[karajorma]

You didn't get mass shootings because no one got a gun who wouldn't have gotten one anyway. The law was never enforced. It was symbolic. Find me proof that levels of gun ownership in that town actually changed immediately after the law was passed. Find me proof that 25 years on they still had changed.

[Mika]

NO!!!

Which way do you expect someone to break into your house? The chimney?

The front door is an obvious entry point, and a quarterstaff there would be both obstructed by the intruder and in his reach before you could get it. Also- where the hell do you get a kilowatt flashlight? Me wants.

Forgot to reply on this.

First, I would hang the scimitar or the sabre close to the entry way, not the quaterstaff just because of the reasons mentioned. There is only one way out, and I tend to hear someone opening the door quite quickly. And he doesn't know it is there.

Regarding the flashlight, my job as research scientist has it's nice sides...

Mika

[SpardaSon21]

You didn't get mass shootings because no one got a gun who wouldn't have gotten one anyway. The law was never enforced. It was symbolic. Find me proof that levels of gun ownership in that town actually changed immediately after the law was passed. Find me proof that 25 years on they still had changed.

The difference isn't is in how many people own guns, its the probability of gun ownership that criminals think about.  Robbing a house where the owner is prohibited from owning a gun is different from robbing a house where there is a good chance the owner is armed and will blow you away without hesitation if you break in.

And gun laws are unevenly applied.  Criminals obviously don't care about breaking the law, or they wouldn't be criminals.  They could care less about owning an illegal firearm.  Law-abiding citizens do care about breaking the law, so that means they go without guns, since owning them would be illegal.

[karajorma]

The difference isn't is in how many people own guns, its the probability of gun ownership that criminals think about. 

And the probability of any house in that town having a gun didn't change at all after this law was brought in.

So to claim that there was a change in the burglary rate due to gun ownership when their was no change in the gun ownership rate is strange at best.

And no, I'm not comparing the town against towns which did ban guns. If passing a law to make guns mandatory did have a real effect then it would be visible against a control, there should be no need to compare it against a completely different test subject.

[SpardaSon21]

The difference isn't is in how many people own guns, its the probability of gun ownership that criminals think about. 

And the probability of any house in that town having a gun didn't change at all after this law was brought in.

So you are saying that law-abiding citizens just wantonly ignore gun control laws?

[Nuke]

maybe they should hand out free guns

[Scotty]

Ugh, do we really need to get the gun crime records for Chicago from that old thread?  When firearms are illegal, it does not reduce the amount of crimes committed with firearms.  If a person is willing to commit a crime in the first place, why would they worry about gun control laws?

Just as a refresher course:

Well then:

Here's a statistic:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288
I've posted it here already, but since General Battuta asking for more than anecdotal  evidence, I'm posting it again in case you've missed it.

It says here, that crime rates in general drop when people must own firearms, and rise when they cannot own firearms. It also says that in Kennesaw, Georgia, there was not a single murder in the 25 years of mandatory gun ownership.

And here's another one:
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

The article says that there are between 108,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year in the USA (based on 15 surveys). That makes the "dozens who get killed because they pulled out a gun and failed to use it" less than 0.1% of the cases. Also notice that:

http://www.ichv.org/Statistics.htm

in 2005 there were 569 homicides by shooting in Illinois.

http://www.cityofchicago.org/webportal/COCWebPortal/COC_EDITORIAL/Murder2005.pdf (page 28)

339 of those happened in Chicago, and 327 of these were commited by handguns, which are prohibited in Chicago.

Just that makes the majority of shootings done by people who don't care about gun laws (or insurance policies, for that matter). A more detailed search will result in a much larger percentage of illegal guns being used. In other words- no matter how restrictive the laws, most gun crimes will still occur.

It also proves that 3/5 of the gun crimes are involved in a place where less than 3 out of the 12 million Illinois residents live, in the place where gun laws are the most strict in the state.

