Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Ripsnort on September 29, 2004, 04:19:34 PM
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Congrats DC! Your crime rate should now drop as it has in 30+ other states that have adopted similar laws! :aok
Voting 250-171, the House approved the D.C Personal Protection Act, which would end the District's ban on handguns and semi-automatic weapons, roll back registration requirements for ammunition and other firearms and decriminalize possession of unregistered weapons and carrying a gun in one's home or workplace. The bill also would prohibit the District's elected mayor and council from passing gun limits that exceed federal law or "discourage . . . the private ownership or use of firearms."
Source (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/registration/register&destination=register&nextstep=gather&application=reg30-metro&applicationURL=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60034-2004Sep29.html)
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It must be freezing in hell right now.
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Wow, what will the 'Victim Cult' do now? You mean the citizens of DC have other options beyond just dieing quietly and waiting for the Police to make a report?
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Hey, if you ignore the murder rate, DC ain't that bad!
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
Congrats DC! Your crime rate should now drop as it has in 30+ other states that have adopted similar laws! :aok
Don't hold your breath.
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Originally posted by Sandman
Don't hold your breath.
I won't but I do believe statistics. A few opponents of the Personal Protection Act claim that passing this measure will result in increased shootings, gun violence and crime overall — basically a return to the “Wild West.” However, these same claims have been made before passage of similar bills in other states, and, to date, zero of the 45 states with conceal-and-carry laws have repealed them. Crime statistics from the FBI show that overall violent crime, homicide, robbery and aggravated assault are lower in states with instituted conceal-and-carry laws than in those that do not have such laws.
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I'm actually happy about this....
For once and for all, Washington is to become an almost definitive case pro/against guns and their effect on society.
Crime drops = pro gunners win.
Crime rises = pro no-guns win.
No more "How nice for you Australians, but that doesn't apply to the US."
No more "Guns are bad because...."
So, good. And finally.... And what better place to hold this little experiment than in the nation's capitol.
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WTG DC!
'bout time!
Criminals just hate armed victims.
Fight crime, shoot back!
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Originally posted by Blooz
Criminals just hate armed victims.
And victims just hate armed criminals.
We'll see who's side has more, in a year or two.
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
I won't but I do believe statistics. A few opponents of the Personal Protection Act claim that passing this measure will result in increased shootings, gun violence and crime overall — basically a return to the “Wild West.” However, these same claims have been made before passage of similar bills in other states, and, to date, zero of the 45 states with conceal-and-carry laws have repealed them. Crime statistics from the FBI show that overall violent crime, homicide, robbery and aggravated assault are lower in states with instituted conceal-and-carry laws than in those that do not have such laws.
Gotta compare apples to apples. Other states do not enjoy a 23% poverty rate. Until that changes, I don't think I'd cross the Potomac after dark and I don't recommend that you do either, white man. ;)
As for conceal and carry laws... not relevant (if I understand the DC PPA). The PPA doesn't authorize concealed weapons.
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Originally posted by Sandman
As for conceal and carry laws... not relevant (if I understand the DC PPA). The PPA doesn't authorize concealed weapons.
You are correct, this is not about concealed weapons, but more importantly it is about the rediculous law that DC has. If the bill passes the senate, it will no longer be illegal to possess a firearm in your home.
The city's homicide rate shows that its restrictions on guns are ineffective. The homicide rate was 72 percent higher in 2001 than it was in 1976, while the national rate had dropped by 36 percent. Bottom line: the D.C. handgun ban has failed miserably. Prohibiting a person from having a firearm assembled and loaded at home for the purpose of self-defense is simply stunning.
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I think the bottom line is that they're poor and gun laws (or lack of) won't make much difference.
In three to five years, we'll know if you're right, I think.
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Originally posted by Sandman
I think the bottom line is that they're poor and gun laws (or lack of) won't make much difference.
In three to five years, we'll know if you're right, I think.
If we start seeing less home invasions and rapes, it will be definate proof.
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
If we start seeing less home invasions and rapes, it will be definate proof.
