side is saying about your side, you're doomed to talk nonsense. Like Kellerman's "43-to-1" claim.

Pro-gun people consider it a win if a gun deters a murder, deters a rape, deters a theft or other nastiness. But anti-gun researcher often run studies that assume the only benefit of guns is if they actually kill a bad guy. (They also have been known to occasionally interpret "the victim knew the attacker" as "the person shot was a family member or loved one".) Given those sort of assumptions, it's trivial to generate "some hard numbers" that are useless, like a 4-to-1 or 12-to-1 or 43-to-1 ratio between "bad" things happening and "good" ones happening to those who own a gun.

The study you gave also assumed a dubious direction of causality - if people who know they are in danger of being attacked tend to go buy a gun, that alone could adequately explain the discovered correlation between being shot and carrying a gun.

(A nice orthogonal issue is that most murderers and most murder victims have multiple prior violent felony convictions, so this Philly study is probably telling us mainly what happens within and among the criminal class. If you aren't a violent felon and don't know any violent felons, the chance of you being killed goes waaaay down.)

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