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Prediction: Israel is attacked in the next 1.5 years? No, it's Paris, France. (Page 6)
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subego
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Jul 17, 2016, 01:05 PM
 
While this specific scenario didn't pop into my head, as information dribbled out there seemed to be obvious problems with how it was planned.

The first was not only did they seemingly lack a plan to depose the current leader, the timing actually made it impossible.

It was a "small" coup. Only suicidal people do that. Coups are precipitated by the military elites. Military elites aren't suicidal.
     
Chongo
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Jul 17, 2016, 01:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
While this specific scenario didn't pop into my head, as information dribbled out there seemed to be obvious problems with how it was planned.

The first was not only did they seemingly lack a plan to depose the current leader, the timing actually made it impossible.

It was a "small" coup. Only suicidal people do that. Coups are precipitated by the military elites. Military elites aren't suicidal.
Word is Erdagon wants to purge the military of "secularists" because he wants to reestablish the Turkish caliphate.
45/47
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jul 17, 2016, 04:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
As Snow-i said, it's not gloating, it's frustration.
Frustration at what?

Defending your position? You don't have too, you could switch sides. Then you might understand frustration.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jul 17, 2016, 04:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
It's defeated sarcasm/cynicism, not smugness, as yet another 100 or so people are dead and we're no closer to figuring out how to stop this. And the last few times this has happened we had to hear you and many others, including the potus & HRC, on about how we stop this with gun control.

if you'd use your brain instead of your vagina to see why I'm sayin what I'm saying, you might see why beating me over the head with your own tactic gets the response it gets. So I'll eat your bag of dicks just as soon as y'all stop acting like said bag of dicks. You don't get to take the high road here, Mr Pot. The kettle is calling you out.
People using their genitals instead of their brains are very much the problem but its not my reproductive organs getting anyone killed.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
subego
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Jul 17, 2016, 06:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Frustration at what?

Defending your position? You don't have too, you could switch sides. Then you might understand frustration.
To answer the first question, I'd look to the utter and complete dismissal which follows it.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jul 17, 2016, 07:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
To answer the first question, I'd look to the utter and complete dismissal which follows it.
I was going to mention I had several snarky suggestions for why you might be frustrated but none of them made you look any better than the gloating.

Countries with sensible gun laws don't have mass shootings. The incidences of familial murder-suicides are dramatically fewer, the murder rates are lower in general and now we can add that they don't start wars against their own police forces. Not to mention their police forces don't gun them down indiscriminately because when they shoot suspects, its still a big deal.
Americans are more likely to die by keeping guns in their houses.
Concealed and open carry doesn't work. Look what happened in Dallas, Cleveland are now trying to temp-ban open carry for the RNC.
The two biggest advocate groups, the NRA and their GOP puppets both ban guns from inside their national conventions (something which should tell you more than all the above statistics put together);
A death toll of innocent bystanders numbering into the millions over the last century or so including a class of seven year olds and now a spate of cop killings and still your politicians won't even engage in a rational discussion and you're frustrated?

Cry me a ****ing river.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Chongo
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Jul 17, 2016, 08:20 PM
 
45/47
     
subego
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Jul 18, 2016, 05:01 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
I was going to mention I had several snarky suggestions for why you might be frustrated but none of them made you look any better than the gloating.

Countries with sensible gun laws don't have mass shootings. The incidences of familial murder-suicides are dramatically fewer, the murder rates are lower in general and now we can add that they don't start wars against their own police forces. Not to mention their police forces don't gun them down indiscriminately because when they shoot suspects, its still a big deal.
Americans are more likely to die by keeping guns in their houses.
Concealed and open carry doesn't work. Look what happened in Dallas, Cleveland are now trying to temp-ban open carry for the RNC.
The two biggest advocate groups, the NRA and their GOP puppets both ban guns from inside their national conventions (something which should tell you more than all the above statistics put together);
A death toll of innocent bystanders numbering into the millions over the last century or so including a class of seven year olds and now a spate of cop killings and still your politicians won't even engage in a rational discussion and you're frustrated?

Cry me a ****ing river.
I've consistently posited this is a cost-benefit analysis. Data is king.

From this vantage, a half-dozen appeals to emotion and a single sensationalized statistic are in fact frustrating.

Note, I didn't make any snarky comments, and voiced displeasure with those who did.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jul 18, 2016, 07:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
I've consistently posited this is a cost-benefit analysis. Data is king.
Literally all the data is against you though. You are not treating it as king.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Paco500
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Jul 18, 2016, 09:57 AM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
Norway's gun laws are some of the least restrictive in Europe. You could have discovered this with a quick Google search. This doesn't help your argument.
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Jul 18, 2016, 10:16 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Literally all the data is against you though.
It really isn't.
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Jul 18, 2016, 10:17 AM
 
Originally Posted by Paco500 View Post
Norway's gun laws are some of the least restrictive in Europe.
Which are still outrageously restrictive compared to the USA or even Canada.
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Snow-i  (op)
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Jul 18, 2016, 10:55 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
To answer the first question, I'd look to the utter and complete dismissal which follows it.
This.
     
subego
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Jul 18, 2016, 12:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Literally all the data is against you though. You are not treating it as king.
How the cost data will be interpreted hinges on the benefit analysis.

If the benefit is low from an objective standpoint, the cost data is against me.

The degree of benefit I'd put in the category of "debatable". It's certainly not cut and dried to the point an analysis placing it on either end is inherently worthy of contempt.
     
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Jul 18, 2016, 12:33 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
It really isn't.
It really is, you just choose to ignore data that doesn't suit your views.
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Paco500
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Jul 18, 2016, 06:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
Which are still outrageously restrictive compared to the USA or even Canada.
And less people are killed by guns. Duh.
     
Paco500
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Jul 18, 2016, 06:13 PM
 
Actually, looking it over, Norway is really not much more restrictive than Canada- more restrictive in some ways, less so in others.
     
Chongo
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Jul 18, 2016, 07:05 PM
 
45/47
     
Paco500
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Jul 18, 2016, 09:06 PM
 
Well thank goodness he didn't have a gun or he might have actually killed someone.
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Jul 18, 2016, 11:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
It really is, you just choose to ignore data that doesn't suit your views.
It's illogical to believe what you believe while choosing to ignore factors that cause more deaths each year than guns (like individually driven vehicles).
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Waragainstsleep
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Jul 19, 2016, 03:32 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
It's illogical to believe what you believe while choosing to ignore factors that cause more deaths each year than guns (like individually driven vehicles).
Yes, guns are less deadly than cancer so I suppose its stupid to ban guns without first banning cancer as well?
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subego
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Jul 19, 2016, 06:33 AM
 
No, but the incidence rate of say, death by mass shooting is so low one gets into a situation where it becomes hard to justify what would need to be done to achieve such a tiny result.

