Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

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Charlie
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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by Charlie »

Grayhome wrote:
Criminals will still retain those guns. How exactly will gun control help at all? Even if it did illegal guns can still be brought in, and guns at still easily be made.
The same way having driving licenses helps keep people that shouldn't be driving off the roads. Also, it is not easy to make guns. It requires specific resources, knowledge and tools to craft an effective weapon that does not immediately blow up in your own hands. And saying "they can bring guns in from elsewhere so we should not ban assault weapons" is like saying "they can ship cocaine in from elsewhere so we should not ban cocaine". It makes absolutely no sense and I think that the law enforcement agencies of the United States would not be advocating to ban all assault weapons if it would not be effective in keeping assault weapons out of the hands of criminals.
Both of your assumptions are flawed. First Driving licenses. How often do you see people driving illegally? I see it all the time. Look at many of Police Traffic arrests, many of them don`t have licenses or they are expired.
Knowledge and tools to make a gun? Hardly.
Look under tools required

Lets say I want a RPK. Soldiers fleeing other African countries like Zimbabwe don`t bring much besides their guns which they sell. I'd go to the boarder station and buy it off one of them there. Or I could go to one of the rougher police stations and buy a fire-arm out of evidence lock up. America isn`t this corrupt so it won`t apply there. But your laws on person to person sales are basically unregulated, it would be easier for me to get one one there.
My father has made a number of shot guns.
Grayhome wrote:I would think that the difference between a home-made shotgun without high capacity ammo clips and a factory crafted assault rifle with a thirty round magazine should be fairly apparent.
What difference exactly? Both are lethal to humans.

Grayhome wrote:Charlie, we're talking about the most progressive, liberal countries of the face of planet Earth. Countries that have the highest standards of education, economics and social commitment to the common good. Countries that look at America and collectively shake their heads, wondering why Americans put up with bi-weakly mass shootings in schools and political corruption. Those nations would never tolerate a medical system that murders their loved ones, there would be riots in the streets long before things devolved that far. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to have this conspiracy theory mindset that the medical institutions of first world nations have all joined together to kill as many of their patients as possible. It is completely and totally in denial of all reality. You are negating my ability to argue with you with your incredibly dogmatic and completely fictional portrayal of the medical advances of the first world nations (minus the United States) over the past few decades.

Preventive medicine has been shown to be both economically and socially beneficial to first world nations. For decades. That's why all first world nations invest in it. It not only saves a massive amount of capital, it's been shown to generate massive amounts of capital in production, as laborers are spending less time sick or injured and more time working.
I never once said they did it actively. It`s a simple matter of economics. Doctors who are paid less that private care doctors don`t work as hard. Resulting in sub par medicare.

As for proof, if you can take my dogmatic word for it, I have family in Ireland, Australia, and England.
My uncle in Ireland is struggling with the rescission there. He has told me of the decrease in quality of the clinics there because of it.
My uncle in Australia refuses to go the hospital there, he doesn`t live in the bush but 30 minutes away from Perth a major city, because they incorrectly treated his sickness. He instead goes to the pharmacy to acquire medical advice and medications. On my last trip there I took two kilos of various pill medication because he couldn`t get them without a doctors prescription.

England is home to my grandmother`s sister and some of her grand children. She requires a number of medications to survive, she almost died he a free doctor there gave her the wrong form and dosage of medicine.

If you can`t believe me on any of that, it`s fine. Research some of the shadier practices of Japanese doctors. Japan is one of the best nations on earth in the westernized categories. I recently watched a documentary on Japanese Doctors, it showed how they did not inform patients of their diagnoses when they were found to have terminal cancer. It occurs so frequently there that they are making new laws to stop it.

Private medicine has always generated greater profits, it has been responsible for most of the more recent medical advances as companies try to gain an edge of each other.
Arioch wrote:
discord wrote:your(the gun ban crowds) dream is of course japan, with no guns, and no gun violence, or any other violence to speak of.... might be an interesting place to visit, i would not want to live there for the exact social reasons which cause that state of affairs.
While violence (and crime in general) is certainly lower in Japan than other industrialized nations (due to reasons of social structure), the lack of guns does not means there is no violence or murder in Japan. People kill each other with knives or whatever else is at hand.
I could be wrong, but, I'm fairly sure there is more suicides than murders is Japan.