Now, remember the second article, about the minimum 108k defensive gun uses per year? According to the www.ichv.org site, there were 330 deaths from legal gun use and 221 from undetermined intent in the USA in 2005. And 330/108 000 times 100% gives just above 0.3%. A maximum of 3 people out of 1000 who (legally) pulled out a gun actually (legally) killed someone in self defense. The other 997 were fine just by showing the perp they have one, or shooting but not killing them.
This makes the argument of thugs continuing their assault after the victim pulls out a weapon mostly false too.

And a final thing:
Notice that in 2005, there were 30,694 gun deaths in the U.S, among them:
12,352 homicides (40% of all U.S gun deaths),
17,002 suicides (55% of all U.S gun deaths),

If not for the guns, 17k people would have poisoned themselves, jumped off bridges or used some other method to kill themselves.
If not for the suicides, there would have been 13 692 gun related deaths, or only 45% of the total.

P.S. Taking the 108k defensive gun uses (the smallest of all surveys) as the true number, somewhere in America 12 people have used their guns in self defense while I was writing this post. (It took me about an hour to find and read everything, and write it)

When guns are proscribed, gun crimes do not decrease.

[karajorma]

So you are saying that law-abiding citizens just wantonly ignore gun control laws?

I'm saying that when you make gun ownership mandatory it doesn't change gun ownership in the slightest unless you enforce that. People who don't want a gun in their house don't suddenly buy one. People who are obsessed with guns don't change their habits either.

So the stats from that town are basically worthless.

[BengalTiger]

Sorry for being absent, had a busy week.

Here's something that does show how legally carrying concealed guns reacts with crime rate (a lot better than Gun Town USA does):

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/flcrime.htm

http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/cw_monthly.html

The crime rate in Florida grew steadily from 1960 to 1988, 1 year after the concealed carry licenses became available (2,705 per 100k in '60 to 8,938 per 100k in '88), and then began to drop steadily, from 8000+ in the mid 80's to 4000+ in the mid 2000's, per 100 000 inhabitants.

The number of people able to legally carry concealed guns grew from zero before 10/1/87 to 553,822 (or 3034 per 100k inhabitants) in 2/28/09.

[karajorma]

The overall number of crimes didn't actually change much though did they? In fact until 1994 the number of violent crimes increased. What happened is that the number of people in the state increased. Increasing by about two million between the introduction of the ban and 1994.

I'd want an explanation of why the population of Florida changed by millions between those two dates before I consider those statistics to be worth a damn. Cause if it's due to large numbers of old people moving to the state (who generally don't commit large numbers of crimes) then carrying concealed had little effect on the crime rate at all and what caused the fall was simply having more honest people in the state.

Furthermore I strongly question your conviction that the crime rate fell as a result of carry permits as opposed to better policing.

Here's the stats per 100,000 people.

Code: [Select]

1986  11,675,000  8,228.4  1,036.5  7,191.9  11.7  52.7  366.8  605.3  2,221.3  4,372.6  598.1
1987  12,023,000  8,503.2  1,024.4  7,478.7  11.4  50.2  356.6  606.3  2,256.9  4,545.2  676.7
1988  12,377,000  8,937.6  1,117.7  7,819.9  11.4  49.7  403.3  653.3  2,294.3  4,760.6  765.1
1989  12,671,000  8,804.5  1,109.4  7,695.1  11.1  49.7  404.0  644.6  2,282.8  4,606.6  805.7

So in 1989, two years after the option to carry concealed came in. What had happened?

Violent crime - Up, Property crime - Up, Murder - Down, Rape - Down, Robbery - Up, Assault - Up, Burglary - Up.

So we didn't even see a sudden drop in the number of crimes per person. It took years to bring those averages down. You'll probably claim that it took those years to get the gun ownership up and for the criminals to realise this. On the other hand I can claim that the effect on crime could simply be due to better policing methods and you're going to be hard pressed to prove me wrong. Which basically means your stats aren't worth a damn when it comes to proving your point.

