CDZ Gun Control Proposals Aim to Reduce, not Eliminate, Gun Deaths and Injuries

[usmbguest5318]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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.​

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:

• 1984-1993
  • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
  • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
• 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

This is not accurate...

~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)

Opinion | Background Checks Are Not the Answer to Gun Violence

The background check system confuses the names of law-abiding individuals with those of criminals, resulting in thousands of “false positives” every year. Relying on phonetically similar names along with birth dates just doesn’t allow for much accuracy.

comprehensive annual data on the denial of firearm applications by the background check system are available, there were 377,283 denials. But the federal government prosecuted only 460 of those cases, leading to 209 convictions, mostly on charges of providing false information. There was a similarly small number of state prosecutions resulting from the gun purchase denials.

Why didn’t more of those denials lead to perjury prosecutions? According to my analysis, the reason is simple: a high percentage of cases are dropped because the applicant was wrongly denied clearance to buy a gun.

Many of those people are trying to buy guns to protect themselves. “This incredibly high rate of false positives imposes a real burden on the most vulnerable people,” said Reagan Dunn, the first national coordinator for Project Safe Neighborhoods, a Justice Department program started in 2001 to ensure gun laws are enforced.

The system also does a poor job of accounting for people who have had their rights to buy a firearm taken away and then restored. In the 1990s, Frank Wise of Jacksonville Beach, Fla., was convicted of check fraud after his employer went bankrupt. When his paycheck bounced, two checks he sent to his mortgage company also bounced. Nearly 20 years later, Mr. Wise was able to get his record cleared, but that information wasn’t entered into the background check system for three years. Getting this fixed cost him $3,600 in legal fees.



And more....

CPRC in the Associated Press on background checks - Crime Prevention Research Center

But saying that half the denials are later overturned after appeal gives a misleading impression of the number of mistakes that were made by the NICS system. Not everyone is willing to go through the process to make an appeal, which for most people would require hiring a lawyer.

Take the numbers for 2009. There were 71,010 initial denials. Of those, only 4,681, or 6.6 percent, were referred to the BATF field offices for further investigation. As a report on these denials by the U.S. Department of Justice indicates, “The remaining denials (66,329 – 93%) did not meet referral guidelines or were overturned after review by Brady Operations or after the FBI received additional information.” They are making sure that the reason that the person has been flagged is for a reason that could prohibit them from getting a gun, that they have the right person, and that the reason that they have been flagged is actually correct. To put it differently, the initial review didn’t find that these individuals had a record that prevented them from buying a gun. (Numbers for 2010 are very similar and are available here. The Obama administration has stopped releasing this data after 2010.)

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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.​

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:

• 1984-1993
  • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
  • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
• 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

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.

And on Suicide....guns are not the issue...

Fact Check, Gun Control and Suicide



There is no relation between suicide rate and gun ownership rates around the world. According to the 2016 World Health Statistics report, (2) suicide rates in the four countries cited as having restrictive gun control laws have suicide rates that are comparable to that in the U. S.: Australia, 11.6, Canada, 11.4, France, 15.8, UK, 7.0, and USA 13.7 suicides/100,000. By comparison, Japan has among the highest suicide rates in the world, 23.1/100,000, but gun ownership is extremely rare, 0.6 guns/100 people.

Suicide is a mental health issue. If guns are not available other means are used. Poisoning, in fact, is the most common method of suicide for U. S. females according to the Washington Post (34 % of suicides), and suffocation the second most common method for males (27%).

Secondly, gun ownership rates in France and Canada are not low, as is implied in the Post article. The rate of gun ownership in the U. S. is indeed high at 88.8 guns/100 residents, but gun ownership rates are also among the world’s highest in the other countries cited. Gun ownership rates in these countries are are as follows: Australia, 15, Canada, 30.8, France, 31.2, and UK 6.2 per 100 residents. (3,4) Gun ownership rates in Saudia Arabia are comparable to that in Canada and France, with 37.8 guns per 100 Saudi residents, yet the lowest suicide rate in the world is in Saudia Arabia (0.3 suicides per 100,000).

