Once again #2

S O F I

Administrator
Staff member
#21
I still think Jokerman sides with gun-toters just for the sake of debate, but I will say this. When your future child dies from a gun-related incident, you will re-asses your position on gun legislation.
 

Duke

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#22
I don't have to think anything. There's a town in the US that requires citizens to be armed. The crime rate went down to zero. In those cities with easy carry laws, the crime rate is much less than strict cities. Facts are facts.

Anyway, every citizen doesn't want to be armed. I'm not saying give everyone a gun, everyone without a criminal record. I'm saying the more law-abiding citizens who want guns are allowed to have guns, the safer things will be. The more these citizens carry their guns, the safer everyone else will be. Of course, everyone who wants to get a gun or carry one should have to go through a gun safety course.
But this is just as theoretical as my "five-oh will protect us all" desillusion. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that 60% of the population are law abiding citizens, allowed to carry guns. Let's say half of them, a good 1/4th of the total population, wants and gets to carry.

I do not even want to imagine how a saturday night in any big city is going to turn out. This experiment may work in some small hick town where everybody knows each other, but it's not going to work in New York. Or LA. Or Houston. Or whatever.

Both theorems are susceptible to a whole host of practical objections. And when given the choice of which problem to face (as a goverment) I'd rather choose the one where not everybody and their granny is armed.
 

PuffnScruff

Well-Known Member
#23
You don't think that all these incidents happening because some idiot got hold of a firearm in the first place is in any way, hm, odd? Contradictory? .
you can't prevent idiots from doing stupid thigns, such as getting behind the wheel of a car because they are suicidal and driving down a highway at high speeds and crashing into innocent people and causing harm to those people and themselves. you can say this never happens but some of my parents friends were victims to this

.
Just because gun toting psycho's tend to be taken down by someone else with a firearm doesn't make guns life savers. To argue so is ludicrous. Off duty cops don't count imo. Based on their personal experience and training I wouldn't say they qualify as normal civilians in regards to gun use/ownership. .
cops dont spend all their time in training learning gun safety and how to shoot. when it comes to gun safety they really are no more training than a citizen who has taken a gun safety course or a concealed weapons class. that is the truth. i was at a gun show recently and even a police officer i talked to admitted this. the proof is in how many officers shoot themselves in the foot(that mostly has to do with glocks too but that is a different story). it is not ludicrous at all. the facts are out there.

Guns are used up to 2.5 million times a year to successfully stop criminal attack, 98% of the
time without having to fire a shot. -Professor Gary Kleck, “Armed Resistance to Crime”

33 states have laws recognizing the right to carry a gun for self-defense. FBI statistics show that crime
has gone DOWN in those states, especially for rape and murder. -Professor John Lott, “More Guns,
Less Crime”

U.S. Department of Justice statistics showed that when a woman is armed, attempted rapes fail 97% of
the time. -U.S. DOJ, “Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities”, pg. 31

95% of all 911 calls are dispatched too late for the police to stop a crime or catch a suspect.
-U.S. News and World Report, June 17, 1996, page 30

facts are facts my friend, all the speculation, assumptions, and dreams of a gun free utopia society in the world will not change them


.
And apart from that, for every story about a "life saving" gun incident, you can find one where no one intervened and people just died. Just because you can "counter" a negative message with a positive one doesn't mean guns are good or private ownership is a smart, responsible choice. .
and i bet in those incidents you will find that nobody had a gun and felt scared and threatend because the criminal did have a gun. again look at the facts in those links i posted. criminals when confronted with someone else who has a firearm get scared and backdown especially if the firepower is greater than theirs.

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and lmao @ the football analogy. How childish can your argumentation get, man? I bet in that period ('97-'02) more people were injured by handguns than assault rifles. Does this mean assault rifles are safer than handguns now?.
the point of the football stats was that there are more deaths in that period from football at schools than gun related deaths at schools, including gang violence, so why would you not ban football if doing so would save lives

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Piss off with your information distortion.
you asked for links, i provided:D
 

Duke

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#24
Even if everything you say is correct, Puff, even if, the practical problem is that you will never manage to get enough of the public to carry a gun that some kind of permanent civil watch (by way of half the population packing) is unobtainable.

