9 ms·

How else would you analyze the issue? A binary analysis would lead us to conclude that gun regulations are completely bereft of any benefit whatsoever, given t

How else would you analyze the issue? A binary analysis would lead us to conclude that gun regulations are completely bereft of any benefit whatsoever, given that gun violence, even mass shootings/spree killings, happen in countries with quite strict gun control - I mean, the former PM of Japan was killed via firearm just this month! But that is not the case. There is a clear gradient of occurrence and effectiveness of regulation. So, we need to move into the realm of statistics. And the statistics are that over the course of the decade from 2010 to 2019 ~350 kids were killed in school shootings, and ~26000 took their own lives. My assertion is that given these numbers, an inordinate amount of resources, political capital, and conversational bandwidth is being spent on what is actually a rather rare occurrence and that this is largely a waste compared to what we could be spending said resources, political capital, and conversational bandwidth on - namely, solving the problems that affect broad swathes of the populace and that I, and others, believe actually drive people to commit such violence in the first place. Or, we can spend the next century fretting about a statistically vanishingly rare occurrence, keeping the blue and red tribes divided, making little to no progress on the existential problems that we as a country, culture, society, and species face, as the world becomes increasingly uninhabitable.

fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
It’s really quite simple, you didn’t have to spell out your confusion so elaborately: Statistics deals in degrees; violence against children is something that is sufficiently cognized in absolutes.
- chii 4y ago
  policy decisions and budget allocation should an emotionless utility function that allocates what produces the best outcome with maximal efficiency. To do otherwise is to be biased one way or another.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  If we shutdown all schools we would have 0 mass shootings at schools. This is the only moral choice when dealing with absolutes.
  - fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
    Not really, that’s just one (extreme) proposal. I understand the self-gratifying impulse to write something like that though: it absolves the responsibility and work of addressing the problem, and frustrates the conversation away from finding solutions toward justifying the need to find a solution at all. It even makes you feel clever for a half-second. A cute rhetorical parlor trick.
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      You said it was an absolute. Once we start weighing the costs against other things we care about like education it becomes a relative cost.
      - fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
        This is a principles based analysis. Pretty common in public policy. Principle 1: Children should not be victims of arbitrary violence Principle 2: Children should be educated These are compatible principles. Your proposal (one of many potential proposals) is to undermine principle two rather than addressing the source of the issue which is violent third parties. And to forestall any further swiss-cheese a priori logic: this is not something fantastical. There are other societies with have honored both principles one and two, and have experienced zero, as in ABSOLUTELY zero acts of mass violence in educational settings.
  - odessacubbage 4y ago
    this is unironically my solution
spaceman_2020 4y ago
> given that gun violence, even mass shootings/spree killings, happen in countries with quite strict gun control They absolutely do not, not even remotely close to the scale and frequency in the United States. At least not in countries with equivalent socio-economic metrics as the US (El Salvador does not count).
- rjbwork 4y ago
  >They absolutely do not, not even remotely close to the scale and frequency in the United States. I thought we weren't analyzing gun violence statistically?
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    We weren't analyzing school shootings statistically, since the statistical incidence of that happening should be as close to zero as possible. But since you walked down the statistical path anyway, the least you can do is not be completely wrong about it.
    - rjbwork 4y ago
      I see that you have a hard time following an argument and the rhetorical techniques I used. I will break it down. I compared the rate of school shooting deaths to suicide deaths for the purpose of pointing out the outsized amount of resources the issue takes up. You claimed that it is wrong to analyze gun violence statistically. I, for the purpose of demonstrating the absurdity of such an assertion, analyzed gun violence using a non-statistical and binary approach. You then took exception to me conceding your point for the purpose of argument and using said non-statistical approach by then bringing statistics back into the mix and arguing that the frequency of gun violence is much higher in the US than other places. So, which is it? Can we, or can we not use statistics to analyze gun violence? If we can, then we can compare the statistics across regulatory regimes and social, economic, and cultural contexts and show that gun violence can be affected in degree by those factors. If we cannot, then we cannot show that regulation is effective, since gun violence still happens in highly varied regulatory regimes and social, economic, and cultural contexts. I would argue that statistics is an appropriate approach since, in my opinion, it allows us to come to a better reckoning of reality. Ultimately, your view is up to you. But you can't have your cake and eat it too here - you have to either admit that the use of statistics is appropriate, or that aforementioned factors are irrelevant to gun violence occurring. They are simply mutually incompatible views.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
