More guns, more homicide

A Harvard School of Public Health Press Release describes a new study by Miller, Hemenway and Azreal:

In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of homicide, researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found that homicide rates among children, and among women and men of all ages, are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the February 2007 issue of Social Science and Medicine

Earlier studies on the relationship between firearm ownership and crime had to use proxy measures for ownership because there was no national survey data available at the state level. The press release continues:

Analyses that controlled for several measures of resource deprivation, urbanization, aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, and alcohol consumption found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates for children, and for women and men. In these analyses, states within the highest quartile of firearm prevalence had firearm homicide rates 114% higher than states within the lowest quartile of firearm prevalence. Overall homicide rates were 60% higher. The association between firearm prevalence and homicide was driven by gun-related homicide rates; non-gun-related homicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership.

Naturally pro-gun bloggers have attacked the study. Glenn Reynolds says they were funded by the Joyce Foundation:

I'm pretty sure that these guys would call anyone who accepted grants from the NRA bought-and-paid-for. But the Joyce Foundation is every bit as biased as the NRA, and has a history of paying for scholarship that would be treated as a scandal if it were engaged in by pro-gun folks.

His "paying for scholarship" link goes to a post where he says that it isn't unethical, so I guess he isn't saying that it is scandal just that "these guys" would. Or something. Certainly Reynolds called it a "vicious smear" when people attacked John Lott because he was funded by the Olin Foundation.

Reynolds also links to criticism by Jeff Soyer. Unfortunately, Soyer has not read the study, so his criticism is very wide of the mark. Soyer writes:

In the current study, they claim they've "controlled" for factors such as unemployment, etc. I'd be interested in seeing how they accomplished that statistical dance.

No problem. They used negative binomial regression.

Once again though, this study uses the same flaw of lumping a bunch of states together, dividing all the states into just four "groups". If you take the states with the highest gun ownership, and here's a handy WaPo chart, you find that they must have lumped North Dakota, Wyoming, and Alaska (and Montana, Idaho, etc.) which have high suicide rates in with Alabama and Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, states with high homicide rates. In my opinion, that's the only way for him to reach his statistical goals.

They only grouped states into four groups in an additional analysis that they did as a check on their results. Their results do not depend on such a grouping. The study looks at homicide, not suicide. The word "suicide" does not even appear in the body of the paper.

But here's the clincher. From that same chart, the "state" with the highest homicide rate in the U.S.? By a factor of almost four times the rate of ANY other state? It's Washington DC. It's the place where gun ownership is for all practical purposes forbidden, that is, where gun control has become a total ban on guns.

Washington DC is not a state. It's part of a city. It is simply wrong to compare it to entire states.

As long as Miller continues to lump suicide and homicide together, his arguments are specious at best and full of crap at worst.

Again, Miller et al did not lump suicide and homicide together. This study does not consider suicide at all.

Back to Reynolds:

I find much of the public health literature on guns to be highly biased and deeply untrustworthy. It starts with an agenda, rather obviously, and then constructs "research" to confirm it. In this it resembles far too much of the politicized social science we see today, which explains in part why people are far less persuaded by social science claims than they used to be.

Unfortunately the reference Reynolds gives to support his claim about the public health literature on guns is itself highly biased and deeply untrustworthy.

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Finally, a gun post. It's been a while.

The Joyce Foundation funds a mass of specious "research" and have a clear anti-gun agenda. They do not seem to pay for unbiased research. That in and of itself certainly does not negate the study at hand, but is something to keep in mind, if in fact they did fund the study we are discussing.

Yes, DC is not a state, that's why it was referred to as a "state". Note the quotes. It is noteworthy that the cities with the toughest gun control typically have the worst violent crime (Chicago, Detroit, DC). Do they have the worst violent crime because they restric gun ownership, or do they restrict gun ownership because of their violent crime problems?

I'm off to read the study, but I have a feeling it will get the smackdown treatment, much as the Kellerman study go the same.

There are plenty of studies that purport to "clearly demonstrate" one side or the other on this topic. The bottom line for most people, I would think, is that out in the real world, far away from the ivory towered number-crunchitoriums, where gun control has been implemented most strenuously, we see that gun violence not only remains, but often worsens. Common sense should then tell us that guns are but a small factor in the problem and that focusing on "gun control" is a waste of time and resources.

I've not read the study yet because they want $30 for it and I'm poor. However, there is this bit quoting Hemenway. He goes on and on about "reasonable" measures that *could* help with the criminal gun violence problem in the USA.

The first problem with this is that he's using the new language of the Brady Campaign and their ilk, citing their proposed methosds as "reasonable" ad nauseum. Over and over and over again they try to stress that what they want to do is "reasonable".

Second, his has essentially zero evidence to back up his claims that his proposed "reasonable" regulations would have any positive affect at all. Everything he asks for comes straight from the Brady Campaign wish list.

And then they come out with their study. I'm looking forward to finally reading it, once I find a copy.

The correlation between prevalence of guns and their use is such an obvious thing that I'd say the burden is on those who wish to demonstrate otherwise (though I'd be curious to see what the numbers are depending on the type of gun).

The best policy for reducing gun deaths is a more open question. Given how well the current crop of wingnuts do on science policy and the war in Iraq, one might do well to guess that not listening to wingnuts would be a good place to start.

By Gsnorgathon (not verified) on 13 Jan 2007 #permalink

The correlation between prevalence of guns and their use is such an obvious thing that I'd say the burden is on those who wish to demonstrate otherwise

Done. Kellerman's data inadvertently showed that the homicide rate among caucasions only in Vancouver BC is slightly higher than the same for Seattle Washington. This is an apples to apples result. If guns were at fault for higher homicide rates, then Seattle should have beat Vancouver hands down. This result is also in conflict with the results of the study in question by Hemenway.

None of those are what I had in mind. Kellerman's data shows what it shows. I just found that his study was not very interesting, nor did it show anything that was relatively important. He was able to show a relative increase in risk that was measureable, but so what? It was small on an absolute scale compared to things that most of us do not care about, such as "a dog in the home" for example.

Kellerman's main contribution was the unintendid result I mentioned above, in my opinion.

How does Reynolds support the charge that the Joyce Foundation is every bit as biased as the NRA? This nonsense attacking disinterested foundations as hotbeds of political activism seems to always go unchallenged.

"The bottom line for most people, I would think, is that out in the real world, far away from the ivory towered number-crunchitoriums, where gun control has been implemented most strenuously, we see that gun violence not only remains, but often worsens. Common sense should then tell us that guns are but a small factor in the problem and that focusing on "gun control" is a waste of time and resources."

Since you put anecdotal evidence above statistical analysis, here's an anecdote for you: I live in a country which has gun control. I have never, ever saw a civilian (not a policeman, not a soldier, not a security guard) brandishing a gun in public. I have never, ever heard a gunshot fired in anger. I have never, ever heard about any of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances or neighbours killed or wounded by gunshot. And I live in a capital city.

How does that sound to ya?

By Roman Werpachowski (not verified) on 13 Jan 2007 #permalink

Done. Kellerman's data inadvertently showed that the homicide rate among caucasions only in Vancouver BC is slightly higher than the same for Seattle Washington. This is an apples to apples result. If guns were at fault for higher homicide rates, then Seattle should have beat Vancouver hands down.

Yes, because one data point is clearly sufficient in coming to a conclusion.[\sarcasm]

The Joyce Foundation funds a mass of specious "research" and have a clear anti-gun agenda. They do not seem to pay for unbiased research. That in and of itself certainly does not negate the study at hand, but is something to keep in mind, if in fact they did fund the study we are discussing.

Oh, and can you cite some evidence of this claim?

I really don't have a strong opinion on this research one way or the other, but I find your attitude toward the paper extremely grating -- throwing a bunch of crap to see what sticks, without actually supporting your allegations. You might be right about the Joyce Foundation (I know nothing about it), but I'm certainly not going to believe that based solely on your say-so.

How does Reynolds support the charge that the Joyce Foundation is every bit as biased as the NRA?

They have an opinion, so they must be biased ;-)

By Roman Werpachowski (not verified) on 13 Jan 2007 #permalink

This nonsense attacking disinterested foundations as hotbeds of political activism seems to always go unchallenged.

and

Oh, and can you cite some evidence of this claim?

It is nearly trivial to show that the Joyce foundation is anything but disinterested.

Yes, because one data point is clearly sufficient in coming to a conclusion.

It is a perfectly acceptable counter to the contention that more guns = more homicides, especially in the USA. All else remaining more or less the same, except that the number of guns is vastly greater in Seattle, and maybe a more generous "social safety net" in Vancouver. Yet Seattle and Vancouver are the same in terms of homicide for the predominant racial group.

I have never, ever saw a civilian (not a policeman, not a soldier, not a security guard) brandishing a gun in public. I have never, ever heard a gunshot fired in anger. I have never, ever heard about any of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances or neighbours killed or wounded by gunshot. And I live in a capital city.

Ditto, but I pack heat, and so do many around me. It just goes to show that gunfire and brandishing are rare occurrences.

Their results do not depend on such a grouping. The study looks at homicide, not suicide. The word "suicide" does not even appear in the body of the paper.

I think that Jeff was referring to the old 2002 paper, but like you said, he doesn't have access to the new paper (I'll see if I can fix that) so he's making assumptions.

"Yet Seattle and Vancouver are the same in terms of homicide for the predominant racial group."

You assume that the two "racial groups" are otherwise equivalent.

You also omit to mention whether the Vancouver figures include the highly anomalous year when the victims of the Red River Killer were found.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 14 Jan 2007 #permalink

Ben, you "pack heat"? Do you "pack heat" when you are like, going to the shops, hanging out with friends, at a cafe or in a bar? Is that what you mean?

Ben, the link you posted that is purporting to show that the Joyce Foundation is biased takes me to some Web page that doesn't prove anything and is replete with dead links.

Please research a little harder before posting the first Web page that Google finds for you.

Hey, wanna have some fun with Ben? Sneak up behind him, yell "GUN!", duck, and when the shooting stops, see how many innocent bystanders he's shot. It'd be a lot more fun than reading his chimplike libertarian/objectivist crap-flinging.

Are there similar studies that distinguish between homicide by a stranger and homicide by a household member?

By Herb West (not verified) on 14 Jan 2007 #permalink

Again, Miller et al did not lump suicide and homicide together. This study does not consider suicide at all.

Glenn is engaging in projection; the rightwing has been doing a little semantic dance with the term "suicide bombers" so long that now they've forgotten that there is a difference between suicide and homicide, and they project that error unto others.

Ditto, but I pack heat, and so do many around me. It just goes to show that gunfire and brandishing are rare occurrences.

Well my anecdotal experience has been somewhat different than yours. I live in Portland, Oregon, a safe city by US standards (homicide rate about 1/5th that of Philly, for instance).

I've experienced:

One young friend losing his lower leg when the friend's mom he was staying with heard a noise, got out the 12-gauge, stumbled and accidently shot him from close range, putting a fist-sized hole in his thigh.

My ex-father-in-law was shot in the gut by a guy robbing his neighborhood store. He lived but due to his vascular system being somewhat rearranged had various troubles including the inabilty to have an erection (that oughtta get Ben's attention).

One block from my house, there was a running gunfight, guy in a van vs. police. And the end the guy committed suicide, about 250 from where I live.

Another gunfight, police vs bad guy, four blocks from my house resulting in the bad guy's being shot to death.

Either Ben lives in a very quiet place or he's got cotton stuffed in his ears.

After reading the paper I've concluded that this research is what is kindly referred to as "low impact." The single novelty is that the data comes from a new telephone survey about firearm ownership. While that's interesting (sort of)the paper doesn't shed any light on debates about gun control policy.

Instead, the paper presents a correlation between firearm ownership and firearm homicide which is a trivial result. We already know that guns (wielded by people) kill. The important debates on firearms are over what kinds of *laws* minimize crime and minimize violence.

From the paper: "Multivariate analyses adjust for several potential confounders....". These are described as (1) rates of aggravated assault and robbery (2) urbanization (3) unemployment (4) alcohol use (5) percentage of population 18-34 years of age (6) percentage divorced (7) living in the southern census region (8) median family income (9) percentage of families beneath the poverty line (10) family income inequality (11) percentage of population that is black and (12) percentage of families headed by a single female parent.

That seems thorough... except that it neglects any measure of gun control laws, licensing laws, concealed carry laws etc. These are the very policies that are at our disposal to limit gun violence. These are the very policies that make up the gun violence debate but they're not even examine in this study. Trivial and low impact indeed.

Another large limitation is that the data only spans 2001-2003 and that's not a long enough period to examine differences in gun violence before and after changes to gun control laws. Maybe the authors can produce something more informative after another 5-10 years of data accumulation.

Other limitations are that the study doesn't distinguish between illegally owned firearms and legal firearms. It doesn't distinguish between homicides caused by strangers and homicides caused by a household member. It doesn't address non-fatal gun violence.

Lastly, the data comes from a telephone survey! The paper says that only 4% of 200,000 respondents refused to specify how many firearms they own. Firstly, I find it very hard to believe 96% of people will share truthful personal information (about guns no less) over the phone. Secondly, a more relevant statistic is what percentage of firearm owners refused to truthfully specify how many firearms they own. Thirdly, based on news reporting last year we know that political pollsters increasingly distrust phone surveys; I imagine that they would voice skepticism over the CDC's phone surveys too.

By Herb West (not verified) on 14 Jan 2007 #permalink

Ben, you "pack heat"? Do you "pack heat" when you are like, going to the shops, hanging out with friends, at a cafe or in a bar? Is that what you mean?

Something like that. This is America after all.

Hey, wanna have some fun with Ben? Sneak up behind him, yell "GUN!", duck, and when the shooting stops, see how many innocent bystanders he's shot. It'd be a lot more fun than reading his chimplike libertarian/objectivist crap-flinging.

Uh-huh.

Glenn is engaging in projection;

That was Jeff, not Glenn.

Wow, Dhogaza, you live in a pretty nasty place. Your friend's freind's mom needs to learn more about firearms safety. Where my father lives in Vancouver he's had more than a couple elderly neighbors suffer from "home invasions" where they were terrorized, tied up, beaten and robbed. The world is an unsafe place and you do what you can. There is no perfect solution.

Why, I know a guy who was burned by the frying pan when he accidentally touched it. Funny thing was that he didn't think getting rid of the frying pan was a good solution to his frying pan safety problem.

Lastly, I was wrong, I have one friend who's heard gunshots in public. My lab mate heard shooting outside his condo near the University of Washington one night. It's a pretty scummy neighborhood, all sorts of bad eggs hang out there. I won't go there at night unarmed.

Ben, the link you posted that is purporting to show that the Joyce Foundation is biased takes me to some Web page that doesn't prove anything and is replete with dead links.

Sorry about the dead links, that post was from a while back. The only link you need is still active and right at the top from geek with a 45

And lastly, about the red river killer. I'm not sure what that is? Are you mixing up the guy who killed all the prostitutes and fed them to his pigs in Abbotsford BC with the Green River Killer in the Pierce County region of Western Washington? I'm pretty sure that the Kellerman study does not overlap with any mass killings. The Kellerman study I'm thinking of "Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities" is from 1988, if that helps. I think Tim and I were thinking of two different papers, and in fact I was got them kinda mixed up. The I just mentioned compares gun violence between Vancouver and Seattle, and the other one is about risk associated with guns in the home. Sorry about the confusion.

Ben: "I'm not sure what that is? Are you mixing up the guy who killed all the prostitutes and fed them to his pigs in Abbotsford BC with the Green River Killer in the Pierce County region of Western Washington?"

Yes, I should have checked my facts before posting.

The thing is you can take a stack of data (i.e. homicide rates in Seattle and Washington) and dissect it any number of ways.

If the caucasian v caucasian comparison doesn't yield the result you want you look at gender or age or income levels until you find a subgroup for which the Canadian homicide figure is higher.

Fro that matter, what's the definition of "Caucasian" - Americans tend to distinguish between "white" and "hispanic" where Australians don't for example.

You also have a major drug growing and smuggling business in BC and Washington. If Seattle is anything like the rest of the US there's probably a significant African-American element in the drug business there. Given that the percentage of African-Americans in Canada is lower, their Canadian counterparts are more likely to be Caucasian.

(Note: I'm not suggesting a link between race and criminality but between poverty (both absolute and relative) and criminality. Unfortunately being black in America is a pretty good proxy for being poor.)

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 14 Jan 2007 #permalink

If the caucasian v caucasian comparison doesn't yield the result you want you look at gender or age or income levels until you find a subgroup for which the Canadian homicide figure is higher.

But that was never the point. The study was intended to show how Seattle suffered more gun homicides that Vancouver because there were more guns in Seattle all else being similar culturally and geographically.