With mass shootings it's about 0.2 per 100K. Closer to 0.1 if you're not in a gang.

Compare this to suicide by gun, where it's 7 per 100K.

What's the rate for a call to action due to suicides* vs. mass shootings? It's almost as if the mass shootings covered by the media, which are for all intents and purposes terrorist attacks, achieve the intended purpose of terrorist attacks. They engender a response wholly out of proportion to the attack.


*I know you personally give suicides the play they deserve. I'm talking about everyone else.
( Last edited by subego; Jul 19, 2016 at 06:51 AM. )
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jul 19, 2016, 10:21 AM
 
Don't forget all the non-mass shootings. Theres a lot of them. Murders and accidents.
And of course it doesn't get counted in the murder rate when the cops shoot a suspect but if 99% of suspects were unarmed, how many fewer would be shot resisting or escaping? Or co-operating for that matter.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
subego
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Jul 19, 2016, 10:39 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Don't forget all the non-mass shootings. Theres a lot of them. Murders and accidents.
My point in bringing up suicides was to contrast the amount of time spent debating it (close to nil) with the incidence rate, which is higher than all the others combined.

Compare that to mass killings by whatever means, which is what precipitated this discussion. How much time is spent debating that.

And lest one accuse me of shying away from data (ahem), I'll mention another thing which is consistently glossed over: injury. I don't have the figures on hand but one has to presume the numbers are 5 to 10 times higher. This cost must go into the equation as well.

There's very little in this debate I forget.
     
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Jul 19, 2016, 10:56 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Yes, guns are less deadly than cancer so I suppose its stupid to ban guns without first banning cancer as well?
It would make sense to put more into battling cancer and quit fretting over guns, which can't be removed from society anyway. Yes.
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Waragainstsleep
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Jul 19, 2016, 03:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
It would make sense to put more into battling cancer and quit fretting over guns, which can't be removed from society anyway. Yes.
Because no other society has ever done it.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
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Jul 19, 2016, 03:56 PM
 
They sure haven't.
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Waragainstsleep
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Jul 19, 2016, 09:11 PM
 
I don't want ≠ it can't happen.
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Jul 20, 2016, 12:03 AM
 
It's bound to be more successful than the taxation "whack-a-mole" we play now.
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Jul 21, 2016, 05:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
My point in bringing up suicides was to contrast the amount of time spent debating it (close to nil) with the incidence rate, which is higher than all the others combined.

Compare that to mass killings by whatever means, which is what precipitated this discussion. How much time is spent debating that.

And lest one accuse me of shying away from data (ahem), I'll mention another thing which is consistently glossed over: injury. I don't have the figures on hand but one has to presume the numbers are 5 to 10 times higher. This cost must go into the equation as well.

There's very little in this debate I forget.
I thought this was well thought out and raises several good points worthy of discussion.

Crickets from the anti-2A crowd...please forgive my frustration.

I'll add another angle to consider this from. Once we've considered the incidence rate of negative interactions involving armed citizens, lets consider as well the positive. I.e. Defensive Gun Uses.

Many in the media don't count the times a citizen defended themselves using a gun without firing a shot (merely its presence de-escalated the situation). The lowest estimates available are around 83,000 per year, and range as high as 4.7 million per year. Neither number is small or deserves to be ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use

Data is king. Waragainstsleep: care to offer your thoughts on subego's analysis and/or the data I've offered up for consideration? I've talked about this several times before, and you've never addressed this aspect of the equation.
( Last edited by Snow-i; Jul 21, 2016 at 06:04 PM. Reason: typo)
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jul 21, 2016, 08:49 PM
 
I didn't pipe up because all those things Subego brought up support the anti-gun argument.

You have a problem with excessive numbers of murders, mass-murders, suicides, accidental killings and I too strongly suspect shooting injuries. All of these made worse by Americas love of guns. All of which would almost certainly be reduced at least a little, but in likelihood a lot by removing hand guns and anything not used for hunting from circulation. The evidence for this being that countries that don't have guns everywhere don't have anywhere near these rates of violent deaths and injuries.

Defensive gun uses is a difficult one to track for sure, but however significant those numbers might be, how many of them would be nullified if there were no gun on the other side of the equation? You're left only being able to count instances where someone with a gun has dissuaded someone with a knife/bat/club or greater capacity for unarmed violence from a violent confrontation. I'd wager that number is not terribly significant, certainly in the face of all the gun deaths and injuries.

It certainly would be fascinating to see the data on numbers of gunshot injuries. Also the medical bills. Once upon a time our NHS started billing costs for RTAs to car insurance companies. Perhaps your medical insurers could start suing gun makers to get some of their outlay back.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Snow-i  (op)
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Jul 22, 2016, 02:15 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
I didn't pipe up because all those things Subego brought up support the anti-gun argument.
What world do you live in?

You have a problem with excessive numbers of murders, mass-murders, suicides, accidental killings and I too strongly suspect shooting injuries. All of these made worse by Americas love of guns. All of which would almost certainly be reduced at least a little, but in likelihood a lot by removing hand guns and anything not used for hunting from circulation. The evidence for this being that countries that don't have guns everywhere don't have anywhere near these rates of violent deaths and injuries.
Many of them also don't have as many black people. Does that make them racist?

Correlation does not equal causation. It's a basic tenet of math that you learn in 3rd grade. Now, do you want to address the metrics sub ego and I have offered? Or do you want to run from the challenge by making another broad statement by using statistics that don't tell nearly the whole story?

Defensive gun uses is a difficult one to track for sure, but however significant those numbers might be, how many of them would be nullified if there were no gun on the other side of the equation?
What? In the vast majority most cases there is no gun on the other side.

You're left only being able to count instances where someone with a gun has dissuaded someone with a knife/bat/club or greater capacity for unarmed violence from a violent confrontation. I'd wager that number is not terribly significant, certainly in the face of all the gun deaths and injuries.
No, because you made a faulty assumption that in most of those cases the a gun was used against another person with a gun.


