Mall Killing and Other Mass Killings

[ReillyT]

Because if the availability or prevelance of guns related to the number of gun homocides, then there would be significant number of guns used in homocide.
0.005% is not a significant number.

There are a significant number of guns used in homicides. Why would an increase in the total number of guns have a strong effect on the number of homicides. I am not suggesting that merely owning a gun instills someone with the urge to kill. Once guns are easily available, adding more guns on top of that will not dramatically effect the ease with which someone can get a gun. It is already very easy. There is not direct relationship between guns and gun crimes when guns are already very easy to get. It is a really simple concept and we went over it yesterday.

Also, you so very quickly dicsount the correlation between the prevelance of guns and violent crime, when up to 40x more guns are used in violent crime than in murder. You discount a number that is 40x larger than the number you count on the grounds that there is 'no correlation' in the larger number?

I don't dicount the correlation between incidence of violent crime and gun prevalence because there isn't apparently a correlation to discount. I am just looking at the comparative examples. Why is there no correlation between guns and violent crime generally where there is one between guns and homicide? I don't know. Maybe because homicides are less likely to be premeditated than a robbery, assault or rape, but that once a lethal and particularly efficient weapon is introduced, a greater percentage of these violent crimes result in homicide. There, you got an explanation out of me (made up though it is), but it doesn't bolster your case.

Sure, a higher % (68%) of murders involve guns, but, given the relattionship to the number of guns involved (10k v 400k), that 68% is not SO much higher than the 30% of overall violent crime to allow you to simply dismiss the numbers involving violent crime with a 'there's no correlation'.

I don't even know what you are talking about. The lack of correlation between incidents of violent crime and gun ownership can be obtained by looking at the examples of other countries. It supports your case. Why are arguing this? What are you arguing?

* You do realize that a lack of correlation between violent crime and gun prevalence helps the pro-gun case, don't you?

This is because murder is a tiny fraction of overall violent crime. A LOT more guns are used to commit a LOT more violent crimes than simnply homocide -- and you;re tring to argue 'no corelation'. You're trying to focus the argument so the numbers skew in your favor.

A lack of correlation between violent crime and gun prevalence helps your case. It is true that murder is only a small fraction of all violent crime, but it appears to be the type of violent crime that is affected by gun prevalence.

If you were to eliminate ALL gun murders in the US (and not replace any of them with non-gun murders) our murder rate will still be signifcantly higher.

This indicates that our 'probelm' is not the guns, and their 'solution' is not their gun control.

That is just silly and demonstrably false. Here are the murder rates (1998-2000) for a selection of countries.

From 1998-2000 (homicides per 100,000 persons):

England - 1.40
Australia - 1.50
Italy - 1.28
Germany - 1.16
USA – 4.28

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cr...ers-per-capita

Reduce our rate by 68% and you get 1.37, which is right in the middle of these countries. Care to try again?

 

[M14 Shooter]

There are a significant number of guns used in homicides.

You;re trying to correlate prevalance/number of guns to number of murders. You need to compare the number of guns and number of murders.
0.005% of the total number of guns is not significant.

Why would an increase in the total number of guns have a strong effect on the number of [gun] homicides.

Beats me -- thats YOUR argument.

There is not direct relationship between guns and gun crimes when guns are already very easy to get.

So... what's your point?

Why is there no correlation between guns and violent crime generally where there is one between guns and homicide?

HOW is there no correlation between guns and violent crime generally where. supposedly, there is one between guns and homicide

That is just silly and demonstrably false. Here are the murder rates (1998-2000) for a selection of countries.

Care to try again?
2000:
US total murder rate: 5.5/100k
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_00/00crime2_3.pdf
US non-gun 1.76/100 (32% of 5.5)

England 1.40 - US +26% higher
Australia 1.50 - US +17% higher
Italy 1.28 - US +38% higher
Germany 1.16 - US +52% higher

Those percentages are significant.

This indicates that our 'probelm' is not the guns, and their 'solution' is not their gun control.

 

[ReillyT]

You;re trying to correlate prevalance/number of guns to number of murders. You need to compare the number of guns and number of murders.
0.005% of the total number of guns is not significant.

We went over this yesterday. It is not a direct relationship. Adding one gun doesn't automatically result in some percentage of a murder more. Remember when I discussed the plateau effect. The comparison is between countries where guns are difficult to get and the USA, where guns are easy to get.

Beats me -- thats YOUR argument.

No, that is what you wish my argument was, but that is not actually my argument.

HOW is there no correlation between guns and violent crime generally where. supposedly, there is one between guns and homicide.