I've lived many years in both cities, and the Caucasian populations of both are nearly identical in terms of culture (except for maybe the affinity for Hockey Night in Canada up north).

The very interesting fact was that between the two most culturally similar groups, availability of guns didn't make any difference in the homicide rates. There was ZERO cherry picking here. It wasn't even intended by the authors of the study.

It certainly, at the very least, warrants further consideration and study.

Can anyone tell me what the incidence of gun deaths is in cites versus rural areas? I am no scientist, but I'll be my house on it that the cities have the higher crime rate per capita. Then factor in the fact that there are many, many more legal guns owned in rural or suburban areas (look at CA for example there is a lot of real estate outside the main cities and the bulk of gun ownership is there, but not the high crime), and you have identified the problem: cities. This is no surprise though. Considering these facts the high incidence of gun deaths with high gun ownership is merely a correlation and not causative. Hardly scientific.

"Considering these facts the high incidence of gun deaths with high gun ownership is merely a correlation and not causative. Hardly scientific."

I'm afraid I'm not following your reasoning here Ron.

If the per capita gun ownership was higher in rural areas but gun deaths were concentrated in urban areas, then gun deaths wouldn't be correlated with gun ownership rates.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 14 Jan 2007 #permalink

Kevin Baker points out that in the last ten years or so, the number of guns legally in civilian hands in the US increased by 30 million, of which 10 million were likely handguns.

Yet, during that time period, violent crime in the US generally declined sharply.

But we are supposed to believe that states with higher gun ownership have more homicide.

mndean :

Hey, wanna have some fun with Ben? Sneak up behind him, yell "GUN!", duck, and when the shooting stops, see how many innocent bystanders he's shot. It'd be a lot more fun than reading his chimplike libertarian/objectivist crap-flinging.

This is called projection. It means that you think poorly of your own capacity for self control and fear that keeping or carrying a firearm would somehow make you murder strangers. Since you can't admit it to yourself, you project your irrational fear upon other people.

Herb West:

Lastly, the data comes from a telephone survey! The paper says that only 4% of 200,000 respondents refused to specify how many firearms they own. Firstly, I find it very hard to believe 96% of people will share truthful personal information (about guns no less) over the phone. Secondly, a more relevant statistic is what percentage of firearm owners refused to truthfully specify how many firearms they own. Thirdly, based on news reporting last year we know that political pollsters increasingly distrust phone surveys; I imagine that they would voice skepticism over the CDC's phone surveys too.

Amen to this. I would never tell a stranger who called me on the telephone that I owned guns. I know very many gun owners who would never do such a thing.

This entire business of trying to precisely pinpoint gun ownership in America is really pointless and a waste of time. Other than the most general statistics - 300 million guns, 80 million handguns, somewhere between 1 in 3 to 1 in 2 households, etc., few Americans are going to cooperate with nosy strangers about the guns that they may or may not own. Moreover, our laws rightly protect the privacy of gunowners by forbidding goverment registration of individual firearms to individual citizens in most cases.

However, this evidently doesn't prevent some bright professors from using telephone survey numbers to run multivariate statistics to tell us what they want us to believe.

Ben, you`re a Barbarian. I have never in my life met anyone who goes anywhere armed with any kind of weapon of any sort. Maybe you should ask yourself why you think you need such macho accessories when you live in an ostensibly "civilised" country.

ben, I don't think that the Seattle/Vancouver comparison tells us very much, since it is just one data point. But the fact is that Seattle had a higher murder rate. Now presumably you want to argue that that is because they are different in some way other than guns. But then the same argument applies to your comparison of just the whites.

Kevin P, only 4% refused the question so your claim that no-one would tell a stranger if they had guns is just wrong. Now if the guns they had were illegal they might not have told the interviewer about them, but this does not help your case at all. Suppose the result of stricter gun controls in a state is fewer legal guns and more illegal guns so that the real rate of gun ownership doesn't change but the rate reported in surveys goes down. Then the fact that this study still found that more reported guns was associated with more homicides suggests that the restrictive gun laws reduce homicides.

All else remaining more or less the same, except that the number of guns is vastly greater in Seattle, and maybe a more generous "social safety net" in Vancouver. Yet Seattle and Vancouver are the same in terms of homicide for the predominant racial group.

You seem to have missed my point -- this is only one data point (comparing one pair of cities). No matter what your hypothesis is (more guns=more violence, more guns=less violence, more guns=no effect), this one data point can be consistent with that hypothesis due to statistical noise.

Anecdote from Norway, which is far from gun-free, but free from guns for "personal protection" (it's all hunting and automatics stored by reservists at home a la Switzerland - the latter are not without their problems, but that's for another post): Only guy I know who was shot, shot himself in the foot with a shotgun on his first hunting trip... He spent some time in hospital, but he's fine now. Just some soles in his shoe or something. Oh, and I visited a court case where some sad guy had fired warning shots with his hunting rifle to scare away a taxi driver awaiting payment, but that's it.

There is one thing I'll give to the pro gun people in this crowd. When considering a policy, it's best to compare places where a policy was put into effect (if at all possible). Up here, some smart fellow noticed that youths who start drinking at a late age, drink less as adults. They then started campaigns assuming that youths who start drinking at a late age _for whatever reason_ will drink less as adults. The campaigns (targeted at adults, to keep them from giving alcohol to their children, and at youths, basically saying "you're not mature enough, little man") are spectacularly unsuccessful.

Think of countries where firearms that kill citizens are NOT those kept in the home...

Are you thinking of police death squads, paramilitary insurgents, military dictators, etc? Places where the populace is unarmed and awaits the knock in the night?

The paper is based on "States with firearm prevalence more than one standard deviation above the mean: Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Mississippi, South
Dakota, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming", which comprised < 6% of the US population at time of survey. Those are some pretty weak numbers. In terms of causes of injury we should be addressing, firearms comes in way, way down the list.

As in most of this Harvard group's work, their difficulty is not in trying to say something true, but is in trying to say something important.

By MaverickNH (not verified) on 15 Jan 2007 #permalink

Harald, that was an interesting point, which I believe (ok, I'm too lazy to go looking it up) is contradicted by the evidence on smoking. Perhaps this is a measure of the relative addictive potentials of the two habits?

Tim Lambert:

Kevin P, only 4% refused the question so your claim that no-one would tell a stranger if they had guns is just wrong.

Tim, this is the difference between being a professor in the bubble of Harvard and being a gun owner in the great American gun culture. You place your faith in the academic study. I live in the gun culture and I don't. This is similar to our earlier discussion where you defended another academic study that found that burglars target homes and neighborhoods with "high gun ownership". I pointed out that there is no frigging way that any burglar can find this out in the America that I live in and I know. As far as I know, you have never accepted that you are plain wrong in defending that study either.

Your defense of these studies in the face of so much contrary empirical evidence is religious in nature. At some point, you start to sound like an Amish person talking about racing cars.

Ben, you`re a Barbarian. I have never in my life met anyone who goes anywhere armed with any kind of weapon of any sort. Maybe you should ask yourself why you think you need such macho accessories when you live in an ostensibly "civilised" country.

There are plenty of us. About 40 states in the Union issue permits to any law abiding citizen who wants one. I'm certainly not alone.

Barbarian, eh? If you say so.

But the fact is that Seattle had a higher murder rate. Now presumably you want to argue that that is because they are different in some way other than guns.

Yes, Seattle has a significant black population. The data shows indisputably that young black men are responsible for far more than their share of homicides, as both perpetrators and victims. Of course this is not caused directly by their race, but instead has to do with many historical factors, but that is not the discussion here.

The fact remains that while my point is not proof, it is very compelling evidence. Further study is warranted. Especially when data on the country as a whole shows that for Caucasians only again, our homicide rate is on par with Europe, and yet we have da guns.

Eli: "Perhaps this is a measure of the relative addictive potentials of the two habits?"

Tobacco is the anomaly here. The evidence I've seen (which I'll admit to not having studied very critically) suggests that if you haven't become addicted to cigarettes by the age of 18 you never will.

Sadly, probably every reader knows of at least one person who became addicted to alcohol or some other drug at an older age than that.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 15 Jan 2007 #permalink

Ian, read my whole comment, don't pick and choose. There are lots of rural areas in states that have big cities with high crime/homicide rates. I gave CA as an example. The study talks about states. So a state could have high gun ownership in the rural areas and low gun ownership in the cities, but high homicide rates in the cites. This turns the study on its head--low gun ownership in the city would then be correleated with high homicide rates. CA is the perfect example as we have LA, Oakland, SF, SJ, SD.

Ben: "The data shows indisputably that young black men are responsible for far more than their share of homicides, as both perpetrators and victims."

Well they account for far more than their share of murder convictions. But I'm sure that has nothing to do with the US legal system.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 15 Jan 2007 #permalink

Ian Gould:

Well [young black men] account for far more than their share of murder convictions. But I'm sure that has nothing to do with the US legal system.

Oh, come on, don't be coy, tell us what you really feel about the US legal system.

Out of curiosity, are you British?

Kevin, could you further explain your argument? Are you arguing that all academic studies are bunk or that only studies which disagree with your intuition are flawed?

I think the public often has a weak understanding of how academia actually works...
Most people who do data analysis become quickly used to results which contradict their a priori understanding. The assumptions which are required to do complex statistical analysis (or in my case econometrics) mean that there will always be limits to what can be established using data. Because of these issues most professionals default not to an intuitive stand but rather to "more research needs to be done before we can say..." Outside of academia the perception is often that academics think they know everything. Inside of academia it would be extremely unusual for someone to claim that they know anything at all even when the point is seemingly mundane. I doubt that if we asked Tim to list three 'facts' regarding gun control he would be willing to make such a commitment. I am surprised how often an academic actually become less confident in their understanding the more they study a subject!

By Archibald (not verified) on 15 Jan 2007 #permalink

Archibald:

Kevin, could you further explain your argument? Are you arguing that all academic studies are bunk or that only studies which disagree with your intuition are flawed?

I have a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering and work in the semiconductor industry. As a process engineer, I routinely used statistically designed experiments to improve process and chip performance. I rapidly learned that you can easily play with your statistical models to tell you whatever you would like to hear.

In my line of work, it was easy to verify the model by running a new experiment on actual living and breathing wafers. This kept everyone honest.

This unfortunately does not apply to the social sciences. You (usually) cannot run a verification experiment to prove that your model was correct. In this particular case, that would involve actually enumerating gun ownership by visiting and searching every private home in the target area. This is of course impossible - you can't search even a single home without a warrant. The study then is unverifiable. I suspect that most social science is like this but we don't hear much about it because many of these studies may be on uncontroversial subjects.

But this is of course on the subject of gun control. There is a systematic effort, funded by the Joyce Foundation in recent years to the tune of millions of dollars to investigate the private lawful ownership of guns contributes to crime. Coincidentally, almost all of these studies find that private lawful gun ownership contributes to crime, and recommends various gun control methods. The entire field has become poisoned. While it is possible to find honest scholarship in this area, Joyce Foundation studies are not the place to go looking for them.

Furthermore, if a study contradicts real world experience, it must be able to explain the contradiction in a compelling way. In my real world experience, the gun culture is composed of tens of millions of law abiding Americans who take responsible care of their firearms. A very small number of criminals, concentrated in geographic and demographic areas are responsible for the vast majority of crime. Studies conducted in the liberal bubble of Harvard, far removed from the gun culture of America lack any kind of real world experience or perspective. Unsurprisingly, their findings mirror their authors' prejudices (and their funders' desires).

Here is more information on the Joyce Foundation. Full disclosure: I am the author of the graph.

I have a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering and work in the semiconductor industry. As a process engineer, I routinely used statistically designed experiments to improve process and chip performance. I rapidly learned that you can easily play with your statistical models to tell you whatever you would like to hear.

Sheesh, it's always the engineers.

Sure, it's possible that this is what's happening in this study, and it is certainly possible that the research is biased due to funding sources. However, your form of opposition is dangerously close to the anti-science approach -- dismissing the conclusion because (a) you don't like it, (b) you can identify a source of potential bias, and (c) some aspect of it runs counter to your personal experience.

As far as (b) goes, potential sources of bias can be used to explain why some result is erroneous, once it has already been shown to be so (for example, if there is a significant body of research contradicting the result in question). And (c) is why we take the scientific approach in the first place -- the most likely person I will fool into believing something incorrect is myself, often based on personal experience.

It is true, engineers tend to be skeptical people, because they have to make things work in the field and have been burned all too often by the fancy theories coming out of headquarters :-)

I've been a practicing engineer for 20 years so I feel comfortable with my understanding of how science works. You should explain your point of view to the Harvard School of Public Health :-)

Kevin, I feel like we are talking past one another to a certain extent. I have not read the report in question and certainly did not intend my comment as a response to its specific points. If you read my comment again then your response I think you will find we are not particularly far apart in our views. I am highly critical of social science research as a whole and I believe my post reflects this fact. Where we seem to differ is as to whether the social sciences are in fact aware of these limitations. You said:

"Tim, this is the difference between being a professor in the bubble of Harvard and being a gun owner in the great American gun culture. You place your faith in the academic study. I live in the gun culture and I don't."

This suggests you believe academics place high confidence in research; I often find that this is not the case. I often less confident in their perceptions of how society functions than other people. Most professional researchers are painfully aware of the limits to their knowledge BUT are also very skeptical of individual experience as a methodology for explaining the world. It appears that we have different views of what the null hypothesis should be. You seem to suggest that academic researchers assume that barring stronger evidence they accept weak evidence. You are more critical and suggest that barring stronger evidence you accept personal experience. I suggest that for most reputable researchers if the evidence is only weak then we cannot say anything at all about the real world. (I realize that I am claiming to speak for other researchers so am braced for disagreement...)

Finally, (I think we are all glad that I am near the end) you seem to believe that academics do not recognize how easily research from partisan groups can be tainted. I know nothing about the Joyce Foundation but note that you did not extend your criticisms to pro-gun groups like the NRA. I find it particularly ironic that you claim anyone in these comments are unaware of such potential conflicts as the entire reason this blog exists is to examine exactly such partisan claims. I doubt anyone posting here is unaware of these critiques but rather suspect that they disagree about the specific details!

By Archibald (not verified) on 15 Jan 2007 #permalink

Makes plenty of sense. I've always regarded Duggan's 2001 JPE paper as the leading piece of reserach on the topic, so it's not surprising that these guys arrive at similar conclusions. If I'd been refereeing it, my only comment would've been to get them to also do the analysis at an MSA level.

There are few things better, in my view, than gun nuts defending their phallic-object fetishizing and stroking.

And lil' Ben packing heat around the scarrrrry UW campus? Riiiiight, tough guy. Those big ol' bums on the Ave or runaway skater punks with dreads too much for you to handle when you go up for lunch?

Best,

D

And lil' Ben packing heat around the scarrrrry UW campus?

Nope, firearms not allowed on campus. I don't feel it's worth it to lose my RA over that.

Those big ol' bums on the Ave or runaway skater punks with dreads too much for you to handle when you go up for lunch?

I guess you didn't get the memo.

Hevn P: "Oh, come on, don't be coy, tell us what you really feel about the US legal system.

Out of curiosity, are you British?"

Australian actually. But that's okay I know we all look a like to you.

A couple of quick questions for you?

1. Are African-Americans, on average, poorer than the national average?

2. Do you agree that people who can afford to hire good lawyers are more likely to be acquitted?

As it happens, my views on the American legal system are based heavily on my research into the Australian legal system and how it dealt with Aborigines undertaken for the Queensland Office of the Cabinet a little over a decade ago. Aborigines were no more likely than whites to commit criminal offences but were about ten times as likely to end up in prison as a result.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 15 Jan 2007 #permalink

Eli were you referring to "When considering a policy, it's best to compare places where a policy was put into effect (if at all possible)" ? But I do think that this would have been better with smoking as well, because it would be harder for the hacks to dismiss. But anyway it would be a stretch saying that inclination to smoking and lung cancer had a common, unrelated cause - it's far more reasonable to think that heavy drinking as an adult and heavy drinking in youth may have common, unrelated causes.

let me get this right Ben. Someone walks up to you in the street and sticks a knife in your face, says "gimme your wallet", and you think you can draw your gun and threaten and/or shoot them before they stab you? Is this how the self-defence argument works? Or does it work by you pulling your gun before they pull the knife, i.e. shooting them if they look threatening?

Ben,

your attendance at Greek fratboy parties to get lunch, while like certainly, like, dude is phat, could like be safer like dude if you like laid off the huhhuh like beer bong dude.

You wouldn't have to be such a big man that way.

Best,

D

It is true, engineers tend to be skeptical people

Is it?

Got any stats comparing engineers to people with equivalent education in other fields, using more than one measure of what constiutes a stupid belief?

Too many go-rounds with Creationist and other woo-woo engineers makes me skeptical of your claim. ;-)

It is true, engineers tend to be skeptical people...