It certainly would be fascinating to see the data on numbers of gunshot injuries. Also the medical bills. Once upon a time our NHS started billing costs for RTAs to car insurance companies. Perhaps your medical insurers could start suing gun makers to get some of their outlay back.


Is the UK going to sue the makers of cutlery used in knife attacks or car manufacturers for murders? Your doctrine would demand it.
     
subego
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Jul 22, 2016, 04:53 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
I didn't pipe up because all those things Subego brought up support the anti-gun argument.
What doesn't support the anti-gun argument is the proportion of what I'll charitably call "discussion", and attempted legislation in the wake of mass shootings, compared to their incidence rate.

The proposition before us is a cost-benefit analysis. This is a consistently appearing, concrete, and overwhelming example of a distorted analytical process.

If one wants to castigate those on the pro-gun side who shirk their responsibility in terms of acknowledging the true and full cost of a permissive gun policy, I'm there in agreement, but unless the argument is I deserve the label, that's not the discussion being had right now.

As to whether or not the label is appropriate for me, I quote a post above which argues I am undeserving.

Since the cost side of the analysis isn't contentious as far as this discussion is concerned, this leaves the benefit side. While all anti-gun arguments by no means suffer from the analytical failure demonstrated with mass shootings, that's the only benefit analysis which has occurred so far, barring their status as fetishes.

That American fetishize guns, while true, is again not the discussion being had. Allow me to state in no uncertain terms indulging a fetish is an invalid benefit, and arguing otherwise, whether consciously or unconsciously, is worthy of nothing but scorn.


Now, despite the sizable cost, I have still come to the conclusion the benefits outweigh it. I'm more than willing to discuss the flaws in my analytical process, but the discussion hasn't progressed past the point of insinuations said process could be anything other than a despicable proxy argument for my devotion to killing machines.

And I should eat dick.
( Last edited by subego; Jul 23, 2016 at 09:24 AM. )
     
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Jul 22, 2016, 03:00 PM
 
Six dead at Munich mall.
News from The Associated Press
45/47
     
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Jul 22, 2016, 03:13 PM
 
It was a brown man screaming Arabic, but let's not assume he was Muslim.

****ing hell, I'm just numb, this is absolutely insane.
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Jul 25, 2016, 08:29 PM
 
Taken me a while to get back to this thread, sorry.

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
What world do you live in?
One where I am in very little danger of ever being shot.



Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Many of them also don't have as many black people. Does that make them racist?
To the best of my knowledge, guns have yet to start falling out of the uteruses of American women.

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Correlation does not equal causation. It's a basic tenet of math that you learn in 3rd grade. Now, do you want to address the metrics sub ego and I have offered? Or do you want to run from the challenge by making another broad statement by using statistics that don't tell nearly the whole story?

Firstly since we can't do lab tests with human lives at stake, correlations and hypotheses are the best we've really got. But the correlations are tremendously strong, the hypothesis is tremendously simple and logical and the alternatives are few. Every other developed nation has stupendously fewer gun deaths than you, and they typically drop to their lowest levels with the banning or heavy restrictions of firearms. The only semi-logical alternative explanation I can think of is that Americans are just several orders of magnitude more violent than everyone else. I won't rule it out but is that what you believe? How do explain that when all of you are genetically derived from all of us? Just an unhappy coincidence? Environmental factors? I'm clutching at straws for you.

Secondly, I might need you to spell out these metrics, though I'll have a go at addressing some.

Fast food is quicker, easier and cheaper than healthy food. Because we enjoy it and its more convenient, we eat too much of it even though its bad for us. Because its there. When it wasn't there, you had to cook and your meals were heartier and healthier. The point being, when something is available, it will be used more readily than if it isn't.
Now I'd like to think that if I lived with a gun at my side, that no matter how angry I got during a screaming fight with my girlfriend, I would never ever pull my gun out and so much as threaten her. I expect you feel the same way about yourself and your significant other (for the record I don't have a girlfriend but you take my point). Thats because we aren't idiots and we know that guns can kill people and that losing loved ones is painful. Killing them yourself more so. We also know that in both our countries there are legions of morons who don't think before they act when they are sober, let alone when they are not. This means that a suicidal impulse that might otherwise have passed due to the hassle of driving to the nearest bridge or tall building, or googling how to tie a noose and finding an appropriate combination of bean to hang from and stool to fall off of, can be indulged as fleetingly as it might normally have passed, thanks to that handgun in your side holster that you set down next to your beer when you got in.
That massive fight with your wife after several too many where she pushes you too far one too many times so you finally just grab your gun and shoot her. Or she shoots you. Or one of shoots those damn kids. These things all happen on a regular basis in America. They don't really happen over here.
Its news in my country when a kid falls into a river and drowns. Its barely news in your country when another one shoots himself or his toddler sister, or his mother in Walmart. It happens every week. These are local interest pieces at best.

So that covers escalation of more trivial violence, accidents and suicides. Perhaps now you see why I thought Subego's list supported my point. Because it does.



Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
What? In the vast majority most cases there is no gun on the other side.

because you made a faulty assumption that in most of those cases the a gun was used against another person with a gun.
OK, I did make that assumption. I'm not entirely convinced you aren't making the opposite assumption but assuming(!) you aren't, how many incidents have escalated after starting with something more mundane like a bat or a knife then another guy pulls a gun so two others pull guns and then theres a bloodbath. Or some terribly inaccurate shooting as everyone panics and fires blindly while running away and a couple of people get hit in the nearly random crossfire?



As far as the mass shootings and subsequent legislation goes, these incidents are the only ones with any chance of shocking your populace into a change of heart or into action. Thats why people try to use them. Try to find a silver lining in a tragedy so it might prevent the next one. These alone are not a cost/benefit analysis, they are a short window of opportunity or potential for positive change. Its why the right have gone from condemning the first lefty to politicise each one, to beating them to it and taking away the power of the moment.
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Jul 26, 2016, 01:54 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Taken me a while to get back to this thread, sorry.
No problem.


One where I am in very little danger of ever being shot.
Same goes for us in the US, especially since criminals are not likely to attempt to burgle, rob, or rape an armed citizen.




To the best of my knowledge, guns have yet to start falling out of the uteruses of American women.
So what? Your argument is "correlation = causation", so is mine.



Firstly since we can't do lab tests with human lives at stake, correlations and hypotheses are the best we've really got.
No, they're really not. Correlation doesn't even begin to accurately interpret the data. Where you agree data is king, you wish to ignore basic statistics?
Here's some reading for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correl...mply_causation

But the correlations are tremendously strong, the hypothesis is tremendously simple and logical and the alternatives are few.
It's not logical in the least. Infact, it's a logical fallacy.