...only if the poverty rate doesn't decline as well. ;)
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Originally posted by Sandman
...only if the poverty rate doesn't decline as well. ;)
LOL! ;)
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Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 22 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense.8
The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home.9
The presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold.10
In 1994, 35% of the homes with children younger than 18 reported having at least one firearm; 43% of those had at least one unlocked firearm.11 21% of firearm owners keep at least one gun loaded and unlocked in the home.12
When someone is home, a gun is used for protection in fewer than 2% of home invasion crimes.13
http://www.washingtonceasefire.org/facts.asp
:aok
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MT, do you own a gun?
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Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 22 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense.8
The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home.9
The presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold.10
In 1994, 35% of the homes with children younger than 18 reported having at least one firearm; 43% of those had at least one unlocked firearm.11 21% of firearm owners keep at least one gun loaded and unlocked in the home.12
When someone is home, a gun is used for protection in fewer than 2% of home invasion crimes.13
how does a gun increase the risk of homicide? Does the gun have mind control over it's owner? Does the gun tell people to commit suicide?
I could probably show that the presence of alcohol in the home increases the risk of homocide by 80% over houses without alcohol. Lets ban alcohol.
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Originally posted by NUKE
how does a gun increase the risk of homicide? Does the gun have mind control over it's owner? Does the gun tell people to commit suicide?
Source: # Kellermann, AL, Rivara, FP, Rushforth NB, et al. "Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home." N Engl J Med. 1993;329:1084-1091.
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Originally posted by Sandman
Source: # Kellermann, AL, Rivara, FP, Rushforth NB, et al. "Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home." N Engl J Med. 1993;329:1084-1091.
I'll bet homicides in the home are more frequent in homes that have running water as opposed to homes without running water.
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Rip, correlation does not prove causation. However, it might suggest it.
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The bill will fail in the Senate. The anti-gun Senators will vote anti-gun admendments into the original bill. Just like what happened to the firearm industry protection from reckless lawsuits bill.
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so nash... you would say that the 17 or so states that adopted right to carry laws and showed an decrease in crime are proof positive that the pro gun rights crowd is correect? if the crime increased in DC then that would make the only one in more than 30 that show declines.
MT... those stats are a little missleading since....
(1) 9 out of ten murders are by someone in the family or a friend or someone the victim knows... the stat you show includes the just released burglar who lives down the street that the victim has waved to occasionaly it also includes rival gangs or criminals who know each other.
(2) guns are efficient killers but... this stat is also purposley missleading. The stat includes women killing their husbands who are wife beaters and... more importantly... it does not even tie the gun to the crime. It does not say that the gun in the home is used in the homicide... many people buy guns when they feel they may be the victim of a homicide, or, at risk. they stat does not even say the victim is murdered in the home where the gun is at all.
(3) so what? there should be a lot more accidents then right? Wrong... accidents are declining. States with strong gun lock and storage bills are not showing any decrease over those who do not. It is a scam.
lazs
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Giving new meaning to 'chicken fight'
BLUEWELL, W.VA.
Father-and-son fight ends with shots fired, police says
A family meal erupted into a gun battle after a father and son clashed over how to cook chicken.
The two men argued Sunday over the best way to prepare skinless chicken for dinner.
"It started out as a physical confrontation, but it escalated until both of them were shooting at each other," Detective Sgt. A.D. Beasley of the Mercer County Sheriff's Department said Monday.
Beasley said each man fired a .22-caliber handgun at the other. Harley Shrader was struck by a bullet that went through the upper part of his right ear and lodged in the back of his head. He was treated at a hospital and released. The elder Shrader was not injured.
Jackie Lee Shrader, 49, was charged with malicious wounding and wanton endangerment. Harley Lee Shrader, 24, was charged with wanton endangerment.State
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Originally posted by lazs2
so nash... you would say that the 17 or so states that adopted right to carry laws and showed an decrease in crime are proof positive that the pro gun rights crowd is correect?
I just don't know about all those stats, and never really looked into 'em nor know where they come from or anything like that.