I don't know about that, they tend to think quite highly of their own intuition. That's what we need to be most skeptical of. Intuition is no substitute for actual data and research.

(And I say this knowing numerous engineers, including my brother.)

Nope, firearms not allowed on campus.

Do you seriously carry a gun around Seattle? This is an absurdly safe city; I can't imagine that actually being useful.

Hi Harald, I don't think that at all. Tobacco is attractive because people are easily addicted to nicotine. They throw the cancer in for free.

Interestingly enough one of the research problems was finding an animal model that enjoyed smoking and would suck the stuff into its lungs. That was one of the principle holdups in investigating second hand smoke issues.

SG said: let me get this right Ben. Someone walks up to you in the street and sticks a knife in your face, says "gimme your wallet", and you think you can draw your gun and threaten and/or shoot them before they stab you? Is this how the self-defence argument works? Or does it work by you pulling your gun before they pull the knife, i.e. shooting them if they look threatening?"

No, SG, he thinks if he pulls his gun, the knifewielder will see the gun and will flee. And he is substantially correct. People wield weapons mostly for bluff. If the knifewielder had wanted to just have a fight, he would have stabbed Ben without asking for the wallet.

The only thing funnier than paranoid gun nuts protecting their phallic symbols are gun-phobes revealing that they cannot think logically about guns for one second, and know nothing about the real world. I suggest this be alleviated by talking about "weapons" rather than guns, since guns are only the most effective weapons at killing, but certainly not the only ones. Just ask the people in Rwanda.

Incidentally, Time magazine once chronicled the details of every gun death in America for a week, and it was very illuminating. I took the time to categorize them:

Half were suicides, usually middle aged men.

The next largest group, tragically, were the wives of the suicidal husbands.

The bulk of the remainder were citizens shooting criminals in self-defense, cops doing the same, and criminals shooting each other. Once I got down to what (I think) we are all really concerned about, average Joe citizen minding his own business and getting shot, or a child finding a gun and dying, the numbers were very small, something like 15% of the total, if memory serves.

Of course, the people that toss around the number of "gun deaths" rarely tell you any of this. Take Time's cover photo (they had photos of most of the victims). Had Time been objective and put the typical victim on the cover, it would have been a middle aged depressed man. But no, they put a young girl whose friend shot her with dad's gun.

Kudos to the people that did this study for at least restricting it to homicides. But more delineation is needed.

Tim, I don't think Kevin's point is complicated. Studies based on surveys assume the answers will be (to a large extent) correct. You can't do that with gun owners, because paranoia is correlated with that. Non-gun owners are going to answer honestly and say "no guns here", and many gun owners will lie and say the same. So it taints the study, just like Chagnon's famous Yanamamo geneology study which turned out to have all made up names, because in that culture it was considered rude to talk about the dead.

For the record, I'm an actuary, I own a gun but don't carry it, and have no particular love for them.

your attendance at Greek fratboy parties to get lunch, while like certainly, like, dude is phat, could like be safer like dude if you like laid off the huhhuh like beer bong dude.

You wouldn't have to be such a big man that way.

What the hell are you going on about? I have a wife and two kids, live in a super safe neighborhood, and loathe partying. My labmates and friends all know I'm a gun nut and don't care. We give each other crap all in good fun, but it's more a live and let live sorta thing. Nobody feels unsafe around me, and I never ever carry a gun in someone else's house, unless they're of the nut persuasion also.

let me get this right Ben. Someone walks up to you in the street and sticks a knife in your face, says "gimme your wallet", and you think you can draw your gun and threaten and/or shoot them before they stab you? Is this how the self-defence argument works? Or does it work by you pulling your gun before they pull the knife, i.e. shooting them if they look threatening?

It works like this: If I thought my life was in danger, then I'd draw and shoot if necessary. If not, then he can have my wallet, car and any other inanimate object he likes.

I don't know about that, they tend to think quite highly of their own intuition.

"Intuition" doesn't keep planes in the air, bridges from collapsing, and allow the computer you're typing on to work.

Engineers (I'm an INTJ engineer) "think quite highly" of what works - in the flawed imperfect real world.

Amen to that, Purple Avenger. Engineers are always very interested in what works reliably and predictably, and above all, can be reconciled with actual experience. In my line of work, there are plenty of processes that could theoretically work very well, but don't fare quite so well in the real world.

Gun control theory is much like this. At one time, I believed in it myself. Over time, after finding out how badly it fared when it came face to face with actual criminality, I came around 100% to the opposing view.

There is some gun control that I support, provided that it does not actually affect law abiding people. I support locking up convicted violent felons caught possessing guns, although more because it puts them in prison where they can't do much harm than because of the gun law per se.

Davis to Ben:

Do you seriously carry a gun around Seattle? This is an absurdly safe city; I can't imagine that actually being useful.

I wonder why Seattle Police Officers carry guns then.

I have walked in downtown Seattle after dark and it is not as safe as you think. For some reason, the city seems to tolerate a large crowd of bums who harass people.

Ian Gould:

A couple of quick questions for you?

1. Are African-Americans, on average, poorer than the national average?
2. Do you agree that people who can afford to hire good lawyers are more likely to be acquitted?

This is trivially true, yes. However, there are plenty of poor people of other ethnicities who don't commit crimes at the same rate.

As it happens, my views on the American legal system are based heavily on my research into the Australian legal system and how it dealt with Aborigines undertaken for the Queensland Office of the Cabinet a little over a decade ago. Aborigines were no more likely than whites to commit criminal offences but were about ten times as likely to end up in prison as a result.

Since we have few, if any Australian Aborigines in America, perhaps your research is inapplicable to a discussion of African American criminality. Unfortunately, there is a culture in the African American inner city, where traditional families are hard to find, young men get raised without a positive male role model and are far likelier than the rest of the population to engage in criminal conduct, starting with drug dealing and extending to violent crime, usually committed against fellow African American victims. Crime rates in this inner city culture are far higher than the rest of the population and it is silly of you to imply that they are comparable to the rest of the population. They aren't.

Here a reference by Juan Williams, who is an African American journalist for National Public Radio: Enough

Dano:

There are few things better, in my view, than gun nuts defending their phallic-object fetishizing and stroking.

Dano appears to be engaging in projection as well.

Alas, these kinds of phallic comparisons happen way too often with gun control advocates. This prejudice even infects people who should know better.

Kevin--any other prejuidices you care to air out? Why it's perfectly reasonable to carry a concealed weapon to protect yourself from the homeless. That's certainly what I did living in LA, and when traveling around by bus no less. However, I understand the difference between assertiveness and agressiveness.

Ian's observation is perfectly valid--that possibly your perception that the majority of gun crimes being performed by inner city African Americans is biased by the conviction rates. Out here in rural California, we see violence performed with guns by whites, at per capita rates comparable to Los Angeles.

One other point, how is it that a partiarchy is better than a matriarchy?

Mike

Kevin P:

Downtown Seattle (Pike Place) is where a Seahawk got killed (head bashed in), a small area known to be scary & I don't go there late. Downtown Denver is where DW just got shot by a little man with a little p*nis who got dissed and had to be a big man.

The majority of Seattle is very safe and every time I left my front door unlocked in Wallingford nothing happened, and no one hassled me on the street (I'm kinda big, tho) no matter where I went, ask me about Sacramento or SFO.

My point is that if ben is so manly, he shouldn't be afraid to walk up the big scary Ave, populated by young teen runaways and that singing guy. Ooooh. Veddy skeddy.

And he has a very safe neighborhood, yet can't watch his mouth so he has to pack a gun.

Best,

D

Mike:

Kevin--any other prejuidices you care to air out? Why it's perfectly reasonable to carry a concealed weapon to protect yourself from the homeless. That's certainly what I did living in LA, and when traveling around by bus no less. However, I understand the difference between assertiveness and agressiveness.

Mike, this is a confused paragraph. I don't quite understand what you are trying to say.

What prejudices are you referring to?

Against homeless people? I certainly have a prejudice against anyone, not just the homeless who hounds and harasses citizens who are walking down the street minding their own business. On her last visit to downtown Seattle, my wife suffered a small burn on her arm from a cigarette thrown in her direction by a bum.

Against African Americans? I don't live in the inner city and have no animus towards African Americans. They seem to be having a big debate about their own inner city culture. Are you suggesting that we should not dare speak about their culture? I would go for that if everyone would leave gun owners alone in return.

I wonder why Seattle Police Officers carry guns then.

I'm sorry, but this is just an idiotic comment.

I have walked in downtown Seattle after dark and it is not as safe as you think. For some reason, the city seems to tolerate a large crowd of bums who harass people.

Did you get mugged? I agree that some of the homeless here are pushy (I just had an annoying encounter in Pioneer Square the other night), but I don't consider that to be a situation that calls for carrying a gun.

Personally, in the 6+ years I've been in this city (which includes being out at all hours in various parts of town), the only experiences I've had that would justify carrying are the occasional drivers who get irrationally angry that I'm a cyclist in the road.

Davis:

Did you get mugged?

See above.

I agree that some of the homeless here are pushy (I just had an annoying encounter in Pioneer Square the other night), but I don't consider that to be a situation that calls for carrying a gun.

I respect your judgment and suggest that therefore you should not carry a gun in downtown Seattle after dark.

However, you don't have the right to coerce other people into following your belief. I haven't seen Ben demand that YOU carry a gun. What business of yours is it if he does? He knows his situation better than you do.

I'm tellin' ya, the more I read Ben, the more sure I am that I have him nailed. Yell "Gun!" and he'll pull that substitute penis of his out and blaze away like there's no tomorrow. It's that wonderful mixture of anger and fear.

Kevin:

1.) You seem to imply that the disparity of violent crime with guns is due to inner city blacks. Unfortunately, the numbers do not work, blacks are disproportunatly imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses:

"The national war on drugs has perhaps been the primary factor behind the extraordinary rates at which blacks are incarcerated. Drug offenses account for nearly two out of five of the blacks sent to state prison. More blacks are sent to state prison for drug offenses (38 percent) than for crimes of violence (27 percent). In contrast, drug offenders constitute 24 percent of whites admitted to prison and violent offenders constitute 27 percent (Figure 3)."

http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/

2.) As to that inner city lifestyle, that debate may just be a manifestation of a larger laissez faire racism. (By the way, the better scholars to appeal to regarding the African American experience are not Bill Cosby,or Dinesh d'Souza but Larry Bobo)

http://www.russellsage.org/publications/workingpapers/Laissez%20Faire%2…

3.) The observation that problems for black males are due to a lack of a male head of household ignores that such does not provide such an effect to white families without a male head of household.

4.) Finally, the power of anecdote-- A bum burned my wife with a cigarette.

So what you have are three fallacies and one second hand account--I would say your scepticism a fancy way of saying I'm a bigot.

Mike

"The bulk of the remainder were citizens shooting criminals in self-defense, cops doing the same, and criminals shooting each other. Once I got down to what (I think) we are all really concerned about, average Joe citizen minding his own business and getting shot, or a child finding a gun and dying, the numbers were very small, something like 15% of the total, if memory serves."

Let's assume your recollection is correct and that that one week is typical and also assume that there are approximately 8-10,000 gun deaths in the US each year. (I'm working from memory here and that figure may be either too high or too low I suspect its too low seeing as we're discussing suicides as well as homicides), then around 1,200 to 1,500 Americans in the categories you suggest we should be "really concerned about"

So we have 50% or more of the death-toll from the 9/11 attacks every year and roughly double the annual American death-toll in the Iraq war.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 16 Jan 2007 #permalink

Kevin P "Amen to that, Purple Avenger. Engineers are always very interested in what works reliably and predictably, and above all, can be reconciled with actual experience."

In many cases, they also seem to be convinced they are somehow unique in this regard and therefore possess some near-mystical ability to understand issues entirely outside their professional field.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 16 Jan 2007 #permalink

In my experience engineers are easy marks for someone with a bridge to sell. Because they are taught to ignore theory they often are trapped by appearance. You need a balance between the two. For example, I once knew a guy who swore he could beat the second law using memory metal (an interesting material that you can use temperature to force into a previous configuration, they guy had rigged it up as a little engine that rotated around two idler wheels when the metal was heated.

Kevin P: "Since we have few, if any Australian Aborigines in America, perhaps your research is inapplicable to a discussion of African American criminality."

Funny, coming from someone who appears to believe that his experience in the semiconductor industry makes him an expert on gun control.

If you're going to fetishise "real world experience", you can't really ignore direct real-world evidence that it is POSSIBLE for very large differences in conviction and incarceration rates to be caused by factors other than differences in the underlying offence rate.

But you have your theory - it's the godless blacks with their promiscuity and their crack and their rap music.

Best not to look any further in case the facts have the bad taste to try and contradict you.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 16 Jan 2007 #permalink

Ben: "Nobody feels unsafe around me, and I never ever carry a gun in someone else's house, unless they're of the nut persuasion also."

How does that work?

Do you leave your gun at home? Do you actually feel more threatened when you do so?

I'm sure you don't leave your gun unsecured in your car.

What do you do if you're unexpectedly invited to someone's house? Decline? Ask their view on gun control before accepting?

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 16 Jan 2007 #permalink

However, you don't have the right to coerce other people into following your belief. I haven't seen Ben demand that YOU carry a gun. What business of yours is it if he does?

You have to twist my words quite a bit to interpret them as me trying to coerce anyone. I simply expressed incredulity that anyone would feel the need to pack heat in Seattle.

I don't even have a problem with guns; I enjoy going shooting (especially skeet), though I haven't done it in years. At the same time, I'm interested in research on gun control, because I really am curious whether it can have a positive effect on certain types of crime. I find the kind of knee-jerk commentary exhibited early in this thread unhelpful and uninformative, however.

"My point is that if ben is so manly, he shouldn't be afraid to walk up the big scary Ave, populated by young teen runaways and that singing guy. Ooooh. Veddy skeddy."

I used to work in a shop in Fortitude Valley, probably the most violent part of Brisbane.

Every Friday night, I'd walk out of the shop with the takings from late night shopping.

On warm summer nights, I'd walk home over the Story Bridge via Kangaroo Point and Woolloongabba and through Musgrave Park, home of most of Brisbane's homeless.

I never carried a gun, I never felt I needed one.

Before anyone starts on the whole "It's okay for you but what about people who can't defend themselves?", I'm five foot six, overweight, wear glasses and have spinal injuries from a bus crash when I was a teen.

I also happen to be smarter than the average mugger, pretty observant and think fast on my feet.

The idea that guns are either necessary or sufficient to defend yourself is just plain silly.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 16 Jan 2007 #permalink

I cannot speak as to whether Ben prefers that I be armed but there are cerainly groups which are putting that forth as their position. Recent ordinances noted in this blog require gun ownership and I am led to believe that John Lott has recommended it from time to time. Speaking of which, I followed a link there a few days ago and realized that his comments are either turned off or heavily censored. The same post in Marginal Revolution led me both here and to Lott's blog. Does he (Lott) turn on comments for specific topics (a la MR)?

By Archibald (not verified) on 16 Jan 2007 #permalink

Ian Gould said: Let's assume your recollection is correct and that that one week is typical and also assume that there are approximately 8-10,000 gun deaths in the US each year ... then around 1,200 to 1,500 Americans in the categories you suggest we should be "really concerned about"

If that's what the data is, then that's what it is. My point is that if we are going to make a sound decision on policy, we need good, relevant data, not politically-massaged data. We need to be skeptical of any data on this issue since it is so politically charged. Along with the deaths "that matter" (an admittedly debatable definition), we also have to subtract the deaths that were avoided by the presence of guns (self-defense, etc.), a more difficult figure to discern, but it is certainly not zero.

There is too much blind defense from the pro-gun side. Dismissing studies that conflict with one's personal experience re large populations is the surest way to keep one's opinions unsullied by facts. Ditto with dismissing a study because it might be flawed. All studies might be flawed. To dismiss it, one needs to know that it is flawed.

Likewise, there is too much shrill nonsense from the anti-gun side. Implying that gun owners are trigger-happy goofs is intellectually dishonest. Likewise, tacitly presuming that all gun deaths are the same leads to a distorted view. Finally, gunphobes seem to act like death by gun is worse than death by other causes. You see this in studies that proport to show the (to me) trivial claim that more guns = more gun deaths. So?! I don't care about minimizing "gun" deaths, I care about minimizing deaths!

Is 1,500 undesired deaths annually (just to pick a number) worth the values freedom of gun ownership brings? We can't make that decision well without good data, and the intellectual honesty to deal with the data, regardless of our perceived "personal experience".

MarkP:
"Likewise, there is too much shrill nonsense from the anti-gun side. Implying that gun owners are trigger-happy goofs is intellectually dishonest. Likewise, tacitly presuming that all gun deaths are the same leads to a distorted view. Finally, gunphobes seem to act like death by gun is worse than death by other causes. You see this in studies that proport to show the (to me) trivial claim that more guns = more gun deaths. So?! I don't care about minimizing "gun" deaths, I care about minimizing deaths!"

