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Author Topic:   Gun Control
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 241 of 310 (669575)
07-31-2012 8:23 AM
Reply to: Message 238 by Dr Adequate
07-30-2012 9:16 PM


I said that what made the difference was non-violent protest.
And I'm sure that it was our strongly worded letter that ended hostilities with Japan in WWII.

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 Message 238 by Dr Adequate, posted 07-30-2012 9:16 PM Dr Adequate has replied

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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 242 of 310 (669578)
07-31-2012 8:45 AM
Reply to: Message 235 by Jon
07-30-2012 6:05 PM


The best response is to tell them their point is irrelevant.
What is it irrelevant to? I've already showed what it was relevant to (a discussion about gun control).

This message is a reply to:
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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 243 of 310 (669582)
07-31-2012 9:21 AM
Reply to: Message 233 by crashfrog
07-30-2012 5:49 PM


Re: opportunity, not motive
And if you have a handgun in a locked case, but the 10-inch chef's knife is just in a block in the kitchen, which are you more likely to go for?
While I agree that there are circumstances where getting hold of your gun may be more difficult than getting hold of your knife, I don't agree that this means much - as the opposite circumstances could exist. And further - the gun still has the attraction over the knife in the killing business, so even if it was marginally more difficult to access your gun (ie., you have to do the rather trivial task of unlocking a case)
You're making an argument that on the margin, the presence of a gun enables some number of murders that wouldn't otherwise occur because it's easier to kill with a gun than with a knife. But it's a lot easier to get a knife than a gun. So, it seems to me that it's a wash.
I don't think unlocking a case makes it a lot more difficult to get your gun. Not to the degree that pulling a trigger is easier than stabbing someone.
Furthermore, I should stress that I'm not 'making the argument'. I'm telling you what it is, because you seemed to not know it.
Almost everybody who is killed by a gun is killed in plain view of the killer, usually within eight feet.
I can believe that. And most people know their killer, too.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 244 of 310 (669585)
07-31-2012 9:45 AM


