Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Jim De Arras said:
Well, Mr. Lambert, lets have the numbers for .au, and see where the trend leads us.
Here are all the numbers I have.
Country % at-home % gun homicide
burglaries ownership rate
Netherlands 48 2 0.9
England 26-59 5 0.7
Australia 10 20 2.0
Canada 10 31 2.1
USA 14 49 8.8
The Australian "at-home" burglary rate is actually for Victoria. The range given for England is because the rate is 59% for attempted burglaries and 26% for completed burglaries, so the overall rate must be somewhere in between.
The GB example at least cancels the Canadian one, so (6) is disproved if (3) also is.
My point is that is nonsense to take a correlation with two data points and call it a proof.
And while not having the raw numbers, I still suspect Canada is far from unarmed, much farther than GB, and so the 4% difference between the USA and Canada is in the noise. There would be a threshold above which the assumption is that the home might be armed, and so better to wait until they are not there.
Well, if your threshold theory is true, the threshold must be somewhere between 5% and 20%. However, the same reasoning will also prove that greater gun ownership causes more homicides. Do you concede this, or do you think some other factor is involved?