I think the defenders of gun owners commenting here are ones coming across as ignorant trigger happy goofs.

But you employ a strawman regarding gunphobes--the use of a gun in the heat of anger is far more difficult to undo, on average, than say the use of a bat; and in the absense of anger, even more so. I read the data as including 'accidental discharges' since these will be treated as potential manslaughter or assault charges. You don't accidentally bludgeon someone.

However, I do agree with you. We need to recognise that this is a public health issue, but it does not necessitate the loss of the right of firearms ownership, but may require assuming additional responsibility with that right. Frankly in the extreme, I see myself willing to accept the outright ban on handguns, but would not with rifles and other hunting paraphenalia.

Mike

Mgr says: I think the defenders of gun owners commenting here are ones coming across as ignorant trigger happy goofs.

Quote one. I haven't seen anyone here defending gun ownership say anything as stupid as "Someone walks up to you in the street and sticks a knife in your face, says 'gimme your wallet', and you think you can draw your gun and threaten and/or shoot them before they stab you? Is this how the self-defence argument works? Or does it work by you pulling your gun before they pull the knife, i.e. shooting them if they look threatening?", and some of the other reality-removed sneers I've seen here on the anti-gun side.

Mgr says: But you employ a strawman regarding gunphobes--the use of a gun in the heat of anger is far more difficult to undo, on average, than say the use of a bat; and in the absense of anger, even more so. I read the data as including 'accidental discharges' since these will be treated as potential manslaughter or assault charges. You don't accidentally bludgeon someone.

I agree with you, and don't see how this relates to what I said. I am speaking to the many statements I've seen from people who were anti-gun that seemed consistent with the idea that dying by gun is worse than dying some other way. Celebrating a reduction of gun deaths irrespective of deaths by other means was one example of that.

Some statements, and conversations I've had with many such people, reveal a state of mind I can only describe as "phobic". It's not meant as an ad hominem, but as describing a real psychological state. As an example, I once had a friend dress as a cowboy at halloween, complete with real guns in his holsters and real bullets around his belt. This made one of the guests very nervous, and rightly so at that point. Then he showed her that not only were the guns unloaded, but he had carefully selected guns and bullets that were incompatible (.22 pistols and .45 shells, if memory serves), so that even if someone had tried to load the guns and shoot someone, they couldn't do it, and he demonstrated this for us. She was still just as uncomfortable, and after our attempts to explain it and calm her failed, she left in a righteous huff.

Now I'm sorry, how else might one describe such an attitude except phobic? It's akin to a person who can't handle having a spider on them even after it is explained that the spider is plastic. Sadly, I hear and see this attitude about guns all-too-frequently.

It's displayed every time someone (Bill Maher sadly is one example) can't admit the obvious: that had some of the people at a multishooting tragedy (Columbine, Luby's, the church who's name escapes me, the McDonalds 20+ years ago, pick your favorite) been armed and trained, it is likely fewer innocent people would have died. The flip side of that coin are the people that resist the obvious fact that if more people were armed, there would be some situations where people would die who wouldn't have before.

My point is dispense with this nonsense, deal with reality, get the best data we can, and make an informed rational decision, based neither on macho male posturing, nor peacenick idealism.

The sneering attacks against Ben indicate very clearly the lack of maturity of the people who make them. References to Freud and penis substitutes only detract from their arguments.

The arguments for and against open or concealed carry permits are legion, and it's a situation that cuts both ways. Anti-gunners (some but not all) DO have a tendency to behave as if their opponents are uncontrolled, dangerous nuts who blast everything in sight, and whose existence is morally dubious at best; this does nothing for the objectivity of anti-gun campaigners.

Personally, I am a shooter. I shoot smallbore rifle indoors, and my victims are paper targets. If I had the time and the money, I'd make a full time sport of it and a pitch at the Olympics in 2012 or '16. I'd like the time to do pistol as well, but I just don't have it.

If it were permitted (it's not), and if I were going to carry concealed 24/7 (I probably wouldn't), I would think it would be irresponsible to issue me with a concealed carry permit if I were the sort who was just going to blaze away because some anti-gun nut walked up behind me and yelled "Gun!".

Ultimately I think that anyone who carries for self defence must accept that as soon as they draw, they are essentially committed to killing somebody; there will be no time for hesitation, and "shooting the knife out of the mugger's hand" is for the movies. Anyone who carries should be trained to make this decision appropriately. Anyone who can't demonstrate this sort of capacity should not be given a permit to carry on their person.

I am firmly in favour of free ownership of guns, so long as a purpose can be demonstrated (even as simple as "recreational shooting with historical firearms"), and that the shooter ought to carry out their activities at least partially under the umbrella of a club or association - which, apart from the companionship being good for the soul, means that if they are going off the rails or having lapses of judgement, other people can notice and they can be quietly pulled aside and dealt with (and hopefully helped) before an explosion happens. And that we don't have isolated people accumulating stockpiles of weapons with nobody to notice what they are doing. (Of course farmers who have them for pest control are another matter.)

I would argue that possession of automatic weapons should not be permitted the general public (unless in the context of a reservist scheme like Switzerland's); I am undecided about non-military self-loading longarms.

By Justin Moretti (not verified) on 16 Jan 2007 #permalink

Ben and MarkP, you are really eager to live the phrase "from my cold, dead hands" aren`t you?

Let me suggest a little experiment for you Ben: get a mate around to your house with a reasonably soft 6" long object that resembles a knife; have him wave it a foot in front of your face, in a situation which might suggest your life was in danger; then pull that gun. I give you maybe 20 or 30 tries, and you are still dead every time. Even if you use the old fake wallet trick, you`ll still be dead.

MarkP may think this is a "reality-removed sneer" but I wouldn`t take his word for it if I were you. Give it a go.

Justin Moretti, this kind of situation is about more than being trained "to make the decision" - you need years of training to be able to defend yourself against a knife when you are prepared and ready with another knife in your hand, let alone in your pocket. It`s a complete fantasy to suppose otherwise.

Much as you might like that particular scenario, SG, that's not all there is to it. There are approximately one million defensive gun uses in the United States every year. Much as you'd like all those folks to have been unarmed victims, it fortunately wasn't so.

I don`t understand Ben. Everyone in this scenario is armed. Perhaps you misinterpreted my suggestion of a floppy fake knife as an implication that your assailant would be pretending to be armed? I merely recommended it for the purposes of keeping the experiment safe.

Can I say that I agree with Justin that the personal attacks on Ben are unwarranted. Without rereading the whole thread I don't immediately recall any such attacks on Mark, if they are in there though, they are also unwarranted.

I agree with previous posters that the US situation is muddied by too much advocacy posing as research - but as John Lott demonstrates this is by no means limited to the pro-control side. (This is not intended to reflect on all pro-gun researchers, Dr. Kleck is frequently mentioned as an eminent Academic advocate for gun ownership.)

I also think that the ease with which handguns in particular can be transported between US states makes a state=by-state analysis problematic. It also makes an assessment of the effectiveness of municipal or state-wide gun control laws problematic.

however, the massive difference in murder rates between the US and other developed countries suggests that PART of the difference is almost definitely attributable to the greater availability of handguns.

I think American advocates of a broad interpretation of your Second Amendment would do everyone a service if they acknowledged that, focussed on trying to define exactly how much of the higher murder rate is attributable to gun laws and argued their case on the basis that the higher murder rate was an acceptable cost for what they see as the benefits of gun ownership. (Nobody likes road fatalities but nobody seriously suggests reducing them by cutting the speed limit to 20 MPH; requiring cars to be covered in foam rubber and requiring drivers and passengers to wear crash helmets.)

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 16 Jan 2007 #permalink

There are approximately one million defensive gun uses in the United States every year

Has this figure already been debated ad Nauseum on this blog? Sorry if it has, but according to the National Crime Victimization Survey the figure was about 100,000, not a million as Ben claims. Am I missing something?

I agree that my comments about Ben's fears were over the line, and I apologize. Few things get me going more than gun nuts, and knowing this I shoulda stayed in line.

Again, apologies.

BTW, I used to be a marksman. And if Federal judges keep getting fired in this country, I'm going to have a gun in every f'n room as an answer to Gonzales' Homeland Security thugs coming into my house looking for my hard drives.

Best,

D

Congrats ben on your continued decent behvaiour despite the pathetic behaviour of dano, mndean and the like.

Unfortunately, bigots always need some group to abuse, and in Australia some left-wing bigots have decided that shooters are an easy target.

SG, try that same experiment, except this time just beg for your life. Is that somehow more satisfying?

Hmmm, 1M did seem sorta high.

"BTW, I used to be a marksman. And if Federal judges keep getting fired in this country, I'm going to have a gun in every f'n room as an answer to Gonzales' Homeland Security thugs coming into my house looking for my hard drives."

That's the idea.

"I think American advocates of a broad interpretation of your Second Amendment would do everyone a service if they acknowledged that, focussed on trying to define exactly how much of the higher murder rate is attributable to gun laws and argued their case on the basis that the higher murder rate was an acceptable cost for what they see as the benefits of gun ownership."

Like I said before, for Caucasians only, we're about just like much of Europe. Besides that, we have the historical record on our side for our interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. It means what we think it means, and its primary purpose is for what Dano eluded to above.

Lastly, there's the recent study by Kleck, "Resisting Crime: The Effects of Victim Action on the Outcomes of Crimes.", that shows active self defense is the statistically best option as a response to crime. In the past it was unclear if one should resist or not. Many, especially the Brady Group, advocated passivity in the face of crime, as the best way to avoid injury. Kleck, for example, looked at whether or not injury happened as a result of fighting back, or if the injury occurred first and then the resistance later.

The end result was that resisting crime has the least likelyhood of resulting in injury, and a gun was the best means of resistance, IIRC.

MarkP--you don't understand, I consider myself a 'gunphobe'. I don't have one, will not allow one in my house, and will not tolerate it in the ordinary discourse of my life. Aside from the violence aspect, they are noisy, and pollute the environment.

MarkP: "Quote one."

Since there are only two, you assumed the pickings were slight, but here goes--

Ben:
"'Ben, you "pack heat"? Do you "pack heat" when you are like, going to the shops, hanging out with friends, at a cafe or in a bar? Is that what you mean?'"

"Something like that. This is America after all. "

I consider this exchange immature and inflammatory on Ben's part. I certainly do not wish to encounter Ben in anything but broad daylight where his Barney Fife logic might get me and several bystanders blown away.

The fact that someone comes to a party with realistic ordinance, probably to get a rise out of some of the guests; and you expect those targets to calm down after explaining that its all dummy rounds and empty chambers, is not a characterization of phobia, but of immaturity on your friend's part and on you for rationalizing it as a phobia. What other response were you expecting? If it were me, I would have thown your sorry asses out without a by your leave by the host or hostess. Sure, I'm going to take your word that they are dummy rounds, after you pulled this stunt?

If you wish to have folk take your position on gun ownership seriously, you need to stop the argument that it's OK to carry.

I talk to co-workers about hunting (my son wants to bow hunt), and the first thing out of one of their mouths is getting him into a fire arms safety class. I am not hearing this from any of you advocates in this discussion, and quite frankly, I want to get fire arms out of the hands of you Clint Eastwood addled boobs, until you can show the sensitivity of what brandishing a weapon means to others not so desensitized to what weapons can do.

Mike

Mike, how is that inflamitory?

The ONLY times any of my friends knows I'm carrying is when we go hunting/hiking/camping/fishing or to the shooting range. Otherwise, if it's to a suitable public place (i.e. NOT a bar) then I carry discretely and nobody ever knows. I NEVER carry in anyone else's house.

I obey the law, NEVER brandish, as that is illegal unless my life or the lives of others are at stake.

And yes, by all means take a safety course. That was the first thing I did when I got back to the USA and got re-interested in firearms after living in Canada for many years.

And yes, they are noisy. That is among the primary reasons why I would be loath to use a gun, even in self defense. My ears permanently ring already from going to concerts with unprotected ears in the days of my youth. I don't want to make that worse, it's not worth any amount of money or property.

Within that vein, I've been attempting to change the laws in Washington State that say I can *own* a firearm sound suppressor, but I can't actually use it. This law makes about as little sense as a law allowing me to own a jar of peanut butter as long as I never eat it.

"let me get this right Ben. Someone walks up to you in the street and sticks a knife in your face, says "gimme your wallet", and you think you can draw your gun and threaten and/or shoot them before they stab you? Is this how the self-defence argument works? Or does it work by you pulling your gun before they pull the knife, i.e. shooting them if they look threatening?"

Haha you forgot the best option. Give him your wallet and then shoot him the back as he runs away. That would probably be the most just way of dealing with the criminal.

Seriously though, the burden does lie with the study to prove that gun ownership causes gun violence. I live in Canada where they have gun control laws that would give gun contol advocates wet dreams at night, and the Canadian city with the toughest gun laws, Toronto just went through the "summer of the gun". It was pretty awful, school kids getting shot and horrible things happening. It was a record year for gun violence. The cause? Gang violence over drugs. I think the root cause of gun violence in America and Canada isn't gun ownership but rather illegal narcotics. People get shot over drugs and drug money, not because of the lack of gun control. It's the high price of drugs that causes gun violence and streets to be unsafe, not the "prevalence of guns."

If you guys would legalise narcotics you'd have "gun violence" more than half solved.

By Chris Doan (not verified) on 17 Jan 2007 #permalink

Mike

...I want to get fire arms out of the hands of you Clint Eastwood addled boobs...

LOL. In some ways, we have won the war for gun rights in the US when this is the best that gun control proponents can come up with.

Mike, you make a great unwitting propagandist for the pro gun side - all we have to do is point to you and say: Imagine Mike in charge of gun licensing.

Ian Gould:

In many cases, [engineers] also seem to be convinced they are somehow unique in this regard and therefore possess some near-mystical ability to understand issues entirely outside their professional field.

LOL. Are you limping into credentialism here? And is gun control advocacy a professional field now? Maybe it is at that.

Funny, coming from someone who appears to believe that his experience in the semiconductor industry makes him an expert on gun control.

"Gun control" is not some abstract academic theory like a discussion about the origins of the universe that affects nobody's daily life. Gun control is used in this country to make it more difficult for ordinary citizens to own and carry guns for self defense, and in some extreme cases, to disarm them completely. I am one of those citizens. Gun control affects my daily life. Yes, I happen to be an expert on the gun laws of my state and my country, because - you know what - I can go to prison if I inadvertently run afoul of them, no matter how innocent my motive may have been. Otherwise law abiding gun owners go to prison all the time for some technical violation of the gun laws.

In contrast, I have to ask the question: Do the authors of this study, Tim Lambert, and yourself, Ian Gould live in the United States and do any of the following:
1) Own a rifle, shotgun or pistol
2) Keep a firearm at home for self defense
3) Carry a firearm to a shooting range
4) Carry a firearm for self protection at your retail business
5) Carry a firearm for self protection on your way to a night shift job
6) Carry a firearm when hunting
7) Own a semi automatic firearm with a detachable magazine
8) Travel between states on the way to a shooting competition
9) Attended a shooting match or shooting club and met other gun owners

I suspect that you have done few of these things. Yet you still, for some reason, feel that your theoretical studies are superior to the practical experience of millions of law abiding gun owners who do the above and risk violating the law if they are not careful about how they do it.

Contrary to your claim, engineers actually do study and use theory, but the theory has to compellingly explain the observations of the real world. It is much easier to verify this in the world of the basic sciences. In the social sciences, it's much harder to do that.

Chris Doan:

If you guys would legalise narcotics you'd have "gun violence" more than half solved.

I completely agree with this too. The first big burst of gun control in the US came around during the era of Prohibition, when soaring crime rates influenced the passage of the National Firearms Act, which made the ownership of machine guns, silencers and short barreled rifles and shotguns subject to expensive registration. Prohibition went away, and crime rates declined but the NFA remained on the books to this day.

The War on Drugs is an all round disaster that has collaterally damaged the Fourth Amendment and the Second Amendment.

Ben--it's inflammatory in that rhetoric using such devices as packing heat in public places irritates those of us who support your right, but disagree with the extent. This can, and will motivate someone as myself to actively participate in actions to limit the portions of your right that we percieve as a privilege.

There is a sense that handgun ownership may have some connect to a need for macho posturing. It may be a stereotype, but let's not engage in discussion that feeds it, if the desire is to educate. If it's to tweak the lefty tree huggers, OK, but accept the consequences that follow.

I will say it, I have no problem with rifles for hunting, but I draw the line at needing handguns for self defense, because I do not see the evidence justifying it. I have skimmed some of Kleck, but would like to see the actual survey response rates, rather that the conclusions he draws (some of which appear selective). I would be very interested by a survey of gun owners not members of the NRA. There may be a self selection bias in the recall of the past, both exaggeration and deletion in Kleck's survey reguarding self defense, that such a narrower focus could address.