This makes interesting reading; it's an example of a country that had a massacre, banned a lot of weapons and had a forced buyback scheme which seems to show positive results
Also, in something reminiscent of creation 'science' and climate change deniers, it seems that the gun lobby tried to rig foliow-up statistics to make the policy seem ineffective.
Bulletins — Spring 2011 (Issue 4) Harvard Injury Control Research Center | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health 1
Spring 2011 (Issue 4)
The Australian Gun Buyback
I. Introduction
The 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA), passed in response to the April 28, 1996 Port Arthur, Tasmania massacre of 35 people, banned semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns, bought back more than 650,000 of these weapons from existing owners, and tightened requirements for licensing, registration, and safe storage of firearms. The buyback is estimated to have reduced the number of guns in private hands by 20%, and, by some estimates, almost halved the number of gun-owning households.
This issue of Bulletins reviews the evidence on the effect of the NFA on firearm deaths. There have not been any studies examining the effect of the buyback on crime other than homicide. Some scientists believed that the buyback might reduce firearm crime, but most saw no reason to expect that it would significantly affect non-firearm crime. Most crimes in Australia before the NFA did not involve firearms, and few Australians owned handguns or carried them on their person, either before or after the buyback. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that after the buyback, the percentage of robberies where the assailant used a firearm did drop significantly. There was little change in unlawful entry with intent, one of the few types of crime where one might make a case for a possible deterrent effect of having a gun in the home.1
II. Evidence the Buyback Saved Lives
For Australia, the NFA seems to have been incredibly successful in terms of lives saved. While 13 gun massacres (the killing of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the NFA, resulting in more than one hundred deaths, in the 14 following years (and up to the present), there were no gun massacres.2
The NFA also seems to have reduced firearm homicide outside of mass shootings, as well as firearm suicide. In the seven years before the NFA (1989-1995), the average annual firearm suicide death rate per 100,000 was 2.6 (with a yearly range of 2.2 to 2.9); in the seven years after the buyback was fully implemented (1998-2004), the average annual firearm suicide rate was 1.1 (yearly range 0.8 to 1.4). In the seven years before the NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate per 100,000 was .43 (range .27 to .60) while for the seven years post NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate was .25 (range .16 to .33).3
Additional evidence strongly suggests that the buyback causally reduced firearm deaths. First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates.4
One evaluation of the law concluded that: The rates of total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides all at least doubled their existing rates of decline after the gun laws; there is no evidence of substitution for suicides or homicides.2 A more recent evaluation, which examined the differences across states, concluded that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80 per cent, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise.4 This incredible size of the effect (80% reduction) strains credulity.
III. Opposing Evidence
Two evaluations found little effect of the law, but their design made it almost impossible to find an effect.
1. The authors (Australian gun lobby members) of one study5 claimed that the policy has made no difference. There was a trend of declining deaths which has continued.6 They made an assumption that the historical downward trend in firearm deaths would have continued unabated, and chose 1979 as the beginning year for the trend analysis, although data were available for each year back to 1915. The Australian firearm suicide rate in 1979 was higher than any other year from 1932-1996; the firearm homicide rate in 1979 was the third highest it had been during this same time frame. Identical analyses using data from 1915-2004 found that both firearm suicide and firearm homicide declined significantly after the NFA.
The researchers also assumed that without the NFA, a linear trend of the actual death rate 1979-1996 would have continued forever. In other words, they assumed that if the historical rate fell from 3/100,000 to 2/100,000 in the initial period, it would fall to 1/100,000 in next period, then to 0/100,000, and then to -1/100,000. According to their assumption, without the NFA there would have been an ever-increasing percentage fall in firearm death. Indeed their model predicted that without the NFA, the number of firearm homicides in Australia would be negative by 2015. Critics labeled this a Resurrection Problem.7
Given their assumptions, if by 2004 the Australia firearm homicide rate had been zero (and remained there), that rate would not have been low enough for the researchers to find any beneficial effect of the law on firearm homicides.
Incredibly, even given their assumptions, they still found that firearm suicides fell significantly after the NFA. They legitimately wanted to determine not only whether the NFA was associated with a fall in firearm suicide, but whether (a) the NFA led to method substitution (e.g., hanging suicide replacing gun suicide), and (b) whether something other than the NFA may have affected suicide post-1996. In their discussion, they used non-firearm suicides as evidence for both these concerns. They set up the discussion so that if non-firearm suicides increased after the gun buyback, they could claim this was due to method substitution (i.e., the NFA may have reduced firearm suicide, but there was substitution, causing non-firearm suicides to rise, so the NFA really didn’t have much effect on overall suicides). And if non-firearm suicides decreased, they could claim this showed that some factor other than the buyback was the real cause of the decrease in firearm suicides. When non-firearm suicides briefly increased after the NFA they attributed this to method substitution, and then when non-firearm suicide began to fall, the authors concluded that society changes (e.g., suicide prevention programs) could have been the cause of the observed reduction in firearm suicides.3
2. Another pair of researchers used sophisticated analyses to search for a single year structural time series break date as a means of identifying the impact of the NFA. They could not find any such break, and concluded the results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates.8 However, when policies have even modest lags, the structural break test can easily miss the effect. It can also miss the effect of a policy that occurs over several years. The massive Australian gun buyback occurred over two calendar years, 1996-97. Firearm homicide and firearm suicide dropped substantially in both years, for a cumulative two-year drop in firearm homicide of 46% and in firearm suicide of 43%. Never in any two year period, from 1915-2004 had firearm suicide dropped so precipitously.3
IV. Conclusion
It does not appear that the Australian experience with gun buybacks is fully replicable in the United States. Levitt provides three reasons why gun buybacks in the United States have apparently been ineffective: (a) the buybacks are relatively small in scale (b) guns are surrendered voluntarily, and so are not like the ones used in crime; and (c) replacement guns are easy to obtain.9 These factors did not apply to the Australian buyback, which was large, compulsory, and the guns on this island nation could not easily be replaced. For example, compared to the buyback of 650,000 firearms, annual imports after the law averaged only 30,000 per year, with many of these bought by law enforcement agencies.4
For Australia, a difficulty with determining the effect of the law was that gun deaths were falling in the early 1990s. No study has explained why gun deaths were falling, or why they might be expected to continue to fall. Yet most studies generally assumed that they would have continued to drop without the NFA. Many studies still found strong evidence for a beneficial effect of the law.
From the perspective of 1996, it would have been difficult to imagine more compelling future evidence of a beneficial effect of the law. Whether or not one wants to attribute the effects as being due to the law, everyone should be pleased with what happened in Australia after the NFAthe elimination of firearm massacres (at least up to the present) and an immediate, and continuing, reduction in firearm suicide and firearm homicide.