Have guns, at one point or another, ever saved a woman from rape? I'm sure they have. I'm sure that, used properly, they will protect you to some degree. I'm also sure that, used unproperly, they will serve to shoot some poor 6 yr old needing to potty while daddy thought there were burglars in the house.


It makes no difference. You post a story about guns saving a life, I can post one where they take a life. You want everyone armed, I want no one armed. Both are utopias. Given the fact that you have to make a choice between the two, I'm quite happy I live in a place where they don't sell guns as if they're cigarettes.

Also, regarding your statistics...the way you present them hides a lot of information. I'm sure that 95% of attempted rapes fail if the victim-to-be is armed, but how many women you think are armed, or even want to be armed in their own house, let alone on the street? IF they were armed, yes, they'd be near invulnarable according to your data. But they aren't and maybe don't even want to be. So that makes your 95% very cute, but unpractical.

33 states have laws recognizing the right to carry a gun for self-defense. FBI statistics show that crime
has gone DOWN in those states, especially for rape and murder. -Professor John Lott, “More Guns,
Less Crime”

This says nothing, really. Crime gone down? After guns became legal? Already before? What about other crimes than rape and murder? How much did they go down? What are the natural fluctuations in the numbers, etc etc etc?

A half and a half don't make two. Statistics are statistics and statistics don't lie, but you also need a whole host of other statistics and information to be able to put them into context. You can't just rip them out and expect to make a solid point based on 2 lines with 4 numbers in them.

And if public gun ownership does so much for public safety, still I ask, for the gazillionth time, why does so many of the random-reasonless-gun-shooting crap happen in the States and not in, ooh i dunno, Austria? France? Sweden?

Why is practically the entire western world devoid of maniacs that walk into a mall and empty clips in random shoppers, except the USA? Why do the overwhelming majority of school shoot ups happen in the USA? Can you answer me this question?
 

PuffnScruff

Well-Known Member
#25
Even if everything you say is correct, Puff, even if, the practical problem is that you will never manage to get enough of the public to carry a gun that some kind of permanent civil watch (by way of half the population packing) is unobtainable.
there is no need to make everyone carry a firearm, just the ones who want to carry

Have guns, at one point or another, ever saved a woman from rape? I'm sure they have. I'm sure that, used properly, they will protect you to some degree. I'm also sure that, used unproperly, they will serve to shoot some poor 6 yr old needing to potty while daddy thought there were burglars in the house.
accidents happen, it is unfortunate but you cannot stop an accident from happening.

It makes no difference. You post a story about guns saving a life, I can post one where they take a life. You want everyone armed, I want no one armed. Both are utopias. Given the fact that you have to make a choice between the two, I'm quite happy I live in a place where they don't sell guns as if they're cigarettes.
i don't want everyone to be armed, just the ones that want to be. you are happy living where you are where guns are not sold that is fine. i am happy knowing that if i break down in western kentucky, where oxycon is more valuable than currency and people get robbed everyday for their money and belongings so drug addicts can pawn, sell, or trade for pills, that i will be safe from a group of addicts trying to jump me or hold me up.

Also, regarding your statistics...the way you present them hides a lot of information. I'm sure that 95% of attempted rapes fail if the victim-to-be is armed, but how many women you think are armed, or even want to be armed in their own house, let alone on the street? IF they were armed, yes, they'd be near invulnarable according to your data. But they aren't and maybe don't even want to be. So that makes your 95% very cute, but unpractical.
i'm sure the books and information from the govt studies that have been released go into more detail, those were just excerpts
33 states have laws recognizing the right to carry a gun for self-defense. FBI statistics show that crime
has gone DOWN in those states, especially for rape and murder. -Professor John Lott, “More Guns,
Less Crime”

This says nothing, really. Crime gone down? After guns became legal? Already before? What about other crimes than rape and murder? How much did they go down? What are the natural fluctuations in the numbers, etc etc etc?
well you would have to do some research and look for the stats from the govt.

And if public gun ownership does so much for public safety, still I ask, for the gazillionth time, why does so many of the random-reasonless-gun-shooting crap happen in the States and not in, ooh i dunno, Austria? France? Sweden?