avidphantasm 4y ago
> How else would you analyze the issue? Um, I don’t know maybe morally? As in, it is morally abhorrent and unconscionable for children to be preyed upon in school, one of the places they should safe by definition.
- rjbwork 4y ago
  Okay. I agree that kids should not be preyed upon in schools. Now what?
  - avidphantasm 4y ago
    Get rid of fucking assault rifles. Ban their sale. Mandatory buybacks. Jail time for violators. There are lots of other problems contributing to school shootings, e.g. alienated males due to retraction of empire, loss of manufacturing jobs due to financialization of the economy, erosion of mental health safety net due to privatization and disinvestment. All of these issues need to be addressed. But when the patient is bleeding out, you first STOP THE BLEEDING.
    - rjbwork 4y ago
      That won't be happening. The second amendment is a thing. Demographics and opinion polls show that we won't be getting rid of it any time soon. Assault Rifles are in common use, thus will not be banned any time soon. The current regime seems poised to expand, rather than restrict, the types of arms which we have the right to bear. This is ultimately my point - we have a lot of other avenues to address the problem rather than this, IMO, fruitless attempt to deal with the guns.
      - avidphantasm 4y ago
        Contemporary (mis)interpretation of 2A is relatively recent. Nothing is impossible in this realm.
      - spacemanmatt 4y ago
        Careless deference to the 2nd amendment (more generally, deference to "the constitution") is among the reddest flags you can throw.
lkois 4y ago
By binary analysis, it sounds like you mean to claim that 99% effective isn't close enough to 100%. For most people that would be enough. Because I don't know how else you could conclude that gun regulations are bereft of any benefit whatsoever, even hypothetically, without manufacturing such an unfair hurdle to obfuscate the obvious: gun violence requires access to guns. It seems like you want to say that broader mental health problems are more important than gun violence, but that's only more reason to restrict access to guns. Most other places in the world are able to recognise that mental illness and guns are a bad mix, and act accordingly. The US has had nearly one third of the mass shootings in the world since the 60s yet people like you continue to defend access to guns as though it's not a contributing factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...). That alone seems to point to one of those broad problems affecting the populace. It doesn't have to be the only cause, to merit a treatment. The rest of the world doesn't view gun access as a given, or even a good. It's earned and revered, or prevented, but never normalised. It's why Abe's assassin had to make his own gun, because Japanese laws didn't make things easier for him. It's why here in Australia, even gangsters don't even have guns, for the most part https://youtu.be/BYsXCnxbnj0?t=461 https://youtu.be/BYsXCnxbnj0?t=461 But we don't judge the effectiveness of these restrictions by some bogus standard of absolute zero gun violence. We judge them by assessing our rare incidents of gun violence, and whether we think we think we could or should have done more to prevent them from obtaining and using a firearm. And when we look at the numbers of mass shootings in the US, particularly in sensitive places like schools, we wonder how in the world you can think you're doing enough.
tacitusarc 4y ago
This approach assumes a moral equivalence to all gun violence. I believe people tend to assign a significantly higher negative moral weight to the murder of children in general, and children at school in particular. You may disagree with that weighting, but it’s an entirely consistent and valid model.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- shkkmo 4y ago
  I don't see the moral difference between taking a gun and shooting a kid and bullying and harassing a kid until they are driven to take a gun and shoot themselves. Both are horrific, but the latter seems even more horrific because it includes not only death, but psychological torture before the death.
readme 4y ago
you could start by using actual data your 80:1 stat seems pretty dubious -- do you have a source for it?
res0nat0r 4y ago
Most folks outside the USA (where I live) that I've worked with / spoken to say that we're completely insane and it's embarrassing that we allow the incredible amount of gun violence that we do. All my coworkers overseas think it's unreal and really intolerable that we allow the level of gun violence that we do. People need to quit embarrassing themselves trying to somehow reason away why the USA is an outlier via some kind of cope metric. It's the guns.