The fear of being victimized by violence is manufactured by those with something to gain from it; and it includes playing to racism and ignorance. Those who argue they need a handgun to protect themselves were duped by the manufacturers of the same weapons, and by those public safety professionals who needed a second income by outsourceing renta-cops (at least for Los Angeles after the Watts riots).

Mike

Mike:

If you wish to have folk take your position on gun ownership seriously, you need to stop the argument that it's OK to carry.

Our argument seems to be working quite well. 37 states now issue concealed carry permits on a "shall issue" basis and the number slowly but surely increases almost every year. In every state the heated debate goes something like this:

1) There are dire warnings that blood will flow in the streets and "Clint Eastwood addled boobs" will reign supreme and murder women, children and adorable puppies :-)

2) Concealed carry reform legislation may stall or be defeated for some years, but eventually some election comes around, proponents are elected and the legislation passes.

3) Much hand wringing follows, usually from the mainstream media.

4) After a couple of years, no mayhem has ensued, there has been no jump in crime and sometimes even a modest decrease. Everybody wonders what the big fuss was about.

5) Over time, more reform legislation is passed that tinkers around the edges and make it easier to obtain permits and reduces the number of places where carrying is forbidden. I don't believe that even a single state that has moved to restrict carrying once it is approved.

6) We move on to the next state, lather, rinse and repeat. I predict that Wisconsin, Delaware and Rhode Island will fall into the shall-issue column within the next decade.

7) Another development that may yet happen in my lifetime is to abolish the permit regime altogether. Alaska did this in 2003. Any law abiding person may carry a concealed firearm in Alaska and Vermont without any kind of permit. Since many states allow the open carry of firearms without a permit, this is not a big stretch legally.

So the lawful carrying of firearms is actually becoming a legal norm in America, far from being an argument that needs to be stopped.

Kevin P--another slow day at the wastewater treatment plant? Excellent example of cherry picking 1, or is it that your comprehension skills can only address independent clauses, rather than compound complex sentence constructions, or paragraphs. Ben, I think, gets it. You enjoy your handguns only because many of us are agnostic, continue with the posturing, and you piss us off into the veto area; and then see how narrow your right to a well regulated militia is.

Mike

Mike:

Frankly in the extreme, I see myself willing to accept the outright ban on handguns..

In a later comment you say that you do not own any guns. Of course you are willing to accept an outright ban on handguns - it doesn't come at any cost to you!

Those of us who actually own and use them lawfully have much more motivation to defend their keeping. Perhaps we know more about how they actually work as well.

Ben--it's inflammatory in that rhetoric using such devices as packing heat in public places irritates those of us who support your right, but disagree with the extent.

Do you actually support the right to keep and bear arms? Considering the language that you have employed in this thread, I would hesitate to accept your support. And saying that you support the right to own hunting rifles is meaningless. The Second Amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with hunting. This is like saying that you support the right of men to have an abortion.

I will say it, I have no problem with rifles for hunting, but I draw the line at needing handguns for self defense, because I do not see the evidence justifying it.

You will dismiss this as an anecdotal account, but for the rest of the readers, a two minute search finds this story:

"On the morning of the incident, he secreted into the house and waited for her," Sgt. Scott Tummond said. "She happened to be armed with a .38 pistol, and when he tried to grab her she brought the gun to action, firing once and striking him in the chin."

There are plenty of other self defense stories at the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog

Kevin P--another slow day at the wastewater treatment plant?

Heh heh, you are funny :-) And also losing...

Kevin P--nice bluster.

I see that you still have not addressed my question regarding racial prejuidice underlying your impressions.

My choices regarding guns and weapons are my own, but I would not make the assumption that handgun violence has not infringed upon my life--my brother-in-law lives in a persistent vegetative state because he was shot in the head, accidentally or intentionally is unclear. He's african american, and was at work. A friend of mine's twin brother lost his temper at a party, and was killed by a handgun. My maternal grandfather blew his head off with a shot gun.

Hopefully these anecdotes aren't too theoretical for you.

Mike

Mike, you didn't ask a "question" about racial prejudice, you made a direct accusation. Let me quote you:

I would say your scepticism a fancy way of saying I'm a bigot.

Please be honest and admit that you made a dishonest accusation. We continue meeting you with civil debate and you continue responding with insult.

I am sorry to hear about the violence that has affected your family. Clearly this must be painful to bear. Please allow me to point out that the gun, an inanimate object, was not responsible for causing your family members harm. If your maternal grandfather had taken his own life with sleeping pills, would you blame the drug company? Or the pills?

Guns are certainly used to commit crime and cause harm. Every single gun owner knows this and also knows that in the hands of responsible citizens, guns are used to protect and defend. The two uses are and always have been two sides of the same coin, and this is true for most weapons.

Most gun control laws such as those that you propose do little to curb crime and misuse. This is because, by definition, gun control laws are generally obeyed by only law abiding citizens. These citizens never have been the problem. The problem is caused by criminals, generally men who commit robbery, rape and murder, in violation of all laws and morality. These criminals don't obey gun control laws. This is the reason why most gun control laws fail.

I think that we share the goal of reducing the criminal misuse of guns. We differ in our methods. Your method is to take away my right to own a gun, even though I am not the problem.

"LOL. Are you limping into credentialism here?"

This from the man who critiques social science papers on the basis of his experience in the semiconductor industry.

The only person engaging in credentialism here is you - certainly you're the only one who has felt compelled to list their credentials.

"In contrast, I have to ask the question:... "

So have you lived for any length of time in any country which severely restricts hand-gun ownership?

If not, does this invalidate your opinion?

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 17 Jan 2007 #permalink

Kevin P: "Do you actually support the right to keep and bear arms?"

Kevin, feel free to show us the section of the Constitution which prohibits private ownership of artillery; chemical and biological weapons; surface-to-air missiles; heavy machine-guns and nuclear weapons.

Either you believe that private citizens should be allowed to own these classes of arms or you believe in a selective interpretation of the Second Amendment to restrict "the right to keep and bear arms".

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 17 Jan 2007 #permalink

Ian Gould:

So have you lived for any length of time in any country which severely restricts hand-gun ownership?

Yes, actually. I am an immigrant to the US and grew up in a country where all gun ownership, not just handgun ownership is severely restricted. Gun permits are available, but only to the wealthy and connected.

And there, as in the US, most criminality came from a tiny subset of the population. The vast majority of the populace was law abiding and disarmed.

I visit my home country about every year. My home town where I grew up is quite peaceful and I feel safe in it. The larger cities are an entirely different matter. Most citizens try hard to get home before dark. If you are out after, say 10 p.m. and get mugged, your friends and neighbors will look at you and think you were stupid for being out that late. I feel safer in most big cities in the US.

How about you? Have you lived in a US state or other place where the ownership and/or carrying of handguns is common?

Ian Gould:

Kevin, feel free to show us the section of the Constitution which prohibits private ownership of artillery; chemical and biological weapons; surface-to-air missiles; heavy machine-guns and nuclear weapons.

Ah, the nuclear weapons strawman again. This isn't very orginal, I'm afraid. I will engage you on this subject at the moment when the NRA proposes the first law to issue permits to carry surface to air missiles. Until then, I believe that we were discussing handguns.

For the record: I would not oppose the regulation of phasers or other particle beam weapons with a yield greater than 10 Gigawatts :-)

Boy Kevin, when they handed out the chutzpah, did you go back for seconds? You're real quick with the anecdotes to support your case, but go to people kill people, not guns when its the other way.

Let me explain this real slow. My brother-in-law was shot with a hand gun, by a middle class white male in his thirties. A brain used a gun because it was scared of another human being's skin pigmentation. He was never charged because of the extenuating circumstance that it occurred during the night shift, my b-i-l was in the alley repairing the telephone line, and he was not killed.

An apology is in order, but I think it should be coming from you.

Again, real slow:

"I would say your scepticism a fancy way of saying I'm a bigot."

Was a conclusion from a post with four points (with links), and the third post in which I addressed your possible prejuidice towards african americans. The fact that you made uncritical statements equivalent to stating that all black culture was urban, disfunctional, and criminal and all of its own making strikes me as bigoted.

But here's my apology--I am sorry for addressing you as a rational human being, rather than the racist scum you appear to be.

Mike

Mike, I am sorry to hear about your brother-in-law. Your description of his shooting seems like a tragedy.

I am also sorry that my conversation with you has angered you so much that you call me a racist scum. In this regard, I think that you are hyperventilating and will continue to lash out, so I will attempt to deescalate the situation by ceasing to communicate directly with you.

I would do the same in any situation in real life, trying to avoid conflict until it became unavoidable. This is what responsible gun owners generally do. It is strange that I have to demonstrate this to you on the Internet. Perhaps there are anger management and conflict resolution classes available to you in your area.

Best wishes and may you find peace.

In the meantime, I am available for discussion with the other good Netizens of this board.

SG said: Ben and MarkP, you are really eager to live the phrase "from my cold, dead hands" aren`t you?...

MarkP may think this is a "reality-removed sneer" but I wouldn`t take his word for it if I were you. Give it a go.

Yes it was, and thank you for making my point for me so eloquently. I come on here asking people to make rational policy decisions based on solid data, with the necessary skepticism that such a politically charged topic warrants, and you respond by basically calling me a "gun nut" and playing games with unrealistic scenarios. You sound like you formed your opinion of weapons and conflict from watching Kung Fu movies.

In case you can stoop to be bothered with facts, my warm, living hands haven't held a gun in many, many years, the one gun I own was a gift, and frankly, I don't much care for them. I got interested in the gun issue because I kept seeing factually bereft, realistically removed, snide screeds like yours coming from the anti-gun side, and they offend my statistically trained, logistically honed sensibilities. Thanks for being Exhibit A in why so many anti-gun types must resort to baseless personal attacks, because they can't make their case logically.

Mgr said: The fact that someone comes to a party with realistic ordinance, probably to get a rise out of some of the guests; and you expect those targets to calm down after explaining that its all dummy rounds and empty chambers, is not a characterization of phobia, but of immaturity on your friend's part and on you for rationalizing it as a phobia. What other response were you expecting? If it were me, I would have thown your sorry asses out without a by your leave by the host or hostess. Sure, I'm going to take your word that they are dummy rounds, after you pulled this stunt?

And here we get Exhibit B. Mike, if you like facts with your screeds, the guy in question was the host of the party, is one of the most polite, nicest, self-effacing people one could meet, and is about the last person on earth who would intentionally provoke someone else. He was just raised around guns, as I and so many here were, and we just are not phobic about them as you admittedly are (and kudos for honesty on that).

There is nothing wrong with having a phobia. Most of us have a few (mine is heights). The trouble comes when you think the rest of us should make public policy to accomodate your irrational fears. That's over the line.

Kevin is right Mike. The more people like you talk, the more reasonable the pro-gun side looks. And since I favor some level of gun control, I emphatically suggest you refrain from such ignorant ad hominems and stick to facts and logic.

Ian Gould said: however, the massive difference in murder rates between the US and other developed countries suggests that PART of the difference is almost definitely attributable to the greater availability of handguns.

I agree Ian, since guns are more effective at killing than any other hand-held weapon, at least once you get further apart than 3 feet. But I would place a lot of the blame for the high murder rate in America on the fact that we Americans are a violent people with a violent culture. We fight a lot, we play violent sports, we watch violent films. I notice this every time I travel abroad. The weapons don't make us violent, we are violent, therefore we like weapons.

MarkP: My point was that you were attributing a woman's reaction to wearing bandolera and having weapons to a phobia. The description you originally provided suggests that your friend behaved like a jerk, and rather than acknowledge the woman was justified in being upset, attribute it to a phobia. I agree there was likely nothing wrong in doing it to you, however, there was to her, and it has nothing to do with phobia. Had you stated it was hysteria, and was typical of this person, then I might have responded differently. My reaction would have been different if you were apologetic, but I did not get that either.

I am sorry, but American culture is no more violent than any other (I'm sure the Aussies have some stories to tell regarding their treatment of their native population), it is our acceptance of the use of guns that makes the outcomes of that violence more likely to be permanent.

By the way, ever heard of a football (aka soccar)riot, or hooliganism? These guys make the black hole look tame.

Mike

I just read the rest of the thread, and Mike (mgr), I wish your brother-in-law the best, and offer my sympathies for the tragedy you all have gone through. I cannot imagine what that feels like. It's one more reason we should all avoid personal attacks, and stick to the arguments. One never knows what one's interlocutor has experienced. We could all use a few miles in each others' shoes.

I'm sorry Mike, I invite any other reader of this blog to reread the story I told and find a hint of him being a jerk. That's your very understandable bias showing. Just look at your choice of verbs - wearing a costume with an unloaded gun becomes "doing it to" someone, as if it constituted acting on another person. To you, wearing a gun makes you a jerk, plain and simple.

The fact is the woman was not justified in being upset after the demonstration. An unloaded gun is less dangerous than your average kitchen knife, and she wasn't afraid of the kitchen knives. I doubt she would have been afraid of someone dressed like Crocodile Dundee, complete with the very dangerous knife, or a person dressed as a baseball player brandishing a very dangerous baseball bat.

This is exactly why it is a phobia. Some people fear guns far more than other items which are as, if not more, dangerous, because they have an inherent fear of guns per se. Your bias is totally understandable from your experience, and I won't claim I'd act differently were I in your shoes. But just like I don't think we should base our drunk driving laws on the opinions of the mothers of kids killed by drunk drivers (who of us is capable of being rational in that situation?), IMO your personal experience taints your opinion on this subject beyond usefulless, and the content of your posts reveals this in technocolor.

Wow, this thread has grown.

I think this was aluded to above, but hopefully some clarification will result. If you look at the table here and compare, say, Finland and the USA, you can learn something interesting. The Fins own lots of guns (and sound suppressors are effectively unregulated compared to the USA, argh!). The Fins have a HIGHER non-firearm homicide rate than the USA. They have a vastly LOWER firearm homicide rate. If more guns = more homicide, and the Fins don't seem to mind murder any more than us, judging from non-firearm homicide rates, why does a firearms ownership rate greater than half ours lead to a firearm homicide rate less than one quarter of ours?

Now, it could be that there's just a nonlinear relationship between the two, but why then, when you look at Caucasians only (sorry if doing this upsets some folks, but this is the data), do the USA and Finland have approximately the same homicide rates? It ain't the guns.

Most of the homicide rates in the developed countries in the chart on the link above have different homicide rates for the same reason they have different suicide rates: cultural differences. Not much more to it.

Now, as for the "we should have nukes" baloney about the 2A, the purpose of the 2A is to ensure access by ordinary Americans to small arms. That is, arms appropriate to INDIVIDUAL members of the military or militia. This would be rifles, handguns, shotguns in all their configurations. You could draw the line at heavy machineguns, rocket launchers and the like, but some would argue with me that I'm wrong. In most states these are legal but regulated, so available none the less.

There is a dearth of info available on why I'm correct. That was the original intent of the framers so that we wouldn't have to show our bellies to tyrants, but could fight back.

As to carrying guns in public. I look at my kids, and I remember Beslan. It is extremely unlikely that anything even remotely this terrible will ever involve me or anyone I know, but I'd like to make it even less so, and I always want to have the chance to fight back.

Ben, the link you provided points back to this thread.

MarkP
"There is nothing wrong with having a phobia. Most of us have a few (mine is heights). The trouble comes when you think the rest of us should make public policy to accomodate your irrational fears. That's over the line.

Kevin is right Mike. The more people like you talk, the more reasonable the pro-gun side looks. And since I favor some level of gun control, I emphatically suggest you refrain from such ignorant ad hominems and stick to facts and logic."

Do you know what an ad hominen argument is? In addition--

1. Where did I state that unconditionally, hand guns should be banned? What I seemed to state was that if the study proves out, then may be we should consider tighter restrictions, in the extreme, may be we should do so with handguns.

2. I don't recall you stating you have a degree in psychoanalysis. My reason for not having guns around my home is as I stated--they are a risk to my families safety, they are noisy, and they pollute. I cannot with 100% assurance know that a gun in my house will not go off, intentionally or accidentally; since I let out that I live in a rural context, I am not fond of having neighbors use their yards on holidays, weekends, after work or when ever for target practice (my dogs like it less); and, god knows where the lead shot ends up. Explain how that is a phobia.

3. The gun violence I have been exposed to (with the exception of my grandfather, which I found out even more recently) occurred while I was in graduate school. I had not even considered myself unique until Kevin challenged me on it. As to it making me irrational, I think I will let my words defend me.