Why is practically the entire western world devoid of maniacs that walk into a mall and empty clips in random shoppers, except the USA? Why do the overwhelming majority of school shoot ups happen in the USA? Can you answer me this question?
it seems like you are looking for just one specific answer to these questions. there is no one answer. there are multiple things you have to take into account and there are multiple things that could be the problem. especially for the school shootings. as i have said before, in almost every case of the school shootings where the shooter was a student, that kid was on some sort of anti-depressent medication.

i have seen stats that show that armed violent crimes have gone up in australia since their gun ban. the same for the u.k.
 

AmerikazMost

Well-Known Member
#27
Puff, you're statistics are crap. If I ever remember anything from my ECON stat class it's this: you can collect, analyze, and manipulate any set of statistics in any situation to have them say what you want them to. For instance...
Guns are used up to 2.5 million times a year to successfully stop criminal attack, 98% of the
time without having to fire a shot. -Professor Gary Kleck, “Armed Resistance to Crime”
If you gave me a list 2.5 million incidents and the circumstances surrounding them, I would be able to "prove" to you that all attempted crimes fail 95% of the time because of guns, or that guns are 487 times more likely to stop a crime than to be involved in one.

Statistics only go so far, and any statistic being used--ESPECIALLY anything using a percentage sign (%)--is really worthless without knowing the date from which and the methods in which it was attained.

Sometimes common sense needs to prevail. If a firearm is in the proximity of any incident where there is a potential for violence, the situation escalates.

Fact: If firearms were banned from use by the general public, there'd be less gun crime.

Obviously, it wouldn't be eliminated, but I guarantee there'd be less deaths by firearms. Half the stories you provided were police using guns to stop crime. Most civilians use guns to COMMIT crimes, regardless of how successful guns are when used to stop crimes.

And the drugs analogy is a bad one. Civilians can easily obtaind or manufacture, transport, conceal, and sell drugs. If we ban drugs, there won't be people growing magnum plants in their backyard or be in their basements doing masonry in their assault rifle labs. They could still be get if they wanted to be got, but it'd be a lot harder to do so, and gun crimes by "oridnary" citizens and deadly crimes of rage would drop tremendously.




33 states have laws recognizing the right to carry a gun for self-defense. FBI statistics show that crime
has gone DOWN in those states, especially for rape and murder. -Professor John Lott, “More Guns,
Less Crime”
Any relation to Trent Lott?
 

PuffnScruff

Well-Known Member
#28
Puff, you're statistics are crap. If I ever remember anything from my ECON stat class it's this: you can collect, analyze, and manipulate any set of statistics in any situation to have them say what you want them to. For instance...
sure stats could be manipulated, but what about the stats provided from govt sources? are the stats provided from people and groups who are anti-gun manipulated too?
Sometimes common sense needs to prevail. If a firearm is in the proximity of any incident where there is a potential for violence, the situation escalates.

Fact: If firearms were banned from use by the general public, there'd be less gun crime.
well that actually cannot be proven it is just a theory. guns are banned in the u.k. but their violent crimes with firearms have gone up. do you really want firearms to go on the blackmarket even more than they already are? because that is what would result if guns were banned. criminals feeding more criminals guns. thats not a good thing. people with a criminal record are more likely to die as homicide vitcims, so i wonder how many of the 75% of the 10,100 homicides with firearms from '05 in our country were from repeat criminals and not law abiding citizems?

is there really anything wrong with law abiding citizens to have guns?

Obviously, it wouldn't be eliminated, but I guarantee there'd be less deaths by firearms. Half the stories you provided were police using guns to stop crime. Most civilians use guns to COMMIT crimes, regardless of how successful guns are when used to stop crimes.
it might go down a little bit but repeat and career criminals would still be taking up the majority of the percentage rate. criminals use guns to commit crimes. not law abiding citizens.
And the drugs analogy is a bad one. Civilians can easily obtaind or manufacture, transport, conceal, and sell drugs. If we ban drugs, there won't be people growing magnum plants in their backyard or be in their basements doing masonry in their assault rifle labs. They could still be get if they wanted to be got, but it'd be a lot harder to do so, and gun crimes by "oridnary" citizens and deadly crimes of rage would drop tremendously.
the drug analogy was ment to point out that guns would be on the black market even more than they are already, like drugs are. drug are illegal but you can still purchase them in this country, even if they are not produced in this country. they still manage to get here and find their way onto the streets. the same thing would happen with guns. and these gun crimes by the "oridnary" citizen may drop but what about crime from repeat criminals?

also if you ban guns in you are just giving away your freedoms in this country and giving the govt more control over the citizens.
 

