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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Both sentence in italics are just totally irrelevant to the issue.
I just do not know what to say anymore.
Can you really not see why having widespread legal weapons make it, all other thing equals, much easier to get illegally a weapon than if there were next to no legal weapons?

So you want to omit facts now to support your nonsensical claims.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Well, if we do change the law, it will not be their legal right anymore. By definition, laws cannot strip you of your legal rights .

The minority of people want stricter gun control. Looks like stripping people of their lawful rights isn't on the cards

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
No. I said a society without widespread guns everywhere would be safer. Removing guns from one house is maybe just going to make that house less safe. Removing guns from every house is going to make it safer for everyone.

Oh look, gun ownership up, crime and homicide committed by guns down. It's almost as if the facts run contrary to your point

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
So you want to omit facts now to support your nonsensical claims.

No, but I am sure not willing to draw conclusion from non-related fact. Let me give you an example. In Iran, the government decided that some higher-level university course were to be male-only because women outnumber men by some nice margin at the higher level of education. Are you willing to omit that fact because it does not support your nonsensical claims? Just because it is in no way related to it?
Yeah, I do the same too.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
The minority of people want stricter gun control.

By people, you mean U.S. citizen, I guess. Not sure though, I cannot see the picture.
Looks like stripping people of their lawful rights isn't on the cards

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Oh look, gun ownership up, crime and homicide committed by guns down. It's almost as if the facts run contrary to your point

Woah, tons of picture that I cannot see. Are they related to what I am saying, or not? Honestly, I do not expect them to be. I am pretty sure you would not be able to even just find out what I was trying to argue anyway, so how can you expect to argue back?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
No, but I am sure not willing to draw conclusion from non-related fact. Let me give you an example. In Iran, the government decided that some higher-level university course were to be male-only because women outnumber men by some nice margin at the higher level of education. Are you willing to omit that fact because it does not support your nonsensical claims? Just because it is in no way related to it?
Yeah, I do the same too.

Again, I'm sure that there was some point that you were trying to make buried in there

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
By people, you mean U.S. citizen, I guess. Not sure though, I cannot see the picture.

Given the fact that we've been talking about the US since the OP that would be a good guess

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Woah, tons of picture that I cannot see. Are they related to what I am saying, or not? Honestly, I do not expect them to be. I am pretty sure you would not be able to even just find out what I was trying to argue anyway, so how can you expect to argue back?

Strange that they are not working for you. You can always quote me and paste the link in a new window. In short;
- gun ownership increased, crime decreased.
- in the same period accidents with firearms decreased
- in the same period homicides where a gun was used decreased
- guns are used in the overwhelming minority of violent crimes
- gun owners are less likely to murder than an average citizen

 Cheesecat wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
On the plus side, we got a new slogan out of it.

Oh I can't even exalt this hard enough!

It's pretty amazing.

6/10

Needs Hitler and Zimmerman peeking out from behind the letters.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Oh look, gun ownership up, crime and homicide committed by guns down. It's almost as if the facts run contrary to your point

General wealth level goes up, crime goes down. General wealth level goes up, more people can afford guns, gun ownership goes up.

Correlation does not imply causation.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
General wealth level goes up, crime goes down. General wealth level goes up, more people can afford guns, gun ownership goes up.

Correlation does not imply causation.

During the global financial crisis that affected people's general wealth, gun ownership increased during this time and crime decreased

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Again, I'm sure that there was some point that you were trying to make buried in there

Yeah, and you will never know .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Yeah, and you will never know .

Comments like this and "Cry me a river" don't really add to any sort of sensible discussion

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
General wealth level goes up, crime goes down. General wealth level goes up, more people can afford guns, gun ownership goes up.

Correlation does not imply causation.

During the global financial crisis that affected people's general wealth, gun ownership increased during this time and crime decreased

Which, of course, still doesn't prove a link between increased gun ownership and decreasing crime. Again, correlation does not prove causation.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
General wealth level goes up, crime goes down. General wealth level goes up, more people can afford guns, gun ownership goes up.

Correlation does not imply causation.

During the global financial crisis that affected people's general wealth, gun ownership increased during this time and crime decreased

Which, of course, still doesn't prove a link between increased gun ownership and decreasing crime. Again, correlation does not prove causation.

Unless of course you are trying to tie high levels of legal gun ownership to illegal gun crime, which many of you are doing.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Comments like this and "Cry me a river" don't really add to any sort of sensible discussion

There is no sensible discussion to be had with you. Just consider the quote I was answering to, and you will know why .

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Which, of course, still doesn't prove a link between increased gun ownership and decreasing crime. Again, correlation does not prove causation.

