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Scientific American’s gun error
- josscrowcroft 14y ago"Fewer guns means fewer deaths from guns" Note that the word "less" doesn't feature once in the linked article.
- chris_wot 14y agoI must be missing something here. Fewer is a synonym for less.
- barking 14y agoFewer is for things you can count, less is for things you measure
- stinky613 14y agoFewer is supposed to be quantitative; less is supposed to be qualitative.
- boboblong 14y agoNo, that's wrong. The distinction is between continuous and discrete, not quantitative and qualitative.
- pretoriusB 14y agoYes, you are missing the fact that less is to be used with continuous (mass) quantities, and fewer with enumerable (count) ones. Less sugar / fewer tarts, less gunpowder, fewer bullets, etc.
- quarterto 14y agoIt's a made-up distinction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less
- charliepark 14y agoWell, sure. But all grammatical distinctions are contrived. It's still the standard way to distinguish between countable / non-countable objects.
- mkr-hn 14y agoliterally noone cares
- manicdee 14y agoThree people cared enough to argue the point right here on HN. Your claim is trivially falsified.
- mkr-hn 14y agoThat was a subtle joke about how HN is already reddit.
- mkr-hn 14y agoI noticed people are downvoting my posts instead of the posts participating in the tangent of vague pedantry. What does the vague pedantry contribute to the discussion that my calling it out (in the same useless, non-specific way) doesn't?
- barking 14y agoYou are correct of course. But, more is the opposite of both fewer and less so logically shouldn't fewer should interchangeable with less?
- alexkus 14y agoNo, English isn't that simple.
- pretoriusB 14y agoNo, because words are not necessarily transitive in this way (heck, even mathematical properties are not necessarily transitive, with the exception of well defined cases).
- oconnore 14y ago"Based on this, framework, one model for the per-capita gun death rate D would be D = V * G * k, where V is the average tendency toward violence and G is availability of guns, with killing power k factored in." Ah yes, the old "write an article based on a model that you made up apparently without validation and then accuse everyone else of not citing evidence".
- pretoriusB 14y agoWell, the Australian cases of drug laws / murders provides enough validation for his case.
- jtc331 14y agoExcept that in both Australia and the UK the gun murder rates were already incredibly low before their respective gun bans. Their bans didn't actually lead to less violence than before their bans; in fact, violence actually increased post-ban.
- lutusp 14y agoThis would only be scientifically defensible if there was another Australia, identical in every respect, with only one thing changed -- the thing being measured.
- mattraibert 14y agoI read it that way at first too. But if you read a little further, the article centers on providing evidence for the model. Specifically he shows evidence that a a state with higher G has linearly higher D (which is exactly what the model states).
- aszepieniec 14y agoAnd then when the evidence does not match up, he fudges with one of his parameters, V, to "explain" it.
- 14y ago
- stinky613 14y ago1) Am I crazy/ignorant for thinking that his formula seems like an arbitrary way to make his argument appear more technical than it is? 2) I really, really get frustrated when editorializers make the leap from correlation to causation without hard evidence.
- wsc981 14y agoAs someone who lives in The Netherlands, I used to be a proponent of very strict gun control. Here in The Netherlands almost no one has a gun. Gun shops are hard to find. It seems to work out well for our country. Then again, I visited Israel 3 times in the past and what's interesting is that lots of people, soldiers in the IDF have guns. You pretty much see guns everywhere. Yet at the same time, you don't have the fear that someone will randomly start shooting people. Last week I came across the following article, that brings up some interesting points on why Israel has far fewer, if any, of the shooting incidents we see in the United States: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/119408/why-israel-has-no-newtowns http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/119408/why... In short, the article brings up the following points: - "An armed society ... is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. It may be a bit odd to think of Israeli society as polite, but when it comes to guns it is. When everyone has a gun, guns are no longer seen as talismans by weak, frightened, and unstable men seeking a sense of self-validation, but as killing machines that are to be handled with the utmost caution and care." - "Rather than spend fortunes and ruin lives in a futile attempt to eradicate every last trigger in America, we would do well to follow Israel’s example and educate gun owners about their rights and responsibilities, so as to foster a culture of sensible and mindful gun ownership. Go to any shooting range in Israel, as a soldier or a civilian, and the instructor is likely to talk about responsibility even before he or she begin to cover the basics of shooting." - "In Israel, still a somewhat socialist country, mental health services are ready available, for free, to anyone. And because so many young Israelis undergo traumatic experiences in the course of their military service, a whole host of nonprofit organizations are on hand to provide counseling and treatment." Perhaps the 3rd point is the most important one.