Third, recent statistics in the state of Florida show that nearly one third of the guns used in suicides are obtained illegally, putting these firearm deaths beyond control through gun laws.(5)

Fourth, the primary factors affecting suicide rates are personal stresses, cultural, economic, religious factors and demographics. According to the WHO statistics, the highest rates of suicide in the world are in the Republic of Korea, with 36.8 suicides per 100,000, but India, Japan, Russia, and Hungary all have rates above 20 per 100,000; roughly twice as high as the U.S. and the four countries that are the basis for the Post’s calculation that gun control would reduce U.S. suicide rates by 20 to 38 percent. Lebanon, Oman, and Iraq all have suicide rates below 1.1 per 100,000 people--less than 1/10 the suicide rate in the U. S., and Afghanistan, Algeria, Jamaica, Haiti, and Egypt have low suicide rates that are below 4 per 100,000 in contrast to 13.7 suicides/100,000 in the U. S.

 

[Auld Phart]

Do a 10 year study, enforcing all gun laws currently on the books,

have all miscreants/mentally ill that should be on the NICS database placed there.

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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.​

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:

• 1984-1993
  • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
  • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
• 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Can you explain how a permit to purchase a gun affects the homicide rate, considering that criminals, the ones who will actually be doing the murdering......do not get a permit to purchase a gun? Does that, in any way, make sense?

And as to Missouri...

Cherry picking Missouri...

Opinion: Media cherry picks Missouri gun data to make misleading case for more control

Prior to August 2007, Missouri law had established what is known as a universal background check, closing down the so-called gun show loophole.

While it is true that the murder rate in Missouri rose 17 percent relative to the rest of the U.S. in the five years after 2007, it had actually increased by 32 percent during the previous five years. The question is why the Missouri murder rate was increasing relative to the rest of the United States at a slower rate after the change in the law than it did prior to it. Missouri was on an ominous path before the law was ended.

Simply looking at whether murder rates were higher after the law was rescinded than before misses much of what was going on. Most likely, getting rid of the law slowed the growth rate in murders.

But there are other reasons not to accept the conclusion touted by the press.

There are currently 17 states with these background check laws, down from a peak of 19 states. Missouri is just one of them.
 If you are going to insist on looking at just one state, Missouri adopted the law in 1981 and rescinded it in 2007. Why not test if the murder rate fell after 1981 and whether it increased after 2007?
 Why only look at just the murder rate for this one state? Why not the overall violent crime or robbery rates?

The reason for this cherry picking is obvious. Only those conditions produced the desired results. For example, Missouri’s violent crime rate fell 7 percent faster than the violent crime rate for the rest of the United States from 2006 to 2012.

Researchers should not cherry pick one state to examine. Consider the following. You flip a coin 20 times — ten heads and ten tails. If you specifically picked just five heads, you might well conclude the coin was biased. Since most readers don’t know the data, researchers need to make clear why they are only examining a small portion of the total sample.




Gun violence and negativity bias in the Information Age

One way around the negativity bias is to remember that, as the saying goes, the plural of anecdote isn’t data. Fluctuations in data are also not automatically a trend.

An illustration of this is the claim made about homicide rates in Missouri after repeal in 2007 of the requirement to have a license to purchase when buying a handgun.

The murder rate in that state has moved about between 8.1 and 5.0 per hundred thousand over the last twenty years, but coming for the most part at a rate between six and seven.

Incautious reporting took a temporary rise from 2007 to 2008 as evidence that loosening gun laws is a bad thing to do, but the average of homicide rates from 2008 to 2014 is the same as that of the years 1996 to 2007, reminding us that we have to look at lots of data over time to reach supportable conclusions.

 

[Two Thumbs]

the reason behind gun control has nothing to do with deaths.

It's strictly about controlling the citizens. Unarmed citizens can do nothing against an armed state.

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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.​

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:

• 1984-1993
  • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
  • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
• 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Yeah.....and about Connecticut......from your link....do you see the problem here?

Methods. Using the synthetic control method, we compared Connecticut’s homicide rates after the law’s implementation to rates we would have expected had the law not been implemented.