So I've disproven your statement, yet you haven't disproven mine - just dismissed it out of hand

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Which, of course, still doesn't prove a link between increased gun ownership and decreasing crime. Again, correlation does not prove causation.

So I've disproven your statement, yet you haven't disproven mine - just dismissed it out of hand

My argument had just as much to stand on as yours; nothing. You've disproven mine (although I still feel there's an arugment to be made that overall living standards are still increasing, with the recession being a temporary setback), but you've also provided no proof of the claim you're making other than pointing out that there seems to be a correlation.

When you are able to actually disprove a relationship between gun ownership and gun owners being safer (as the stats above show across many areas) then I look forward to a discussion.

What is with everyone's fething walls of charts? Are people tired of typing up walls of text?

Showing graphs is irrelevant. You need to do a coefficient of correlation analysis to see if there is a correlation between the number of guns and the number of gun deaths/murders.

Available from the CDC, as noted in numerous graphs above

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Available from the CDC, as noted in numerous graphs above

Which was order by the Obama administration.

The results of this that study was be strangely.... muted.

 whembly wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Available from the CDC, as noted in numerous graphs above

Which was order by the Obama administration.

The results of this that study was be strangely.... muted.

That happens when the review you order finds that the facts do not support your bias.

Coefficient of correlation is not shown in graphs. It is a mathematical calculation.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Coefficient of correlation is not shown in graphs. It is a mathematical calculation.

This is true, I took a statistics course and was completely unremarkable at it.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Coefficient of correlation is not shown in graphs. It is a mathematical calculation.

Naw...

There's Lies... Damned lies... and statistics.

 whembly wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Coefficient of correlation is not shown in graphs. It is a mathematical calculation.

Naw...

There's Lies... Damned lies... and statistics.

I believe this is appropriate.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Coefficient of correlation is not shown in graphs. It is a mathematical calculation.

Although it is often shown on graphs to give a visual representation of the nature of the coefficient in relation to the data it is calculated for.

 CptJake wrote:
Not sure how you get 1 : 4.8 as 1/4, you may want to brush up on your math.

I rounded for convenience, and rounded in the favour of your argument, and you're trying to score some cheap point on that. Bit sad, really.

And I showed the percentages, the difference is not statistically significant regardless of how you wish it was. The 3500 or 14000 is spread over a population of 314 million people, really not a significant difference when you look at the numbers.

You know what, I'm just going to ignore that you don't know what statistical significance means, and try to engage the attempted substance in your post.

It's several thousand of people who are dying that wouldn't be. If it was announced that there was a food type that killed a few thousand americans every year, you wouldn't be sitting there saying 'oh its just several thousand people are year it isn't statistically significant'. And yet here you are, trying to make that argument because its about guns.

That is my argument. Your snide reply is baseless and does nothing to refute the argument. I neither ignored economic development nor any other factor. In fact, those factors help to make my point. It ain't the tool. How hard is it to get?

It's not hard to get, just easy to dismiss because it's stupid. Obviously lots of factors play in to crime and murder rates. That doesn't mean you just dismiss guns as a causative factor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Good thing that I didn't compare the US to other countries then. I'm glad you brought up New York too, especially as it has some of the strictest gun control in the country and yet there are still criminals with guns there.

Of course there's still guns there - you have open borders across state lines. Any kind of single state gun ban is stupid.

I apologize if I mis-read your intentions. Usually when the same arguments get brought out in an often polarized debate it can be too easy to mis-read another's intentions.

That accounts for much of my frustration with these threads. People just default to the same old arguments, assume the other side is making the same old arguments and no-one reads anything anyone else is posting, thinks about what they're saying or really tries to achieve anything at all.

Actual conversation just doesn't happen.

But I never claimed that guns don't impact murder rate. In fact several times above I have shown that an increase in gun ownership corresponds with a decrease in crime and homicides.

Nah, you showed that the overall trend in declining murder rates continued regardless of gun ownership. Which is to be expected.

Sorry that you didn't get to fire a machine gun (which type?). I've been fortunate enough to fire rounds from a P90 and M4.

The images was MP5 and M4, though as I understand it lots of things can be dressed up as M4 while being quite different actions. Was told it was full auto though, that's what I was really after.

I never said all gun owners, that was an assumption on your part. But I did speak of the overwhelming majority of gun owners who are law abiding and treat their firearms with respect

I agree with you there. But the issue with having 100 million gun owners is that 99 million can be responsible people who treat their guns with respect, and that still leaves a million people to get angry and kill a family member or friend, allow their gun to be stolen, leave it somewhere where their kid can take it, or use it in the spur of moment to commit suicide, and sure enough you've bumped up the murder rate by several thousand in a year.