- desigooner 14y agoThe thing that is easily overlooked is the mandatory military service in Israel. You have trained citizens who know what a gun can do, what the consequences of such an action would be and how to handle a gun in presence of an armed opponent. I suppose it's a state of mind that can't be achieved by going to the gun range a few times a month.
- brudgers 14y ago
- philhippus 14y agoIs this supposed to be some kind of revelatory finding? Let's say there were only one gun in the world; how would that affect deaths from guns?
- mpweiher 14y ago"Revelation?" No, it's pretty much duh. However, it does need saying every once in a while because there are many who deny this obvious connection, and in the US at least they seem to control much of the discourse.
- paulgb 14y agoI don't think there's anything surprising about the stats. The more gun violence around me, the more likely I am to own a gun for self defense. I don't see evidence of causation in the other direction. (For what it's worth, I favor gun control, but I don't like seeing it pushed with bad stats)
- carsongross 14y agoWhat if the causality runs the other way, and more violent social environments inspire gun ownership? Are there other confounding variables that we aren't allowed to think about? Also, fewer.
- bcl 14y agoThe other side: More Guns, Less Crime - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime
- vacri 14y ago"Lott examines the effects of the Brady law." "The third edition of the book is the first study to examine Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws." "Lott spends some time discussing gun ownership rates and crime rates in other countries, such as the United Kingdom." What an informative and illustrative article explaining the other side.
- vacri 14y agoAn assault weapons ban will do little for the murder rate in the US. The US has 17k murders annually, 13k of those are committed with firearms, and 11k of those are committed with handguns. Only 2k out of 13k are committed with longarms (which aren't just assault weapons) - this assault weapons debate is a waste of hot air for both sides, and isn't going to have a meaningful affect on either the real issues or the security theatre.
- zzzeek 14y agothe theory is that decreasing access to large magazines and/or 100-round drums would decrease the mass-murder rate. Considering we're talking about mentally unstable suspects, a little bit of resistance to being able to get a large magazine might mean they can't fire off 30-100 rounds without reloading when they go off on their spree.
- vacri 14y agoMass murder is highly visible, but makes barely a dent in the annual toll. Not to mention that the two biggest school-based mass-murderers in the US did their massacres with legally obtained handguns, not assault weapons. Even if there were ten mass-murders the size of Sandy Hook a year, that'd still make only 300 homicides out of 13k firearm and 17k total. And according to this page [1], there's actually only been about 75 mass-shooting homicides in the US in 2012, including Sandy Hook. 75 is three orders of magnitude less than the annual toll. Also, 'mentally unstable' doesn't mean 'frothing at the mouth and barking at the moon'. Simply because a mentally ill person might have troubles with moral judgments doesn't mean that they lose the capacity for forethought - look at Cho chaining the doors shut before starting. Assault rifles are just simply not the problem in US homicides. [1] http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337221/a-timeline-of-mass-shootings-in-the-us-since-columbine/?mobile=nc http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337221/a-timeli...
- zzzeek 14y agoregardless, there's not much of an argument for 30-round/100-round magazines to be legal. Just like there's not much argument for pipe-bombs to be legal (anyone can make one, right ? is the illegality of easy-to-build bombs "security theater" or just common sense?). These devices have no legitimate uses by civilians.
- gojomo 14y agoAfter reading this, I remain unconvinced that legislation like "limits on magazine capacity and regulation of ammunition sales" will make Alaskans desire gun ownership, and shoot each other, at rates more like New Jerseyans.
- clarky07 14y agoThis is a bullshit article. Why are we trying to minimize "gun deaths?" What the article doesn't mention is that most of those are suicides that would just do it another way if they were less readily available. Violent crime in the UK is 4x what it is in the US yet there are less gun deaths because of the strict gun control. Who gives a shit if guns are involved or not?
- clarky07 14y agoFor those that like citing stats: Murder rate in 2011 Montana - 2.8 New Jersey - 4.3 http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-... Violent Crime rates - http://www.infoplease.com/us/statistics/crime-rate-state.html http://www.infoplease.com/us/statistics/crime-rate-state.htm... Please note DC, the place with the most gun control in the country, is also by far the most violent, with the most murders per capita by a huge stretch.
- bane 14y ago> Please note DC, the place with the most gun control in the country, is also by far the most violent, with the most murders per capita by a huge stretch. It's worth it to note then that as gun control has increased in D.C., the murder rate has dropped tremendously. http://news.yahoo.com/dc-pace-fewer-100-homicides-2012-094716815.html http://news.yahoo.com/dc-pace-fewer-100-homicides-2012-09471... from ~500 in the early 1990s to under 90 this year.