Every other developed nation has stupendously fewer gun deaths than you, and they typically drop to their lowest levels with the banning or heavy restrictions of firearms.
They also have alot less black people. That's a correlation, would you like to apply your logic to that?

The only semi-logical alternative explanation I can think of is that Americans are just several orders of magnitude more violent than everyone else.
That's because you're ignoring a myriad of factors and statistical tendencies, and failing to understand the data that we do have.

I won't rule it out but is that what you believe? How do explain that when all of you are genetically derived from all of us? Just an unhappy coincidence? Environmental factors? I'm clutching at straws for you.
Every nation, every culture, every group of people are influenced by a myriad of circumstances. If you remove gang, drug & urban gun violence from the numbers, you'll see that our violence ratio is not at all out of the ordinary. You're oversimplifying the issue to fit your worldview, and even though you agree "data is king" you don't want to look at the data from any other vantage then the broadest possible.

Secondly, I might need you to spell out these metrics, though I'll have a go at addressing some.

Fast food is quicker, easier and cheaper than healthy food. Because we enjoy it and its more convenient, we eat too much of it even though its bad for us. Because its there. When it wasn't there, you had to cook and your meals were heartier and healthier. The point being, when something is available, it will be used more readily than if it isn't.
Heartier and healthier?

People are living longer now than ever before. According to your above logic, that means fast food is healthier than home cooked meals, right? No, of course not - there are other factors that influence longevity to a high degree. Just like the violent crime/murder ratio and gun ownership.

You know what else is a correlation? Gun ownership is inversely correlated to violent crime. The violent crime rate has been dropping for twenty some years while gun ownership in the US is skyrocketing. Can you explain that?

Now I'd like to think that if I lived with a gun at my side, that no matter how angry I got during a screaming fight with my girlfriend, I would never ever pull my gun out and so much as threaten her. I expect you feel the same way about yourself and your significant other (for the record I don't have a girlfriend but you take my point).
Being a gun owner myself, and having my fair share of arguments with girlfriends, family, etc, I can tell you unequivocally that the thought has never even entered my mind. Nor does it for the vast majority of gun owners.

Thats because we aren't idiots and we know that guns can kill people and that losing loved ones is painful. Killing them yourself more so. We also know that in both our countries there are legions of morons who don't think before they act when they are sober, let alone when they are not. This means that a suicidal impulse that might otherwise have passed due to the hassle of driving to the nearest bridge or tall building, or googling how to tie a noose and finding an appropriate combination of bean to hang from and stool to fall off of, can be indulged as fleetingly as it might normally have passed, thanks to that handgun in your side holster that you set down next to your beer when you got in.
So now you want to talk suicides? My take - if you want to kick the bucket on your own, that's entirely up to you. Trying to protect people from themselves is no reason to abolish a constitutional right.

That massive fight with your wife after several too many where she pushes you too far one too many times so you finally just grab your gun and shoot her.
Uh,, what? That's your argument? Husbands and wives fight ergo we should abolish the 2A?

Or she shoots you. Or one of shoots those damn kids. These things all happen on a regular basis in America. They don't really happen over here.
What you call a "regular basis" amounts to a statistical outlier - it does not happen nearly with the frequency you imply. What does happen, though, on a more regular basis, is an outside intruder comes into the family home, robs, rapes, and murders.

Its news in my country when a kid falls into a river and drowns.
It's news here too.

Its barely news in your country when another one shoots himself or his toddler sister, or his mother in Walmart. It happens every week. These are local interest pieces at best.
Could you provide some data to back up your claims? It does not happen "every week", and you're using your own anecdotes in place of actual data.

So that covers escalation of more trivial violence, accidents and suicides. Perhaps now you see why I thought Subego's list supported my point. Because it does.
Only if you ignore the data, and instead replace it with anecdotes about what you see in the news & a logical fallacy that correlation = causation.






OK, I did make that assumption. I'm not entirely convinced you aren't making the opposite assumption but assuming(!) you aren't, how many incidents have escalated after starting with something more mundane like a bat or a knife then another guy pulls a gun so two others pull guns and then theres a bloodbath. Or some terribly inaccurate shooting as everyone panics and fires blindly while running away and a couple of people get hit in the nearly random crossfire?
I mean, you're envisioning some horrifying situations that absolutely have occurred - though when taken against the data and subego's point that this is a cost-benefit analysis, your words lose weight as you're dealing in hypotheticals and without considering that these instances occur so rarely as to be outweighed by the good an armed citizenry provides.

No one wants to see the situations you're talking about, but the good thing is that they happen so rarely as to be but a very small part of the equation. Those situations, with or without legal guns, are going to happen no matter what. It's what happens in a nation of 330+ million people. An armed citizen with a gun at least has a chance to prevent them - unfortunately it's impossible to track horrifying situations that never happened because a good man or woman was there and had the tools to put a stop to it.


As far as the mass shootings and subsequent legislation goes, these incidents are the only ones with any chance of shocking your populace into a change of heart or into action.
Perhaps using the media to sensationalize an issue and let uninformed opinions rule the day isn't a good thing, don't you think? Afterall, the media profits from these situations.

Thats why people try to use them. Try to find a silver lining in a tragedy so it might prevent the next one. These alone are not a cost/benefit analysis, they are a short window of opportunity or potential for positive change. Its why the right have gone from condemning the first lefty to politicise each one, to beating them to it and taking away the power of the moment.
It's not a window of opportunity - it's a window of propaganda. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone that thinks its a good idea to make policy in the wake of or in response to a horrifying situation. Afterall, that's how we got the Patriot act and essentially the gutting of the 4th amendment. I assert that this is a terrible methodology. The ends should never justify the means, especially in a free society. And since we've yet to discuss any of the actual data and how to interpret it, I posit that should be our next point of discussion.


Can you reconcile the inverse correlation between gun ownership & homicide rate? Using your paradigm of "correlation = causation", it seems more guns are the answer. I know this not to be true, but I want to get your take on it.
( Last edited by Snow-i; Jul 26, 2016 at 02:05 PM. Reason: fixed img tags)
     
Chongo
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Jul 26, 2016, 01:57 PM
 
No gun needed here.