What I'm seein' here - if the bill gets passed (and I hope it does) - is the chance for a fresh new look at it.
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it is obvious that two such well adjusted folk would never have been injured if it weren't for evil 22 caliber firearms.
still... if you ban weapons all the way down to the lowly 22.... you end up with the messy prospect of 9 iron or cricket paddle beatings.
lazs
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I won't but I do believe statistics. A few opponents of the Personal Protection Act claim that passing this measure will result in increased shootings, gun violence and crime overall — basically a return to the “Wild West.” However, these same claims have been made before passage of similar bills in other states, and, to date, zero of the 45 states with conceal-and-carry laws have repealed them.
In Minnesota, after the Concealed Carry law was passed and ordinary citizens were able to carry, after one year, there was not one single case of a licensed user violating any law with his weapon.
And victims just hate armed criminals.
True, but the criminals will be armed regardless of any law.
dago
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nash.. I will agree that every state that passes right to carry is a good thing to watch. The stats on ones that have are readily available. They can be found in both of Lott's books and are highly footnoted and are not in dispute by even the most rabid and neurotic anti gun nut.
I too will look forward to the results if the bill passes. My guess is that like in every other state the crime will go down. If it stays the same or is marginally increased then that will be curious but.... it will still be one state increassing while dozens decreased. Why, would you discount the data from say....Florida, a state that showed a dramatic decrease after adopting snesible right to carry laws?
Further... it is a fact that right to carry licenced citizens are among the lowest for crime of any kind and... to date... of the millions... none has been convicted of a wrongful death... even I would have expected a couple but this is unreal... these guys are saints.
So... in what way does right to carry hurt a state? Most states realize that they have nothing to lose (cc people comit no crimes) and everything to gain (crime drops).
If I could prove to you that concealled carry people were not only not more likely to comit crime but far less likely.... would you then say that concealled carry was a good thing?
lazs
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Originally posted by lazs2
it is obvious that two such well adjusted folk would never have been injured if it weren't for evil 22 caliber firearms.
still... if you ban weapons all the way down to the lowly 22.... you end up with the messy prospect of 9 iron or cricket paddle beatings.
lazs
You have amazing insight into people you don't know or have never met Lazs.
Yesterday you stated that the people in loser's video link "all looked like good people to me. I would bet they were all frioendly and helpful and generous... most gun people are. "
Today you are using sarcasm to refer to these guys as "well adjusted".
You are sure...absolutely positive...that none of those people in that video are not one of these two?
Wow.
Can I borrow your crystal ball man, I may want to play the lottery today?
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dago...actually... laws like 3 strikes and increased penalties for crimes commited with a firearm involved have shown to decrease the incence of armed criminals.
The best of both worlds is strong laws and penalties for firearms missuse but much easier access to firearms by citizens. certainly there will allways be psycos and death wish criminals but they are not the majority of the criminal class. Most criminals will not chance using a gun in a crime if the penalties are too high.
lazs
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Originally posted by lazs2
If I could prove to you that concealled carry people were not only not more likely to comit crime but far less likely.... would you then say that concealled carry was a good thing?
Only if crime overall goes down. It doesn't matter if the guys who are allowed to carry concealed weapons don't commit crimes, if the result of them being allowed to carry means more gun crime overall.
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Originally posted by KBall
The bill will fail in the Senate. The anti-gun Senators will vote anti-gun admendments into the original bill. Just like what happened to the firearm industry protection from reckless lawsuits bill.
I HIGHLY doubt that. The reason there was no support to renew the suposed assault weapons ban was because the democrats KNOW they cannot get re-elected if they go after guns. They (the democrats) have cited time and again the reason they are getting wooped back home in the elections is because of their anti gun stances in the senate.
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yes nash... the crime in those states goes down. from a little to dramaticly. And, it seems that the longer concealled carry is in effect the more crime goes down.
"More Guns Less Crime" by Lott is the best but His media bias book has more up to date data.
but.. I will be honest... even if the evidence had shown that guns were a net liability, like watersports for instance, instead of the asset that they are... I would still advocate the freedom to choose them for self defense and for a guard against tyranny.
lazs
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Originally posted by lazs2
"More Guns Less Crime" by Lott is the best but His media bias book has more up to date data.