What do you want me to explain? I am just telling you what the statistics reveal. It isn't my opinion. Countries with low gun prevalence generally have low murder rates - almost (but not competely - e.g., Nigeria) across the board. There is thus a correlation between low gun prevalence and homicide prevalence. By no means is it a perfect correlation, but it appears to be there. It is hard to look at the inverse because the US is the most armed country in the world per capita by a long mile, and many of the others are war-torn.

As for why there is no correlation between violent crime and gun prevalence (as these numbers are rougly the same in countries with completely different levels of gun prevalence), I don't know. You asked that earlier and I hazarded a guess, but I don't know. I also don't need to know. It helps the pro-gun position that there is no correlation.

Care to try again?
2000:
US total murder rate: 5.5/100k
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_00/00crime2_3.pdf
US non-gun 1.92/100 (68% of 5.5)

England 1.40 - US +37% higher
Australia 1.50 - US +28% higher
Italy 1.28 - US +50% higher
Germany 1.16 - US +65% higher

Those percentages are significant.

This indicates that our 'probelm' is not the guns, and their 'solution' is not their gun control.

Remember when I was mentioning intellectual honesty. I gave you statistics for 1998-2000, which suggested that the US would fall roughly in the middle of the pack if all no gun deaths had occurred (you came up with the hypothetical). You have cherry picked just the year 2000 for the US, but left the statistics for all of the other countries unchanged (that is, 1998-2000). That is intellectual dishonesty. However, even with that, I think it shows that the US falls greatly back towards the pack, even if it doesn't reach it with your use of statistics.


That it doesn't fall all the way back (with your rigged statistics) might indicated that our problem is not just gun prevalence, although that certainly may remain a component.

* Sorry about the rigged statistics comment. It could have been an honest oversight.

* Also, you might want to provide sources that are cross-country perhaps to retain consistency. Otherwise, you could check with the Dept. of Justice for each country. All mine come from the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention). You should either feel free to use the same or find some other source that compares at a cross-country level - just for consistency sake. You can find the UN Report and other good cross-country sources at www.nationmaster.com

 

[M14 Shooter]

Remember when I was mentioning intellectual honesty. I gave you statistics for 1998-2000, which suggested that the US would fall roughly in the middle of the pack if all no gun deaths had occurred (you came up with the hypothetical).

You have cherry picked just the year 2000 for the US, but left the statistics for all of the other countries unchanged (that is, 1998-2000). That is intellectual dishonesty.

I picked the 2000 rate becaue it was the lowest, giving your argument the best chance:

The US rate for
1998: 6.3/100k - 2.01 non-gun
1999: 5.7/100K - 1.82 non-gun

This raises the US numbers -above- what I listed and -increases- the % of US rates over those countires you listed. Not sure how you think you're helping your case here -- and your claims of rigged statistics and intellectual dishonesty on my part are laughable.

However, even with that, I think it shows that the US falls greatly back towards the pack, even if it doesn't reach it with your rigged statistics

Given that the US rate is 28-65% higher than the countries you chose, I dont see how you could possible argue this. It is -closer- to those other cuntries, but it is still, as I claimed, significantly higher.

So, my statement stands:

If you were to eliminate ALL gun murders in the US (and not replace any of them with non-gun murders) our murder rate will still be signifcantly higher.

This indicates that our 'probelm' is not the guns, and their 'solution' is not their gun control.

 

[ReillyT]

I picked the 2000 rate becaue it was the lowest, giving your argument the best chance:

The US rate for
1998: 6.3/100k
1999: 5.7/100K

This raises the US numbers -above- what I listed and -increases- the % of US rates over those countires you listed. Not sure how you think you're helping your case here -- and your claims of rigged statistics and intellectual dishonesty on my part are laughable.

.
Given that the US rate is 28-65% higher than the countries you chose, I dont see how you could possible argue this. It is -closer- to those other cuntries, but it is still, as I claimed, significantly higher.

So, my statement stands:

If you were to eliminate ALL gun murders in the US (and not replace any of them with non-gun murders) our murder rate will still be signifcantly higher.
This indicates that our 'probelm' is not the guns, and their 'solution' is not their gun control.

I apologized for the "rigged" comment. That was uncalled for, and clearly not the case. Nonetheless, our statistics do disagree. That could be a function of how the UN qualifies "homicide." That would be something we would need to work out to conduct cross-country comparisons from the FBI database.

Nonetheless, I don't see how you come to the conclusion that guns are not the problem because a gun-related discounting of the homicide rate does not fall within that of Western European counterparts. Your statistics used in the manner in which you use them would indicate that guns are roughly 85% of the problem. ((.68/.85) - 1 * 5.5). You would be better off arguing from principle.

*At least we have moved from the violent crime focus.

