8 ms·

Bear in mind that what the researcher is saying is that they don't have evidence of an effect, not that they have evidence of no effect. The distinction is impo

by moomin 9y ago

Bear in mind that what the researcher is saying is that they don't have evidence of an effect, not that they have evidence of no effect. The distinction is important in this case: there's a famous one where researchers could find no link between money and happiness. Another 30 years of solid data provided the missing evidence that the obvious was true. Meanwhile, I live in the U.K. and we haven't had a mass shooting since the laws passed. I'll happily wait for the statistics to go past the required p-values. Also worth bearing in mind: what statisticians do agree on is that owning a gun is more likely to hurt you than help you. If you live alone that's your own call, but if you have a family I'd say it's something you ought to think about carefully.

ericmcer 9y ago
The statistic makes sense, owning a gun is more likely to harm than help you. That is across all of society though. The thing is, you own it and are personally in charge of storage, maintenance, operation, etc. So it is harder to blanket apply the harm vs help rule to an individual owner without knowing their personal practices.
- moomin 9y ago
  It is, but it's also worth bearing in mind that, on average, you're going to be average. And, as is natural, you probably overestimate your own behavior. (This last point is basically true of everything, but gun safety's pretty unforgiving on that last point.)
  - yellowapple 9y ago
    Right, but unless you're an expert on gun safety (which in turn implies being an expert on guns), you're probably not going to be qualified to determine if someone is above or below average in terms of gun safety.
electrograv 9y ago
> Meanwhile, I live in the U.K. and we haven't had a mass shooting since the laws passed. I'll happily wait for the statistics to go past the required p-values. I really hate to bring this up, but "no mass shootings" does not equal "no mass deaths". There have been plenty of attacks in Europe to great effect without guns being used -- for example, the truck attack in Nice, Paris is still unrivaled by any gun massacre in America. We shouldn't play semantic games / statistical filtering games with phrases like "reducing gun violence" and "reducing mass shootings"; I think we all can agree that our collective goal as decent human beings is work towards reducing violence/harm/death, period. Why qualify it on only gun attacks -- other than for political reasons? If banning guns indeed reduces mass killings overall (again, it's rather a red herring to say your only goal is to reduce mass shootings rather than mass killings in general), then by all means let's work towards that. But the data so obviously shows this to be a false correlation: Right now Europe is if anything the poster-child of why gun control doesn't work, with all the truck and bomb attacks. Again, I hate to bring this up, but so often Europeans use this as a common insult to Americans but I see this as a rather strong case of cognitive dissonance.
- arnaud12 9y ago
  The attacks in Nice and Paris are the French equivalent of 9/11. They’re acts of war and are really outliers in statistics. You can’t really use these attacks as an argument against gun control. In day to day life there are 0.21 homicides by gunfire for 100k inhabitants per year in France and 3.6 in the US (source: wikipedia). I think the real argument is there... But then again, as a Frenchman most of American politics are more and more foreign and impossible to understand to me (gun law, healthcare...)
  - cosmiccartel 9y ago
    > In day to day life there are 0.21 homicides by gunfire for 100k inhabitants per year in France and 3.6 in the US (source: wikipedia). This is missing the point of the comment you're replying to. You're comparing homicide by gunfire, not homicide. It is true that Europe has a lower homicide rate in general, but there are exceptions. Lithuania is a European country with restrictive gun laws and a substantially higher rate of intentional homicide than the U.S. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...)
deleted 9y ago
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by moomin 9y ago

ericmcer 9y ago

The statistic makes sense, owning a gun is more likely to harm than help you. That is across all of society though. The thing is, you own it and are personally in charge of storage, maintenance, operation, etc. So it is harder to blanket apply the harm vs help rule to an individual owner without knowing their personal practices.

moomin 9y ago
It is, but it's also worth bearing in mind that, on average, you're going to be average. And, as is natural, you probably overestimate your own behavior. (This last point is basically true of everything, but gun safety's pretty unforgiving on that last point.)
- yellowapple 9y ago
  Right, but unless you're an expert on gun safety (which in turn implies being an expert on guns), you're probably not going to be qualified to determine if someone is above or below average in terms of gun safety.

electrograv 9y ago

> Meanwhile, I live in the U.K. and we haven't had a mass shooting since the laws passed. I'll happily wait for the statistics to go past the required p-values. I really hate to bring this up, but "no mass shootings" does not equal "no mass deaths". There have been plenty of attacks in Europe to great effect without guns being used -- for example, the truck attack in Nice, Paris is still unrivaled by any gun massacre in America. We shouldn't play semantic games / statistical filtering games with phrases like "reducing gun violence" and "reducing mass shootings"; I think we all can agree that our collective goal as decent human beings is work towards reducing violence/harm/death, period. Why qualify it on only gun attacks -- other than for political reasons? If banning guns indeed reduces mass killings overall (again, it's rather a red herring to say your only goal is to reduce mass shootings rather than mass killings in general), then by all means let's work towards that. But the data so obviously shows this to be a false correlation: Right now Europe is if anything the poster-child of why gun control doesn't work, with all the truck and bomb attacks. Again, I hate to bring this up, but so often Europeans use this as a common insult to Americans but I see this as a rather strong case of cognitive dissonance.

arnaud12 9y ago
The attacks in Nice and Paris are the French equivalent of 9/11. They’re acts of war and are really outliers in statistics. You can’t really use these attacks as an argument against gun control. In day to day life there are 0.21 homicides by gunfire for 100k inhabitants per year in France and 3.6 in the US (source: wikipedia). I think the real argument is there... But then again, as a Frenchman most of American politics are more and more foreign and impossible to understand to me (gun law, healthcare...)
- cosmiccartel 9y ago
  > In day to day life there are 0.21 homicides by gunfire for 100k inhabitants per year in France and 3.6 in the US (source: wikipedia). This is missing the point of the comment you're replying to. You're comparing homicide by gunfire, not homicide. It is true that Europe has a lower homicide rate in general, but there are exceptions. Lithuania is a European country with restrictive gun laws and a substantially higher rate of intentional homicide than the U.S. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...)

deleted 9y ago

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