Now note that I'm not saying that means you need to take the guns off the 100 million people, just that it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how gun proliferation leads to more deaths per year.

You seem to have taken my one comment out of context from the entire discussion that was being had with another user. You may wish to revisit the entire conversation rather than snippets.

Okay, sorry if I've missed your point. Perhaps you could clarify your position.

You're right, there are basic economic principal at work. And one of those principals is that there is a market for smuggled guns. Yes, more drugs flow north than guns. But that does not mean no guns.

Absolutely. I'm not saying banning guns would mean no guns, not at all. Just pointing out the argument that guns flow from the South is the opposite of what is happening now.

Strong levels of support may be overstating it. Yes, there were strong levels of support within some areas, but not overall. And the Republic of Ireland was not keen on being a conduit for weapons reaching the North as an emboldened IRA could have caused issues south of the border.
Defense against a tyrannical government is the reason behind the Second Amendment. I am not going to claim otherwise, nor am I going to engage in pointless debate about how effective resistance would be. But gun ownership has also historically included such things as hunting and self-defense. At the time the Second Amendment was written these rights were so common it was almost unthinkable that they had to be spelled out.

Sure, I'm not arguing against the second amendment. I'm saying that as a practical reality, you don't ever have to worry about not having guns right now in case you need to fight your government later. When the time comes, getting some guns will be the easy part.

Well in these graphs that show murder rate per year and gun accident rate per year, we are being asked to assume that since these rates are dropping while gun ownership is increasing -- this is taken as a given, the data to support it is not given -- then guns do not contribute significantly to murders or gun accidents.

We also see there are times when the murder rate increased. If the gun ownership rate was not dropping during those years -- which we don't know, though it seems unlikely that gun ownership would have declined much -- the theory that gun ownership is negatively correlated to murder rate is not convincing at first sight.

However by doing a calculation of the coefficient of correlation on the data (gun ownership rate / murder rate) we can see how strongly they are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation, of cause, but it may do. For example, it would be difficult to have gun accidents without guns, so clearly there would be some degree of correlation, though other factors such as safety training will no doubt be involved.

Unfortunately due to irregular reporting of gun ownership there is no reliable data on ownership rate. I don't know if there is any reliable data on safety training. Of course in some areas, safety training is not a requirement for gun ownership.

While on the topic I would note that the red and blue chart showing gun murders as a proportion of all murders is misleading, having been drawn to start at an origin of 3 rather than 0. This makes the gun murder rate look lower than it is. The actual gun murder rate is about 2/3rds of murders.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
The minority of people want stricter gun control. Looks like stripping people of their lawful rights isn't on the cards

An even smaller minority want reduced restrictions on guns, and yet you've had recent expansions to CCW in several states. So it isn't as simple as just scoring an overall majority.

The demographic you might want to look at is the number of households with one or more guns in them - the trend is a long term decline.



The point being that you don't want to still be fighting this issue when gun ownership drops to a quarter of households or less. While the gun lobby is in the ascendancy right now, the long view of demographics aren't great so I think it would be wise to get this debate settled in your favour now.

 sebster wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
The minority of people want stricter gun control. Looks like stripping people of their lawful rights isn't on the cards

An even smaller minority want reduced restrictions on guns, and yet you've had recent expansions to CCW in several states. So it isn't as simple as just scoring an overall majority.

The demographic you might want to look at is the number of households with one or more guns in them - the trend is a long term decline.



The point being that you don't want to still be fighting this issue when gun ownership drops to a quarter of households or less. While the gun lobby is in the ascendancy right now, the long view of demographics aren't great so I think it would be wise to get this debate settled in your favour now.

That's making the assumption that people who don't own guns don't stand in favor of the Second Amendment, and that is demonstrably false. Those in favor of keeping gun laws much as they are now or loosening restrictions has always outstripped the actual ownership rate for the past thirty years.

I am finding it hard to understand the apparent drop in household gun ownership with the increased rate of gun ownership (and links with increased/decreased crime, accidents and murders).

Presumably the situation is that fewer people or households want to own guns, but the ones that do are buying more guns.

In my anecdotal experience, the people who do own guns tend to own several.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am finding it hard to understand the apparent drop in household gun ownership with the increased rate of gun ownership (and links with increased/decreased crime, accidents and murders).

Presumably the situation is that fewer people or households want to own guns, but the ones that do are buying more guns.

That's basically the situation.

A small part of the seeming mystery, though, is the rise of female gun owners. They're making up an increasing percentage of the purchasing demographic, and females new to gun ownership will frequently not increase the "households owning guns" statistic.