[Closed] More gun grief in the US

banning guns is an immediate and direct solution to the gun related death issue

Yes, but strangely everybody seems to be ignoring my point that banning all guns in the US is only going to happen in some alternate universe. You might as well suggest banning all cars from the roads would save even more lives (note I'm not actually suggesting that).

aracer - Member
Yes, but strangely everybody seems to be ignoring my point that banning all guns in the US is only going to happen in some alternate universe. You might as well suggest banning all cars from the roads would save even more lives (note I'm not actually suggesting that).

Just had a quick scan through the thread. I must have missed the part where you said that because you don't appear to have ever suggested it. You made one passing mention to it being in the constitution but, although I'm no expert, I don't see why this couldn't be ammended? After all, it has been ammended 27 times, and some of these would be regarded amongst some of the best things to happen to America. I wonder whether these ammendments were protested so strongly in their times? Namely the 15th?

Now I don't want to start any new big argument. Just one Englishman's opinion.

I'm guessing there weren't that many deaths due to suicide in those Vietnam figures.

Probably one or two but I don't really see the relevance.

If you removed firearms as a method of suicide I don't for one second believe there would be a 1 to 1 increase in other methods of committing suicide.

Firearms are for killing things. They are therefore a very effective way of committing suicide too.

Banning guns would not really help the majority, imo, because there woudl still be a large number of guns floating about.

After all, it has been ammended 27 times

Have any of those amendments directly repealed previous amendments?

If you removed firearms as a method of suicide I don't for one second believe there would be a 1 to 1 increase in other methods of committing suicide.

Well the suicide rate in the UK is virtually identical to that in the US. Plenty of other very effective ways of committing suicide it would seem.

Banning guns would not really help the majority, imo, because there woudl still be a large number of guns floating about.

Fair point.

But it would stop them being so easily accessible...e.g. from your local supermarket.

Although it should be said that it isn't illegal to own a gun in the UK. There are simply stricter regulations I suppose.

You made one passing mention to it being in the constitution but, although I'm no expert, I don't see why this couldn't be ammended?

Sorry, I thought the constitution comment was obvious. You failing to see why it couldn't be amended doesn't mean it's going to happen.

Have any of those amendments directly repealed previous amendments?

I'm not certain but ammendments have been re-ammended for lack of a better word. Furthermore, an argument could be made that the 22nd ammendments does directly contradict the 12th with regards to presidency. However this is more an inherent technicality than an intended attempt to counter.

You failing to see why it couldn't be amended doesn't mean it's going to happen.

And you saying it won't happen doesn't mean it can't also?

Cars,suicide, which is the worst way to have a loved one die.
Awesome contribution so far on whether lots of people having guns is a good idea or a bad one and whether it impacts.on murder or.death rates.

What you going to shoe horn in next ????
Can't wait to see

Molly prohibition was an amendment and the changed by another one iirc

molgrips - Member
Banning guns would not really help the majority, imo, because there woudl still be a large number of guns floating about.

Australia cut murders by gun by ~50% just by banning semi auto and auto weapons (which no civilian needs).

Australian gun homicides

1997: 79
1996: 104
1995: 67
1994: 76
1993: 64

Ban was in 1996.

Have any of those amendments directly repealed previous amendments?

Prohibition

Anyway I'm still lost as to what the point of bringing up suicide is anyway

Its a really simple argument it goes like this:

Guns are inherently deadly (its what they are for) ->
Lots of people are being killed by these deadly things ->
If you reduce the availability of these deadly things less people will be killed by them.

Everything else is just window dressing

I'd like to see a breakdown of gun deaths in the US by socio-economic grouping or links to oother crimes. So we can see how much is say drug/gang related, how much is drunken redneckery, and so on.

Anyway I'm still lost as to what the point of bringing up suicide is anyway

Which is why I keep pointing it out whenever the figures including that are used (to compare with figures which don't include it).

Why did you stop at 1997 aracer?