discord may be able to elaborate more, but I believe you are given Sig 550 by the government for free.
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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by discord »

charlie: actually the efficiency of it(public health care) has to do with work ethics and how law abiding the populace is... and how hard the government cracks down on corruption, it is pretty decent in sweden in most cases, but the nordic countries are a aberration in this case as far as i have understood it.

on gun smithing for dummies, that is still a pretty advanced gun, you could make it a LOT simpler by removing the magazine and making it breech loaded break action.

and yes, the suicide rate in japan is rather high, 54 times the murder rate to be more exact.
US has a suicide rate 2.66 times higher than homicide.

sig 550? from where? why? /me confused. referring to standard issue gun for the swiss armed forces?

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by Charlie »

discord wrote:charlie: actually the efficiency of it(public health care) has to do with work ethics and how law abiding the populace is... and how hard the government cracks down on corruption, it is pretty decent in sweden in most cases, but the nordic countries are a aberration in this case as far as i have understood it.

on gun smithing for dummies, that is still a pretty advanced gun, you could make it a LOT simpler by removing the magazine and making it breech loaded break action.

and yes, the suicide rate in japan is rather high, 54 times the murder rate to be more exact.
US has a suicide rate 2.66 times higher than homicide.

sig 550? from where? why? /me confused. referring to standard issue gun for the swiss armed forces?
It looks harder than it is to build, there are easier plans out there it terms of full autos. The more mechanical experience you have the easier it is. As for breech loaded break action that would be more apparent on a home made shot gun.

On the Sig 550
army-issued personal weapon
No sorcery lies beyond my grasp. - Rubick, the Grand Magus

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by fredgiblet »

Charlie wrote:Re@fredgiblet
Would you say you are currently depressed? Currently at risk of suicide? No? Then under those fictions laws you may posses a gun.
Even if you were taking a drug with potential side effects like that, take a psych test proving you are fine, job done. The law would have to prove you shouldn`t have a gun, you need prove you should. If the law can find sufficient cause to block you, they can`t stop you.
That's how the law would be written, yes. However the Hoplophobes have proven to be very persistent at interpreting laws in a way that gets them what they want, rather than what the law intends. The debates over the meaning on the 2A show that pretty clearly.
Grayhome wrote:Also technically under the constitution it is stated (if you follow a literal translation) that all citizens should have access to predator drones, Abram tanks and suitcase nukes and if the citizens cannot afford such weapon systems the government is obliged to purchase them for us.
And if the 1A was taken literally we couldn't have slander or libel laws, in both cases we take liberties with the literal wording, however gutting the wording isn't supposed to be on the agenda.
Absalom wrote:Guns are a tangential subject to gun violence. Why? Because it's the violence that people have reason to care about.
I'm always amused when people arguing for gun bans say "Country X banned guns, then their gun homicide rate went down!" Correct, what did their HOMICIDE rate do though? THAT'S the one that's important.
Grayhome wrote:An outright ban on all assault weapons and heavy regulation upon all other firearms would significantly lessen the firearm related violence in the United States, and would lessen violent deaths in general. As evidence of this I present the other industrialized nations of planet earth, who have far fewer guns in civilian hands, far more gun regulation, and thus a higher quality of life than do Americans.
Those other countries also have less inequality and better social programs. Do you know what happened in 2005 with the '94 AWB expired? There was an orgy of purchasing of "Assault weapons" and the murder rate went DOWN, just like it did for the preceding 12 years, and just like it's done for the following 8. The number of crimes committed with "Assault weapons" is minuscule, the only reason they are notable is because SOME of the most sensationalized crimes use them, however as Cho showed us a pistol is all you really need to have the highest kill count in US history.
So you are saying the result of a ban on civilian possession of assault weapons in the United States would be either a null impact on the level of gun violence, or it would have the negative effect of increasing firearm related violence. Even though in first world nations that currently heavily regulate guns such as Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, France, etc the result has been a (historically) marked decreases in the level of violent crimes. What historical evidence are you drawing this from? Please provide it for review and provide a full list of sources for examination.
Can you provide compelling evidence that the sole, or even primary, reason for the lower murder rates is limited access to guns? I haven't seen the numbers for Britain, but in Australia the murder rate was lower than the US and dropping BEFORE the gun ban, the fact that it's lower post-ban is hardly surprising or noteworthy. You are pointing out a correlation from a small group and saying that it equals a universal causation, that's REALLY bad statistics work.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by fredgiblet »