:rolleyes:
I'm sure HIS stats are irrefutable, unlike others which you poo poo above.
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Yeah, it will be interesting to watch... and if crime goes down then hey - that's fantastic.
As far as past stats go, they may be perfectly solid. But I dunno... There's a whole lot of factors (economic for one, like Sandman pointed out), and also a whole lotta ways to make stats bend.
So I don't bother with it. Not saying they're wrong... but...
This Washington thing, for me at least, will be a fresh new sort of benchmark. If things go well, all things considered, then the anti-gun guys won't have a leg to stand on.
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curval... I know you are smarter than that...
I did not poo poo the other stats I merely explained how they were missleading. the data in those particular statements was mostly true. and....
it is not Lott's data that we are talking about here. he merely gathered it and some pretty bright and rabid anti gun groups with a lot of money at stake (contributions for their "cause") have tried unsuccessfully to dispute his findings and the data he collected. To date... only one minor "survey" was shown to not be accurate or exist and it played no part in what we are talking about here.
still.... where is the mounds of data by these anti gun nuts that would show that crime has increased in states with right to carry laws? the very best they can do is show a few counties where it hasn't gon down...... much.
lazs
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nash... these are not old stats... they are continueing stats. The longer concealed carry is allowed the lower the crime rates. This is the data from over thirty states as oppossed to the one that may or may not happen (DC)...
how long does/would the DC law have to be in effect before you called it rellevant data? a day? a week? a year?.... years?
simply look at the states that have had their human right to carry restored. Some are quite recent.
lazs
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Poverty is a symptom of Washington's messed up culture more than a cause. The government has spent the last 40 years trying to be the Nanny with the result that many citizens of DC are perpetual 14 year olds. At the start of every school year the schools have to turn away hundreds of kids who haven't been properly vaccinated. The parents just didn't have a clue.
Allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns is a good start in putting responsibilty back were it belongs.
The mayor of DC is also pushing for school vouchers, much to the dismay of the race/poverty pimps.
Maybe there's hope for that rotten city.
ra
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so nash.... when DC passes the stictest gun laws in the country and crime and homicide go up 76% .... that is bvecause of other factors like economics? but if the law is for more gun rights and crime lessens then.... that is not because of firearms but because of.... economics?
and.... the data in other states is not relevant because.... it is a year or more of data? What counts.... one days data picked out by the brady bunch? or.... 99% of all homicides happen to people at where a gun is within 5 miles of the victim? (counting poilice)
lazs
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Just a quick search reveals that it was more than just one survey he was wrong about here (http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lott98update.html)
Now, what about your crystal ball? Can I borrow it?
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I aint saying I'm going about it the right way... It's just gonna be what works for me.
And by not reading Lotts book or anything like that, I know I'm not able to form a rounded opinion about it. So I haven't. S'why I don't participate in gun threads.
If the DC law passes, I'm going to quietly note as much about the conditions and trends of the place over last few years. Then I'm going to wait a few more and note the conditions at that point. Then I'm going to look at the gun/crime stats. Hopefully something becomes clear.
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Originally posted by lazs2
it is obvious that two such well adjusted folk would never have been injured if it weren't for evil 22 caliber firearms.
still... if you ban weapons all the way down to the lowly 22.... you end up with the messy prospect of 9 iron or cricket paddle beatings.
lazs
Reminds me of Australia. Guess you've heard that with guns now banned there is a move to ban swords as well (may have already happened). Guess golf clubs and cricket paddles are next.
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Here's an interesting article from an Austrailian source regarding Lott:
Gun Lobby Lies (http://www.ntu.edu.au/faculties/lba/schools/Law/apl/blog/stories/liberties/12.htm)
More stuff about Lott here:
I haven't read the book but from this article I can see where lazs gets some of his ideas (http://www.handguncontrol.org/facts/issues/?page=lott)
Check out the first two items under "Lott's Other Wacky Ideas". Lazs, did you cut and paste HIS thoughts and use them as your own in previous posts?