AmerikazMost

Well-Known Member
#29
sure stats could be manipulated, but what about the stats provided from govt sources? are the stats provided from people and groups who are anti-gun manipulated too?

well that actually cannot be proven it is just a theory. guns are banned in the u.k. but their violent crimes with firearms have gone up. do you really want firearms to go on the blackmarket even more than they already are? because that is what would result if guns were banned. criminals feeding more criminals guns. thats not a good thing. people with a criminal record are more likely to die as homicide vitcims, so i wonder how many of the 75% of the 10,100 homicides with firearms from '05 in our country were from repeat criminals and not law abiding citizems?

is there really anything wrong with law abiding citizens to have guns?


it might go down a little bit but repeat and career criminals would still be taking up the majority of the percentage rate. criminals use guns to commit crimes. not law abiding citizens.

the drug analogy was ment to point out that guns would be on the black market even more than they are already, like drugs are. drug are illegal but you can still purchase them in this country, even if they are not produced in this country. they still manage to get here and find their way onto the streets. the same thing would happen with guns. and these gun crimes by the "oridnary" citizen may drop but what about crime from repeat criminals?

also if you ban guns in you are just giving away your freedoms in this country and giving the govt more control over the citizens.
You really think that if guns are banned that there will be MORE violent crime using firearms? You think that people will have BETTER access to them? Most career criminals who use guns got them off the black market anyway. They're cheaper and can't be traced. The supply of black market firearms may rise, but the demand from those criminals won't go up. The only demand for black market guns that would go up is that of people seeking a firearm for a premeditated, isolated act of violence. In those cases, the person is determined to commit that crime. Now, would it be easier for him to find a vendor off the black market? Or to walk into a gun store and purchase one on the spot? I forget.. where did the Va. Tech shooter get his weapons?

If you want to use the drug to gun analogy, look at it backwards. If marijuana was legalized, would there be more or less pot smoking? More. Why? Because there'd be easier access to it, and it wouldn't be a crime to possess it. It's common sense.

And yes, anti-gun statistics are probably manipulated in some way too.
 

PuffnScruff

Well-Known Member
#30
You really think that if guns are banned that there will be MORE violent crime using firearms? You think that people will have BETTER access to them?
.
yes i do, look at other countries that have banned guns. the u.k. for example. violent crimes with guns went up after banning. same in australia.

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Most career criminals who use guns got them off the black market anyway. They're cheaper and can't be traced. The supply of black market firearms may rise, but the demand from those criminals won't go up. The only demand for black market guns that would go up is that of people seeking a firearm for a premeditated, isolated act of violence. In those cases, the person is determined to commit that crime. Now, would it be easier for him to find a vendor off the black market? Or to walk into a gun store and purchase one on the spot? I forget.. where did the Va. Tech shooter get his weapons?.
according to this study
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Firearmsources.svg
only 9% of guns from criminals come from the black market. and where the va. tech shooter got his guns at isn't what people should be looking at. as i have said, the majority of the school shooting cases can all be linked back to prescription medication. that is what people need to be looking at, not "where did he buy his guns" "lets all throw away our freedoms" "give the govt more control of our lives".

you can't prevent someone from killing another person. not unless the movie minority report becomes a reality. if guns were banned and a person wanted to off another person they would still find the means to do so. guns just make it easier. why punish people that obey the law just because a few rotten apples spoil the bunch? to save some lives? well then lets get rid of the automobile. hell, lets get rid of football at school. there are plenty of other ways people die where the numbers are much higher than deaths by a gun, so lets ban all of those too. but that would just be stupid, right?

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If you want to use the drug to gun analogy, look at it backwards. If marijuana was legalized, would there be more or less pot smoking? More. Why? Because there'd be easier access to it, and it wouldn't be a crime to possess it. It's common sense.

