usmbguest5318
Gold Member
Preface:
Main Post Remarks:
Endnote:
Thread topic:
This thread's topic is the legitimacy of the assertion/conclusion that gun control does not "work" because it does not eliminate gun-related deaths and/or injuries.
Not the thread topic:Anything else.
Main Post Remarks:
At least weekly I come across remarks wherein the speaker/writer asserts that because a given jurisdiction's gun control legislation has not, within that jurisdiction, completely eliminated gun-related deaths and gun-related injuries, one must conclude that gun control measures don't work.
Such an assertion/argument is pure poppycock! For something to work, it must accomplish what it aims to accomplish. Neither gun control advocates nor the measures they propone have ever aimed to eliminate gun-related deaths and injuries. They have only ever sought to reduce them.
Not even the most ardent supporters of the most draconian gun control measures think that gun control measures will eliminate gun-related deaths and injuries. The goal of gun control measures is to reduce the incidence of gun-related death/injury.
The fact of the matter is that some gun control measures do indeed reduce the incidence of gun-related deaths and injuries. To wit:
Thus the assertion that gun control measures do not eliminate gun deaths/injuries is little but an irrational red herring/straw man tactic for misrepresenting what is actually claimed by gun control advocates: that gun control measures reduce the incidence of gun-related deaths and injuries.
Such an assertion/argument is pure poppycock! For something to work, it must accomplish what it aims to accomplish. Neither gun control advocates nor the measures they propone have ever aimed to eliminate gun-related deaths and injuries. They have only ever sought to reduce them.
Not even the most ardent supporters of the most draconian gun control measures think that gun control measures will eliminate gun-related deaths and injuries. The goal of gun control measures is to reduce the incidence of gun-related death/injury.
The fact of the matter is that some gun control measures do indeed reduce the incidence of gun-related deaths and injuries. To wit:
- Brady Bill Correlation:
- 1984-1993
- 1994 Brady Bill takes requiring background checks takes effect.
- 1994-2012
- ~2.4 million prohibited domestic abusers, convicted felons, mentally ill persons, and other dangerous individuals attempted to buy firearms and were denied the ability to to do so because they failed the background check. (Source)
- 2012 alone: Background checks blocked ~192K prohibited persons from gaining access to firearms.
- Other correlates:
- The Association Between State Laws Regulating Handgun Ownership and Statewide Suicide Rates [1]
- Results largely indicated that states with any of these laws in place exhibited lower overall suicide rates and suicide by firearms rates and that a smaller proportion of suicides in such states resulted from firearms. Furthermore, results indicated that laws requiring registration and license had significant indirect effects through the proportion of suicides resulting from firearms. The latter results imply that such laws are associated with fewer suicide attempts overall, a tendency for those who attempt to use less-lethal means, or both. Exploratory longitudinal analyses indicated a decrease in overall suicide rates immediately following implementation of laws requiring a license to own a handgun.
- Association Between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides
- The law was associated with a 40% reduction in Connecticut’s firearm homicide rates during the first 10 years that the law was in place. By contrast, there was no evidence for a reduction in non-firearm homicides.
- Effects of the Repeal of Missouri’s Handgun Purchaser Licensing Law on Homicides
- Missouri’s 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgun law contributed to a fourteen percent increase in Missouri’s murder rate through 2012 (updated from sixteen percent; first paragraph of press release).
- The law’s repeal was associated with an additional 49 to 68 murders per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012.
- The repeal of Missouri’s PTP law was associated with a 25% increase in firearm homicides rates.
- The Association Between State Laws Regulating Handgun Ownership and Statewide Suicide Rates [1]
Thus the assertion that gun control measures do not eliminate gun deaths/injuries is little but an irrational red herring/straw man tactic for misrepresenting what is actually claimed by gun control advocates: that gun control measures reduce the incidence of gun-related deaths and injuries.
Endnote:
- I don't actually care whether suicide rates decrease. If one wants to kill oneself, I'm fine with letting one do so. Hell, I'm more likely to give one a ride to the bridge or cliff one wants to jump off of than I am to discourage one from jumping.
Given that that is my view of suicide and the folks who want to commit it, that gun control reduces suicide rates isn't a key basis I'd use to argue for implementing any given gun control measure. That said, suicide-by-gun is a gun-related death, and to that end they "count" as goes the legitimacy of assessing whether gun-related deaths and injuries appear to be reduced by gun control measures. - Oddly enough, some people will go so far as to assert that because absolute causation has not been established, thus we do not know whether gun control measures are arbitrarily correlated with lower gun-related deaths or whether the observed correlates result from their being causal to the observe behaviors/outcomes. Such an argument is intrinsically fallacious. It is the very definition of the logical fallacy (flaw in reasoning) called "argument from ignorance."
- Argument from Ignorance
- The Fallacy of Negative Premises and 5 Cases that Failed -- The content at this bullet point's link discusses the negative premise fallacy. Basically, it's just the other side of the argument from ignorance coin, so to speak. It applies when the assertion being evaluated is structured as a negative one rather than as a positive one, thus it's given a different name. The derivation of the flaw in reasoning, however, is effectively the same as it is with arguing from ignorance: one's not knowing something for certain is thus a good reason not to take actions indicated by/based on what one does know.
- The rational counter to an argument based on existential, weighty, material and/or preponderant/abundant correlates is not to present an argument from ignorance (or a negative premise fallacy-based argument), but rather, it is to perform new original research that reveals incontrovertible and germane facts about causality and that were heretofore unknown. If those facts show that causality indeed does not exist between the actions and outcomes under consideration, then one can discount the correlation-based arguments from before. (Note: merely assembling a different set of extant minority facts that show a different association than the one claimed does not credibly refute the argument/conclusions of an associative based argument.
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