Some older, but still relevant news (http://slate.msn.com/id/2078084)
Shall I continue?
With all of Lott's flipping and flopping about his identity and his statistics he reminds me of...well...Kerry.
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The dog ate my gun, and my surveys.:rofl
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http://www.downunderwebsites.com/aussielawswords.htm
Why don't they just ban testicles and be done with it?
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I wouldn't be suprised if allowing gun ownership in Washington actually reduces crime marginally.
The problem with most US states, and Washington in particular, is that all a criminal has to do is cross state lines to buy a gun. How far to Virginia?
Any criminal who wants a gun in Washington has easy access to Virginia, and no physical controls to stop them returning with a gun.
The whole point of criminals is they don't obey the law. It's useless banning criminals from owning guns if you don't take measures to tackle the supply of guns to criminals.
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It's not as easy as that. You have to present some ID prooving where you live, usually a driver's license. So at the very least you have to create a forged document to buy a rifle or shotgun. It's probably easier to get one on the black market. To buy a handgun there is a background check and a waiting period.
If a significant percentage of gun crimes were being commited with guns purchased in other jurisdictions the anti-gun fascists would be using those stats constantly.
ra
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It's not as easy as that. You have to present some ID prooving where you live, usually a driver's license. So at the very least you have to create a forged document to buy a rifle or shotgun. It's probably easier to get one on the black market. To buy a handgun there is a background check and a waiting period.
Only if you buy from a dealer. If you buy from a gun show or private individual, there are no madatory checks or records required.
And of course until the mid 90s there were no such requirements.
And exactly how hard is it to get a fake id in the US? Isn't it common for kids to buy alcohol?
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curval.. the only data that Lott can't defend is the lone survey that is pretty much irrelevant in any case to showing less crime do to more guns... it is simply a survey of people and was not used in any way to chart data. He mentioned it and probly shouldn't have since it probly didn't exist as he thought it did...
This is a very small thing and not even data... simply a survey he quoted that the source was not reliable. survey was probly bogus.
The 1.5-3 million prevented crimes a year are FBI data. the author trying to deunk Lott is saying that his spot surveys are more accurate than FBI data.
If the one tiny survey that is barely mentioned in the book and not used to formulate data, is all that can be faulted from the reams of footnoted data then I would say that Lott is one of the most meticulous researchers and economists to every write a book. Lotts critics are making such a big thing out of this one insignifi8cant survey because that is all they have.
plus... if his data was very far off.... we would obviously not be seeing the results we are seeing.... crime goes down when people carry and own guns... people with concealed carry licences are one of the most law abiding goups in the country.
crime has gone up in the countries that have strict gun bans.
And nash... there are allready dozens of state that did not have concealed carry and now they do... they have anywere from one to ten years of having concealed carry.... let us know when you find a state of time frame that has the right aura or feel to it. but.... if none of those other states count.... then I guess you should just wait till you find one that produces the results you want.... I can't say I wish you luck tho.
lazs
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so nashwan... you are saying that the reason that there is so much gun violence in DC is because the criminals know that the citizens are unarmed and helpless?
I would agree.
lazs
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Lazs... I know it may be wrong to ignore existing stats...
But that's what I'm gonna do.
It may take me 3-4 entire years to catch up to your position, but that's what it's gonna be.
Frankly I don't trust this chit. And these books. Any of it.
This gig in Washington represents a fresh start for me. In the meantime I won't, like I haven't been, pestering yer lot in the gun threads.
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nash... you miss my point. What is so special about the stats that would be collected about DC over all the stats that have allready been collected from the other states? is there something about DC? What stats will you believe if DC passes the law? Who will you trust if not the FBI stats? CBS and Dan Rather maybe?
lazs
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My own stats... I'm gonna go with that. FBI and Trent Lott can kiss my arse. :)
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Originally posted by lazs2
nash... you miss my point. What is so special about the stats that would be collected about DC over all the stats that have allready been collected from the other states? is there something about DC? What stats will you believe if DC passes the law? Who will you trust if not the FBI stats? CBS and Dan Rather maybe?
lazs
Perhaps, being the most murderous geo-political region that there might be the most gross representation of an armed public statisticallywise?