And yes, anti-gun statistics are probably manipulated in some way too.
maybe, maybe not. it might rise for a few years but it would probably decline after a few years. there is really no way of knowing. i mean who would be smoking more pot? the people that already smoke pot or the people that dont smoke pot?
 

Preach

Well-Known Member
#31
i like to think of it this way: one way or another, a lot of people are gonna die in the world, so how they die is irrelevant in the long run. there are already too many people on this planet. let's say there were 3 billion people on this planet instead of 6, which would be much more ideal. then everything would be different. resources would be more spread out between people, and that practically means that the general mentality of every person in the world would be different. all the negative things going on in the world dwell in your sub-conscious and distort your impression of things. when you see an arab with some wires popping out of his shirt, what are you gonna automatically think? what if he's just wearing an mp3 player? doesn't change what your initial reaction is does it. or if this particular stereotype doesn't apply to you, instead of responding with a wiseass joke, find a different stereotype you know you have misconceptions about and think of that instead.

when someone say "guns" you have an initial reaction and that intial reaction would probably never had grounds to form in the same manner on if the human race wass less hateful and jealous. i'm threading on very thin ice here with my philosophical speculations, but my point is that we are where we are, thinking "what could have been" is pointless, and no matter what you try to change, it's gonna have a positive and a negative outcome. before ellaborating on that, i have to point out something i noticed. duke lives in a country where gun laws are stricter than in the us where jokerman lives. they are both standing on each side of the river throwing rocks at eachother. what a coincidence lol.

basically, you should both open up to the fact that you both have good points, but either way, if the u.s. decides to ban guns or if holland decides to legalize them, people are still gonna die all over the world and when you try to focus on bringing down the crime or the killings in your own country without thinking about the entire world as one big entity, you really aren't seeing the full picture. if american's can't have guns they need to substantiate them somehow. for 30 years, it has been embedded in every american's mind that guns are a right. when they're suddenly not, who knows how that's gonna turn out? the average american has a certain mentality, and we all know how hard it is to accept fault and "change" your attitude towards something when you don't want to. so if the american government decides to ban guns, that will obviously not be well received by the american population, and i can't help but envision a few typical american patriotic characters that would probably make a pretty big deal about it. the result could be civil war at worst lol. that doesn't help the people dying thing.

so sitting on the fence i just wanted to point out that you're not going anywhere with eachother, but i think you both have a point and you're both being a little neglective of eachother's points. hi! :)
 

AmerikazMost

Well-Known Member
#32
yes i do, look at other countries that have banned guns. the u.k. for example. violent crimes with guns went up after banning. same in australia.
Puff, you keep pointing out the UK as an example, and I've been thinking to myself, "This sounds like complete horseshit." So I finally did some of my own research, and ya know what? I was right; it is complete horseshit.

Gun crimes have gone up since the ban in 1997, but it's been a continuation of a trend that's been going on for decades. Colin Greenwood, probably the leading expert on firearms in the UK and who opposes the ban on firearms, stated in his report:

"The situation is not, as some people have claimed, that the ban on handguns caused an increase in their use in crime. The truth is that it is total irrelevance. Crime and the use of pistols has been increasing continuously over the period and everything that politicians and police have done has tended to exacerbate rather than tackle the problem, but the ban on handguns is neither here nor there in the equation."

http://www.firearmsafetyseminar.org.nz/_documents/Greenwood_Paper.pdf

This is exactly what I meant by problems looking at the statistics through tunnel vision. Look behind them and around them as well for the true answers and conclusions. Puff, sorry to tell you that the Fox News report or the radio talk show that you got your information from misled you.

Anyway, here are a couple more statistics for you to chew on.

Over the past two years, crimes involving firearms in the UK has dropped significantly.