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

Replies to this message:
 Message 246 by Jon, posted 07-31-2012 10:22 AM Tangle has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 245 of 310 (669588)
07-31-2012 10:09 AM
Reply to: Message 243 by Modulous
07-31-2012 9:21 AM


Re: opportunity, not motive
I don't think unlocking a case makes it a lot more difficult to get your gun.
I would say that manipulating a lock, or remembering a numeric code, is precisely the sort of fine-dexterity task that you really can't do in the middle of a dissociative rage. That's the point of a locked case, after all - to make it hard for people to get your gun.
Not to the degree that pulling a trigger is easier than stabbing someone.
Right, you made the argument earlier that stabbing someone is somehow more visceral (pardon the pun) and direct than a firearm, and that that's an obstacle to some amount of murders.
But is it? I feel like if the law against murder - if the moral norm against murder - isn't enough, than the mental block against plunging blades into another person's body probably isn't going to be an obstacle.
And most people know their killer, too.
Exactly. Homicide is the crime with the lowest recidivism because murders are usually for a perceived reason. Random mass murder, by any means, is just absurdly rare.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 243 by Modulous, posted 07-31-2012 9:21 AM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 255 by Modulous, posted 07-31-2012 4:31 PM crashfrog has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 246 of 310 (669589)
07-31-2012 10:22 AM
Reply to: Message 244 by Tangle
07-31-2012 9:45 AM


Please refer to the last several pages of this thread to discover why limiting your research criteria to 'firearm deaths' produces meaningless results.
Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 244 by Tangle, posted 07-31-2012 9:45 AM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 248 by Tangle, posted 07-31-2012 10:55 AM Jon has replied

  
1.61803
Member (Idle past 1504 days)
Posts: 2928
From: Lone Star State USA
Joined: 02-19-2004


Message 247 of 310 (669591)
07-31-2012 10:39 AM
Reply to: Message 228 by onifre
07-30-2012 5:02 PM


Onifre writes:
What's the point of all these concealed weapons if you badasses aren't gonna defend all of us?
Hello Onfre, I was in Killeen Texas 1991, the day a man decided he would drive his truck through the Luby Resturant front window and systematically shoot 23 people.
Luby's shooting - Wikipedia
I was also in Harker Heights Texas about 5 miles away from
Ft Hood the 5th Nov 2009 when Major Hassan, a Army Psychiatric Dr . Decided to shoot and kill 13 people. In both instances the bad guys stopped what they were doing because law enforcement .
I personally would rather be armed when the shit hits the fan. No one can say what one will do when faced with the possibility of death. Thats why people train, so when faced with such stress and fear hopefully the training will take over.
You'd shit your pants like the rest of us.
You have no idea what I'd do any more than what you would do.
I am a vet US Army Medical Corp, I also have 15 years ER and ICU hospital experience as well as first responder experience. I can tell you first hand that people can surprise you when the blood and guts are flying.
Edited by 1.61803, : No reason given.

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs

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Replies to this message:
 Message 252 by Dr Adequate, posted 07-31-2012 1:15 PM 1.61803 has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(1)
Message 248 of 310 (669592)
07-31-2012 10:55 AM
Reply to: Message 246 by Jon
07-31-2012 10:22 AM


Jon writes:
Please refer to the last several pages of this thread to discover why limiting your research criteria to 'firearm deaths' produces meaningless results.
I am not searching for firearm deaths, I'm reading through a vast quantity of research on gun control.
Not surprisingly, that research occasionally has something to say about deaths from firearms. But it also has a lot to say about whether firearms are merely substituting deaths by other methods and if you'd care to read some of the research itself instead of randomly jeering every post I make, you would know that.
What exactly is your beef?- if you spell it out I'll try to answer you.

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

This message is a reply to:
 Message 246 by Jon, posted 07-31-2012 10:22 AM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 249 of 310 (669593)
07-31-2012 11:07 AM
Reply to: Message 248 by Tangle
07-31-2012 10:55 AM


But it also has a lot to say about whether firearms are merely substituting deaths by other methods and if you'd care to read some of the research itself
I'd like to read some of the research itself. Let us know when you post some.