4. I consider my experience anecdotal, and would not allow it by itself to inform my policy opinions. If the science behind this new survey is consistent with my experience, my attitude towards gun ownership will change--and that is what I expressed here in this blog. My opinions towards the utility of hand guns were shaped by earlier gun studies.

5. Racism is ignorance, based upon slavishly accepted premises built on the flimsiest of stereotypes. I am sure at this point someone can bring out Moynihan's study of black pathology, but contrast that with work done by Bobo and others, and one will find that many of the premises of pathology are predicated upon comparison to white american society and culture as if they were the ideal, rather than from the historical outcome of exclusion and denial of economic, social, and political advancement and entitlement.

6. The irrational fear of being a victim of crime to where one considers protecting themselves with a hand gun, is fueled in part by racism. Consider, that the hotbed of violent crime is always the inner city, and the inner city is where we left those with greater skin melanin, and that connection is clear. That violent crime is actually distributed more evenly though the population can be pointed out, but the diatribe never shifts.

7.) One is racist if when pointed out the assumptions made about an ethnic group are wrong, but one persists in pursuing them still.

8.) I think how you should view your own attitudes as apologist for the gun lobby, rather than as gun control advocate. I put up, not its your turn, just how do you intend to do gun control, or just shut up.

Mike

Mike

Ben:

Now, as for the "we should have nukes" baloney about the 2A, the purpose of the 2A is to ensure access by ordinary Americans to small arms. That is, arms appropriate to INDIVIDUAL members of the military or militia. This would be rifles, handguns, shotguns in all their configurations. You could draw the line at heavy machineguns, rocket launchers and the like, but some would argue with me that I'm wrong. In most states these are legal but regulated, so available none the less.

Here are some fun pictures from the very gun friendly state of Arizona. Note: Not a single person was harmed by the ownership and use of these weapons.

From MarkP

you respond by basically calling me a "gun nut" and playing games with unrealistic scenarios

What was unrealistic about my scenario, MarkP? Being threatened at knifepoint for money seems very realistic to me. Is there some other reason that one would carry a concealed handgun in the street for self-defense, other than this scenario?
Ben has not yet indicated to me how your handgun will protect you in this situation. If you can`t explain your self defense method to me, I can only conclude that either a) you haven`t thought your self-defence options through very well or b) it`s not really for self defence. (Or c) you can`t be bothered explaining to someone who has never seen a gun outside a police holster how they can be used).

Also your "statistically inclined" mind didn`t seem very interested in Ben`s tenfold exaggeration of self defense incidents, while my presumably emotive gunnut mind found the figures straight away. So spare me the rational high ground and indulge my "unrealistic" scenario of being robbed at knifepoint on the street.

KevinP, nice! I'm not saying they should be outlawed, but maybe a little more stringent stuff to owning than what I listed, maybe not. Besides, the ammo gets spendy in a hurry.

Sorry, here's the link.

Mike, what you say about racism is true. The problem of young black male violence was certainly not caused by their race, not directly. I tend to side with Thomas Sowell and his contemporaries who consider it to have been caused by the welfare state which destroyed the black (and any other race, including white) family structure in the inner cities or wherever it took hold. I have first hand experience of this from when I was young.

You think folks like myself have an irrational fear of harm? I think my "concern" is perfectly rational. Same that I chose to actively do something about it. Is it racist? I don't think so, never really crossed my mind. I don't have a mental picture of the type of person who might try to assault me.

SG, you train for those types of scenarios, at least mentally. It is highly likely that you could, if you chose to be aware of your surroundings and situation, tell that something with this person approaching you is not right. Then you could try to avoid the situation by moving. Then it would be pretty easy to tell if the person is acting in an abnormal manner. If they continue, you can ask them while they are at a distance what is going on. It might be embarrassing if it is innocent, but if not then you have an advantage.

If they surprise you, well, what would you do if you were unarmed? Armed, you could just give them your wallet. If they are out to do you harm, then you need to put distance between yourself and them. You also have two hands and only need one to access your firearm. The other one can be sacrificed to give you distance/protection while you draw your weapon or run to cover.

It seems you have in mind a scenario where you wear blinders, have one hand tied behind your back, and have your feet glued to the floor. I've yet to experience that situation, but if I encountered it, well, you might be right, the gun might not help.

My point, Ben, is that whether you are armed or not, the only situation where you can defend yourself effectively is the second one on my list - the one you now describe - of putting distance between yourself and the assailant and then brandishing.

The most likely self-defense scenario people come across is the former - someone gets in close with a knife, baseball bat or other weapon (including, in some countries, a gun) before they reveal their intentions. In this case your weapon is useless, except that it is more likely to get you injured if you think you can use it.

The latter situation, on the other hand, is more fraught with danger for innocent people the more deadly the weapon gets. This situtation involves the possibility of jumpy people feeling at risk, heavily armed. It is the situation which, I would guess, led to the shooting incident described by Mike. It is also a situation limited by arms control. In Australia you get out of that situation by pulling a knife, or just running fast - because the assailant also only has a knife. In the US, on the other hand, you have to be "packing heat" in order to escape it. And if everyone knows you are likely to be, why, they are just more likely to get better at manipulating you into the former situation or get a gun themselves, aren`t they?

So MarkP, now that Ben has answered me, can you explain how my scenario is "reality-removed"?

"How about you? Have you lived in a US state or other place where the ownership and/or carrying of handguns is common?"

I have visited the US but haven't lived there fro any length of time.

Ironically, given your assertion that you feel much safer in big cities in the US, I was mugged at knifepoint in the US, something that hasn't happened to me in 45 years living in the third largest city in Australia.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 17 Jan 2007 #permalink

"Ah, the nuclear weapons strawman again. This isn't very orginal, I'm afraid. I will engage you on this subject at the moment when the NRA proposes the first law to issue permits to carry surface to air missiles."

It's not a straw-man argument.

My reading of the history of the Second Amendment make two things clear:

1. The right to own arms was never intended to be restricted to the "well-ordered militia"

2. One of the reasons for supporting private ownership of arms was to make ti possible for citizens to resist government excesses and, if necessary, to overthrow the government.

In order to achieve this particular objective , it's necessary for the citizenry to have access to weapons equivalent to those available to the state.

Now the authors of the Bill of Rights clearly didn't anticipate the technological advances of the 19th and 20th centuries, if they had and if they'd foreseen that weapons capable of killing thousands would become available they would probably have drafted the provision differently.

All that being the case, the pragmatic argument for restricting ownership of certain classes of weapons in overwhelming but I think it takes a deliberate misreading of the Amendment to justify it.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 17 Jan 2007 #permalink

Now the authors of the Bill of Rights clearly didn't anticipate the technological advances of the 19th and 20th centuries, if they had and if they'd foreseen that weapons capable of killing thousands would become available they would probably have drafted the provision differently.

They didn't anticipate the advent of radio, television, movies and the Internet and the disproportionate propaganda potential of these media either. Perhaps, given their potential and actual support for causing mayhem, these media should be exempt from the protections of the First Amendment? Interestingly, in many countries where newspapers receive fairly good legal protections, radio, TV and movies receive very stringent government oversight, including preemptive censorship on sensitive topics that may affect public order and national security. I am opposed to these limits on the First Amendment as well.

As a practical matter, there is probably some outer limit to the weapons protected by the Second Amendment. Some have proposed that the line can be drawn at the weapons that individuals would bear as part of a military force - which in the US of today would include fully automatic M16s, pistols, various misc large caliber rifles, carbines, shotguns, grenade launchers, bazookas, and might stop short of crew served or vehicle-based heavy weapons.

Thanks to the collective rights nonsense, however, this question has never been addressed in any meaningful way.

You have still erected a straw man, however, because this thread is about weapons possessed by households - ordinary rifles, shotguns and pistols, and you are attempting to distract it into a discussion into nuclear weapons.

"The irrational fear of being a victim of crime to where one considers protecting themselves with a hand gun, is fueled in part by racism. Consider, that the hotbed of violent crime is always the inner city, and the inner city is where we left those with greater skin melanin, and that connection is clear. That violent crime is actually distributed more evenly though the population can be pointed out, but the diatribe never shifts."

So, it is "irrational and racist" to fear violent crime in urban areas . . . but since crime is actually spread throughout the entire populace (to include suburbs), it is NOT irrational to be deluded into thinking that "crime won't happen to me?"

Crazy talk!

SG, you are describing one of many scenarios in which a knife may be used an assailant's weapon, and then attempting to generalize very broadly to claim that handgun possession is therefore useless in self defense.

I have attended handgun defensive use training classes - which I suspect you haven't - and have read about other accounts of other handgun training classes. In my class, and in every other class that I have read about, knives are discussed, and all instructors are very clear that you have to put distance between you and your assailant so that you can bring your weapon to bear. In my class, this included a demonstration of how fast the instructor could spring across a room with a rubber knife. The conclusion was to put either: a) A distance of about 21 feet and/or b) Run to place an obstruction such as a table, chair, parked car, in the way. If this was done, the gun could be brought to bear, and the knife assailant would likely retire since the odds had been greatly evened. If this could not be done, it was best to not brandish the gun or even give a hint that it was there, but rather to cooperate while looking for a opportunity to do (a) or (b). Bear in mind that the knife holder may not be interested in just your wallet, but might be interested in kidnapping and rape, followed by murder. Your cooperation and lack of defense also endangers you.

I doubt that you know this either, but all handgun classes drill in the concept of mental awareness of self and surroundings, such as the concepts of the Color Codes of Awareness, which every citizen, not just gun owners should be aware about. Thus, you may have detected your knife-carrying assailant before he pulled the knife and may already have taken the precautions necessary and may be able to bring your gun to bear.

So contrary to your speculations - which seem to come from watching many movies - there is a great deal of thought and training that goes into the conscious decision to carry a gun. If you live in Australia, there may not be many opportunities, but if you visit the US, I encourage you to visit and take a defensive handgun course. It will open your eyes and you will learn a good deal. You should do this even if you don't intend to buy or carry a handgun - you will learn a lot about how to stay alert and safe.

So if there is so little risk of crime, why are we even discussing regulating guns? Which is it?

Gary Kleck from the same link:

A statistic commonly cited in support of "shall issue" concealed-carry laws comes in the claim that 2.5 million defensive gun uses occur each year. Criminologist Gary Kleck arrived at this number via a national random-digit-dial telephone survey of 5,000 adults.

Tim, since you endorse Gary Kleck in the one instance, I am sure you endorse him in the other :-)

The most likely self-defense scenario people come across is the former - someone gets in close with a knife, baseball bat or other weapon (including, in some countries, a gun) before they reveal their intentions. In this case your weapon is useless, except that it is more likely to get you injured if you think you can use it.

You claim without proof.

Then you go on to say that us gun nuts are jumpy, and as soon as we get some distance between ourselves and the bad guy, we'll send a hail of lead his way endangering anyone in a quarter mile radius.

This is not so, why would it be? With every passage of concealed carry laws in a US state, this is claimed. "Blood in the Streets" they cry. It never happens. You must be wrong, but why?

The simple fact is that most of us, who choose to carry a weapon understand that the fact that you are under attack is NO EXCUSE if you inadvertently harm an innocent bystander. If you start spraying bullets and hurt an innocent, you will go to jail, you will lose your right to carry a weapon or even touch one, and your life will be ruined. The potential consequences must be weighed by anyone choosing to carry a gun. By anyone choosing to even own a gun.

But then the same is true of owning a car.

And yes, what Kleck says is true. I do not personally know a single person who has been the victim of anything more than simple "cold" burglary or theft. However, this is America, we like our guns, hate tyrants and desire self-sufficiency. Part of carrying a weapon is simple practice and familiarity should things ever become less desirable than they are now. Be prepared.

In order to achieve this particular objective , it's necessary for the citizenry to have access to weapons equivalent to those available to the state.

The Vietnamese and Iraqis are proving you wrong. The US government would have a difficult time when there is a well trained rifleman behind every blade of grass. The country could always commit suicide by nuking itself, but then what good would nukes do the resistance at that point anyway?

K Romulus: "So, it is "irrational and racist" to fear violent crime in urban areas . . . but since crime is actually spread throughout the entire populace (to include suburbs), it is NOT irrational to be deluded into thinking that "crime won't happen to me?"

so, do you always forget the precis to an arguement? The point is that to focus your fear of being victim of crime upon the inner city, is in part driven by racial fears. The fact that that crime rate is largely driven by non-violent crime, makes the argument even more irrational.

What is your risk of being a victim of violent crime? Is it more or less on the order of being struck by lightning (the impact in both cases is devastating)? Should you also carry a lightning rod and grounding wire in case this should happen?

It is irrational to prepare for an eventuality that is objectively unlikely, but you opine as possible.

Mike

Ben--I actually did not consider your personal position as racist, you seem to apply greater self reflection as to your position.

However, how is it that Sowell's analysis only applies to dysfunctionality now, but not prior to 1964 when the same family and absent male parent structures existed? You may want to look over the link I provided above from Larry Bobo and others, whose argument derives in part from a series of studies done in the late eighties that point to the divergence in comparative wealth between black working class and white working class due in part to redlining, and suburban flight (in the case of Los Angeles).

The divergence is fueled by property ownership, and the appraised value of the property. Whites can liquidate a greater amount of wealth simply by taking a second mortgage of their house, comparable to a black property owner. And when do familes most often take out seconds--most often it is to finance house mortgages of the children.

Mike

What you say can be applied to the Chinese, Pols, Irish, just about any other immigrant group besides black Africans. The difference largely rests on white guilt about slavery and our reaction to that. In order to assuage our guilt, we have enacted policies that have been inadvertently detrimental to much of the black population.

Otherwise, what's the difference between minorities? And what explains the successes of other minorities, especially the Chinese?

"So if there is so little risk of crime, why are we even discussing regulating guns? Which is it?"

Legally, risks acceptable to the public are values below 1 out of a million. The question is what is the risk to gun owners and members of their families that they may experience death through the agency of a gun. If the risk rises to a range of unacceptable, then gun control is on the table as a public health measure.

Mike

Ben--you understand that you are comparing one ethnic group subjected to legal discrimination for almost 500 years to another subjected to legal discrimination for 50, and that legal discrimination ended with WWII?

For the USA, the early Chinese immigration (Gold Rush) was primarily male, with the intention of making money, and returning to China. Some were successful to where they brought their familes here. Few Chinese emigrated after enactment of the Exclusion Act. After WWII, the principal immigration of the Chinese to the US were likely nationalist Chinese with merchant class connections, and some level of personal wealth.

Overall, what the Chinese have, which African Americans lack, is a family connection to relatives living elsewhere.

Mike

Ian Gould:

My reading of the history of the Second Amendment make two things clear:

1. The right to own arms was never intended to be restricted to the "well-ordered militia"
2. One of the reasons for supporting private ownership of arms was to make ti possible for citizens to resist government excesses and, if necessary, to overthrow the government.

Ian, I do appreciate that you are willing to state that the Second Amendment substantially protects the private right to own arms. We can quibble about the margins of it, but we do agree on the substance.

If gun control proponents ever actually accepted this simple proposition, then some dialogue might actually be possible.

Instead, they insist there is no individual right to own a gun, or that there is a "collective" right but no individual right (nonsense), or that they have no objection to the right to own hunting rifles (irrelevant).

My own litmus test for the sincerity of a gun control proponent is to see if he is willing to repeal the gun control laws of Washington D.C., where no law abiding citizen can own a handgun and where all firearms in the home have to be disassembled and unavailable for home defense. If the gun control advocate still defends this draconian level of gun control, then his objective is to disarm us. There is no point in negotiating with someone whose intention is to drive us into the sea. They claim we are "unwilling to compromise", when in reality they only want unilateral concessions.

Ben said: "The difference largely rests on white guilt about slavery and our reaction to that. In order to assuage our guilt, we have enacted policies that have been inadvertently detrimental to much of the black population."

What policies were these? What before and after data do you have to show these detrimental effects?

By the way, being the child of immigrants from around WWII, I don't feel I share in this 'white guilt' silliness. I just do not like seeing oppression and I don't like stereotypes that do not stand up to even the casualest scrutiny. I lived up in downtown Los Angeles between 1962 and 1965, so be aware I have some idea of what the before was like.

Mike

Here. More about white underclass in Britain, which parallels our inner city groups but shows the outcome of welfare is race independent.

Kevin P and MarkP if you are still around, i do not get my ideas about self-defense from "kung-fu movies". I have 15 years` experience in martial arts; I teach kickboxing; and I trained with various weapons, including knives, for 5 years. I am well aware of the self-defense principles you discuss. However, my training with knives makes me very aware of just how difficult it is to defend oneself against them by any means except running away. The self-defense method you describe (of awareness, etc.) is a very effective method, but the gun is very secondary to it (running being the prime part, and avoiding the confrontation to start with), and it clearly increases the risk of injury to innocent people if you misapply your situational awareness. I wonder how many people who learn the "colour codes of safety" happen to colour code them when they apply them, if you get my drift?