2010: 30
2009: 36
2008: 27
2007: 28
2006: 41
2005: 15
2004: 15
2003: 54
2002: 45
2001: 47
2000: 57
1999: 50
1998: 57
1997: 79
1996: 10
1995: 67
1994: 76
1993: 64
1992: 96
1991: 84
1990: 79
1989: 80
1988: 123

Australia, the annual rate of firearm homicide per 100,000 population is

2010: 0.13
2009: 0.16
2008: 0.13
2007: 0.13
2006: 0.20
2005: 0.07
2004: 0.07
2003: 0.27
2002: 0.23
2001: 0.24
2000: 0.30
1999: 0.26
1998: 0.30
1997: 0.43
1996: 0.57
1995: 0.37
1994: 0.43
1993: 0.36
1992: 0.55
1991: 0.49
1990: 0.46
1989: 0.48
1988: 0.74

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/australia

I feel sorry for the families involved, but our ( the UK's ) obsession with US gun law is one of life's on going mysteries

Haven't read the thread, have we done the demographic of who's mostly being murdered by guns and why that's important in the debate?

I feel sorry for the families involved, but our ( the UK's ) obsession with US gun law is one of life's on going mysteries

I think its down to the difficulty of understanding the US position when ostensibly at least the solution seems to be pretty straightforward

Why did you stop at 1997 aracer?

It seemed the most obvious point to compare before and after. Kind of hard to suggest other factors haven't affected the rate over a longer period - if you do a proper study (of the sort I gave a link to earlier) you can take account of that, but given the raw figures and no other information you have to compare over a fairly tight timespan in order to be able to draw any sensible conclusion about the impact of a specific change. The first year which might support your 50% assertion was 8 years after the ban, which seems strange for something you'd think would have such an immediate effect.

aracer - Member
The first year which might support your 50% assertion was 8 years after the ban, which seems strange for something you'd think would have such an immediate effect.

Are you sure?

1996 104 1
1997 79 0.76
1998 57 0.55
1999 50 0.48
2000 57 0.55
2001 47 0.45
2002 45 0.43
2003 54 0.52
2004 15 0.14
2005 15 0.14
2006 41 0.39
2007 28 0.27
2008 27 0.26
2009 26 0.25
2010 30 0.29

I'm sure that if you take a statistical anomaly as your baseline you can prove whatever you want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean

Well the suicide rate in the UK is virtually identical to that in the US. Plenty of other very effective ways of committing suicide it would seem.

I will put my professional hat on and point out that guns are actually widely known to police and mental health workers as being one of the best/worst ways to off yourself. If you look at 'violent' methods of suicide (ie hanging, jumping, shooting, trains/underground) over hundreds of examples, it is often suprising for the [s]internet warrior[/s] layperson to discover the numbers of people who survive the first two but extremely rarely survive the third one. I am professionally aquainted with a large handful of still-not-dead people who have jumped from the Tamar Bridge and a couple of multistoreys too now I think of it, and one who jumped under a train and lost his legs but not his life. Highly unlikely those people would be here had they easy access to firearms.

Its enthralling this

Aracer I still struggle to believe you believe what you type tbh

To help you fish What makes you think it is an anomaly and how would recession to the mean be applied in the random sample of the entire population?

aracer - Member
I'm sure that if you take a statistical anomaly as your baseline you can prove whatever you want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean

Statistical anomaly or the point at which Australia said 'no more'?

That's the only place to take a baseline from, the year they enacted the legislation and the 'enough is enough' point.

BTW are you still 'providing perspective' or do you actually have a position now?

...oh and uk and USA having similar rates of recorded suicide is of limited help/use in an argument about gun control: given the wide variation in suicide rates of first world countries with similar social care sytems, standards of living and firearms laws, there may be all sorts of non-gun related reasons why UK and USA happen to come up similar. And that's before you even go into how deaths are recorded in different legal systems and cultures -statistically no one commits suicide in North Korea do they? (allegedy there are plenty of what would seem to be suicides in UK get recorded by coroners juries as open verdicts or misadventure, I certainly know of a few, but perhaps understandably no one has seems to have managed any meaningful research on it -rather complicated to do a search of coroners reports on 'open-verdicts-that-actually-looked-a-lot-like-suicide' because the verdict [b]is[/b] the verdict.)

What makes you think it is an anomaly

The fact that 35 of those deaths were in a single massacre - apart from that incident and massacres of indigenous people in the early years of Australia, the largest number killed in any single incident in the entire history of Australia was 15 - one example of which took place after the gun legislation. Hence it's pretty fallacious to credit any measure with reducing the deaths when compared to that year.