What surprises me though is that apparently the US needs all those guns on the street to maintain law.
You know the old saying, "An armed society is a polite society.".
But that's not universal.
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Lott appears to have the same sort of "issues" with attention grabbing and manipulation that only MrBlack could possibly rival.
You place a great deal of trust in his figures and are very quick to point out how other data is misleading and site his book as the authority on gun related stats.
Your call, but I've read those reviews of him and his book. He sounds like Kerry...at best. MrBlack at worst. The man has apparently admitedley used multiple personas to review his own work and give it glowing reviews. He even posed as a.....woman.:eek: Maybe he has some sexual issues, I don't know.
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ok nash... fair enough... how will you gather the data?
thrawn... Florida was one of the most murderous states before sensible concealed carry laws were passed and it showed a dramatic drop in crime after.
curval... all the sites you show with years to tear a book they hate apart and half a thousand stats to pour over... all they can come up with is one survey that isn't even factored into any of the conclusions or charts? And... He didn't make up the survey.. it was given to him. So he posed as someone not himself on a BB? ahh.... I am having a hard time finding the name and address for a "mr curval" in bermuda. We even go further on the BMW and stripper web... layers of identities. Some even pretended to be women..
Everything asside... data from both sides.... there are 10million or more new concealled carry citizens out there from even a few years ago.... they have proven to be the most law abiding group of people for their age sex and economic status there is... they are not causeing a problem...
even if you gave in to the unfounded claim of them not helping all that much... you still can't make a case that they are causing problems... so why not let em continue and grow? To try to ban them seems..... neurotic and..... foriegn.
lazs
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Just in case you didn't read any of the links see this one below.
Lott twists and turns to try and prove his data just like Kerry does when he says "I voted for it before I voted against it".
Now you are twisting and turning trying to defend him.
Come on lazs...man up. Lott is not the God of stats you credit him with being.
The Bellesiles of the Right?
Another firearms scholar whose dog ate his data.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, Feb. 3, 2003, at 4:19 PM PT
What is it about statistics and guns? Last year, Michael Bellesiles, a historian at Emory College, came under criticism for his Bancroft Prize-winning book, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, which argued that gun ownership was far less common during the 18th and 19th century than is generally supposed. His analysis, which was obviously pleasing to proponents of gun control, was drawn from probate records. But Bellesiles was unable to produce all of his data, owing, he said, to a flood in his office. After a committee of three scholars examined Bellesiles' research, they concluded that "his scholarly integrity is seriously in question." Bellesiles resigned from Emory in disgrace.
Now one of Bellesiles' principal critics, a Northwestern law professor named James Lindgren, has turned his skeptical attention to a scholar who is Bellesiles' ideological opposite: John R. Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime. Once again, the issue is the disappearance of supporting data.
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Lott's More Guns, Less Crime is the bible of the national movement to persuade state legislatures to pass so-called "concealed carry" laws, which permit citizens to carry concealed firearms. The book's thesis is that populations with greater access to firearms are better able to deter crime. Some scholars have quarreled with Lott's interpretation, but this controversy is about underlying data. Lindgren and others want to know where Lott got the evidence to support the following sentence, which appears on Page 3 of Lott's book: "98 percent of the time that people use guns defensively, they merely have to brandish a weapon to break off an attack."
Initially, Lott sourced the 98 percent figure to "national surveys." That's how the first edition of More Guns, Less Crime put it. In an August 1998 op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, Lott appeared to cite three specific surveys:
Polls by the Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart Research Associates show that there are at least 760,000, and possibly as many as 3.6 million, defensive uses of guns per year. In 98 percent of the cases, such polls show, people simply brandish the weapon to stop an attack.
But polls by the Los Angeles Times, Gallup, and Peter Hart show no such thing.