And Ben, if you blame welfare for the growth of criminal cultures in black Americans, can you explain why the Finns have such a low rate of gun homicide? After all, those scandinavian countries are welfare heaven. Sit down money everywhere. Surely they should have similar rates of crime? Could it not be the case that in societies with easy access to guns (such as Finland, NZ, the USA), the level of welfare is protective against gun violence; and in societies with low welfare (e.g USA, Japan, China), restricted access to guns is protective against gun violence? And do you know if Finland has no gun control, or if Finns just happen to be willing to go to the trouble to get a license so they can have a gun?

SG:

I have 15 years` experience in martial arts; I teach kickboxing; and I trained with various weapons, including knives, for 5 years. I am well aware of the self-defense principles you discuss. However, my training with knives makes me very aware of just how difficult it is to defend oneself against them by any means except running away.

Ah, but have you trained with handguns?

My defensive handgun instructor is a active duty policeman who carries both a gun and a knife. The tactics that were taught to me and are commonly taught are often used by US policemen who do get confronted by criminals armed with knives and other edged weapons - they retreat to a safe distance and then challenge the knife wielder at a distance which he cannot cross without getting shot. Eventually, contrary to your claim, above, the person who brings a knife to a gunfight tends to lose. If that were not the case, your police officers would not need to carry guns - they would carry knives instead.

Many policemen also carry knives, but only as a weapon of last resort.

Again, I encourage you, train with handguns so you get an alternative perspective and a diversity of experience. Many handgun instructors also train in the martial arts and with edged weapons for that very reason. All these tools and skills have a place. You will notice that not once have Ben or I claimed that the handgun is the only defensive tool possible. Rather, our position is that it is an important tool, but not the only one. The most important defensive weapon is the brain - but it sometimes isn't sufficient, which is why we need to help it out with deadly weapons.

Right, Kevin P. Further, I was it you SG who seemed to think that we advocate the run away and then come back blasting approach? Whoever it was, and I'm not going back through all 147 comments (yikes!, like moore's law), the fact is that most of us "macho" types subscribe to the "run away if you can and don't look back" doctrine.

But I'm getting older and slower, and while I might be able to make a quick move to get a couple yards of separation, there are many bad guys who could easily outrun me.

Now, Finland is something I know a little about, having a bizzarely white skinned and haired brother-in-law from Suomi. Now, I think I'll have to have my sister show up and answer something about that here. Yes, their welfare state makes ours look like a scrooge, but it's to the point of being weird. Practically zero motivation to work for those even remotely tending toward laziness. Not a good thing. I suppose if you pacify the criminal element with free cell phones (why not, Nokia has a horde of them), cable TV and car payments, they have no motivation to work at all, honestly or criminally. See, at the heart of things, criminals above all wish to avoid work. They see crime as the best means of avoidance, in the USA at least. When you get free twinkies and Oprah, why bother even with petty theft, it's too much like work.

There's more to it than that. They have a different cultural history than we do. Their ancestors had a work ethic, and it will take a couple more generations to completely take that out of them. But one thing they do have in common with the other Scandinavian havens for the lazy is that their immigrants, particularly, well, nevermind, but their immigrants are not so nice as the natives. There are whole cities that are practically overrun with the noobs where even the police won't go. Give them a while, it will get worse.

I can comment on the Finland/welfare issue, as my husband is a Finn. First of all, Finland has tight gun control. You need a license to buy a weapon, which then goes to the local police who make the decision about whether or not you can keep the weapon. Any handgun shorter than 5" barrel is illegal to own. There is no such thing as concealed weapons permits for civilians.

Unlike the U.S., Finland has an extremely homogeneous society: 98% of the Finnish population is of the same race and religion (white, Lutheran). Homogeneous societies tend to have less strife. That said, Finland is still an extremely violent country. It has one of the highest violent crime indices in the world, as of 2001 had the highest homocide rate in the EU, and rivals Japan for the highest suicide rate. But you have to understand something about the old Finnish culture to understand why the welfare system has only recently started to corrupt the culture. Finns typically prided themselves on their extreme work ethic. When, through hard work and modest lifestyle, the nation became wealthy enough they instituted the right to welfare as a safety net (essentially, my father in-law's generation). Thirty years later, it has become a lifestyle option, and you have a new generation of Finns who take extended welfare vacations rather than work. Out of desperation, the Finnish government has instituted programs to try to get Finns back to work (especially immigrants, who have 70% unemployment rate). The generous welfare system has also attracted many undesirable types from Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Russia, etc. -- these are clansmen of Farah Aideed, Baathist henchmen, Russian mobsters, etc. -- who come to live on the average Finn's dime. Crime (violent, property, drug) has increased astronomically since Finland opened its doors and coffers to these people, who wouldn't have otherwise bothered to relocate to a remote, sparsely-populated Arctic nation.

"None of those are what I had in mind. Kellerman's data shows what it shows. I just found that his study was not very interesting, nor did it show anything that was relatively important. He was able to show a relative increase in risk that was measureable, but so what? It was small on an absolute scale compared to things that most of us do not care about, such as "a dog in the home" for example.
Kellerman's main contribution was the unintendid result I mentioned above, in my opinion"

As I've noted before, if you google "Kellerman" you get one set of opinions. If you google "Kellermann" you get a quite different set of opinions, which are as one might expect, more closely related to the research of the guy who was actually named "Kellermann". Try it sometime. It's like googling "Einstien" and deciding on the basis of the results that he wasn't as great as he is reputed to be.

Ben said: "Here. More about white underclass in Britain, which parallels our inner city groups but shows the outcome of welfare is race independent."

Ben what you have linked to is a paragraph snippet of a Thomas Sowell column. Dalyrumple's book (a collection of essays) unfortunately is a "I have a theory, and here is the data I have rallied to support it" type of argument. Many anecdotes of the 'underclass' does not make a population or a meaningful statistic. Might as well read "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning", or "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner".

But I suppose one could, hey why not, blame boredom and ennui on modernity; and, if only we were to reinstitute serfdom, then they would see value in their lives.

You still haven't put up the specifics of how US policy towards African Americans has made their lot worse. (Oh, and don't use Sowells' reference to the wage increase for textile workers under the New Deal, context matters, the reason they were out of a job was related to an economic downturn at the time.)

I would recommend you read Moynihan's study from 1965 as a baseline for the statistics for what the African American poor were going through prior to the Great Society reforms (which should be the baseline for your argument, or are you going to reach all the way back to the Great Depression, and the urban migration when most agricultural livelihoods went down in flames?

Mike

Ben: "See, at the heart of things, criminals above all wish to avoid work. They see crime as the best means of avoidance, in the USA at least."

It's 4.30 AM here so don't ask for a citation but a few years back The Economist reported on a study that found the average hourly wage rate for people selling drugs in Chicago worked out to around minimum wage.

But, of course, the minority who avoided serious prison time and getting murdered by the competition had a chance at moving up to the more senior ranks where the pay was much, much higher.

In other words, the dealers were acting exactly like all those waiters in California looking to break in as actors
- pursuing a high risk strategy with the potential for a major reward if they were lucky enough and worked hard enough.

It's the American Dream.

By Ian Gould (not verified) on 22 Jan 2007 #permalink

Sarah--yes, you can comment regarding Finland, but I like numbers and appropriate comparisons (they help in seeing pattern). In isolation, I guess Finland is a socialist hell hole. However, both the homicide and suicide rates are lower than Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania according to WHO mortality data. I guess a homicide rate of m--4.2/f--1.8 (2001) compares unfavorably to the USA homicide (1999) rates of m--9.5/f--2.9.

Mike

Um, Ben, your sister's post both disputes your conclusions about Finland and probably on past experience needs to be taken with a grain of salt. You probably need to update your conclusions, since you used Finland as an example of a country where lots of guns does not mean lots of gun-crime; but Sarah has observed that Finland has very strict gun control. So maybe when there are lots of guns, strict gun control is good? Perhaps when comparing two countries with lots of a thing, the main determinant of how that thing is used would be the laws concerning that thing, not factors affecting the attitudes and lifestyles of those who use the thing? Car accidents, for example, tend to be heavily affected by things like speeding laws.

In any case, Sarah once described the Japanese as a "puritan people", so I take her opinion of Finland with a grain of salt.

I was going to point it out but you said it yourself: your and your sisters views of the role of welfare seem to be heavily dependent on the idea that black people respond differently to welfare than white people (Sarah expanded this to include a whole bunch of non-American brown people). Can you explain a) why this is? and b) if people of different cultures respond differently to welfare, is it the welfare that is the issue, or the culture?

Kevin P, my point about handguns can be made based on knowledge of edged weapons. The point is: you can't defend yourself up close with a handgun against something as simple as a knife because you can't get any weapon out in time to defend yourself; therefore a self-defense strategy based on handguns requires tactics for pre-emption and making distance (as you have agreed). Tactics for pre-emption rely on being jumpy and sketchy about strangers (otherwise they contain no pre-emption), as you have admitted; tactics about making distance rely first and foremost on skills outside the weapon (as you have observed) and make as much distance for your opponent as for you. In the former case (pre-emption) guns significantly increase the risk of jumpiness leading to innocent people being injured (please explain how this is not the case); in the latter case, criminals who are armed (as they can be in societies with lax handgun laws) gain the same benefit from your distance-creation tactics as you do.

None of these considerations require any knowledge of firearms, only knowledge of how quickly someone can stab you before you can get a weapon out of wherever you are storing it. Your post disputing this simply reiterated the things that I had already said, and revealed that everything you have been taught agrees with them. So we can conclude that the only benefit of your "packing heat" is that you walk around in a perpetual state of fear.

Which is probably why Australians consider the idea of carrying concealed handguns to be so crazy - a bunch of scared, jittery people with guns is just flat-out bad.

Just a spectator to this discussion and always felt that I was agnostic on the private arms issue, but that (SG) was pretty well put!

I was going to point it out but you said it yourself: your and your sisters views of the role of welfare seem to be heavily dependent on the idea that black people respond differently to welfare than white people (Sarah expanded this to include a whole bunch of non-American brown people). Can you explain a) why this is? and b) if people of different cultures respond differently to welfare, is it the welfare that is the issue, or the culture?

(a) Sarah and spent a few years of our lives living in subsidized housing with people on welfare. They were all white. They were mostly pretty scummy and they didn't mind taking money for nothing.

I'm actually pretty happy with most of the state of welfare in the USA as it is becoming the "safety net" it should be instead of a disgusting way of life, what with the time limits and all.

Welfare as a blank check is a disaster in the long run, independent of culture, the only thing culture will do is influence how long welfare will take to have a corrupting influence.

In the former case (pre-emption) guns significantly increase the risk of jumpiness leading to innocent people being injured (please explain how this is not the case);

Not true. There is zero data to back this up. In fact, the data show that this is untrue.

So we can conclude that the only benefit of your "packing heat" is that you walk around in a perpetual state of fear.

If you say so, but I disagree. I occasionally feel moderately uneasy when I'm not armed coming home late from school at night, but I have yet to feel that way when armed.

Ben, your time in subsidized housing signifies nothing. Nor, really, does Sarah`s rant about race in Finland. Finland has a high crime rate, but it can`t be due to welfare or immigration - France has a welfare state, no work ethic, heaps of immigrants and the same rate of gun ownership as Finland, but has a lower murder rate (half). An alternative explanation, provided by the Finnish Ministry of the Interior, is:

As a result of recent changes in Finnish alcohol policy and of intoxicant abuse in our country, the violent crime rate for Finland will probably remain high by international standards. In most incidents of violent crime, the perpetrator and the victim know each other.

Doesn`t sound like the sort of crime you protect yourself against by "packing heat" to me. Or much to do with immigration.

As for race and welfare: can you explain why black people become vicious criminals in a welfare state, but white people don`t? Why does Finland (according to your Sister) have to import its criminals in the form of brown-skinned dole-bludging murderers, instead of home-growing white ones?

Finally, you still haven`t explained how your move-away-and-pull-a-gun scenario is safer for innocent people than not having a gun. Note I said innocent people. Explain how this self-defense tactic does not lead to even a small increase in numbers of people who do not intend to rob you being shot by mistake.

After all, the view of many people is simple: jittery people with handguns increase the risk of strangers getting shot. You need to explain how someone like you, tooled up and jittery, is no more dangerous to passersby than someone not tooled up and equally jittery in order to a) show we`re wrong in this thoroughly reasonable supposition and therefore b) provide us with a decent reason why this is not a theoretical explanation for the high rates of gun crime in the US. If you can provide us with b) then maybe we could consider your alternative "black welfare bludgers" argument, but until you do, well, it seems entirely reasonable to suppose that more people carrying more guns against more heavily armed criminals are likely to lead to more dead bystanders. Just like more cars usually = more traffic accidents.

Shorter SG (and Dano):

That's a great method to protect my children: crossfire caused by ignorance and lack of discipline.

Best,

D

Yep, I agree, the evidence given by myself and my sister are purely anecdotal. I can't answer your other questions about race, I don't know. I don't find any other answers given here any more satisfying than that either.

Finally, you still haven`t explained how your move-away-and-pull-a-gun scenario is safer for innocent people than not having a gun. Note I said innocent people. Explain how this self-defense tactic does not lead to even a small increase in numbers of people who do not intend to rob you being shot by mistake.

Lessee, I'm an innocent person in the event that someone tries to harm me and I move away and pull a gun. It seems as though you imply that I would not be so. As to other innocent persons, those not involved at all, the data does not even remotely support your position. You claim that there is a danger posed to innocent persons by others carrying concealed weapons. The data is available, the studies have been done, you are wrong, and the onus is on you to prove that you are right since you made the claim.

You need to explain how someone like you, tooled up and jittery, is no more dangerous to passersby than someone not tooled up and equally jittery

I need prove no such thing. You need to prove your unfounded claim that I am "jittery". Right now it's only based on your feelings, and that doesn't pass muster.

it seems entirely reasonable to suppose that more people carrying more guns against more heavily armed criminals are likely to lead to more dead bystanders.

While it may seem reasonable to you to suppose that, it is not true. People fair worse in places with strict gun control, such as NY City, Chicago, DC etc. etc. than they do in perfectly well armed Seattle, Portland, Denver, etc...

Ben, regarding yoru comments on guns, here is the basis of the rational thought on guns: guns are designed solely to kill or injure living things, therefore the presence of more guns is likely to lead to more killed or injured living things. Giving people the ability to use guns in public places will lead to more killed or injured people.

This is a rational position which has led to gun control in many places. It is a similar theory to the idea (proven many years ago) that more cars = more car accidents, more alcohol=more alcoholism, etc.

Your claim is that the truth is counter-intuitive, i.e. more guns will not lead to more gun-related injuries. Given you r claim is counter-intuitive, and contains a risk to public safety, the onus lies on you to prove that we should not institute controls on a dangerous device.

In this particular case, I am presenting a subcase of this rational position, that people armed for self-defense with a ballistic weapon are more likely to harm bystanders than people not so armed. This position is not based on gut feeling but a rational appraisal of what will happen: jittery person A thinks person B is out to get them, pulls a gun prematurely, kills or injures B (see Mike`s life story as an example of how this might work). Alternatively, person A knows person B is out to get him, shoots him, misses and kills someone in a nearby house. You need to show me the evidence that this won`t happen. Note this is slightly different to showing me the balance of outcomes will be positive through, for example, a comparison of armed and unarmed states. I and other gun control advocates might argue this would not be a problem if we could institute Japanese-style gun control across all of the US, thus preventing criminals from being heavily armed. This is a different issue. My arguments here and now are about whether a) you are made safer by carrying a gun and b) whether your doing so endangers others around you (not the effect more broadly in society). By "you" in this case I mean you, Ben, not the collective thou.

These comments are partly a response to accusations of gun-nuttery, partly to support my earlier jibe that you are a Barbarian, and partly to support the general view that Australians have that handgun carriers are a menace to society (by which I mean: in Australia, the practice of carrying a concealed handgun is considered, by 98% of the population, to be a highly criminal and dangerous act, and people who do it are viewed as extremely dangerous and unstable whatever their reasons).

So here I am talking about individual encounters, not social statistics. The statistics arise when we get to the next layer of debate - is the benefit of you being armed worth the general level of extra collateral damage it causes.

As for your final comment:

I'd rather end up with one cut than with many.

You again show your ignorance of knives. Once you receive one cut you will likely be paralysed or debilitated beyond your ability to think or move at more than a snails pace. You will then be stabbed as many times as your assailant chooses to. Comparing your situation to that of a cop is misleading - they also have body armour, and generally have more control of the situation because they have not been surprised (usually, and especially in the US, they are attending the scene of a crime, not defending themselves).