- clarky07 14y agoWhile true, all crime in the US has dropped significantly in the last 20 years. Many have suggested Roe v Wade had a big impact in this, but I'm not sure it's conclusive. From Freakanomics, the theory being that many would be kids in bad situations would have ended up as criminals 18 years later were instead aborted. This has led to a big overall crime drop. Whether it's actually because of this isn't the point though, crime has dropped a lot everywhere, and the violent crime in DC is still much much higher than other places with far less strict gun control. FWIW, the strict gun control in DC started in the late 70's. It may have gotten stricter over time, but I'd say it's a stretch to say that it getting stricter 15 years later was causal to the crime drop.
- aszepieniec 14y agoGun control advocates cite statistics of the kind "how many deaths are caused by guns" as justification for more gun control. Frankly, whatever the statistic is, it is too high. But that is not the point. But in order to successfully make an argument along the lines of "more gun control will save lives", they must also cite statistics of the kind "how many lives are saved by guns". Obviously, if guns cause the death of 12000 people yearly and save the lives of 100000 people yearly, gun control is a bad idea. On the other hand, if they only save the lives of 100 people yearly, it might be a good idea after all. I have yet to see a single article on the internet citing such a number. Why is it so hard to find such a statistic? The number of lives saved by guns (not counting police and military guns) is quite impossible to count. One might succeed in counting the number of cases where guns are used in self-defense, even though these cases usually go unnoticed. But how do you count the number of cases where the would-be perpetrator chooses not to commit the crime on account of a gun being present in defense of the would-be victim? Or doesn't even start to think about the crime? This is a classic case of Bastiat's "that which is not seen". Because the statistic cannot be calculated, people do not take it into account. But they should if they want to make an effective argument for more gun control based on statistics. Because the relevant statistics cannot be calculated, statistics should not be used in policy debates such as the one about gun control. Rather, let us reason about the unseen consequences of the actions of individuals as well as of the government. Without involving emotional arguments from either side.
- vacri 14y agoIt's also a classic case of selective reporting - you want to include all these invisible cases of defensive gun uses that don't get reported, but you're not mentioning criminal uses of firearms - muggings, holdups, gang activity. If you hold up a store with a gun, it doesn't necessarily follow that you must kill someone, so that stat doesn't get much press - in exactly the same way that defensive gun use doesn't get much press. Well... accurate press. It gets plenty of emotive press. As for looking for such a statistic, you can start with Kleck in the early 90s, but you should also read criticisms of his - it was a shoddy piece of work with a wide number of fundamental flaws, but it was heavily used by gun advocates at the time. It put 'defensive gun uses' at 2.5M/year and 'lives saved' at 200k/year. The latter number has absolutely no realistic merit when compared against contemporary countries (it would mean that without guns the US murder rate would rise from 4.2 to ~50. For comparison, the current highest homicide rate of any first-world, industrialised nation is 4.2 (which itself is currently triple its contemporaries), and only four countries in the entire world have a rate higher than 50. Hopefully the above paragraph would help suggest why saying 100k lives saved/year is also extremely unlikely. At 100k you're looking at a murder rate of about 25. Mexico with all its poverty, social troubles, and drug wars only manages 17. Does anyone honestly think that the social fabric of the US is so abysmally weak as to collapse that badly in the event of gun reform?
- sparkie 14y agoWhere are the figures for government-caused deaths by guns? Here's an idea. If we want less guns, perhaps we should stop manufacturing them to sell to government.
- lutusp 14y ago> Less guns means less deaths from guns (groan) s/less/fewer/ Use "less" for continuous quantities. Less water. Use "fewer" for enumerable things. Fewer gallons of water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less
- stevedekorte 14y agoFor a look at more data (and different conclusions) see: http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_Kate...
- astraelraen 14y agoI love the articles and commentary comparing US gun laws to other countries in the world. There is no comparision and the US will never have gun laws similar to other nations. Any discussion on banning weapons is moot considering that the 2nd amendment exists and has been upheld by the Supreme Court numerous times in numerous ways. Given the high requirements to repeal a portion of the constitution that will never happen. I even wonder if another "assault weapon" ban would hold up if challenged considering the Supreme Court overturned both DC's and Chicago's handgun bans? The previous assault weapons ban was a joke anyway just labeling certain features as evil and banning them if you had too many evil features on a gun. Maybe limiting magazine size could do some "good" but I find it hard to believe changing magazines takes any significant amount of time if the shooter has any experience with the weapon.