In 2006, homicides by firearms in the UK dropped 36 percent to its lowest levels since 1999.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207.pdf



Of the 32 countries listed in this report, the UK has the lowest murders with firearms per capita, at just 0.00102579 per 1,000 people. That's less than half of the United States, who is only outdone by South Africa, Colombia, Thailand, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Belarus, and Costa Rica. That's some great company, isn't it? At least we can say we have less gun murders than a racially tense and stratified country, a country whose biggest crop is cocaine, and a country that may have the worst living conditions in the world.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21670/Crime-Statistics-Murders
(This is from a UN Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems)

according to this study
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Firearmsources.svg
only 9% of guns from criminals come from the black market. and where the va. tech shooter got his guns at isn't what people should be looking at. as i have said, the majority of the school shooting cases can all be linked back to prescription medication. that is what people need to be looking at, not "where did he buy his guns" "lets all throw away our freedoms" "give the govt more control of our lives".
Looking at this graph, one can assume that no less than 61% and up to 76% of guns used in crimes were bought legally. Yay for the freedom to bear arms.
you can't prevent someone from killing another person. not unless the movie minority report becomes a reality. if guns were banned and a person wanted to off another person they would still find the means to do so. guns just make it easier. why punish people that obey the law just because a few rotten apples spoil the bunch? to save some lives? well then lets get rid of the automobile. hell, lets get rid of football at school. there are plenty of other ways people die where the numbers are much higher than deaths by a gun, so lets ban all of those too. but that would just be stupid, right?
Guns are weapons. They're not items that could be used as weapons. They're weapons (our own law acknowledges this). They're sole purpose of creation was to kill people more easily.
 

PuffnScruff

Well-Known Member
#33
Puff, you keep pointing out the UK as an example, and I've been thinking to myself, "This sounds like complete horseshit." So I finally did some of my own research, and ya know what? I was right; it is complete horseshit.

Gun crimes have gone up since the ban in 1997, but it's been a continuation of a trend that's been going on for decades. Colin Greenwood, probably the leading expert on firearms in the UK and who opposes the ban on firearms, stated in his report:

"The situation is not, as some people have claimed, that the ban on handguns caused an increase in their use in crime. The truth is that it is total irrelevance. Crime and the use of pistols has been increasing continuously over the period and everything that politicians and police have done has tended to exacerbate rather than tackle the problem, but the ban on handguns is neither here nor there in the equation."

http://www.firearmsafetyseminar.org.nz/_documents/Greenwood_Paper.pdf

This is exactly what I meant by problems looking at the statistics through tunnel vision. Look behind them and around them as well for the true answers and conclusions. Puff, sorry to tell you that the Fox News report or the radio talk show that you got your information from misled you.

Anyway, here are a couple more statistics for you to chew on.

Over the past two years, crimes involving firearms in the UK has dropped significantly.

In 2006, homicides by firearms in the UK dropped 36 percent to its lowest levels since 1999.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207.pdf



Of the 32 countries listed in this report, the UK has the lowest murders with firearms per capita, at just 0.00102579 per 1,000 people. That's less than half of the United States, who is only outdone by South Africa, Colombia, Thailand, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Belarus, and Costa Rica. That's some great company, isn't it? At least we can say we have less gun murders than a racially tense and stratified country, a country whose biggest crop is cocaine, and a country that may have the worst living conditions in the world.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21670/Crime-Statistics-Murders
(This is from a UN Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems)


Looking at this graph, one can assume that no less than 61% and up to 76% of guns used in crimes were bought legally. Yay for the freedom to bear arms.

Guns are weapons. They're not items that could be used as weapons. They're weapons (our own law acknowledges this). They're sole purpose of creation was to kill people more easily.
wow, nice low blow at the assumption that i get my information from fox news or someone on talk radio (even though the only person on talk radio i listen to is matt drudge and that is only once a week, unless you count coasttocoastam and i rarely watch tv news since all of it, and i mean all of it is sensationalism). i guess i would be more informed if i got my information from cnn or nyt :rolleyes: i guess there i no way i could have gotten this information from researching and reading...
 

Jokerman

Well-Known Member
#34
"The situation is not, as some people have claimed, that the ban on handguns caused an increase in their use in crime. The truth is that it is total irrelevance. Crime and the use of pistols has been increasing continuously over the period and everything that politicians and police have done has tended to exacerbate rather than tackle the problem, but the ban on handguns is neither here nor there in the equation."
Let's follow this man's logic in another area. Cancer rates. We're trying to find out whether tobacco, recently introduced into a society that never had it, might increase cancer rates.

Colin Greenwood: "The truth is that it is total irrelevance. Cancer has been increasing continuously over the period, but the use of tobacco is neither here nor there in the equation."