halftea wrote:Thank you for clarifying that discord. This is actually a topic we studied in both my Ethics and Sociology courses. The point was made there is legally no such thing as an Assault Weapon in the United States. As stated by discord, fully automatic weapons were already regulated and mostly illegal without a VERY special permit process and oversight by a Federal Agency (ATF), rather than State-level legislation and oversight. The legislation targets specific cosmetic features only, (as previously described -- the "tacticool") that offer virtually nothing in the basic functionality of the weapon.
Indeed, one of the things that the anti-gun people are GREAT at is PR, 30-rounds isn't "high-capacity", it's standard capacity. Assault weapons don't exist, assault RIFLE is a term that has a meaning, they are almost totally banned after the Hughes Amendment in '86. I've been chewed out for insisting on air-quoting "assault weapon" before, but the problem is that if you let your opponent dictate the language of the debate you start behind.
Arioch wrote:While violence (and crime in general) is certainly lower in Japan than other industrialized nations (due to reasons of social structure), the lack of guns does not mean there is no violence or murder in Japan. People kill each other with knives or whatever else is at hand.
IIRC they are at .4 murder rate, which is the lowest major country. There's lower but it's mostly tiny countries.
Charlie wrote:discord may be able to elaborate more, but I believe you are given Sig 550 by the government for free.
The Swiss example isn't nearly as good as pro-gun people believe. Militia members are issued a rifle, but private citizens aren't allowed to own ammunition, you buy it at the range and you use it at the range. They USED to issue ammo with the rifle, but they stopped doing that for almost everyone because fear. Now only militia members at high-importance areas get ammo issued.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by discord »

fred: quite correct on the swiss issues, however however, the swiss government no longer REQUIRES them to have that ammunition available by providing it and auditing it regularly, there are no rules against purchasing it yourself, basically this is a budget cut.

and on the PR, one of the things i REALLY hate, is that you are allowed to be passionate, incoherent, rambling without statistics to back up your claims and screaming child murderer at random as a gun banner, but if you talk for guns, if you are even upset, you are suddenly public enemy number one.... classic case of ad hominem, but noone can call out the gun banners on it it seems without getting the same label themselves, not fair, just not fair.

some of the arguments(the "assault weapon" ban comes to mind) is as mindbogglingly plain stupid as arguing for the existence of the invisible pink unicorn(which is intended to be such to show how silly religion is by comparison), and if you call them out on it, you are a child murderer....not fair.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by halftea »

...everyone knows a gun becomes more dangerous if painted pink, black is for posers.
This. This is one of the gems that become the reasons I love reading/lurking on this board. Thanks discord!

And while I acknowledge the maintenance/stabilization/sighting advantages of accessories, I was referring more to the fact that the basic mechanical function doesn't change. Shoot, I would even disqualify a bull-pup layout as a functional change in the mechanics. Regardless of where you chose to situate them in the completed rifle/carbine, you still have the chamber then barrel. However, I do classify the number of rounds fired per trigger pull (the auto/semi-auto switch) as a mechanical change.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by fredgiblet »

discord wrote:fred: quite correct on the swiss issues, however however, the swiss government no longer REQUIRES them to have that ammunition available by providing it and auditing it regularly, there are no rules against purchasing it yourself, basically this is a budget cut.
That's not the way it was explained to me, I heard that there was a failed mass shooting attempt that spurred the decision to stop issuing ammo and they not only stopped issuing it, but went around and collected almost all of it.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by discord »

fred: all of the issued ammo, yes, or well MOST of it, except for the guys tasked with securing certain important places in case of....zombie apocalypse or whatever.
previously there was fifty rounds of government issued ammo with every last one of those who knows how many assault rifles, i have heard 200 thousand, but nothing keeps those people from buying ammunition, or a gun to go with it.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by Absalom »

Grayhome wrote:Every response you have given is either complete fiction, in complete and total denial of reality, or a petty argument over the definitions of word usage.

Your just a troll, aren't you.
Differing conclusions do not make me a troll, no matter how much you may wish otherwise. Some of my arguments may be petty, but with the episodic replies that I've been making recently that's somewhat inevitable; because of the speed of the computer that I write these posts on, this particular post took several hours to write. There's a very sharp limit to the editing that I'm willing to do.