For an example of what happens when you play with knives, I recommend you watch a Paul Vrunac knife-fighting video. At the end of these videos he usually finishes by demolishing the assurance that you can, as he charmingly puts it, "ride one on the jugular" with a quite disturbing visual example. His lesson: you need to defend yourself without taking a single injury in order to win a knife fight, no matter what you are armed with.

(And again, by "knife fight", I explicitly mean a situation where you are in close melee; we have already separated the make-distance-and-shoot strategy from this scenario).

Ben, regarding race, I think yours and Sarah`s general arguments seem to be that race is an effect modifier for the effect of welfare on crime. I.e. welfare leads to increased crime, and some races have an even stronger relationship between welfare and crime than others.

The role of an effect modifier in modifying the relationship between cause A and outcome B does not in itself give any strength to the claim that A causes B, although frequently including the effect modifier enables one to identify the causal relationship between A and B (since it improves statistical accuracy in testing this relationship).

More importantly, however, the effect modifier is not necessarily causally related to A (in fact, I think it has to be not causally related to A, just as a confounder should not be). In practice this means you need to come up with a separate explanation (from the theory underlying the field you are investigating) for the role of the effect modifier. So for example in studies of asbestosis, the effect modifier of asbestos exposure on asbestosis is smoking, and the explanation is that smoking is a separate, independent cause of lung damage, and this lung damage accelerates the development of asbestosis.

So in this case, you need to come up with a theory (for example, from social science) as to why blacks show a stronger association between welfare use and crime to whites. This is separate to your claim that welfare causes crime, a claim which in itself needs to be considered within the context of the potential confounding variable of poverty.

People on this blog have given you that theory - slavery and its effects on black people`s history, culture and current wealth. Your theory seems to be that black people get more welfare than white people. If this is the case, then race is a confounder, not an effect modifier, and the correct conclusion is that welfare causes crime.

In order to support this contention you need to exclude the obvious confounder, poverty. It could be that blacks receive more welfare because they are poorer. In this case, welfare is a marker for poverty (it is on the causal pathway from poverty to crime), and it is poverty which causes crime.

As a good example of how you can prove this to me, you could find your sister`s mythical "index of violent crime" which Finns supposedly score very highly on. There is also an index of how closely targeted welfare is to poverty (Australia, for example, targets welfare very accurately to poverty according to this index). You could then show that inefficient welfare allocation as measured by this index leads to higher violent crime as measured by Sarah`s Mythical Index (the SMI). There is probably already a paper on this. But if there isn`t, you get me the SMI and the welfare-target index data (let`s call it SG`s Mythical Index, the SGMI), we can write a paper together and publish in Soc Sci Med. And we won`t have been funded by anyone called Joyce! (Although we may have to credit the Goddess Procrastination in my case).

In this particular case, I am presenting a subcase of this rational position, that people armed for self-defense with a ballistic weapon are more likely to harm bystanders than people not so armed.

On this I fully agree. I claim that the increased risk is minuscule, however. In the end, this is America, and we carry guns. We hate tyranny and will never stand for it. This requires constant vigilance and readiness. If non-Americans don't like it, then tough. If other Americans don't like it, then tough bananas. If they can ever get a supermajority of the people AND the states to agree with them, well then they can have their way. Otherwise, it's tough bananas all over again.

On what you say about race, yep, that is correct. Being black obviously doesn't cause you to suffer more in a welfare system, not directly. Of course it has to do with many other socio-economic factors.

We hate tyranny

funny. Do you really think that armed citizens are going to protect themselves from government tyranny? And why is it only Americans who believe this? (Don`t quote the war of Independence - you had French help). I suppose, though, the view is catching on - Iraqis seem to agree with you.

If non-Americans don't like it, then tough

Ah, Ben, if this is the case - why are you posting critical comments on a blog run by an Australian, to an anti-gun post by an Australian? Clearly there is more to your position than this sort of bravado, and I can`t help but think that you are falling back on this argument because you know that there is no rational defense of your right to carry a lethal weapon under your coat.

Of course it has to do with many other socio-economic factors.

which would be, what? A history steeped in slavery and struggle and poverty? And if so, why does your sister blame all those non-Finns for Finland`s crime rate? They aren`t black, after all. It seems that everyone except white people has some cultural reason to be a criminal in her worldview.

And if this analysis is incorrect then you have to fall back on the claim that it is welfare which causes crime - against the evidence of the country being cited. Your arguments seem to be a mess of contradictions, while Occam`s razor would give us something like - heaps of grumpy poor people in America have uncontrolled access to guns; meanwhile, heaps of grumpy poor people in Finland, Australia and France (23% gun ownership, much lower murder rate than Finland, high ethnic intake, social tensions) do not have uncontrolled access to guns.

In fact one key difference between these countries and the US is probably the handgun laws...

ben said--"Being black obviously doesn't cause you to suffer more in a welfare system, not directly."

Gah--what is the metric by which you are making this measurement? Moynihan's report should be your baseline:
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm

The report is an easy read. In it you will find some interesting data on drug use, crime, depedency, etc. It's failing is in its interpretationof the problem, as it implicitly presumes the model for economic success as the male domininant nuclear family, and assigns a pathology to black poor families as being female dominant (ignoring the extended nature of such family networks), and places its focus on uplifting the black male. My quick read is that its sexism fails to note that the target should be the adult female, and to ignore the puritanism of men and women living together out of wedlock--common law marriage regardless.

The historical problem is that being black and poor causes you to suffer in the United States. One can fault affirmative action or welfare if one thinks that it provides false hope of overcoming the persistence of racism to the black poor thus bringing to them greater despair, rather than as a prophylaxis to the dominant class that they have done enough to remedy a problem of their doing, and now the problem rests with the subject class to go it alone.

Mike

I suppose, though, the view is catching on - Iraqis seem to agree with you.

Thanks for making my point for me.

Ah, Ben, if this is the case - why are you posting critical comments on a blog run by an Australian, to an anti-gun post by an Australian?

Because he was referring to an American study and critiques of said study by other Americans. The post has political ramifications for America and Americans too.

In fact one key difference between these countries and the US is probably the handgun laws...

Not true. England has ALWAYS had a much lower homicide rate than the USA. This was true when England had no gun laws, and it is still true today. If your conjecture was true, England's homicide rate would have dropped relative to the USA instead of what is really happening, which is that it is the same to increasing.

mgr, the black poor (in general), like much of the poor (in general), have adopted a culture that is incompatible with the middle class. It doesn't matter if it's that M&M guy or anyone else, but the *gangsta* hip-hop, in your face and all that is abhorrent to myself and many others. Race has nothing to do with it.

And yes, it is hard for people to change their culture. Supposedly it takes three generations of hard times to come into the mainstream. It was true for every other group who came to america, and they all assimilated because they couldn't or didn't play the victim game.

Finally, if it is racism, then how do you explain the success of West Indian black people in America? If it was racism, then a simple difference of culture couldn't make any difference in outcome.

Ben,
1.) Your world view is logically inconsistent. You appear to hold two self contradictory notions--you seem to be saying there is no social mobility, and that there is.

2.) "the black poor (in general), like much of the poor (in general), have adopted a culture that is incompatible with the middle class."

Do you recognize what is implicitly racist or classist in this statement? The criterion for assimiliation is for a large proportion of a ethnic group to be in the income brackets and professions consistent with the middle class. It says nothing about culture. You seem to be arguing that the poor (black and white) do not have a work ethic (classist). If you are not, then any aspect of african american culture can be determined inconsistent with middle class culture simply because it is not the way WASPs do it (racist).

Do you take issue with punk and Goth as you do gangsta rap? Why or why not?

3.) Let me see, I explain why comparison to Chinese was inappropriate as far as the personal wealth question goes, now you would like me to address West Indians. The same arguments apply, with the caveat that permit the West Indians to experience racism in the United States over several generations, and let's see how well they are assimilated vis a vis the african american poor.

4.) I conclude that your arguments and positions support my contention that you are in fact a Barney Fife, which to be fair, is only because I know of no caricature that captures my image of you as a prissy boy George Will on foot with a gun in a mixed neighborhood around sunset (It gives a whole new dimension to 'made my knees knock'.). Your observations upon black culture strongly support my argument that hand gun advocates'--like yourself-- need to pack heat is partially motiviated by irrational racial fears.

Mike

Do you recognize what is implicitly racist or classist in this statement?

It is not even remotely racist. It might be classist, but then, I am classist. Class in terms of behavior, not in terms of economic status. There are plenty of rich folks who are low class. Paris Hilton and MM come to mind.

How many white/black/asian/hispanic homies do you know who work in science and engineering? I know none. I know of none. All the affirmative action in the world cannot help someone who has adopted the "gansta" lifestyle.

Yes, there are plenty of poor people with excellent work ethic. They are high class people, regardless of economic status or race.

Yes, the punk and goth "lifestyles" are a pathetic waste of time. But most of that is entirely superficial. Just like when an otherwise middle class high school kid gets into the gangsta thing. It's more or less harmless to that extent.

Er, West Indian blacks are just as black as any other (by West Indian, I'm referring to Jamaicans and similar). So how can racism be directed differently toward them than to their non-West Indian counterparts?

...no caricature that captures my image of you as a prissy boy George Will on foot with a gun in a mixed neighborhood around sunset

Prissy boy? Heh, That's not the first time I've been called something like that by commenters on this blog. Who's George Will?

Won't this thread ever die? Die thread die! You've gone on too long. Hitler!

Ben--you are just digging the hole deeper. Switching the meaning of 'class' to refer to behavior from economic standing is a clumsy and dishonest rhetorical strategy, since the implications I pointed out still remain. Possessing an ethnocentric and provincial superiority regarding one's cultures and practices is the soul of discrimination and prejuidice.

I work for one of the largest engineering firms on the West Coast, and yes, we have 'homies', and in fair abundance too. Something to do with college grads over the last two decades having a penchant to dress and behave like their cohort. We focus on what they can do, and ignore the attire as long as it is field and office appropriate.

"Er, West Indian blacks are just as black as any other (by West Indian, I'm referring to Jamaicans and similar). So how can racism be directed differently toward them than to their non-West Indian counterparts?"

Playing the obtuse again? Primarily the West Indians coming to the USA are few, and mostly from Hispanola, and Cuba. They in their countries of origin were the middle or upper class. Because of the amount of melanin, the racism and discrimination they experience as part of their assimilation into this culture, might result in their being ghettoized in a manner similar to the african american poor currently. It is hard to be a discriminated against as a minority in a country where practically everyone shares that same history.

Mike

"firearm ownership and crime ... because there was no national survey data available at the state level."

I find this implausible. Crime data on a state basis certainly exists. Do national firearm registers not include ownership details down to a level as basic as state of residence ?

"Possessing an ethnocentric and provincial superiority regarding one's cultures and practices is the soul of discrimination and prejuidice."

Discrimintation, yes. Prejudice, depends. Some cultures are superior to others. If you don't like that, well, tough bananas.

"Switching the meaning of 'class' to refer to behavior from economic standing is a clumsy and dishonest rhetorical strategy, since the implications I pointed out still remain."

I disagree. When I speak of class, that is what I mean. Others may use that term differently, so what? I defined my term, then I used it.

"I work for one of the largest engineering firms on the West Coast, and yes, we have 'homies', and in fair abundance too."

They aren't real "homies". I don't give a rats ass how they dress. Do they use correct grammar? If so, then not a homie by my definition. It's the same thing you refer to with the Goths and punks. The behavior you speak of is entirely superficial. The behavior I refer to is not.

Ah, Ben, worming and weaving to avoid recognising the role of slavery in putting black people in a different position to white people.

This is a classic libertarian trick though, isn`t it? Everyone else points out to you that there is a clear historical reason why one group are suffering more difficulties than any other, and instead of admit it and argue that your policies will fix it best, you downplay it. How could 200 years of being someone else`s property still have ramifications for black poverty or white peoples` view of blacks today? My god, it`s been 50 years since segregation ended, how could black people possibly<\i> be suffering any ill effects from it now?

Finally Ben, you claim that England has always been less violent than the US. Given your continued failure to present a number, and the continued incorrectness of your statistics (1 million DGUs, "lots" of statistics supporting a view you yourself then conceded had to be incorrect), I will believe your claim when I see it. In any case, if it is the case that the US mindset is especially violent (which someone else here has posited, but which I frankly find incomprehensible given your combined reluctance and failure in all forms of violent activity), surely this is yet another reason to limit access to tools which improve the efficiency of your inclinations? Or is this just another rational position which you will present a completely topsy-turvy, counter-intuitive defense against?

Kevin at The Smallest Minority does a good job of dealing with young black male violence AND the UK vs USA gun problem here.

Your clear historical reason is the worst possible way to look at the problem. It seeks conflict where there should be a cure. It sets the stage for "reparations" which make no sense, as the parties involved are long since dead.

So far, you haven't proposed a solution to the problem of black poverty in America anyway. Do you have a proposal? Wealth redistribution? Forced integration in every aspect of life? What?

at the present time you are far more likely to be assaulted in England than in the U.S. - you just don't kill each other as often, as has been the tradition since the turn of the last century

Why would that be I wonder? I think Kevin`s analysis of the issue conveniently ignores the possibility that the British were never armed with guns, and also the long British tradition of banning attempts at using whatever the latest weapon is for self-defense. Britain banned duelling, for example, in the 17th century - this is gun control from long before the 20th century. Has the US ever passed such a law?

As for the problem of comparing non-blacks in the US with all of Europe, this is still hardly a pleasant comparison. You mean that the white middle class population of the US commits murder at the same rate as a European population which includes the poorest - all those rioters in France, all the brown people Sarah claims are destroying Finland? Hardly an argument in favour of US crime rates. And how would it turn out if you removed the poor from European calculations?

Kevin`s argument also removes race from the question and blames crime on welfare, without considering properly that welfare is a marker of poverty. He hasn`t added anything that hasn`t been covered here.

No, Ben, you remain hoist on the same petard: either crime in the US is race-related for some cultural reason; or it is related to welfare, and probably therefore poverty unless you can find a way to separate these two phenomena.

And while the clear historical reason may be the "worst way to look at the problem", it is the truth. Your friend Kevin likes to dispense hard facts like a contrarian, so you need to take one: white people oppressed black people in the US, and now you are paying the price. Until you find a way to cure the problem, you will continue to have conflict. As a libertarian you can`t suggest a cure except a state of social conflict (competition without welfare), but this is exactly what black Americans are doing now and you are all living in fear of it and blaming it for all your problems. You also refuse to accept the role of society in ameliorating past problems, so can`t comprehend how to cure the problem anyway.

And finally, you say "reparations" make no sense because the parties involved are long dead. But there are still people around now whose education (and therefore opportunity at wealth) was impeded by segregation in the 50s; people who grew up in one parent families because their parents or grandparents were killed in lynchings; people who are poorer because their black parents were refused promotions or combat duties in the army during world war 2; people who were denied work on the basis of their race. The cultural phenomenon of slavery is still extending its nasty tentacles all through black and white society in the US, and only someone who denies the role of society in shaping our wellbeing would be able to deny this. i.e. only a libertarian would deny this.

Who do I see about getting reparations for my long distant ancestors. I'm sure some were slaves at one point or another if you go back far enough.

Ben, slavery isn't a joke that you can laugh away in such a manner. This response is the classic back-handed way of saying "I don't care about this crap". Not a way to have your opinions taken seriously ...

Just observing some of the local flora and fauna on this blog and I'm finding some bizarre, incredibly irrational views.

"In these analyses, states within the highest quartile of firearm prevalence had firearm homicide rates 114% higher than states within the lowest quartile of firearm prevalence."

Uhhhh... YEAH.... and states within the highest quartile of knife prevalence will have stabbing homicide rates many times higher than states within the lowest quartile of knife prevalence: the point is that it's not the tool that's used but the intention of those who use it that causes homocide. Really what about this is so damned difficult to understand? If there are more guns in a given state then more homocides are going to occur using guns. It's blatantly IRRELAVENT, unless one wishes to consider knife control, hammer control, or glass bottle control alongside gun control.

Anyway, sorry to interrupt. Back to playing, children.

Uhhhh... YEAH.... and states within the highest quartile of knife prevalence will have stabbing homicide rates many times higher than states within the lowest quartile of knife prevalence: the point is that it's not the tool that's used but the intention of those who use it that causes homocide.

Keep reading:

"Overall homicide rates were 60% higher. The association between firearm prevalence and homicide was driven by gun-related homicide rates; non-gun-related homicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership."

The important thing is that those states had many more homicides period, because they had so many more gun-related homicides. It's not just that guns claimed a greater fraction of the homicide count.

To use your example, it's as if you handed out knives to everyone, and the stabbing death rate immediately went way up while the non-stabbing-related homicide rate didn't change. In that case you'd have good reason to conclude that, no, it's not the intention, it is the tool.

By Anton Mates (not verified) on 02 Feb 2007 #permalink