Gun free zone

[myrkul]

Funny story: He went into the research intending to prove how bad guns were for society.
Give it a read: http://www.amazon.com/More-Guns-Less-Crime-Understanding/dp/0226493636

Regardless of his motives, it's his results that count. Study up on them.

Have you?

Yes. Maybe I dug deeper than you. I'm sure on the surface, the results fit your agenda, so you didn't dig deeper.

And I assume by your smuglier than thou tone, you found something to disprove the title?

That seems a reasonable conclusion.

Would you like to share it with the rest of the class, or are these cookies only for your own enjoyment?

Like everything else I share, if I can find it, you can find it. Question: do you think your own claims would be more credible if you presented a less biased view and set of citations from various sources? You go find things which discredit Lott's claims, and then proceed to discredit those findings. I cannot respect your claims otherwise.

Are all the facts, charts, and data that Lott has presented unimpeachable? Do you have evidence he did not massage, manufacture and misinterpret data? Or do you take what he has said at face value? If you do take what he has said at face value, why?

I don't. However, He's not the only one who's come to that conclusion.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

You're too stupid to tell the difference, but those researchers are incompetent.

Much higher quality research is here:
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/dranove/htm/dranove/coursepages/Mgmt%20469/guns.pdf

Ironically, even though you insult my intelligence, you still managed to show me more respect than Asshat.

So I'll read the paper.
But you did insult my intelligence.
So from now on, you're Bunnicula.

[farlack]

If everyone was armed, shootings would last no more than a few moments.

[Rudd-O]

If everyone was armed, shootings would last no more than a few moments.

The Portland mall shooter stopped shooting and offed himself only after a normal person carrying a concealed gun took aim at him.  So you are observably correct.

[myrkul]

Much higher quality research is here:
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/dranove/htm/dranove/coursepages/Mgmt%20469/guns.pdf

In this paper I propose a new way to measure
gun ownership at both the state and county levels on an annual basis.
Specifically, I argue that state- and county-level sales data for one of the
nation’s largest gun magazines, Guns & Ammo, provide a much more
accurate way to measure both the level and the change in gun ownership
within an area.

AH HAHAAHAA!

I suppose sales of Hustler indicate the number of people getting laid?

[Rudd-O]

Much higher quality research is here:
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/dranove/htm/dranove/coursepages/Mgmt%20469/guns.pdf

In this paper I propose a new way to measure
gun ownership at both the state and county levels on an annual basis.
Specifically, I argue that state- and county-level sales data for one of the
nation’s largest gun magazines, Guns & Ammo, provide a much more
accurate way to measure both the level and the change in gun ownership
within an area.

AH HAHAAHAA!

I suppose sales of Hustler indicate the number of people getting laid?

"Quality research", from the household name that we all have come to know and trust: cunticula.

[myrkul]

So I decided to do a little research myself... screw those intellectual stuffed shirts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Darker == more homicides (duh)

Some notable numbers (all per 100 000):
United States    4.2
Somalia    1.5 (even I was surprised about this one)
Cuba    5.0
Haiti     6.9
Canada    1.6 (Huh... Somalis less likely to kill you than a Canadian. Duly noted.)
North Korea    15.2 (Not surprising at all, actually)
Singapore    0.3
China    1.0
Russia    10.2
Nicaragua    13.6
Switzerland    0.7
Monaco    0.0 (lowest)
Honduras    91.6 (highest)
For reference, the world average is 6.9.

Now, these are only "intentional murders." not violent crime in general. But it's good for a little perspective.

Now, since this is a gun thread, we need those numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Guns per 100 residents:
United States    88.8
Somalia    9.1
Cuba    4.8
Haiti     .6
Canada    30.8
North Korea    .6
Singapore       .5
China    4.9
Russia    8.9
Nicaragua    7.7
Switzerland    45.7
Monaco        (no data )
Honduras        6.2 (same as England/Wales)

Now, this is just a semi-random sampling, picked for both large and small numbers that leaped out at me on the murders list. But even from this small sample group, there does not appear to be a correlation, either positive or negative, between gun ownership and intentional murders. Adding additional datapoints may tease out a correlation. But it's late, I've had a weird day, and that's a job for either someone else, or the morning.