Two ISIS knifemen who stormed a church in Normandy forced an elderly priest to kneel before filming themselves butchering him and performing a 'sermon in Arabic' at the altar, a terrified witness has revealed.
The attackers, claimed as 'soldiers' by ISIS, were both known to French police before they cut the throat of 84-year-old priest Jacques Hamel at the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen.
Both were shot dead by police marksmen as they emerged from the building shouting 'Allahu Akbar' following the attack that also left a nun critically injured.
French President Francois Hollande, who visited the scene today, said the country is 'at war' with ISIS after the terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.


Read more: ISIS knifemen film themselves murdering French priest in Normandy attack | Daily Mail Online
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Jul 26, 2016, 11:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Same goes for us in the US, especially since criminals are not likely to attempt to burgle, rob, or rape an armed citizen.
Our robbers and rapists don't need guns, so they don't carry them. Yours need them because their victims probably have them.

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
So what? Your argument is "correlation = causation", so is mine.
More like, its the best explanation I've heard. By a long way.

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
It's not logical in the least. Infact, it's a logical fallacy.
If there are no guns, there can be no gun deaths. How is that a logical fallacy?

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
They also have alot less black people. That's a correlation, would you like to apply your logic to that?
Less as in a lower total number? Or as a percentage?

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
That's because you're ignoring a myriad of factors and statistical tendencies, and failing to understand the data that we do have.


Every nation, every culture, every group of people are influenced by a myriad of circumstances. If you remove gang, drug & urban gun violence from the numbers, you'll see that our violence ratio is not at all out of the ordinary. You're oversimplifying the issue to fit your worldview, and even though you agree "data is king" you don't want to look at the data from any other vantage then the broadest possible.
So you tell me I'm deliberately ignoring parts of the data, then you remove all the parts that don't suit your argument. There is no justification for removing gang violence let alone drug and urban violence from the picture. Thats all relevant.


Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Heartier and healthier?

People are living longer now than ever before. According to your above logic, that means fast food is healthier than home cooked meals, right? No, of course not - there are other factors that influence longevity to a high degree. Just like the violent crime/murder ratio and gun ownership.
OK, I guess that analogy doesn't stand up so well. Whatever happened to the obesity epidemic eh? I blame Pokémon Go.


Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
You know what else is a correlation? Gun ownership is inversely correlated to violent crime. The violent crime rate has been dropping for twenty some years while gun ownership in the US is skyrocketing. Can you explain that?
You're turning correlation into a dirty word here but science starts with correlation. Then you try to explain it, ideally you test your explanation. Where you can't do experiments you have to settle for trying to come up with other equally plausible opposing explanations. Sometimes explanations can be shot down with other explanations.
I know that there is limited if any data on how many individuals own those 300m or so guns. I know that its suspected to be a case where some individuals own many guns each. Its a pity about the data because the guns per person is the relevant statistic. One person can only fire two guns at a time and even then thats atypically outside of action movies. So a guy with 10 guns isn't necessarily any more dangerous than a guy with 2.

Or maybe its because your cops adopted a policy of killing violent criminals while they're still teenagers.


Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Being a gun owner myself, and having my fair share of arguments with girlfriends, family, etc, I can tell you unequivocally that the thought has never even entered my mind. Nor does it for the vast majority of gun owners.
Glad to hear it. But surely you acknowledge there are a lot of angry, drunks, junkies, lunatics, idiots and assholes out there who might not be so possessed of self control?

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
So now you want to talk suicides? My take - if you want to kick the bucket on your own, that's entirely up to you. Trying to protect people from themselves is no reason to abolish a constitutional right.
Modern thinking is that suicide mostly happens to people with depression and that depression should be treated, rather than just letting people kill themselves.

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Uh,, what? That's your argument? Husbands and wives fight ergo we should abolish the 2A?
Part of my argument is that domestic disputes seem to very often escalate due to the presence of firearms.

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
What you call a "regular basis" amounts to a statistical outlier - it does not happen nearly with the frequency you imply. What does happen, though, on a more regular basis, is an outside intruder comes into the family home, robs, rapes, and murders.
Again, our burglars don't carry guns. Because burglary will get you 5 years if you are a repeat offender but armed robbery will often get you 20 or 30 first time around.

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
It's news here too.
I heard about the kid near Disneyland who got hauled off by an alligator. I suspect that had more to do with the alligator and Disneyland than the kid.


Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Could you provide some data to back up your claims? It does not happen "every week", and you're using your own anecdotes in place of actual data.
Gun Violence Archive

Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Only if you ignore the data, and instead replace it with anecdotes about what you see in the news & a logical fallacy that correlation = causation.
353 anecdotes aged 11 or under so far this year according to the above site. Given that rate, I should add "at the time of writing". Seems likely to be higher by the time you see it.




Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
I mean, you're envisioning some horrifying situations that absolutely have occurred - though when taken against the data and subego's point that this is a cost-benefit analysis, your words lose weight as you're dealing in hypotheticals and without considering that these instances occur so rarely as to be outweighed by the good an armed citizenry provides.

No one wants to see the situations you're talking about, but the good thing is that they happen so rarely as to be but a very small part of the equation. Those situations, with or without legal guns, are going to happen no matter what. It's what happens in a nation of 330+ million people. An armed citizen with a gun at least has a chance to prevent them - unfortunately it's impossible to track horrifying situations that never happened because a good man or woman was there and had the tools to put a stop to it.
There have been a good number of incidents where we know that good men with guns (or at least men with guns who weren't criminals) were present. In Dallas they got in the way. The latest drive by on those teenagers they were powerless to stop. But you're right, we'll never know how many times the good guys made a difference either way. Seems like it could be possible to track incidents of vigilante heroism, but you can never track those who choose not to use their guns unless they own up.

Then you have to consider that 2A isn't really there for self defence, let alone vigilanteism.


You write off those incidents which among a big population are certainly not a big percentage. My argument is that they are simply if not easily preventable. Your population is five times ours. Your gun death rate is in vast excess of that. Its still thousands of people losing their lives each year and to me it looks needless. So yes, we finally come back to the cost benefit. Given the available data, my opinion remains that the benefit is frankly pitiful, because most of the need for protective weapons would be mitigated by a lack of offensive ones.