 

[M14 Shooter]

I apologized for the "rigged" comment. That was uncalled for, and clearly not the case. Nonetheless, our statistics do disagree.

I used the FBI numbers. They are as good as gold in my book, and there's no reason to accept the UN numbers over them. I'll accept the European murder rates you provided as accurate. If you would like to re-define the European numbers with the FBI definitions, go ahead.

Nonetheless, I don't see how you come to the conclusion that guns are not the problem because a gun-related discounting of the homicide rate does not fall within that of Western European counterparts.

Our murder rate is significantly higher than theirs, even without guns.
This indicates a probelm within our society that their societies do not suffer from, absent any consideration of guns. This could be any number of things (or, likely, a combination of those things), but the point is that our society, based on murder rates, is inherently more violent than theirs.

This means:
-Their societies do not have significantly lower murder rates because of their gun control
-Even if their societies were armed to the same level as ours, our rates would be higher.

Your statistics used in the manner in which you use them would indicate that guns are roughly 85% of the problem.

That's not necessary at all.

 

[ReillyT]

Perhaps we should handle this like the last one. I state what I think you believe, and if you agree that I have accurately done so, we can just agree to disagree.

Your position is:

The significantly lower rates of homicide in countries which ban guns is not indicative of and provides no evidence for any relationship between guns and homicide. The fact that were all gun deaths subtracted from US homicide rates, US homicide rates would still be higher than those of Western Europe reinforces the position that guns have no relation to the incidence of homicide.
---
I would strongly disagree with all of this and question the factual accuracy of the second sentence. However, perhaps this is where we stand.

 

[ReillyT]

I used the FBI numbers. They are as good as gold in my book, and there's no reason to accept the UN numbers over them.

It is not a question of accepting the right numbers so much as being consistent in how the numbers were calculated. There may be no way to establish the rates for European countries using FBI criteria. That is why using one source and one methodology for cross-country comparisons is important. It will define and calculate statistics for different countries in the same manner.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Perhaps we should handle this like the last one. I state what I think you believe, and if you agree that I have accurately done so, we can just agree to disagree.

Your position is:

The significantly lower rates of homicide in countries which ban guns is not indicative of and provides no evidence for any relationship between guns and homicide. The fact that were all gun deaths subtracted from US homicide rates, US homicide rates would still be higher than those of Western Europe reinforces the position that guns have no relation to the incidence of homicide.
---
I would strongly disagree with all of this and question the factual accuracy of the second sentence. However, perhaps this is where we stand.

OK by me

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Have to weigh the benefits and the detriments. Why are you still harping on about the car accident thing? You don't see that these are both qualitatively and quantitatively different?

Well except his statement that ANY death was to many.....

 

[Larkinn]

Well except his statement that ANY death was to many.....

It is. While I justify actions even though they may kill individuals, their deaths are still significant and those deaths are still too many.

 

[Dr Grump]

Given that nothing was actually banned - no.

Yes, certain types of semi-auto and full autos were banned due to the Hungerford incident in 1987.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Yes, certain types of semi-auto and full autos were banned due to the Hungerford incident in 1987.

As noted before, I thought you were discussing the rise/fall of the US rates, and attibuting them to the 1994 AW ban.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

It is not a question of accepting the right numbers so much as being consistent in how the numbers were calculated. There may be no way to establish the rates for European countries using FBI criteria. That is why using one source and one methodology for cross-country comparisons is important. It will define and calculate statistics for different countries in the same manner.

YeeHaw! The US is still the "wild west"…and any UN attempts to "tame" us are not going to work...we will never agree that the UN is the "one source" of anything.

 

[Dr Grump]

As noted before, I thought you were discussing the rise/fall of the US rates, and attibuting them to the 1994 AW ban.

Apology accepted..

 

[M14 Shooter]

Apology accepted..

What was there to apologize for?

 

[Dr Grump]

What was there to apologize for?

Getting it wrong....

 

[M14 Shooter]

Getting it wrong....

Well, if that's what you need to feel good about yourself...

 

[Dr Grump]

Well, if that's what you need to feel good about yourself...

No, no, no..that's not my point. See, where I come from, when I make a mistake on a messagebaord (and it does happen), I usually go "whoops, my bad, sorry about that". I know that being of the type of person who NEVER likes to be wrong about ANYTHING, and to do admit such a thing makes your blood boil, you probably don't understand. Guess it's all about upbringing. BTW, if you noticed in my post in 203, I quoted the "UK" ...

 

[M14 Shooter]

No, no, no..that's not my point. See, where I come from, when I make a mistake on a messagebaord (and it does happen), I usually go "whoops, my bad, sorry about that"

I said that I took your statement out of context.
If you want more than that, call a therapist.