Grayhome wrote:
Criminals will still retain those guns. How exactly will gun control help at all? Even if it did illegal guns can still be brought in, and guns at still easily be made.
The same way having driving licenses helps keep people that shouldn't be driving off the roads.
Uh... you do realize that people without driving licenses don't stay off the road, right? Before he died (from a heart attack that was probably brought on, either directly or otherwise, by alcohol), I used to know someone who'd had his license revoked (he didn't give me the impression that he disagreed with that either, he just wasn't sticking to it tightly) but still drove every once in a while. Before he died, he'd apparently been worrying that he would get caught.
Grayhome wrote:Also, it is not easy to make guns. It requires specific resources, knowledge and tools to craft an effective weapon that does not immediately blow up in your own hands.
Such as an Afghani blacksmith, or anyone with a decent knowledge of material physics and access to shop tools, yes. Military-grade weaponry? That needs to be accurate over a distance, so you can't get away with anything less than professional-grade work, but for a gang war or to shoot up some helpless bystanders? You're talking about gun-and-runs, short-range, etc., which means that you only need limited accuracy, reasonably quick fire (and let's be frank: you may even go with an external power source for that), and for the gun not to explode. The only one of those that's even half-way difficult is the second of the three, and if you can build anything mechanical in the first place, then you can spend some time to solve that.

And then there's the consumerization of 3d printing, which just makes it easier.
Grayhome wrote:And saying "they can bring guns in from elsewhere so we should not ban assault weapons" is like saying "they can ship cocaine in from elsewhere so we should not ban cocaine". It makes absolutely no sense and I think that the law enforcement agencies of the United States would not be advocating to ban all assault weapons if it would not be effective in keeping assault weapons out of the hands of criminals.
"They can bring marihuana in from elsewhere, so we shouldn't ban marihuana" and "They can bring alcohol in from elsewhere, so we shouldn't ban alcohol" are both known to be true, we just haven't finished accepting the first of those two yet. Shoot, I probably wouldn't vote in favor of legalizing marihuana in the first place if given a chance despite saying that, since I don't agree with being a druggie. None the less, we know that it's accurate, and that nothing we can do to try to change the world is actually going to change that. Thus, if we want to see success we need to turn our sights towards fixing the same problem in a different way.
Grayhome wrote:
My father has made a number of shot guns.
I would think that the difference between a home-made shotgun without high capacity ammo clips and a factory crafted assault rifle with a thirty round magazine should be fairly apparent.
The biggest difference is that you're more likely to hit with the shotgun, hence the reason why they're traditionally used for hunting small, agile animals such as birds. The average gun fatality in the US is gang-related, and the common firing technique in those instances is spray-and-pray (though in the gangs that send new recruits to join the military, this is presumably less-so), for the simple fact that they don't have much experience in actually using the weapons, and therefor aren't very good at hitting what they're aiming at. A late-1800's handgun is accurate enough (at least if properly maintained, and not worn out) to shoot the symbol in a playing card at several yards (it was a neat show, but I didn't care enough to actually memorize any stats) if used by an experienced shooter, and do so reliably. Go look up trick-shooting if you haven't ever seen it. Guns started getting so accurate some time in the 1800's that they killed off duels. It wasn't because the duels were illegalized (duels were performed for quite some time in states that had already illegalized them), but instead that the guns had gotten good enough that if you were lucky then only one of the participants would get hit.

So why are guns so safe for their targets when in the hands of most gang members, despite being so dangerous in the hands of the proficient? Because the gang members are lousy at hitting anything. This is why magazine restrictions actually could help things, were it not for how easy it would be for someone less than above-the-board (and as has already been shown, almost already is for anyone with a 3d printer) to just make high-capacity magazines: lower the magazine capacity, and you greatly reduce the chances of anyone getting hit.

discord wrote:assault weapon ban:
silly, because it affects something like 1% of gun related deaths, those weapons probably have a higher average accident numbers(US military training, probably lower rate, just so many a small percentage gives a high total number.) and not relating who uses them, i would bet that it is more commonly used(somewhere along the lines of 10:1) in defensive shootings against criminals.
From what I remember from the last time that I looked it up, it was actually worse than that. Assault weapons as described in the ban are primarily (and maybe entirely: it's been a while since I checked) long-arm guns with non-rifle-style grips (e.g. pistol grips, folding butt-stocks, maybe vertical handles mounted near the front of the gun, etc.). There might maybe be some situation where these would be used in gun violence, but you're basically looking at nonsensical circumstances and statistics, even for the self-defense case. I wouldn't be surprised if it was around the same statistical level as cast iron skillets (goodness knows one of those would work as a blunt-trauma weapon). A carbine is the longest firearm that I would expect to be useful for most self-defense situations, and both pistols and machine-pistols would surely be far more appropriate than that.