One of the most disturbing things about the whole issue is the lack of important data. I would think both sides would want to know the truth, even open to some interpretation. I know the NRA tries hard to block such data being recorded. This speaks volumes to me. I know many of their members are paranoid lunatics but something tells me the block has nothing to do with a CDC conspiracy theory.
( Last edited by Waragainstsleep; Jul 27, 2016 at 05:34 AM. Reason: Sleep deprivation.)
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Jul 26, 2016, 11:17 PM
 
^^^^^^^^
As I've pointed out before, the machete is becoming the weapon of choice.
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Jul 27, 2016, 12:28 AM
 
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Jul 27, 2016, 05:36 AM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
^^^^^^^^
As I've pointed out before, the machete is becoming the weapon of choice.
Especially in places where guns are hard to come by. Machete wielding idiots are typically less successful at mass killings because they are easier to outrun than bullets, easier to overpower than gunmen and easier to deal with for cops.

Choice of an alternative weapon is not an argument in favour of guns.
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Jul 27, 2016, 06:53 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
What's the rate for a call to action due to suicides* vs. mass shootings? It's almost as if the mass shootings covered by the media, which are for all intents and purposes terrorist attacks, achieve the intended purpose of terrorist attacks. They engender a response wholly out of proportion to the attack.
Yes, and the same holds for terrorist attacks or plane crashes which also receive a media attention that is out of proportion with the number of victims. But I think the difference here is that mass shootings in the US, due to their sheer frequency, serve as a gauge of how much gun violence there is. Politically, though, you need to implement measures that don't just scratch the surface, though.
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Jul 27, 2016, 10:03 AM
 
You're right that the media does overhype pretty much everything, especially if its negative, and I agree that one news story doesn't amount to a nationwide epidemic. I also understand completely why you might suspect me of drawing those conclusions. However, its not one or two dead kids here or there. These stories fall into my lap while I am reading various bits of the internet, I don't tend to go looking for them but I must have seen a dozen or more per year without seeking them out and that tells me that what I'm seeing is a fair indicator that there is plenty more I'm not seeing. I won't call it the tip of the iceberg, but since the ones I see are probably the worst ones where a child is accidentally shot dead perhaps, there is very likely a handful more where the child is only injured and a even more that are merely close shaves.
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Jul 27, 2016, 12:14 PM
 
Is this directed at me, and are you still discussing mass shootings? The focus on children makes it unclear.

I ask because I don't want to whip up a long response which ends up not even addressing your point.
     
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Jul 27, 2016, 01:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Our robbers and rapists don't need guns, so they don't carry them. Yours need them because their victims probably have them.
True, but robbers and rapists often will not attack in an instance where they suspect they may get hurt or killed. There's no way to track a deterrence factor other than looking at the rate as a whole, and as ownership of firearms increases the violent crime rate is dropping. Is it a causative correlation? That's up for debate.


More like, its the best explanation I've heard. By a long way.
You need to back this up with data - just because you like the explanation doesn't mean it's rooted in reality.


If there are no guns, there can be no gun deaths. How is that a logical fallacy?
If your aim is simply to reduce gun deaths without reducing deaths as a whole, sure. The problem is that a gun death or a non gun death is still a death all the same.

Plus, it would be impossible to remove guns from society. Sure you can remove legal guns, but you'll never remove illegal ones with more laws. Again, this ideal is not rooted in reality.


Less as in a lower total number? Or as a percentage?
Both.


So you tell me I'm deliberately ignoring parts of the data, then you remove all the parts that don't suit your argument. There is no justification for removing gang violence let alone drug and urban violence from the picture. Thats all relevant.
If there's data you think is relevant to the discussion, by all means please offer it up. I would be happy to look at it with you.

A new law makings already illegals guns extra-illegal won't solve a damn thing.



OK, I guess that analogy doesn't stand up so well. Whatever happened to the obesity epidemic eh? I blame Pokémon Go.
"Obesity epidemic" is still a problem we face, but my point there is you simply can't say correlation = causation and call it a day.



You're turning correlation into a dirty word here but science starts with correlation. Then you try to explain it, ideally you test your explanation. Where you can't do experiments you have to settle for trying to come up with other equally plausible opposing explanations. Sometimes explanations can be shot down with other explanations.
It may start there, but it absolutely does not end there - not by a long shot. Where you can't do experiments, you take the data available and scrutinize it heavily. Simply stopping at "you have guns and people die" is the fallacy I refer to. Please, by all means, offer up some data to support your explanations.

I know that there is limited if any data on how many individuals own those 300m or so guns. I know that its suspected to be a case where some individuals own many guns each. Its a pity about the data because the guns per person is the relevant statistic. One person can only fire two guns at a time and even then thats atypically outside of action movies. So a guy with 10 guns isn't necessarily any more dangerous than a guy with 2.
A quick google revealed this data. The data is there you just haven't looked at it.

Self-Reported Gun Ownership in U.S. Is Highest Since 1993

Or maybe its because your cops adopted a policy of killing violent criminals while they're still teenagers.
Teenagers are quite capable of killing, raping, robbing, and stealing.



Glad to hear it. But surely you acknowledge there are a lot of angry, drunks, junkies, lunatics, idiots and assholes out there who might not be so possessed of self control?
Sure there are, but it's doubtful many of those would be able to get a legal gun in the first place. Those that tend towards the qualities you describe normally have run ins with the judicial system long before they'd lose control with a gun in their hand.


Modern thinking is that suicide mostly happens to people with depression and that depression should be treated, rather than just letting people kill themselves.
"Letting"? It's their decision and IMO, their right. Do I believe we should offer treatment for those who are considering it? Absolutely! But attempting to protect people from themselves is a fool's errand and the negative effects of doing so would far outweigh the societal benefits.


Part of my argument is that domestic disputes seem to very often escalate due to the presence of firearms.
I would like to see the data you used to make that assessment.


Again, our burglars don't carry guns. Because burglary will get you 5 years if you are a repeat offender but armed robbery will often get you 20 or 30 first time around.
That's great and all, but the US is not the UK, nor would UK solutions to UK problems work in the US.


I heard about the kid near Disneyland who got hauled off by an alligator. I suspect that had more to do with the alligator and Disneyland than the kid.
I hear about people drowning in rivers, sadly, far too often - it won't be national news front page CNN, but there's alot of local news outlets.




Gun Violence Archive[/quote]

353 anecdotes aged 11 or under so far this year according to the above site. Given that rate, I should add "at the time of writing". Seems likely to be higher by the time you see it.
According to your data, 210 deaths out of 353 incedents.

Out of 74.2 Million chilldren (as google provides).