Google was not being nice to me tonight, and would not spit up violent crime rates per capita by country. If anyone wants to be my Extra Special Friend Forever®, posting a link to some recent data (2007-ish would be nice, since that's when the gun data is from) wouldn't hurt.

[cunicula]

So I decided to do a little research myself... screw those intellectual stuffed shirts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Darker == more homicides (duh)

Some notable numbers (all per 100 000):
United States    4.2
Somalia    1.5 (even I was surprised about this one)
Cuba    5.0
Haiti     6.9
Canada    1.6 (Huh... Somalis less likely to kill you than a Canadian. Duly noted.)
North Korea    15.2 (Not surprising at all, actually)
Singapore    0.3
China    1.0
Russia    10.2
Nicaragua    13.6
Switzerland    0.7
Monaco    0.0 (lowest)
Honduras    91.6 (highest)
For reference, the world average is 6.9.

Now, these are only "intentional murders." not violent crime in general. But it's good for a little perspective.

Now, since this is a gun thread, we need those numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Guns per 100 residents:
United States    88.8
Somalia    9.1
Cuba    4.8
Haiti     .6
Canada    30.8
North Korea    .6
Singapore       .5
China    4.9
Russia    8.9
Nicaragua    7.7
Switzerland    45.7
Monaco        (no data )
Honduras        6.2 (same as England/Wales)

Now, this is just a semi-random sampling, picked for both large and small numbers that leaped out at me on the murders list. But even from this small sample group, there does not appear to be a correlation, either positive or negative, between gun ownership and intentional murders. Adding additional datapoints may tease out a correlation. But it's late, I've had a weird day, and that's a job for either someone else, or the morning.

Google was not being nice to me tonight, and would not spit up violent crime rates per capita by country. If anyone wants to be my Extra Special Friend Forever®, posting a link to some recent data (2007-ish would be nice, since that's when the gun data is from) wouldn't hurt.

Some advice:
a) Data for developing countries is really unreliable unless you collect it yourself. Do you believe those numbers for Haiti, Somalia, and North Korea? Who the hell measures homicide in these countries.
b) There are too many other differences between the units of observation for country-level comparisons to be meaningful. Ideally, you should pick units that are as similar as possible except for differences in gun ownership. Thus the study which looks at Guns & Ammo subscriptions and compares neighboring US counties. If the country next door experiences an increase in Guns & Ammo subscriptions, then, relative to neighboring counties, that county also experience sa significant increase in gun-mediated homicides. Other types of crimes are only slightly affected. This suggest that wide gun ownership increases the homicide rate.

Another type of study looks at means of suicide. Examining counties with similar total suicide rates, US counties where people use guns to commit suicide have higher homicide rates than US counties where people choose other means to commit suicide. This difference in homicide rates is entirely due to differences in gun-mediated homicides, not other types of homicide.

(As you can see, I liked the picture)

[myrkul]

a) Data for developing countries is really unreliable unless you collect it yourself. Do you believe those numbers for Haiti, Somalia, and North Korea? Who the hell measures homicide in these countries.

This is UN Data. I'm inclined to believe it is at the very least, unbiased.
Also: LOL@ North Korea being considered a "developing nation."

b) There are too many other differences between the units of observation for country-level comparisons to be meaningful. Ideally, you should pick units that are as similar as possible except for differences in gun ownership.

Per capita is per capita, there's no difference there. If you want number of guns per 100 000 persons, just multiply the second dataset's numbers by 1000. Similarly, to get murders per 100 citizens, divide the first numbers by 1000.

(As you can see, I liked the picture)

I see that. It's a welcome change from Krugman.

[fornit]

a) Data for developing countries is really unreliable unless you collect it yourself. Do you believe those numbers for Haiti, Somalia, and North Korea? Who the hell measures homicide in these countries.

This is UN Data. I'm inclined to believe it is at the very least, unbiased.
Also: LOL@ North Korea being considered a "developing nation."

you really think the UN checks data from somalia or north korea?

b) There are too many other differences between the units of observation for country-level comparisons to be meaningful. Ideally, you should pick units that are as similar as possible except for differences in gun ownership.