Now put in that context it's hopefully even obvious to you, that Mr. Greewood's argument is flawed and he's just blowing (pun intended) smoke out of his ass. The truth is he doesn't know what part of the equation the ban on handguns play in the rising crime rate, if any. Just saying it was rising before the ban doesn't mean it had no effect. But like tobacco there is evidence that it does have an effect elsewhere. So it's logical to assume it might have an effect here.

Why has the crime rate and the use of guns been increasing in the UK? Because crime is a function of people's choices to disregard laws and harm others, not of the availability of guns. If, in fact, the ban had no effect, why then ban guns if the trend in the UK just continued rising like nothing had happened? More importantly, why blame guns, especially in the hands of the law-abiding, whose ability to protect themselves definitely went down with the ban?

I think you are working to justify your emotional responses instead of examining them in a logical manner.

Guns are weapons. They're sole purpose of creation was to kill people more easily.
Actually, they were invented (via the cannon) to defend people more easily.
 
#35
see, this is what i don't get about this whole argument. i don't think i've seen one anti-gun person say guns should be banned, but all the pro-gun people keep talking about is such and such would happen if guns were banned. here's a simple solution: place stricter regulations on purchasing guns. Canada hasn't banned guns, and yet our country isn't full of people shooting each other. we have regulations though, which make it more difficult to purchase a gun. seriously, what would be wrong with that? it wouldn't be infringing on your rights, because no one is saying that you can't own a gun, but there really is no need to make them so easy to purchase.

i have to add that i think it's ridiculous how Americans cling to that second amendment like it still has any real meaning. that amendment was put there because the American government knew that the British were planning a re-invasion of the country. in 1791. well, guess what guys, i think they called off the re-invasion. you can put the guns down now.
 

AmerikazMost

Well-Known Member
#36
wow, nice low blow at the assumption that i get my information from fox news or someone on talk radio (even though the only person on talk radio i listen to is matt drudge and that is only once a week, unless you count coasttocoastam and i rarely watch tv news since all of it, and i mean all of it is sensationalism). i guess i would be more informed if i got my information from cnn or nyt :rolleyes: i guess there i no way i could have gotten this information from researching and reading...
Sorry for the personal attack Puff. Sometimes I get carried away. You know I didn't mean anything by it :D

Let's follow this man's logic in another area. Cancer rates. We're trying to find out whether tobacco, recently introduced into a society that never had it, might increase cancer rates.

Colin Greenwood: "The truth is that it is total irrelevance. Cancer has been increasing continuously over the period, but the use of tobacco is neither here nor there in the equation."

Now put in that context it's hopefully even obvious to you, that Mr. Greewood's argument is flawed and he's just blowing (pun intended) smoke out of his ass. The truth is he doesn't know what part of the equation the ban on handguns play in the rising crime rate, if any. Just saying it was rising before the ban doesn't mean it had no effect. But like tobacco there is evidence that it does have an effect elsewhere. So it's logical to assume it might have an effect here.

Why has the crime rate and the use of guns been increasing in the UK? Because crime is a function of people's choices to disregard laws and harm others, not of the availability of guns. If, in fact, the ban had no effect, why then ban guns if the trend in the UK just continued rising like nothing had happened? More importantly, why blame guns, especially in the hands of the law-abiding, whose ability to protect themselves definitely went down with the ban?

I think you are working to justify your emotional responses instead of examining them in a logical manner.
You want proof? Here's my proof.

This is a graph of Greenwood's data of homocides by firearms in the UK since 1980:


Using Intercooled Stata 9.2, a high-powered statistical analysis program that I got for my ECON Stat class, I performed a least-squares regression analysis on the data to determine the impact of the gun ban on the homocide by firearm rates.