To estimate the counterfactual, we used longitudinal data from a weighted combination of comparison states identified based on the ability of their prelaw homicide trends and covariates to predict prelaw homicide trends in Connecticut.

Results. We estimated that 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 nonfirearm homicides.

Here is a look at the flaws in this study....I can see it and I am not a researcher....

CPRC at Fox News: "Connecticut's strict gun licensing law linked to steep drop in homicides? Not really" - Crime Prevention Research Center

The study cherry picks which states with gun licensing laws are examined, which years are looked at, and the type of crime to study. Any normal researcher would look at all the states in the country that have passed a similar law and compares the changes in crime trends between those states that passed the laws to those that didn’t.

Sure, from 1995 to 2005 the firearm homicide rate in Connecticut did indeed fall from 3.13 to 1.88 per 100,000 people, a 40% drop over a ten-year period. Not mentioned is that the firearms homicide rate was falling even faster immediately before the licensing law went into effect, falling from 4.5 to 3.13 per 100,000 residents — more than a 30 percent drop in just two years.

When researchers throw out data, there had better be a good reason. They didn’t have one.



They cite a paper that looked at the impact of smoking for 12 years after cigarette taxes were increased. What cigarettes have to do with explaining crime rates and what 12 years has to do with only looking at 10 years of data is never explained, though possibly they thought no one would actually read the paper they cited.

In any case, their results change appreciably if just one more year is added to their data.

Between 1995 and 2006, Connecticut’s firearm homicide rate fell by just 16 percent. By comparison, the rates for the U.S. and the rest of the Northeast fell respectively by 27 percent and 22 percent.


If Connecticut’s firearm homicide rate didn’t fall as much as the rest of the country, why should we think that the licensing law was so beneficial?

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

You use a lot of words to show that you are wrong...

Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

What happened in the U.S.....you really don't understand gun ownership and lower crime rates.....

Do you know what happened in Britain after they banned and confiscated guns, doing exactly what you advocate...their gun crime rates have gone up, not down....

We went from 200 million guns in private hands in the 1990s and 4.7 million people carrying guns for self defense in 1997...to close to 400-600 million guns in private hands and over 17 million people carrying guns for self defense in 2017...guess what happened...

-- gun murder down 49%

--gun crime down 75%

--violent crime down 72%

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.

Britain.....an island....that banned and confiscated guns....

Yorkshire sees highest number of crimes for any county in Britain according to figures

“In particular we’re shocked to see an increase of nearly 30 per cent in weapon possession offences between 2016 and 2017.”

Crimes covered violent and sexual offences, vehicle theft, public order offences, possession of weapons, shoplifting, personal theft, drug crimes, robbery, criminal damage, bicycle thefts and anti-social behaviour.


========

Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade | Daily Mail Online

The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year - a rise of 89 per cent.

The number of people injured or killed by guns, excluding air weapons, has increased from 864 in 1998/99 to a provisional figure of 1,760 in 2008/09, an increase of 104 per cent .


========



Crime rise is biggest in a decade, ONS figures show

Ministers will also be concerned that the country is becoming increasingly violent in nature, with gun crime rising 23% to 6,375 offences, largely driven by an increase in the use of handguns.

=========



Gun crime in London increases by 42% - BBC News

Gun crime offences in London surged by 42% in the last year, according to official statistics.

Violent crime on the rise in every corner of the country, figures suggest

But analysis of the figures force by force, showed the full extent of the problem, with only one constabulary, Nottinghamshire, recording a reduction in violent offences.

The vast majority of police forces actually witnessed double digit rises in violent crime, with Northumbria posting a 95 per cent increase year on year.

Of the other forces, Durham Police recorded a 73 per cent rise; West Yorkshire was up 48 per cent; Avon and Somerset 45 per cent; Dorset 39 per cent and Warwickshire 37 per cent.

Elsewhere Humberside, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Wiltshire and Dyfed Powys all saw violence rise by more than a quarter year on year.

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Again....you use a lot of words to show you really don't know what you are talking about...

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.

Non fatal gun accidents, as we went from 200 million guns to close to 600 million guns, and from 4.7 million people carrying guns for self defense to over 17 million....

from the CDC....