Frankly, assault weapons are for gun-range enthusiasts, and hunters who like to bling it up like a peacock.
discord wrote:how difficult is it to comprehend that legal guns are very seldom used in crime? and that removing legal guns gives perception of easier prey, which leads to more violent crime.

-------------------------------------------

yes, gun ban can be done, BUT it must be done in a similar way as the japanese sword hunts, search every home, every person, EVERYWHERE, and have a isolationist country to limit smuggling.
For that matter, the sword-hunt was to prevent (or at least reduce) insurrections.

Grayhome wrote:
assault weapon ban:
silly, because it affects something like 1% of gun related deaths, those weapons probably have a higher average accident numbers(US military training, probably lower rate, just so many a small percentage gives a high total number.) and not relating who uses them, i would bet that it is more commonly used(somewhere along the lines of 10:1) in defensive shootings against criminals.
because generally criminals do not use 'assault weapons'.
so a ban would do....somewhere between nothing to net detriment. it is fear of such weapons that fuels this ban hammer approach not their actual use.
An outright ban on all assault weapons and heavy regulation upon all other firearms would significantly lessen the firearm related violence in the United States,
It's already known that there are enough guns in the US to last for at least a hundred years. To make a dent in that you have to seize guns from everyone who has them, which among other things requires knowing who has them. There were a number of guns that one of my grandfathers had which we would have liked to either sell (some pieces were worth quite a lot) or keep (for sentimental and/or quality reasons), but when my father went to look at the house after the funeral, he and his brother determined that said grandfather's girlfriend had her relatives loot the place. Do you think that you can keep track of guns in a society where such things happen? After all, with the common behavior of people in relationships such things are never going to be rare.

Next: you know how Japan doesn't have much gun crime, and what they do have is basically always possession? The Japanese gangs do have guns, and it isn't as if it'll ever be particularly difficult for them to get them. The Yakuza have sufficient organization to just have the things scratch-built if they need to. So why does Japan not have much gun violence, when the groups that cause most such violence in the US are the same type as tend to have the guns in Japan? Society. Japanese Yakuza are organized groups with older, cooler heads at the top, while your average American gang doesn't have much mature leadership. A lack of adult intervention can both cause, and perpetuate, some very nasty stuff, and by the same token can stop it when said leadership actually decides to do so: witness the Watts Truce and Hoe Avenue meeting.

You want to reduce gun violence? Forget about the guns, they do nothing more than distract you. The real problem is always social chaos in one manifestation or another. If you don't get rid of that then even removing every gun from the world won't bring peace, because the real causes haven't been so much as touched.
Grayhome wrote:and would lessen violent deaths in general.
Without fixing underlying tensions and distortions you only shift the form of violence. In the worst case you shift it to pipe bombs, which has the potential to make things even worse since those don't necessarily require someone to be present to use them, thereby loosening one of the sources of self-control.
Grayhome wrote:As evidence of this I present the other industrialized nations of planet earth, who have far fewer guns in civilian hands, far more gun regulation, and thus a higher quality of life than do Americans.
That is indicative of better social management, not gun control... or so I would say, if I didn't remember that France had rioting in the suburbs of Paris a few years ago. When was it that we last had a proper riot, back in the 90's?
Grayhome wrote:Also it is fear of terrorists gaining access to nuclear armaments which promotes the international community to keep nuclear materials out of terrorist hands. This has so far proven a very viable strategy.
Nuclear weapons pose the threat of effectively "salting the earth" for at least a few decades. The consequences of a gun are much smaller, and a gun itself is also much easier to make (e.g. you aren't likely to die in the process of building a gun if you screw up).
Grayhome wrote:
[rage rant]
that is what pisses me off, the basic approach is wrong, fundamental idea flawed, historical data does not back up your claim.
[/rage rant]
All historical data backs up my claim, and there is no historical data that anyone on this site has provided that does anything other than strengthen my claim. I am a political scientist. I have quite literally devoted my life to studying social issues such as firearm related violence in order to assist in their correction.
Then demonstrate how gun laws are more effective than repairing the fabric of society. I don't care what tunnel your vision is focused on, when you actually look at the categories of gun violence you find a very short list, where the entries are typified by diseases of society itself. A band-aid like gun control does not fix the gaping wound underneath, nor are stitches an alternative to a heart transplant.

