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I would love to see hard statistical evidence that less guns = less deaths. The problem with your hypothesis (because without proof, that's all that your commen

by haggy 9y ago

I would love to see hard statistical evidence that less guns = less deaths. The problem with your hypothesis (because without proof, that's all that your comment is) is that less guns in the hands of innocent people is a recipe for disaster. I live in the US and we see the exact opposite of what you claim. We typically see higher death rates of innocent people in states with very strict gun regulation (Chicago for example). On the opposite side of the coin, states like Texas and New Hampshire see much less criminal gun violence and domestic terrorism. In fact there have been multiple incidents recently where armed criminals tried to wreak havoc and were stopped by armed civilians.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pavlov 9y ago
Less than three months have passed since the Las Vegas massacre, and it's already forgotten? Nevada has very lax gun laws.
tehwalrus 9y ago
The grandparent cites the UK, where we have two orders of magnitude fewer firearm deaths per capita[1] with complete prohibition of private handgun ownership. (People can still join a shooting club, which keeps them in a locked cabinet). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm...
oxide 9y ago
To tie this back on topic, opiates are really rather safe drugs, in terms of oral therapeutic usage, that have been made deadly solely due to prohibition. It's driven injection abuse through the roof as people try to get the most bang for their buck at any cost, and with the introduction of fentalogues into the heroin supply, we get a trumped-up (no pun intended) public health crisis that has a working solution in place. The expansion of maintenance access, both to suboxone and methadone clinics, safe injection sites, needle exchanges and other hard decisions are going to need to be made more quickly than usual to stem the tide. Harm reduction works, prohibition doesn't.
matt_s 9y ago
Recent study: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2017/10/19/states-with-looser-concealed-carry-laws-have-more-gun-deaths-study-says/?utm_term=.024fbdcb3526 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2017/10/19/states-wi... The Australia and British laws and results are evidence that is plain in front of you. Those are humans on a different piece of land on our planet that on a whole have less gun violence occurring because there are less guns. You can talk about culture, how it wouldn't work, etc. but that is the exact point the parent comment is making. It would be nice if the US would let the CDC do in-depth studies of this nature, but gun lobbyists have blocked this from happening.
- saladeen 9y ago
  GP asked about relation of gun laws vs death numbers. You are pretending to answer that, but you weasel in the change from 'general violence' to 'gun violence'. Of course if guns are more easily available, there will be more gun violence, but that's not what GP asked.
  - matt_s 9y ago
    I believe the less deaths part is really meant as gun deaths. Do you honestly think that he wants information about less guns leading to lower cardiac arrests? Or perhaps less motor vehicle accidents involving death? There is only one type of death that is in context in a discussion about firearms, death caused by firearms.
    - saladeen 9y ago
      We are discussing crime. If crime wasn't commited by firearms, there would be no need to have legal framework regulating firearms. However, once firearms are heavily regulated, the violence commited through use of firearms doesn't magically go away. Violent criminals just switch to other methods. You can see similar things happening in UK recently, where they had a heavy campaign on banning knifes. This has resulted in increased use of acid attacks in gang/criminal violence.
      - 9y ago
andai 9y ago
I recently learned that James Holmes, who committed the Aurora cinema mass shooting, drove an additional distance to get to the only theater in the area where customers weren't allowed to have firearms, the only place where law-abiding citizens weren't allowed to defend themselves.
- mhalle 9y ago
  James Holmes was mentally ill, stopped his therapy, and wrote journals filled with details about how he was going to kill people. His perception of reality, his interpretation of threats, and what drove his motivations were are an exceptionally poor basis for establishing public gun policy.
  - andai 9y ago
    Maybe so, but insane or not, how far would he have gotten with his plans if even a fraction of those around him could shoot back?
cmiles74 9y ago
Chicago is a terrible example. They may have restrictive gun control laws, but you need only leave the state and it's a very different story. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20151008/NEWS02/151009827/the-problem-with-using-chicago-to-make-the-case-against-gun-control?X-IgnoreUserAgent=1 http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20151008/NEWS02/15100...
vertex-four 9y ago
States with strict gun regulation primarily have it because of violence that already existed prior to regulation, whether in the form of gang problems, terrorism, or otherwise. You don't call for regulation of something that's not a problem - if nobody ever got killed by a gun, nobody would ever have thought to regulate them. The question is why Chicago has problems with organised violence and other places don't to the same degree. I think if you look into it, the reasons are significantly more complex than "one place has more legal guns" - the data for that hypothesis doesn't make sense when plotted on a chart.
drderidder 9y ago
This argument is trotted out every time the gun violence issue comes up, but there's no veracity to it. The data is freely available. It's been several years since I did this but I plotted gun ownership vs gun deaths per 100k population, by US state, from publicly available databases, and they correlate exactly. More guns = more gun deaths, full stop. It's not a matter of the data not being there to show this, it's more a matter of a really strong cognitive bias that prevents people from being willing to even consider the evidence that doesn't support their preconceptions. [edit] the graph came out looking like this https://twitter.com/73rhodes/status/915604039873769472 https://twitter.com/73rhodes/status/915604039873769472

by haggy 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pavlov 9y ago

Less than three months have passed since the Las Vegas massacre, and it's already forgotten? Nevada has very lax gun laws.