Furthermore, 12 years after allowing concealed carry.

In the year 2000 Florida had an estimated population of 15,982,378 which ranked the state 4th in population. For that year the State of Florida had a total Crime Index of 5,694.7 reported incidents per 100,000 people. This ranked the state as having the 2nd highest total Crime Index. For Violent Crime Florida had a reported incident rate of 812.0 per 100,000 people. This ranked the state as having the 1st highest occurrence for Violent Crime among the states. For crimes against Property, the state had a reported incident rate of 4,882.7 per 100,000 people, which ranked as the state 3rd highest. Also in the year 2000 Florida had 5.6 Murders per 100,000 people, ranking the state as having the 21st highest rate for Murder. Florida’s 44.2 reported Forced Rapes per 100,000 people, ranked the state 7th highest. For Robbery, per 100,000 people, Florida’s rate was 199.0 which ranked the state as having the 5th highest for Robbery. The state also had 563.2 Aggravated Assaults for every 100,000 people, which indexed the state as having the 2nd highest position for this crime among the states. For every 100,000 people there were 1,081.8 Burglaries, which ranks Florida as having the 3rd highest standing among the states. Larceny - Theft were reported 3,242.9 times per hundred thousand people in Florida which standing is the 5th highest among the states. Vehicle Theft occurred 558.0 times per 100,000 people, which fixed the state as having the 5th highest for vehicle

Yeah. The carry concealed thing was definitely having an effect on crime. Even in robbery and burglary, the crimes that carrying a weapon is supposed to prevent Florida is 5th and 3rd in the country.

[Scotty]

Well, gee, I guess it has to be those nice old folks who never commit any crimes  .

[BengalTiger]

Well, in 2007 Florida was on the 6-th place.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Also note that the national average was growing until 1991 (While FL's grew till '88); and that Florida was 2953 crimes per 100k above the national average in '87, and 1082 crimes per 100k in 2007, an almost 3x smaller "advantage".

Now you say that there was better policing. Any evidence to support that claim?

Any evidence to support the claim FL's population grew due to old people moving in, and not illegal immigrants for instance?

And if you'd check the http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/cw_monthly.html site, you'd know that of the 1,461,778 licenses issued, 4,571 were revoked (3,855 of which were due to crimes commited by the licensee, with 166 involving a gun). That makes CCW's a huge gun crime generator- 0.01% (10 per 100k) of the licencees lost their license due to gun violence.

[karajorma]

You've claimed it's due to gun ownership. Prove that. Guess what, you can't. Correlation != causation and you only have a very weak correlation anyway.

Well, gee, I guess it has to be those nice old folks who never commit any crimes  .

Let me explain it more simply then since you don't seem able to grasp the more complicated way I put it earlier.

Same number of crimes + More people = Lower crime rate. Now I'd want to know whether the rapid rise was due to immigration from Cuba, Old people moving to Florida or any number of other factors before I'd be happy to assume the rate has fallen due to there actually being less criminals in total.

I notice you failed to address the other more important objections I had though.

On a personal note I find it hilarious that anyone would hold up the state which is in the top ten for violent crimes as an example of how being able to carry concealed reduces crime.

[BengalTiger]

So dropping from second highest to 6-th highest in 7 years is a bad example?


Well then, if Florida is a bad example, what about the US as a whole country?



http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Why does crime rate go down, when more people are allowed to carry a concealed firearm (look at 1995 to 1999, just after 7 states went from 'no issue' to 'shall issue' in the mid 90's; crime rate goes down by 1000 per 100 000) ? Or was there a huge immigration of old people who don't commit crimes to the USA in the 1990's?

And we're still waiting for info about immigration to Florida, and better police work in FL since the late 1980's.

[karajorma]

Again correlation != causation.