You need to widen your sight to look at the surrounding context, instead of just the fact that guns can be used to kill people. Common household chemicals can be used to kill people too, and with the dual existence of the Internet and the Anarchist's Cookbook it isn't difficult to get the information that you need to make bombs. The Unibomber was at large for how long? Do you want to know what'll happen if some gang decides that since they don't have guns, they'll switch to big model airplanes with bombs strapped underneath instead? Or figure out how to home-brew some (let us all hope weak) solid rocket fuel for some rockets? Those wouldn't even require as good of craftsmanship as a gun, just cautious treatment of the chemicals. Stop wasting time on ideas that are either already out-maneuvered, or in the process of being out-maneuvered, and move on to productive responses that won't be made antiquated by technology within a decade (or two years, whichever).

discord wrote:and on the PR, one of the things i REALLY hate, is that you are allowed to be passionate, incoherent, rambling without statistics to back up your claims and screaming child murderer at random as a gun banner, but if you talk for guns, if you are even upset, you are suddenly public enemy number one.... classic case of ad hominem, but noone can call out the gun banners on it it seems without getting the same label themselves, not fair, just not fair.
In their defense, I don't think it's intentional most of the time. They just feel very strongly on the issue, which causes their vision to become clouded. Then you get those who (rather understandably) don't agree with giving e.g. gangs any form of official interaction with the government other than prosecution, because they think that it legitimates those same gangs, and you can easily wind up in a situation where they strongly feel that something needs to be done, and the only option that they can both imagine and are willing to agree with is gun control, so they decide that only that will work, that it is obvious that it will work, and that therefor anyone who opposes it is doing so because they oppose what gun control advocates believe will be the result of gun control.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by discord »

absalom: on fairness, life ain't fair, and just because you can understand WHY something is happening does not make it more fair.
and it's not really the banners that i have a problem with, it's the acceptance of the 'crowd' of that double standard that bothers me.

gray: you want us to prove our point, me and charlie have posted several links to reliable statistics to back up our claim, why is it that gun banners somehow do not need to do this?
last time i checked the one pushing for an idea has the burden of proof, and the basic ideas posted have been refuted as non viable for the claimed goal, backed by evidence in real world statistics...where is your evidence?

and on bans in general, bad idea. modern organized crime in america was CREATED during the prohibition era, and thrives on banned products, without a VERY good reason, you should avoid bans like the plague.

do note, i am not against changes to the gun laws, there are several that would be a good idea and reasonable likely to be accepted, the ones being pushed by the anti gun nuts are....neither a good idea nor likely to be accepted, or to put it less politely, outright bonkers and silly.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by uthilian »

To see how gun control laws can work you should look at Australia's implementation of its gun control laws after the Port Arthur and the study done a decade after there implementation "firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law's effectiveness." Link to the study, now the study does state that there are geographical reasons why the laws work better/faster in Australia than most places (no local manufacturers of civilian guns, surrounded by water makes importation easier to control)
A Graph showing the rates of Suicides and Homicides with and without guns before and after the 1996 law was past.
Image

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by fredgiblet »

uthilian wrote:without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides.
I've seen that claim before, but if my memory serves the numbers don't add up, the firearm homicide rate dropped dramatically, but the overall number of homicides didn't for several years. If the number of firearm homicides dropped, but the number of homicides didn't then SOMETHING filled the gap.

Additionally the fact that most of the western world had dropping homicide rates at the time needs to be taken into account. In Australia in particular the number of homicides was dropping BEFORE the gun ban went into effect.