fleetwoodsnack 4y ago

It’s really quite simple, you didn’t have to spell out your confusion so elaborately: Statistics deals in degrees; violence against children is something that is sufficiently cognized in absolutes.

chii 4y ago
policy decisions and budget allocation should an emotionless utility function that allocates what produces the best outcome with maximal efficiency. To do otherwise is to be biased one way or another.
JamesBarney 4y ago
If we shutdown all schools we would have 0 mass shootings at schools. This is the only moral choice when dealing with absolutes.
- fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
  Not really, that’s just one (extreme) proposal. I understand the self-gratifying impulse to write something like that though: it absolves the responsibility and work of addressing the problem, and frustrates the conversation away from finding solutions toward justifying the need to find a solution at all. It even makes you feel clever for a half-second. A cute rhetorical parlor trick.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    You said it was an absolute. Once we start weighing the costs against other things we care about like education it becomes a relative cost.
    - fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
      This is a principles based analysis. Pretty common in public policy. Principle 1: Children should not be victims of arbitrary violence Principle 2: Children should be educated These are compatible principles. Your proposal (one of many potential proposals) is to undermine principle two rather than addressing the source of the issue which is violent third parties. And to forestall any further swiss-cheese a priori logic: this is not something fantastical. There are other societies with have honored both principles one and two, and have experienced zero, as in ABSOLUTELY zero acts of mass violence in educational settings.
- odessacubbage 4y ago
  this is unironically my solution

spaceman_2020 4y ago

> given that gun violence, even mass shootings/spree killings, happen in countries with quite strict gun control They absolutely do not, not even remotely close to the scale and frequency in the United States. At least not in countries with equivalent socio-economic metrics as the US (El Salvador does not count).

rjbwork 4y ago
>They absolutely do not, not even remotely close to the scale and frequency in the United States. I thought we weren't analyzing gun violence statistically?
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  We weren't analyzing school shootings statistically, since the statistical incidence of that happening should be as close to zero as possible. But since you walked down the statistical path anyway, the least you can do is not be completely wrong about it.
  - rjbwork 4y ago
    I see that you have a hard time following an argument and the rhetorical techniques I used. I will break it down. I compared the rate of school shooting deaths to suicide deaths for the purpose of pointing out the outsized amount of resources the issue takes up. You claimed that it is wrong to analyze gun violence statistically. I, for the purpose of demonstrating the absurdity of such an assertion, analyzed gun violence using a non-statistical and binary approach. You then took exception to me conceding your point for the purpose of argument and using said non-statistical approach by then bringing statistics back into the mix and arguing that the frequency of gun violence is much higher in the US than other places. So, which is it? Can we, or can we not use statistics to analyze gun violence? If we can, then we can compare the statistics across regulatory regimes and social, economic, and cultural contexts and show that gun violence can be affected in degree by those factors. If we cannot, then we cannot show that regulation is effective, since gun violence still happens in highly varied regulatory regimes and social, economic, and cultural contexts. I would argue that statistics is an appropriate approach since, in my opinion, it allows us to come to a better reckoning of reality. Ultimately, your view is up to you. But you can't have your cake and eat it too here - you have to either admit that the use of statistics is appropriate, or that aforementioned factors are irrelevant to gun violence occurring. They are simply mutually incompatible views.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

avidphantasm 4y ago

> How else would you analyze the issue? Um, I don’t know maybe morally? As in, it is morally abhorrent and unconscionable for children to be preyed upon in school, one of the places they should safe by definition.