This is likely the same nonsense you were trying with Florida on a larger scale. You've provided no proof that crime rates didn't simply fall nationwide (including the states that don't issue carry permits). Your sample is far too ridiculously big, with no control, to be proof of anything except your inability to provide anything beyond anecdotal proof.

Shall I point out that Crime rates in the UK showed a similar drop over the same time scale? What does that mean with regard to crime in the US? Absolutely bugger all cause there is no way to tease out what part gun control played in that.

It's exactly the same thing with your data.

[BengalTiger]

Well the graph on the site you linked to seems to show that the US had a higher burglary rate than England, Wales, Canada and the Netherlands in 1980, and a lower burglary rate then all of them in 2000.

Perhaps all the old non-criminal people moved from those countries to the US, raising the formers' burglary rate, and lowering the latter's?

[karajorma]

The burglary rate in the states barely changed during that time. What happened was that the rate in the UK went up.

And yet again you're taking cheap shots with very little data and no proof that the causes are what you claim they are.

[Scotty]

Again correlation != causation.

It gets really annoying to argue this when you dismiss all evidence just because you don't want to hear it.

Let's switch to a little different argument.  WHY should there be guns laws?  The answer:  No reason whatsoever.

Homicide Rate = 61.8873%-0.0355%(Gun Ownership Rates)

What this means is that if the mathematical comparison is good, Texas, which has a gun ownership level of 39.5% should have a homicide rate of 60.4851%. The actual homicide rate is 64.9727%, making Texas slightly more violent than the predicted value. Now for Washington DC, the predicted rate is 61.7523% whereas the actual rate is 80.0333%. A comparison going the other direction is New Hampshire, which has a gun ownership of 30%, which predicts 60.8218% homicide rate but the actual is 41.3900%.

The big deal is the t-value of -0.3585 and the p-value of 0.7214. This means that there is a 72.14% chance the prediction will be rejected and there is no reasonable comparison between the dependent and independent variables.

Basically, what this says is there is absolutely no correlation
between gun ownership rates or gun restrictions and homicides. Criminals still kill, guns or no.

So, since the level of gun control, where low ownership and high restriction Massachusetts and high ownership low restriction Alaska have the same murder rates, we can safely say that removal of firearms restrictions is a reasonable decision. When the number of weapons in circulation have no impact on crime and homicide rates, there simply is no reason spending billions of dollars regulating laws that clearly have no impact on criminal activities.

I then ran the same numbers with reading at a 4th grade level and that comparison only has a 34% chance of being rejected. Being able to read a newspaper has a stronger bearing on firearms violence than gun ownership does.

For clarification, here is the graph he uses as well:


[attachment deleted by ninja]

[karajorma]

It gets really annoying to argue this when you dismiss all evidence just because you don't want to hear it.

Nice try. I'm dismissing your evidence because it has no value. Not because I don't want to hear it.

The fact I've been able to drive trucks through the holes in the evidence so far presented means it is either incomplete or you are drawing the wrong conclusion. If you want to argue a common sense argument, go ahead. But if you're going to try to back that up with statistics you should be prepared for someone to question your methodology.

Let's switch to a little different argument.  WHY should there be guns laws?  The answer:  No reason whatsoever.

And I 100% agree with his argument. Gun laws at the state level have very little effect.

Of course that doesn't mean that gun laws at the national level don't have an effect. And that's where his argument fails. The availability of guns in America is largely due to the prevalence of guns in the country. State or county wide bans have very little effect because someone can simply bring guns in. There are no checks on the borders after all so what is to stop them?

[Scotty]

Of course that doesn't mean that gun laws at the national level don't have an effect.

And also, of course, a national gun ban/law is actually unconstitutional.  Go figure.

All of this is a moot point anyway.  We have our opinions.  I would immensely support gun rights, because I would rather be able to defend myself from a would-be robber/murderer.  You, apparently, ascribe to the idea that we should all be little defenseless sheep for the police to shepherd.</joke> 

I know you don't really think that.

EDIT:  emphasized really.