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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by discord »

uthilian: homicide, do note the ongoing downward trend since 87, and the sharp spike at 96, that spike is pretty much what i am talking about, admittedly much less pronounced and enduring compared to the UK during the similar incident, which lasted for several years and peaked at 100% instead of australia 50% and only one year.

analysis, short term it is a bad idea, medium it seems to have some positive effect(but this could be the continuation of previous trends), long term? you might get japan, that is not a good thing imho, but some like that ultra civilized life.

but, and this is important, this is a very small and specific data set, i know i have used similar, but statistics is tricky and can fool you, for instance the decrease in homicide could coincide with a increase in successful robberies, or other crime due to lowered threat perceived by the criminals....
and one detail, the police CANT protect you most of the time, just try and figure out optimal response times to a crime in progress, it's not that the police do not want to help, they CANT, so you have to do that yourself, but how?

nice little story. http://aware.org/resources/women-guns-a ... d-survivor

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uthilian
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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by uthilian »

the sharp spike in 96 was caused by the Port Arthur massacre resulting in the death of 35 people and 1995–2004 Melbourne gangland war in which 36 criminal figures and others were killed
you also have to take into account things like the gun buy back in some states not becoming compulsory untill 2-3years the federal laws where passed (in that time no new guns of the restricted types where allowed to be sold or brought)
Last edited by uthilian on Sun Dec 29, 2013 5:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Absalom
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Re: Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

Post by Absalom »

uthilian wrote:A Graph showing the rates of Suicides and Homicides with and without guns before and after the 1996 law was past.
Image
So gun control has a trustworthy effect on suicide behaviors, but I'm not seeing the control graph for homicides? Or is the non-gun homicides bit supposed to be indicative? If you think that this says much about homicides, then you need to take off the ruby-colored sunglasses, and actually look seriously at those graphs.

Gun suicides started declining around 1986; there was a noticeable downwards trend when the law was passed, yes, but it looks like the year before experienced a slowing of the ongoing fall, and gun suicides after 2001/2002 seem to have returned to the same general slope that they were on before 1995, before leveling off around 2005. Conclusion? The effect of gun control in Australia on gun-based suicides was existent, but negligible (note: I could be wrong, in that it could be completely non-existent, but I'm assuming that most gun-based suicides are with recently purchased weapons), and likely has ended, and in the years immediately following the ban it might have resulted in a higher number of non-gun suicides (on the basis of a suspicious mirroring of the graphs, but this is highly and undeniably circumstantial).

Now, let's look at the homicide graph. This graph has a major problem, that being a lack of a control group. Why does the suicide graph have a control group, but the homicide graph doesn't? Because the non-gun suicide line follows a different set of slopes throughout the graph than the gun suicide line, allowing us to treat it as a control on the basis that it presumably has a non-identical set of influences. In contrast, the two lines on the homicide graph show the same general trend: upwards when approaching 1988/1989, downwards when leaving it. Further, in the year before the ban there was a major spike (I won't say 200% of the previous year, but it looks close to 175% of the previous year; it was, in fact, the first time that the gun homicide rate had reached the non-gun rate since 1987/1988; good job breaking it, legislators!), and afterwards it returns to the same slope that it was on before. The best evidence that I can find for a beneficial effect is around 2000, and for that I have to assume that the number of gun homicides without the ban would have been higher: an assumption that I'm not prepared to make on the basis of the non-gun homicides. Conclusion? Australia's gun ban produced a temporary INCREASE in gun homicides, but otherwise did NOT have an effect on them. The FDA would look at this and say that not only does it not show improvements beyond a placebo, but it actually shows a temporarily worse effect than placebo.

You know what those graphs really tell me? They tell me that something happened between... let's say 1986 and 1990 that had a major effect on both suicide and homicide rates, across the board. Look at that and you might have a good thesis paper, but gun control? If you use these graphs to support even a term paper on the benefits of gun control, then any professor serious about doing their job will give you a poor grade, because these graphs only show evidence for the benefits of gun control in a single statistic, which is not the statistic that gun-control advocates like to push for: suicides. Your argument in that post is a failure; come up with a better one next time, and for goodness sake don't just use a graph because it supposedly says something, check to make certain that it really does say it.



uthilian wrote:the sharp spike in 96 was caused by the Port Arthur massacre resulting in the death of 35 people and 1995–2004 Melbourne gangland war in which 36 criminal figures and others were killed
So, essentially we should ignore the only years that actually indicate any effect on homicides at all that was specific to the gun control law? Congratulations, gun control has exactly the same effect as the lack of gun control! Let's throw a party! Seriously, these graphs say that gun control only effects suicide-by-gun, everywhere else there isn't an effect. Don't just look at the rates after the law, you need to look at the rates before the law as well: the graphs speak of the impotence and irrelevance of gun control laws.

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