Testing just the correlation between the existence of a gun ban and the number of homicides each year, it appeared that there was some correlation. Here is my data:

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 24
-------------+------------------------------ F( 1, 22) = 6.34
Model | 1448.58403 1 1448.58403 Prob > F = 0.0196
Residual | 5029.91597 22 228.632544 R-squared = 0.2236
-------------+------------------------------ Adj R-squared = 0.1883
Total | 6478.5 23 281.673913 Root MSE = 15.121

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
homocide | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
gunban | 17.09244 6.790491 2.52 0.020 3.009821 31.17505
_cons | 52.76471 3.667284 14.39 0.000 45.15922 60.37019
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, I don't know how well that will format to the forum, but I'll explain the significant points. First, the R-squared variable in the top right is 0.2236, meaning that this test implies that the ban on guns accounted for about 22% of the rise in homocides by firearms. The small Prob > F stat above the R-squared implies that we can be confident that the ban has some effect. Even more important are the Coef., t, and P>|t| statistics for the variable gunban. The large coefficient implies that the variable has a large effect on homicides. A 2.069 (or -2.069) t-statistic from a data set with 23 degrees of freedom, as in this case, means that we could be 95% confident, the general goal to meet, that the variable is significant; here it's 2.52, meaning we can be about 98% confident, as the P>|t| value shows (confidence = 1 - P>|t|).

This analysis implies a strong correlation between the ban on guns and the rise in homocides by firearms. However, this analysis is too simple, and we have more information that can account for the rise in homocides.



The other information we have from Greenwood's data is the year, which is significant because of his assertion that gun crime has been rising throughout time and not because of a single incident. Therefore, I performed a second analysis, and it revealed a lot of flaws in the original test.

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 24
-------------+------------------------------ F( 2, 21) = 9.22
Model | 3028.62991 2 1514.31495 Prob > F = 0.0013
Residual | 3449.87009 21 164.279528 R-squared = 0.4675
-------------+------------------------------ Adj R-squared = 0.4168
Total | 6478.5 23 281.673913 Root MSE = 12.817

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
homocide | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
year | 1.90367 .6138305 3.10 0.005 .6271393 3.1802
gunban | -5.7516 9.348233 -0.62 0.545 -25.19231 13.68912
_cons | -3731.731 1220.299 -3.06 0.006 -6269.481 -1193.98
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can see, the R-squared variable has risen to 0.4675, meaning that the ban and time alone account for almost half of the trend in homocides (although exactly how much each variable accounts for is unknown). The Prob>F variable is even smaller (0.0013), meaning we can be more confident in this test than the last one. Now, looking at the variables.

The most striking aspect of this test is the change in the Coef. (-5.7516), t (-0.62), and P>|t| (0.545) statistic of the gunban variable. Now that we have taken time into account, the presence of a gun ban actually lowers the number of homocides by firearms per year, as represented by the coefficient. This drastic change implies that the more factors that we take into account, the better we see that the ban has positive effect on gun crime and that the appearance of the raw data is simply masked by other factors. Take a look at the t-statistic. It's not even close to 2.069 or -2.069. Looking at the P>|t| statistic, we can only be 45.5% confident that the ban on guns has ANY impact on the rise in gun crime, and if it did, its impact was probably that it lowered gun crimes because the t-statistic is negative.


Even still, the second analysis was from from sufficient. 54% of the factors are still not taken into account. However, with each factor that we add into the equation, the observed impact of the other factors change. With that being said, the apparent direction of the effect of the gun ban is that it turns out to be a more positive than negative factor on gun crimes as we look at other explanations for the rise.



Is that logical enough for you?

Actually, they were invented (via the cannon) to defend people more easily.
Defend themselves how? By building a wall of cannons that attackers couldn't penetrate? Or by projecting a massive iron sphere at them, smashing and crushing their bodies?
 

Prize Gotti

Boots N Cats
Staff member
#37
You don't need to be worried about getting shot unless you live in the bigger cities in the UK. You more likely to get stabbed to death here.
 

Jokerman

Well-Known Member
#38
Is that logical enough for you?
It's wrong.

This is what I came up with using my fingers:

[(bar-hG/c^5)^1/2]/sr = 3.9336115(89) x 10^-46 cd
(bar-hG/c^5)^1/2 = 5.3904639(43) x 10^-44 s
(bar-hG/c^3)^1/2 = 1.6160204(35) x 10^-35 m [(bar-hc/G)^1/2]/M = 6.6245916(02) x 10^-28
(bar-hc/G)^1/2 = 2.1767500(08) x 10^-8 kg
e/[(bar-hG/c^5)^1/2] = 2.9722423(67) x 10^24 A
[(bar-hc^5/G)^1/2]/k = 1.4169882(01) x 10^32 K


Thus proving the gun ban increased gun crimes. :eek:
 

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