tehwalrus 9y ago

The grandparent cites the UK, where we have two orders of magnitude fewer firearm deaths per capita[1] with complete prohibition of private handgun ownership. (People can still join a shooting club, which keeps them in a locked cabinet). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm...

oxide 9y ago

To tie this back on topic, opiates are really rather safe drugs, in terms of oral therapeutic usage, that have been made deadly solely due to prohibition. It's driven injection abuse through the roof as people try to get the most bang for their buck at any cost, and with the introduction of fentalogues into the heroin supply, we get a trumped-up (no pun intended) public health crisis that has a working solution in place. The expansion of maintenance access, both to suboxone and methadone clinics, safe injection sites, needle exchanges and other hard decisions are going to need to be made more quickly than usual to stem the tide. Harm reduction works, prohibition doesn't.

matt_s 9y ago

Recent study: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2017/10/19/states-with-looser-concealed-carry-laws-have-more-gun-deaths-study-says/?utm_term=.024fbdcb3526 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2017/10/19/states-wi... The Australia and British laws and results are evidence that is plain in front of you. Those are humans on a different piece of land on our planet that on a whole have less gun violence occurring because there are less guns. You can talk about culture, how it wouldn't work, etc. but that is the exact point the parent comment is making. It would be nice if the US would let the CDC do in-depth studies of this nature, but gun lobbyists have blocked this from happening.

saladeen 9y ago
GP asked about relation of gun laws vs death numbers. You are pretending to answer that, but you weasel in the change from 'general violence' to 'gun violence'. Of course if guns are more easily available, there will be more gun violence, but that's not what GP asked.
- matt_s 9y ago
  I believe the less deaths part is really meant as gun deaths. Do you honestly think that he wants information about less guns leading to lower cardiac arrests? Or perhaps less motor vehicle accidents involving death? There is only one type of death that is in context in a discussion about firearms, death caused by firearms.
  - saladeen 9y ago
    We are discussing crime. If crime wasn't commited by firearms, there would be no need to have legal framework regulating firearms. However, once firearms are heavily regulated, the violence commited through use of firearms doesn't magically go away. Violent criminals just switch to other methods. You can see similar things happening in UK recently, where they had a heavy campaign on banning knifes. This has resulted in increased use of acid attacks in gang/criminal violence.
    - 9y ago

andai 9y ago

I recently learned that James Holmes, who committed the Aurora cinema mass shooting, drove an additional distance to get to the only theater in the area where customers weren't allowed to have firearms, the only place where law-abiding citizens weren't allowed to defend themselves.

mhalle 9y ago
James Holmes was mentally ill, stopped his therapy, and wrote journals filled with details about how he was going to kill people. His perception of reality, his interpretation of threats, and what drove his motivations were are an exceptionally poor basis for establishing public gun policy.
- andai 9y ago
  Maybe so, but insane or not, how far would he have gotten with his plans if even a fraction of those around him could shoot back?

cmiles74 9y ago

Chicago is a terrible example. They may have restrictive gun control laws, but you need only leave the state and it's a very different story. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20151008/NEWS02/151009827/the-problem-with-using-chicago-to-make-the-case-against-gun-control?X-IgnoreUserAgent=1 http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20151008/NEWS02/15100...

vertex-four 9y ago

States with strict gun regulation primarily have it because of violence that already existed prior to regulation, whether in the form of gang problems, terrorism, or otherwise. You don't call for regulation of something that's not a problem - if nobody ever got killed by a gun, nobody would ever have thought to regulate them. The question is why Chicago has problems with organised violence and other places don't to the same degree. I think if you look into it, the reasons are significantly more complex than "one place has more legal guns" - the data for that hypothesis doesn't make sense when plotted on a chart.

drderidder 9y ago

This argument is trotted out every time the gun violence issue comes up, but there's no veracity to it. The data is freely available. It's been several years since I did this but I plotted gun ownership vs gun deaths per 100k population, by US state, from publicly available databases, and they correlate exactly. More guns = more gun deaths, full stop. It's not a matter of the data not being there to show this, it's more a matter of a really strong cognitive bias that prevents people from being willing to even consider the evidence that doesn't support their preconceptions. [edit] the graph came out looking like this https://twitter.com/73rhodes/status/915604039873769472 https://twitter.com/73rhodes/status/915604039873769472