WISQARS Nonfatal Injury Reports

CDC non fatal gun accident.....

Nonfatal and Fatal Firearm-Related Injuries -- United States, 1993-1997
1993... 104,390
1994... 89,744
1995... 84,322
1996... 69,649
1997... 64,207


2001.... 17,696

2002... 17,579

2003... 18,941

2004... 16,555

2005... 15,388

2006... 14,678

2007... 15,698

2008... 17,215

2009... 18,610

2010... 14,161

2011... 14,675

2012... 17,362

2013... 16,864

2014..... 15,928

2015... 17,311

Non fatal gun injury stats from 1993......

Nonfatal and Fatal Firearm-Related Injuries -- United States, 1993-1997
1993... 104,390
1994... 89,744
1995... 84,322
1996... 69,649
1997... 64,207

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Fatal gun accident death.....as we increased gun ownership, and as more civilians carry guns...

Leading Causes of Death | WISQARS | Injury Center | CDC

2015...489

2014.....486
2013 ..... 505
2012 ..... 548
2011 ..... 591
2010 ..... 606
2009 ..... 554
2008 ..... 592
2007..... 613
2006..... 642
2005 ..... 789
2004 ..... 649
2003 ..... 730
2002 ..... 762
2001 ..... 802
2000 ..... 776
1999 ..... 824

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Gun murder stats from the FBI....as more Americans bought guns and now in 2017 as close to 17 million people now carry guns for self defense....



Expanded Homicide Data Table 8



gun murder rate 1997 -2000


1997..... 10,729
1998..... 9,257
1999..... 8,480
2000..... 8,493
2001..... 8,719
2002... 9,369
2003.... 9,638
2004..... 9,385
2005.... 10,158
2006.... 10,225
2007 10,129
2008-- 9,528
2009-- 9,199
2010- 8,874
2011-- 8,653
2012-- 8,897
2013-- 8,454
2014-- 8,312
2015--9,616
2016...11,004 ( the increase is due to the Ferguson effect, as Police in major cities pulled back from pro active policing)

The Ferguson effect.....

Hard Data, Hollow Protests

The reason for the current increase is what I have called the Ferguson Effect.

Cops are backing off of proactive policing in high-crime minority neighborhoods, and criminals are becoming emboldened.

Having been told incessantly by politicians, the media, and Black Lives Matter activists that they are bigoted for getting out of their cars and questioning someone loitering on a known drug corner at 2 AM, many officers are instead just driving by. Such stops are discretionary; cops don’t have to make them. And when political elites demonize the police for just such proactive policing, we shouldn’t be surprised when cops get the message and do less of it.

Seventy-two percent of the nation’s officers say that they and their colleagues are now less willing to stop and question suspicious persons, according to a Pew Research poll released in January. The reason is the persistent anti-cop climate.

Four studies came out in 2016 alone rebutting the charge that police shootings are racially biased. If there is a bias in police shootings, it works in favor of blacks and against whites. That truth has not stopped the ongoing demonization of the police—including, now, by many of the country’s ignorant professional athletes. The toll will be felt, as always, in the inner city, by the thousands of law-abiding people there who desperately want more police protection.

 

[OldLady]

the reason behind gun control has nothing to do with deaths.

It's strictly about controlling the citizens. Unarmed citizens can do nothing against an armed state.

No, it really does have to do with deaths.

 

[2aguy]

the reason behind gun control has nothing to do with deaths.

It's strictly about controlling the citizens. Unarmed citizens can do nothing against an armed state.

No, it really does have to do with deaths.

No, not true. Democrats don't care about the deaths....if they did they wouldn't be releasing violent gun criminals from jail, over and over again....

 

[Two Thumbs]

the reason behind gun control has nothing to do with deaths.

It's strictly about controlling the citizens. Unarmed citizens can do nothing against an armed state.

No, it really does have to do with deaths.

I'm sure it's true for the run of the mil dem, but for your leaders it's about absolute control.

 

[2aguy]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

And the magic of the internet comes up with a response to your post...