The massacre that prompted them to implement gun control measures shouldn't be included in the figures? Ridiculous.

one example of which took place after the gun legislation

Really, from the videos earlier I understood there had been "zero"" massacres after the 1996 gun control in Australia.

Unbelievable that you stop at 1997, you are selecting things very carefully but fail to comprehend that controlling guns will reduce deaths.

Even if that is by a single person it is still beneficial.

The massacre that prompted them to implement gun control measures shouldn't be included in the figures? Ridiculous.

What's ridiculous about using standard statistical practices when determining the effect of a change from the figures? We're talking scientific facts here, not knee jerk emotion. Or do you think without the gun control laws there would have been a re-occurrence of something which hadn't previously happened in the entire history of Australia?

You find me a single peer reviewed study which uses the figures from 1996 as the baseline for determining the effect of the gun control laws in Australia.

from the videos earlier I understood there had been "zero"" massacres after the 1996 gun control in Australia.

It appears you don't need a gun to have a massacre.

Unbelievable that you stop at 1997

OK, here's a few more years if you think it helps with Lifer's 50% assertion - I think 5 is pretty generous to determine the effect of something which should have an instantaneous effect:

2001: 47
2000: 57
1999: 50
1998: 57
1997: 79
1996: 104
1995: 67
1994: 76
1993: 64

At least you have managed to get on topic which I should congratulate you on.

It appears you don't need a gun to have a massacre.

Ok zero massacres perpetrated with the use of a gun, happy now?

😆

You're unreal!

1992: 96
1991: 84
1990: 79
1989: 80
1988: 123

13 mass shootings (over 4 dead) in the 18 years before Port Arthur, 0 in the 17 after gun control implementation.

What's ridiculous about using standard statistical practices when determining the effect of a change from the figures?

FWIW you seem to be using a SCED and expecting instant results I assume the baddies dont always hand in the guns so it may take some time to see the benefit

It appears you don't need a gun to have a massacre.

Banning cars wont end "transport related deaths" either

The issue is does it reduce gun related ones and does it reduce deaths [ by murder] in general.

I think we all know banning guns does not ban massacres - it might make them a shit lot harder to do - or less "killy"* when done

* seems we are at this level of "debate"

The standard would be average before - involving more than one year so your sample is large enough to be reliable and the same afterwards to see if there is a significant difference between the two [ i assume we have controlled for other variables]

I linked earlier to somebody who'd done a proper study (where they mention other effects distorting the statistics), but it seems people want to try and show something from the raw numbers, so I'm simply showing the fallacy of Lifer's 50% claim using those.

Fantastic would you like to prove something else no one said?

Well it was an incident I brought up myself when discussing why 1996 was an anomoly and shouldn't be used as a baseline - I am allowed to clarify my own point when challenged aren't I? Excluding massacres of indigenous people, the only previous killing of more than 10 people didn't involve a gun either, hence reinforcing that point.

I refer to my original statement

I simply cannot understand how they can carry on justifying the right to bear arms

I guess they need to sort out their traffic issues, drugs, falling pianos, industrial accidents before they actually get around to this?

Mind as stated it would take time as it did in Australias case, about 14 weeks I believe.

I think I need to qualify using Australia as a reference as it was brought up by others in the thread, I guess that is our closest reference recently that has imposed gun control. Noted the US will have its own unique issues but they should not be insurmountable it would just take courage. Can they really be niaive enough that a document written 100 years ago should not be reviewed and changed as society has changed. Surely they cannot take these ammendments as immutable.

I guess they need to sort out their traffic issues, drugs, falling pianos, industrial accidents before they actually get around to this?

Do I need to point out that is a strawman? Road deaths have been brought up because that kills significantly more people in the US than guns do (excluding suicide) - I'd make similar comments if you were suggesting piano control rather than sorting out the gun problem.

Can they really be niaive enough that a document written 100 years ago should not be reviewed and changed as society has changed.

Yes, I think they can.

Drawing conclusions from an observational study is idiotic anyway, there could be all sorts of unrecognized confounding factors that affect the data over time. As others have said, did everyone hand in their guns? Did illegal guns becomes rarer? Blah blah blah.

You can't make a conclusion either way.

Here's a good paper that is a much more objective paper than Aracers.

This is what happens when an eminent economist writes a paper on the subject instead of ones penned (admittedly quite good papers) by gun lobbyists.