This works out to be a ratio of .00000283018, or .28 per 100,000 thus far this year. As sad as those situations may be, they barely register on the scale. Those stats include suicides and murder/suicides - banning the guns doesn't necessarily prevent those situations.

To give you a frame of reference, the fatal auto accident rate is 11.87 per 100,000, or ~42 times higher. Looking for accident data just for children was a bit harder, though many sources put it in line with the overall rate.



There have been a good number of incidents where we know that good men with guns (or at least men with guns who weren't criminals) were present. In Dallas they got in the way. The latest drive by on those teenagers they were powerless to stop. But you're right, we'll never know how many times the good guys made a difference either way. Seems like it could be possible to track incidents of vigilante heroism, but you can never track those who choose not to use their guns unless they own up.
There have also been times where a good guy has stopped a mass shooter.

12 Times Mass Shootings Were Stopped by Good Guys With Guns


Then you have to consider that 2A isn't really there for self defence, let alone vigilanteism.
That's exactly what it's there for.


You write off those incidents which among a big population are certainly not a big percentage. My argument is that they are simply if not easily preventable.
I disagree. We got onto the subject because an ISIS supporter killed 80+ using a truck, not a gun. My position remains that the tool a person uses to commit crimes is nowhere near as important as the person committing the crimes.

Your population is five times ours. Your gun death rate is in vast excess of that. Its still thousands of people losing their lives each year and to me it looks needless. So yes, we finally come back to the cost benefit. Given the available data, my opinion remains that the benefit is frankly pitiful, because most of the need for protective weapons would be mitigated by a lack of offensive ones.
I don't believe you can draw any conclusions from the broadest possible vantage.

You cannot simply poof all guns out of existence, and with out porous border down south & a booming drug industry, making guns illegal would simply take them out of law abiding citizens hands. The war on drugs has been a massive failure that's done far more harm then good. Are you proposing the US enter a "war on guns" as well?

One of the most disturbing things about the whole issue is the lack of important data. I would think both sides would want to know the truth, even open to some interpretation. I know the NRA tries hard to block such data being recorded. This speaks volumes to me. I know many of their members are paranoid lunatics but something tells me the block has nothing to do with a CDC conspiracy theory.
I don't believe the NRA tries to block data. Can you please provide a source. It seems your bias is taking precedence over looking at the actual data, and I doubt we'll solve anything until we can analyze the numbers together.

I didn't get a response to my most important question though - how do you explain the crime rate significantly dropping while legal gun ownership has been skyrocketing? If the logic is as simple as "no guns = no gun deaths" - shouldn't "more guns = more gun deaths"? This is where "data is king".
     
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Jul 27, 2016, 04:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
Yes, and the same holds for terrorist attacks or plane crashes which also receive a media attention that is out of proportion with the number of victims. But I think the difference here is that mass shootings in the US, due to their sheer frequency, serve as a gauge of how much gun violence there is. Politically, though, you need to implement measures that don't just scratch the surface, though.
I don't believe the data backs up your assessment.

Mass shootings are not the same as inner city violence that is responsible for the vast majority of gun-crime-deaths in the US. Even with an extremely generous designation of "4 or more people shot or killed in the same incedent" the rate of death in "mass shootings" is 283 out of about 330,000,000 (US population). (I realize 2016 is not complete, but even if you double the number to extrapolate the end of 2016 it's an insignificant number. 2015 saw 372 deaths using the same definition, I'd be happy to run the numbers for that as well if you reject my using an incomplete year. 2015 was even dubbed by CNN as the "year of the mass shootings".)

This means your odds of getting killed in a "mass shooting" YTD 2016 are about 0.000000857575758, or 0.0000857575758%, with a per 100,000 number of 0.08576 thus far in 2016. In other words, you would need a group of roughly 1.15 million or so people to find even just one killed in a "mass shooting". Think about that for a minute. Of all the things that can kill us, dying in a mass shooting should not be on your worry list. You are more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to die in a mass shooting. Maybe we should outlaw thunderstorms too, while we're at it?

This even include a significant fraction of incidents that you or I wouldn't really call a "mass shooting" - i.e. gang violence with multiple assailants, murder suicides, etc. The Orlando shooter (50+ killed) accounts for over a sixth of the deaths so far on 2016.

You put too much stock in the media's (very profitable) sensationalizing tactics.
     
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Jul 27, 2016, 10:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
I don't believe the data backs up your assessment.
What part? You are meandering quite a bit in your argument.

You can quibble with a proper definition of mass shootings (e. g. whether it should be 4 or more, 6 or more or 10 or more fatalities), but most of the data I have seen use 4 or more as their criterion. I also don't see why you would want to exclude mass gang shootings here, they are surely part of it. Classifying by number of victims is just one of several ways to make a distinction.

Secondly, statistically speaking in the US most mass shootings have no ties to terrorism — a marked difference to European countries, for instance, where a significant share, if not most, mass shootings are connected to terror. Of course, if you change the way these cases are classified by raising the number of fatalities, excise gang-related crimes and do perhaps some other modifications, we would have to run the numbers again. You can check my argument numerically: is the ratio of deaths in mass shootings to the total number of gun fatalities lower or higher in the US compared to other countries? If it is equal or higher, then fatalities in mass shootings are an indicator of the total number of gun deaths because that number positively correlates with the number of gun fatalities.