rjbwork 4y ago
Okay. I agree that kids should not be preyed upon in schools. Now what?
- avidphantasm 4y ago
  Get rid of fucking assault rifles. Ban their sale. Mandatory buybacks. Jail time for violators. There are lots of other problems contributing to school shootings, e.g. alienated males due to retraction of empire, loss of manufacturing jobs due to financialization of the economy, erosion of mental health safety net due to privatization and disinvestment. All of these issues need to be addressed. But when the patient is bleeding out, you first STOP THE BLEEDING.
  - rjbwork 4y ago
    That won't be happening. The second amendment is a thing. Demographics and opinion polls show that we won't be getting rid of it any time soon. Assault Rifles are in common use, thus will not be banned any time soon. The current regime seems poised to expand, rather than restrict, the types of arms which we have the right to bear. This is ultimately my point - we have a lot of other avenues to address the problem rather than this, IMO, fruitless attempt to deal with the guns.
    - avidphantasm 4y ago
      Contemporary (mis)interpretation of 2A is relatively recent. Nothing is impossible in this realm.
    - spacemanmatt 4y ago
      Careless deference to the 2nd amendment (more generally, deference to "the constitution") is among the reddest flags you can throw.

lkois 4y ago

By binary analysis, it sounds like you mean to claim that 99% effective isn't close enough to 100%. For most people that would be enough. Because I don't know how else you could conclude that gun regulations are bereft of any benefit whatsoever, even hypothetically, without manufacturing such an unfair hurdle to obfuscate the obvious: gun violence requires access to guns. It seems like you want to say that broader mental health problems are more important than gun violence, but that's only more reason to restrict access to guns. Most other places in the world are able to recognise that mental illness and guns are a bad mix, and act accordingly. The US has had nearly one third of the mass shootings in the world since the 60s yet people like you continue to defend access to guns as though it's not a contributing factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...). That alone seems to point to one of those broad problems affecting the populace. It doesn't have to be the only cause, to merit a treatment. The rest of the world doesn't view gun access as a given, or even a good. It's earned and revered, or prevented, but never normalised. It's why Abe's assassin had to make his own gun, because Japanese laws didn't make things easier for him. It's why here in Australia, even gangsters don't even have guns, for the most part https://youtu.be/BYsXCnxbnj0?t=461 https://youtu.be/BYsXCnxbnj0?t=461 But we don't judge the effectiveness of these restrictions by some bogus standard of absolute zero gun violence. We judge them by assessing our rare incidents of gun violence, and whether we think we think we could or should have done more to prevent them from obtaining and using a firearm. And when we look at the numbers of mass shootings in the US, particularly in sensitive places like schools, we wonder how in the world you can think you're doing enough.

tacitusarc 4y ago

This approach assumes a moral equivalence to all gun violence. I believe people tend to assign a significantly higher negative moral weight to the murder of children in general, and children at school in particular. You may disagree with that weighting, but it’s an entirely consistent and valid model.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shkkmo 4y ago
I don't see the moral difference between taking a gun and shooting a kid and bullying and harassing a kid until they are driven to take a gun and shoot themselves. Both are horrific, but the latter seems even more horrific because it includes not only death, but psychological torture before the death.

readme 4y ago

you could start by using actual data your 80:1 stat seems pretty dubious -- do you have a source for it?

res0nat0r 4y ago

Most folks outside the USA (where I live) that I've worked with / spoken to say that we're completely insane and it's embarrassing that we allow the incredible amount of gun violence that we do. All my coworkers overseas think it's unreal and really intolerable that we allow the level of gun violence that we do. People need to quit embarrassing themselves trying to somehow reason away why the USA is an outlier via some kind of cope metric. It's the guns.