Does Gun Control Reduce Murder? Let’s Run The Numbers Globally

Let’s look at the countries with the highest concentrations of gun ownership (excluding Yemen and Iraq as active war zones). Guns per murder in those countries are,

1. United States at 20,967,
2. Uruguay at 3,777,
3. Norway at 55,893,
4. France at 19,747,
5. Austria at 59,608,
6. Germany at 35,647,
7. Switzerland at 35,435,
8. New Zealand at 24,835, and
9. Greece at 26,471.

Norway is a particularly interesting example. It has 10 times the gun ownership rate of the United Kingdom, but only half the murder rate.

When one excludes Iraq and Yemen, not one of the countries on the list of the 10 highest rates of gun ownership also appears on the list of the top ten highest murder rates. In fact, the countries with the highest murder rates have markedly low gun ownership rates.

1. El Savador (108.64 murders per 100,000/5800 guns per 100,000)
2. Honduras (63.75/6200)
3. Venezuela (57.15/10,700)
4. Jamaica (43.21/8,100)
5. Lesotho (38/2,700)
6. Belize (34.4/10,000)
7. South Africa (34.27/12,700)
8. Guatemala (31.21/13,100)
9. Trinidad (30.88/1,600)
10. Bahamas (29.81/5,300)

It really doesn’t matter how you slice this data. The conclusion is inescapable: High concentrations of private, legal gun ownership do not correlate positively to increased murders. Indeed, you can look at almost any slice of data and conclude the opposite: Higher private ownership of guns can be strongly correlated to lower murder rates.

The data also exposes some myths I have heard about gun control. For example, I’ve heard activists tout Australia, which supposedly banned all guns. Australia has advanced a number of gun control measures over the years. Nevertheless, according to the data, Australia has a rate of private ownership of guns of 13,100 per 100,000 and a murder rate of .98.

Australia has almost twice as many guns per capita as the United Kingdom, for example, and a comparable murder rate. New Zealand has almost twice as many guns per capita as Australia but a lower crime rate.

Countries with both a low rate of private gun ownership and a low murder rate exist, but they are clearly data outliers. These include the Netherlands (3,900 guns per 100,000, for a murder rate of .61) the United Kingdom (6,200 guns per 100,000, for a murder rate of .92), Japan, and Portugal. Places like Norway, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany overwhelm those examples because they all have high rates of gun ownership and enviable crime rates.

-------

The ratio of murders per gun works as a decent measure for how responsible a country’s citizens are with their firearms. Measured in this light, an owner of a private legal gun in America measures as one of the most responsible in the world. A gun in America is 387 times less likely to be used in a murder than in El Salvador. Even in Japan, which has one of the lowest murder and gun ownership rates in the world, there are ten times as many murders per gun than in America.

 

[danielpalos]

Muster the militia until crime drops.

 

[Dan Stubbs]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

That worked really well for Hitler. I have wondered how many Jews turned in their guns and wished they had them back.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

That worked really well for Hitler. I have wondered how many Jews turned in their guns and wished they had them back.

I have wondered how many Jews turned in their guns and wished they had them back.

I'm sure you have wondered that.....

 

[danielpalos]

Preface:

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:

• Brady Bill Correlation:
  • 1984-1993
    • America’s gun homicide rate increased during that period by ~55 percent. (Source)
    • America's non-gun homicides decreased during the same period. (Source)
  • 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.

Unless one can show that there are material methodological shortcomings in the studies cited above (or other soundly performed ones like them), one must conclude that at the very least they are correlated to lower incidences of such events and they are so correlated in ways that other actions that either have not or cannot be shown soundly to be equivalently correlated. (See: Statistics and Causal Inference [2]) Anyone who values and places as supreme human life would, if s/he is thinking rationally, will thus conclude that it is sage to act to avail themselves and society of the association between access to guns and lower gun-related death and injury rates.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

That worked really well for Hitler. I have wondered how many Jews turned in their guns and wished they had them back.

what a difference a Constitution makes. Here, all they need do is muster to become well regulated, for literal recourse to our Second Amendment.

 

[9thIDdoc]

The problem here is that nobody makes such a straw man argument.