What you say about probabilities to be killed in a mass shooting, I don't see how this contradicts my argument, I said as much: mass shootings just like, say, plane crashes receive much more attention than the number of victims would warrant. If you read my post carefully, I agree that these incidents receive too much attention. Terrorist attacks should be covered less in my opinion in order to discourage future attacks — they are designed to call for attention after all. But the majority of the population cannot resist, so we should make the best of it.
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
This means your odds of getting killed in a "mass shooting" YTD 2016 are about 0.000000857575758, or 0.0000857575758%, with a per 100,000 number of 0.08576 thus far in 2016. In other words, you would need a group of roughly 1.15 million or so people to find even just one killed in a "mass shooting". Think about that for a minute. Of all the things that can kill us, dying in a mass shooting should not be on your worry list. You are more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to die in a mass shooting.
That's one of my favorite pet peeves of people dealing with statistics: it's not probabilities which matter, but expectation values. You quoted the annual figure, but how does that translate over the life span of a human being: let's assume for simplicity's sake that the probability you quote is (a) correct and (b) stays the same over the course of the life span which I take to be 75 years. The probability that you are not shot over the course of your life time is (1 - 0.0000857575758)^75. Subtract this number from 1 and you get the probability that you will be shot in a mass shooting during your life time, about 0.0064 %. That doesn't sound like much, but amongst a population of 100,000, that's 6.4 people who will die from such an event. The number of victims (i. e. if you include people who weren't shot but involved), this number is much, much higher.
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Maybe we should outlaw thunderstorms too, while we're at it?
Last time I checked, mass shootings are already illegal.
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OreoCookie
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Jul 27, 2016, 11:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
You're right that the media does overhype pretty much everything, especially if its negative, and I agree that one news story doesn't amount to a nationwide epidemic.
Just compare the coverage of something that is billed a terrorist event with something comparable that isn't (e. g. the recent murder of a French priest by two ISIS sympathizers/members and the killing of 9 people (all of which had a migrant background) by a lonely gun man who took inspiration from right-wing mass shooter Breivick). Guess which one has received more coverage. I don't want to weigh lives here, but I think we as a species need to evolve our lizard brains so that we learn how to distribute our attention in a better way rather than deer in a headlight. (Part of it is the speed at which media moves, you really have no way to digest the news first and wait.)
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
I also understand completely why you might suspect me of drawing those conclusions. However, its not one or two dead kids here or there. These stories fall into my lap while I am reading various bits of the internet, I don't tend to go looking for them but I must have seen a dozen or more per year without seeking them out and that tells me that what I'm seeing is a fair indicator that there is plenty more I'm not seeing. I won't call it the tip of the iceberg, but since the ones I see are probably the worst ones where a child is accidentally shot dead perhaps, there is very likely a handful more where the child is only injured and a even more that are merely close shaves.
Attention shapes perception, and that might become dangerous if a person's perception is not congruent with objective reality. Let's take rape: most perpetrators have a personal connection to the victim, a family member, an ex-boyfriend or some such. However, parents often educate their daughters to fear strangers and dark places (the proverbial parking garage). In most cases, those cases also receive more attention while the others where the victim knows her assailant are often hushed over and swept under the carpet.

These “small cases”, if they are recorded at all, don't have the power to reach the front news, so they might only be impressive in aggregate as a statistic. Whereas these big cases capture our attention.
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Jul 28, 2016, 01:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
What part? You are meandering quite a bit in your argument.


You can quibble with a proper definition of mass shootings (e. g. whether it should be 4 or more, 6 or more or 10 or more fatalities), but most of the data I have seen use 4 or more as their criterion. I also don't see why you would want to exclude mass gang shootings here, they are surely part of it. Classifying by number of victims is just one of several ways to make a distinction.
I used the FBI definition of 4 or more. Do you honestly believe that a gang related "mass shooting" has the same causative factors as, lets say the Orlando shooter? I don't. One is fueled by drugs and poverty & the other, well we could start a whole new thread on that. If our aim is to reduce deaths, we ought to consider whats causing them in the first place - don't you think?

Secondly, statistically speaking in the US most mass shootings have no ties to terrorism — a marked difference to European countries, for instance, where a significant share, if not most, mass shootings are connected to terror.
Which, as I pointed out, is about .28 per 100,000 for both terror related and non terror related. If you wanted to take the terror aspect out of it, the number would be even lower (also as I pointed out, the Orlando attack constitutes over 1/6th of the total mass shooting deaths this year).

I find this number to be extremely low all things considered - do you disagree?

Of course, if you change the way these cases are classified by raising the number of fatalities, excise gang-related crimes and do perhaps some other modifications, we would have to run the numbers again. You can check my argument numerically: is the ratio of deaths in mass shootings to the total number of gun fatalities lower or higher in the US compared to other countries? If it is equal or higher, then fatalities in mass shootings are an indicator of the total number of gun deaths because that number positively correlates with the number of gun fatalities.
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. The percentage of mass shooting deaths to total fatalities (using my calculations) using 2014 numbers and this wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ted_death_rate (most recent complete data I could easily find)
Gun Death Homicides 3.64 per 100,000

Mass Shootings - 2014 | Gun Violence Archive
264 total deaths / 330,000,000 (US population) = 0.0000008 which comes out to .08 per 100000

.08 / 3.64 = 0.02197802197 or 2.2%

2.2% of gun homicides in the US are mass shootings (in 2014 at least). These numbers exclude suicides. Care to compare that to France?

What you say about probabilities to be killed in a mass shooting, I don't see how this contradicts my argument, I said as much: mass shootings just like, say, plane crashes receive much more attention than the number of victims would warrant. If you read my post carefully, I agree that these incidents receive too much attention. Terrorist attacks should be covered less in my opinion in order to discourage future attacks — they are designed to call for attention after all. But the majority of the population cannot resist, so we should make the best of it.
I agree with you here. Apologies if I misinterpreted your post.

That's one of my favorite pet peeves of people dealing with statistics: it's not probabilities which matter, but expectation values. You quoted the annual figure, but how does that translate over the life span of a human being: let's assume for simplicity's sake that the probability you quote is (a) correct and (b) stays the same over the course of the life span which I take to be 75 years. The probability that you are not shot over the course of your life time is (1 - 0.0000857575758)^75. Subtract this number from 1 and you get the probability that you will be shot in a mass shooting during your life time, about 0.0064 %. That doesn't sound like much, but amongst a population of 100,000, that's 6.4 people who will die from such an event. The number of victims (i. e. if you include people who weren't shot but involved), this number is much, much higher.
For comparison, Google gives a lifetime expectation value of 1 in 12,000 for getting struck by lightning, or about 8.3 per 100,000 over your lifetime (it does not specify how long it assumes a lifetime to be).

6.4 out of 100,000 over 75 years. I maintain this number is so small as to be insignificant. It even is based on a year that has seen an unusually high rate of mass shootings.

Let's compare that to auto accidents as well. We'll use 75 years to keep it consistent.

11.87 / 100000 gives a probability of 0.0001187. (1-0.0001187)^75 = 0.99113648619. This works out to be a rate of ~ 0.0088. Multiple by 100,000 and you get about 886 people per 100,000.

Between cars and thunderstorms,



So where 6.4 people are dying in mass shootings over 75 years - 886 are dying in car accidents and another 8 in thunderstorms. It's simply an insignificant number in the long run.



Last time I checked, mass shootings are already illegal.
So you agree making them more illegal wouldn't really solve anything, correct?
( Last edited by Snow-i; Jul 28, 2016 at 02:04 PM. Reason: added auto comparison towards the bottom.)
     
 
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