Per capita is per capita, there's no difference there. If you want number of guns per 100 000 persons, just multiply the second dataset's numbers by 1000. Similarly, to get murders per 100 citizens, divide the first numbers by 1000.

the same way you could prove that cannonballs arent more dangerous projetiles than plush bunnies. just include samples in which the cannonballs were thrown by little girls and the plush bunnies were fired by cannons. do some research into how statistics are interpreted properly.

[myrkul]

a) Data for developing countries is really unreliable unless you collect it yourself. Do you believe those numbers for Haiti, Somalia, and North Korea? Who the hell measures homicide in these countries.

This is UN Data. I'm inclined to believe it is at the very least, unbiased.
Also: LOL@ North Korea being considered a "developing nation."

you really think the UN checks data from somalia or north korea?

Well, considering they provided data from those countries, yes, I do. If you can provide proof that the data is erroneous, please do.

b) There are too many other differences between the units of observation for country-level comparisons to be meaningful. Ideally, you should pick units that are as similar as possible except for differences in gun ownership.

Per capita is per capita, there's no difference there. If you want number of guns per 100 000 persons, just multiply the second dataset's numbers by 1000. Similarly, to get murders per 100 citizens, divide the first numbers by 1000.

the same way you could prove that cannonballs arent more dangerous projetiles than plush bunnies. just include samples in which the cannonballs were thrown by little girls and the plush bunnies were fired by cannons. do some research into how statistics are interpreted properly.

That's not remotely the same way. I doubt you have the foggiest clue of what you speak.

[RodeoX]

We just need to make the "Gun free zone" signs larger. I assume these nut job shooters are just not seeing the signs. Because no one would dare disobey a rule. 

I would like to see a map showing active shooter incident locations and no carry zones. Seems the shooters always pick schools, theaters, churches; places they can be sure no one will be able to shoot back.

[myrkul]

OK, So I made a little chart, with the countries ranked, left to right, with lower to higher gun ownership. I then put the murder rates along the Y axis. Everything is in per 100 citizens, though it really doesn't matter, since we're just trying to show a correlation between gun ownership and murder rates, if there is one, and as long as all the murder rates are in the same unit, the relative rates will be the same.

So without further ado, the chart:


So, as you can see, there is no strong correlation between gun ownership and intentional murder.

If anything, you see a bell curve, which I might hypothesize could be explained thus:

With almost or completely no guns, murder is kind of hard to pull off. Knives, baseball bats, etc. all require that you get good and close. So it's not really worth the effort/risk. With few guns, murder becomes much more easy to pull off. You can get a gun, but it's not likely your victim will have one to defend himself with. Once past a certain point, though, guns start showing up in the hands of the "good guys," as well, making murder a much less attractive option. Once again, it's not worth the effort and risk... unless you can be assured your victim does not have a gun, such as in a school or other public place where legally carried weapons are banned.

Clearly, culture plays a part, as well, since on both sides of Honduras (that huge spike in the middle) there are countries which are at or below even the US level (the far, far right bar, the US has more guns per capita than almost any two countries combined).

[kokojie]

You can ban every gun in the world people are still going to die.

What about the children in the recent school knifing incident?

I think it's just luck that no one died in the China school knifing incident. Both gun and knife can easily kill or not kill. It just happens the gun man in CT shooting is highly experienced shooter, while the guy in China I doubt he spent any time practicing knifing or learning how to kill with knives.

[FirstAscent]

You can ban every gun in the world people are still going to die.

What about the children in the recent school knifing incident?

I think it's just luck that no one died in the China school knifing incident.

I see. So if one or two (or three or four or five or six) were unlucky enough to die, the two events would be equivalent?

[RodeoX]

I look at it this way.
The number of guns in a given area is only slightly proportional to your risk of being shot, but who has the weapons is strongly proportional to your risk.  I have been thinking about this since Sunday when I was at a restaurant. I noticed that several patrons were open carrying their weapons and I was concealing mine. I wondered if some people at the restaurant were unnerved at all these guns?
MY first reaction was to think “wow, nothing bad is gonna happen here!” a crazy person trying to shoot someone would be lucky to get two shots off before a rain of lead came their way.