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Jon
Inactive Member


Message 250 of 310 (669600)
07-31-2012 11:51 AM
Reply to: Message 248 by Tangle
07-31-2012 10:55 AM


But it also has a lot to say about whether firearms are merely substituting deaths by other methods and if you'd care to read some of the research itself instead of randomly jeering every post I make, you would know that.
Then where's it at? According to your source, the evidence they reviewed was specifically related to 'firearm deaths'. It says so, at the start of the second introductory paragraph.
Your sources are unimpressive at best.

Love your enemies!

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 251 of 310 (669608)
07-31-2012 1:12 PM
Reply to: Message 241 by crashfrog
07-31-2012 8:23 AM


And I'm sure that it was our strongly worded letter that ended hostilities with Japan in WWII.
I'm not, because, y'know, that was a different historical event in which something else happened.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 241 by crashfrog, posted 07-31-2012 8:23 AM crashfrog has replied

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 252 of 310 (669609)
07-31-2012 1:15 PM
Reply to: Message 247 by 1.61803
07-31-2012 10:39 AM


I personally would rather be armed when the shit hits the fan.
I personally would like everyone other than me not to be armed when the shit hits the fan. I would think that that would reduce the volume of the shit.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 247 by 1.61803, posted 07-31-2012 10:39 AM 1.61803 has replied

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1.61803
Member (Idle past 1504 days)
Posts: 2928
From: Lone Star State USA
Joined: 02-19-2004


Message 253 of 310 (669610)
07-31-2012 1:33 PM
Reply to: Message 252 by Dr Adequate
07-31-2012 1:15 PM


Dr. Adequate writes:
I personally would like everyone other than me not to be armed when the shit hits the fan. I would think that that would reduce the volume of the shit.
Absolutely. If no one was armed that would be the best case scenario. Even towns like Deadwood and Tombstone had very restrictive gun laws.

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs

This message is a reply to:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 254 of 310 (669611)
07-31-2012 1:38 PM
Reply to: Message 251 by Dr Adequate
07-31-2012 1:12 PM


I'm not, because, y'know, that was a different historical event in which something else happened.
Yes, that's the general trend with your conception of history: different events in which something else happened than, you know, what actually happened.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 251 by Dr Adequate, posted 07-31-2012 1:12 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 255 of 310 (669618)
07-31-2012 4:31 PM
Reply to: Message 245 by crashfrog
07-31-2012 10:09 AM


Re: opportunity, not motive
I would say that manipulating a lock, or remembering a numeric code, is precisely the sort of fine-dexterity task that you really can't do in the middle of a dissociative rage. That's the point of a locked case, after all - to make it hard for people to get your gun.
Well, I'm afraid I don't see why opening a lock is something that you really can't do if your mad enough to kill someone. Nor do I suppose that all people have their guns locked when passions rise. That's probably why about 1/4 of murders in the USA are related to an argument.Source, and 2/3 of which involved firearms (especially handguns) and only about 1/4 involve knives. About 180 murders were committed by people involved in brawls while armed (or within reach of a firearm) and under the influence of drugs (2010) - 1/2 of which involved a firearm and again only 1/4 involved knives.
When tempers flare, people still tend to turn to guns more than they turn to knives - despite any impediments you might imagine may exist in certain circumstances.
Right, you made the argument earlier that stabbing someone is somehow more visceral (pardon the pun) and direct than a firearm, and that that's an obstacle to some amount of murders.
But is it?
I have no idea. But so goes the argument. It's pretty difficult to test it in practice.
I feel like if the law against murder - if the moral norm against murder - isn't enough, than the mental block against plunging blades into another person's body probably isn't going to be an obstacle.
To be honest, I don't think moral norms are in consideration in many instances of homicide. I would agree that it won't always be an obstacle, as can be seen by the above stats. But I think its reasonable to think it might be enough of a factor to dissuade some percentage of murderously inclined people.
But that's what it comes down to really, intuition. Definitive study seems impossible to conduct, and I don't think any study so far definitively shows us anything.
Exactly. Homicide is the crime with the lowest recidivism because murders are usually for a perceived reason. Random mass murder, by any means, is just absurdly rare.
I agree again.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 245 by crashfrog, posted 07-31-2012 10:09 AM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 256 by crashfrog, posted 07-31-2012 5:00 PM Modulous has replied

  
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