Port Arthur was not an anamoly ffs. It showed that someone armed with semi-automatic weapons could do something horrific and prompted the government to take steps to minimise the possibility of it happening again.

Port Arthur was not an anamoly ffs

Oh - so gun massacres of more than 10 people was a normal occurrence in Australia?

As they took the guns away what limited info we have showed that legislation prevents it ever happening again*

Using planes to crash into building will remain an anomaly as well as they changed the law to make sure it never happens again - though of course this will have no effect / insert creative yet tenous straw man / non sequitor here and then say cars kill more people

* Just playing the game of murdering to death an extreme view no one really holds and then proving my logic is awesome...that is what we are doing ?

I understand the Australian gun law of 1996 also prevents deaths due to tigers and lions. If only they had such laws in Asia and Africa.

Do I need to point out that is a strawman?

You like your straw men but was it not you that has banged on about road deaths yet introduce your straw man when it suits.

In the 9 years to 1996 there was an average of 86 gun deaths a year.

In the 9 years from 1997 there was an average of 47 guns deaths a year.

54% reduction.

54% reduction.

Er, no.

Sorry, 46% reduction.

OK, so take out 1996 which was anomalous, with something which had never occurred in the previous 200 years of Australian history and what do you get? How about the 5 years either side of 1996?

introduce your straw man when it suits.

I introduce my straw man when somebody else does.

I introduce my straw man when somebody else does.

Ah well there you go I believe you are the only one to use it in this thread?

Removing 1996

2001: 47
2000: 57
1999: 50
1998: 57
1997: 79

1995: 67
1994: 76
1993: 64
1992: 96
1991: 84

You still have a quarter less gun homicides. Do you want to remove 1992 as that looks a little high and everything after 1997 as they are a little low?

It appears you don't need a gun to have a massacre.

Nope, but it certainly helps. Otherwise our military would still be fighting wars with sharpened sticks.

Ah well there you go I believe you are the only one to use it in this thread?

A strawman? Well there was this one:

I guess they need to sort out their traffic issues, drugs, falling pianos, industrial accidents before they actually get around to this?

You still have a quarter less gun homicides.

So not 50% then? Can we stop now? I refer you to iwb's paper above which talks about standard errors and con?dence intervals if you want to get an idea of how accurate any estimate is.

No not 50% however still rather significant with your selective data sets.

I guess they need to sort out their traffic issues, drugs, falling pianos, industrial accidents before they actually get around to this?

Was in response to your banging on about road accidents therefore would that not make it your very own straw man.

Are you guys interested in arguing proper stats or bullshit?

Was in response to your banging on about road accidents therefore would that not make it your very own straw man.

Er, no, because I didn't mention pianos or industrial accidents. I mean I even gave an explanation when I first pointed out that was a strawman.

I'm quite happy to argue proper stats, iwb, if everybody else can stop with introducing spurious ones.

You just as well have

I'm quite happy to argue proper stats, iwb, if everybody else can stop with introducing spurious ones like the actual number who actually died

FTFY

Well have any of you actually bothered to look at the journal articles me and aracer have posted, they don't entirely agree with one another but the statistics are a far cry from being a cut and dry issue.

So I'm going to side with Aracer here, I don't think he had made his points in the best of fashions but you guys are bordering on being dicks here - mobbing him for his opinions instead of making reasoned debate.

I think a far more interesting conversation would be "What else apart from legislation has led to a decrease in gun related deaths". I have a hunch that would lead to more philosophical, sociological and psychological introspection into the kind of world we want to live in.

I'll make my thoughts about this subject clear in a couple of days, right now I'm preparing for an exam and applying for a space physiology course (I decided I want to be blasted at escape velocity towards Mars so I can escape this shit) so I have better things to be doing.

I read your link and the conclusion was pretty clear tbh as to what it found and the more guns handed in the greater it fell. *

I dont think anyone thinks banning guns stops it but it would seem [rather obvious and backed up] that freely available guns does tend to make it worse.

As for guns the best line i heard was americas relationship to guns is like our relationship to booze. - others have higher rates but nothing like our problems so there is more to it than numbers and clearly some psychology or socio economic or cultural factor is at play.

* given how many pages it was i would be surprised if you read it all as I skimmed it - I commented on the article as well iirc.

1994. No one died.
1995. No one died.
1996. No one died.
1997. No one died.
1998. [I]Someone[/I] died.