When faced with a hard to understand mind like the active shooters in the news, it is easy to blame the weapon. Especially if you know little about weapons. Many have a superstitious view of guns as having some sort of power. As though a sensible person is changed into a killer by the presence of a gun. People who know about guns are baffled by this because we think of them like a screwdriver or any other tool. It's not the gun that is the risk, it's the person. Indeed if you want to find a place that is safe from active shooters consider going to places that have guns. A police station, military base, a gun club, these  places have the most guns and are among the safest places. Schools, theaters, gun free zones; are places where only criminals have guns and there may be no one with any ability to stop a shooter.

I know some don't agree. That's cool. I'm not saying you should carry a gun. But for those of us who understand that the only survivable response to a shooter is an armed response, let us protect ourselves. You can hide in a closet and pretend your invisible if you want, I'm going home that evening.

[gyverlb]

OK, So I made a little chart, with the countries ranked, left to right, with lower to higher gun ownership. I then put the murder rates along the Y axis. Everything is in per 100 citizens, though it really doesn't matter, since we're just trying to show a correlation between gun ownership and murder rates, if there is one, and as long as all the murder rates are in the same unit, the relative rates will be the same.

So without further ado, the chart:


So, as you can see, there is no strong correlation between gun ownership and intentional murder.

There's nothing to see in your chart for at least these reasons:

• the x-axis consist of position of countries in a list, not the actual gun ownership ratio, so it skews results in unpredictable ways
• if you want to study the link between gun ownership and murder rates you must eliminate as much as possible any other factor that might be linked to murder rates, mixing countries in a state of civil war or where people are fighting to get limited resources with "developed" countries can't lead to any useful conclusion. And that's only the first few obvious causes of high murder rates I could think of.

Anyway people defending the right to bear arms want to be able to defend themselves and their family, their motivation is purely emotional even resorting to logical fallacies without realizing it (see my earlier exchange with Rudd-O for an obvious example). They make me think of the people preferring to spend hours trapped in traffic here in France instead of using public transportation in the cases where it's both faster and cheaper: they want to be in control even if it's detrimental to them.
I'm not sure the problem can be solved by the US, there are too many people there thinking with their guts. We should probably be patient and wait for a darwinian solution

[myrkul]

There's nothing to see in your chart for at least these reasons:
the x-axis consist of position of countries in a list, not the actual gun ownership ratio, so it skews results in unpredictable ways

But the list is ranked by gun ownership ratio. If I lumped all the countries with a similar gun ownership ratio together, that would skew the results in a very predictable way: upward in all but the highest gun ownership ratio countries. In other words, you are calling for me to massage my data in a favorable manner. I think the chart works fine as is.

if you want to study the link between gun ownership and murder rates you must eliminate as much as possible any other factor that might be linked to murder rates, mixing countries in a state of civil war or where people are fighting to get limited resources with "developed" countries can't lead to any useful conclusion. And that's only the first few obvious causes of high murder rates I could think of.

Then why does Somalia have such a low murder rate? (lower, as I point out, than Canada's)

We should probably be patient and wait for a darwinian solution

I can accept that.

[conspirosphere.tk]

Is this an argument against the 2nd amendment or radically for?
from Nassim Taleb:

"Why don't gun advocates fight for the right of private citizens to own large tanks and atomic weapons? A semi/automatic rifle is too potent for self defense, and too weak against government tyranny"

http://www.businessinsider.com/nassim-talebs-super-simple-argument-for-banning-semi-automatic-and-automatic-weapons-2012-12

Why, indeed?

[myrkul]

Is this an argument against the 2nd amendment or radically for?
from Nassim Taleb:

"Why don't gun advocates fight for the right of private citizens to own large tanks and atomic weapons? A semi/automatic rifle is too potent for self defense, and too weak against government tyranny"

http://www.businessinsider.com/nassim-talebs-super-simple-argument-for-banning-semi-automatic-and-automatic-weapons-2012-12

Why, indeed?

I do argue for private citizenry to own tanks and nukes. What good is a militia if it doesn't have the tools to fight off an invading army?

[FirstAscent]

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Note the modifier 'well regulated'. Also, note that a well regulated militia was necessary prior to the creation of the armed forces.