Alternatively, Lott would sometimes attribute the 98 percent figure to Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University. In a February 2000 op-ed for Colorado's Independence Institute, Lott wrote: "Kleck's study of defensive gun uses found that ninety-eight percent of the time simply brandishing the weapon is sufficient to stop an attack." But Kleck's research shows no such thing.
Eventually, Lott settled on yet another source for the 98 percent figure: "a national survey that I conducted," as Lott put it in a second edition of More Guns, Less Crime. When asked about the survey, Lott now says it was done by telephone in 1997 and that the data was lost a few months later in a computer crash.
Lott's conflicting explanations naturally attracted suspicion, first from Otis Dudley Duncan, a retired sociologist at the University of California, San Diego, who wrote an article on the matter for the Criminologist, and eventually from Lindgren, the Bellesiles gumshoe, who has been posting his findings online. (Chatterbox is indebted to Tim Lambert, a computer scientist and gun-control advocate at the University of New South Wales, for compiling various documents relating to the Lott case.) When Chatterbox asked Lott about the serial attributions to "national surveys," to three specific polls, and to Kleck, Lott conceded, "A lot of those discussions could have been written more clearly." He said that in the computer crash, he lost all his data for the book and had to reconstruct it, but that he couldn't reconstruct the survey. Lott has been able to produce witnesses who remember him talking about this obviously traumatic event soon after it occurred. But none of these people specifically remember him talking about losing data for a survey he'd conducted. Nor has Lott been able to produce the names of the college students he says conducted the phone surveys in Chicago, where Lott was teaching at the time. (Lott is now at Washington's American Enterprise Institute.)
The only compelling evidence that the 1997 survey ever took place is the testimony of David M. Gross, a Minnesotan who contacted Lott after the controversy spread to various Weblogs. (To date, the only mainstream news organization that's covered the data dispute is the Washington Times, whose Robert Stacy McCain had a piece about the Lott affair on Jan. 23. The Feb. 1 Washington Post examined a bizarre side issue, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.) Gross told Chatterbox, "I have come to the conclusion that I in fact did" participate in the study, "based on some of the details of my recollection." What Gross recalls is that in January 1999—a year before questions were first raised about Lott's data—he attended a talk Lott gave at the Minneapolis Athletic Club. (Gross can pinpoint the date, he says, because he bought a tape.) After Lott's remarks, Gross walked up to Lott and told him he'd figured out, while listening to Lott discuss the 1997 survey, that he, Gross, had participated in that survey. Both the timing and the content, as described by Lott, match what Gross remembers about the survey, which is the only gun poll he recalls ever participating in.
Gross recited his story to Chatterbox with a precision that seemed to reflect both his natural temperament and his professional training as a lawyer. It didn't sound as though Gross could be getting this wrong. But, as the bloggers Atrios and Mark Kleiman have noted, Gross is a pro-gun activist—indeed, a former national board member of the National Rifle Association. Gross was also the founding director of the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, and as an attorney he now represents that group in a legal challenge stemming from its appropriation of the name, Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, which previously belonged to a gun-control group that carelessly let lapse its registration with the Minnesota secretary of state. It's odd (though not impossible) that such a bare-knuckled advocate would turn up in a randomly generated survey.
Even if the survey did take place, why should we believe the stated finding? Lott says he repeated the 1997 survey last year. He can't reveal the results, he says, because the publisher of his next book won't let him. But he has shown the results to Daniel Polsby, a law professor at George Mason. Polsby reports that while he won't endorse the methodology—"I have questions about it"—the results were "approximately the same." (This time the percentage was slightly lower than 98 percent—by how much, Polsby won't say.) "John is a very intense man, he rubs a lot of people the wrong way," Polsby told Chatterbox. But "faking something like this would not be John's style."
One type of faking that apparently is Lott's style is the assumption of a fictional identity on the Internet. (This is the piece of the story that the Washington Post's Richard Morin zeroed in on.) Lott has posted Web comments defending his work using a "sock puppet" named Mary Rosh. He was busted by Julian Sanchez, a blogger who works at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. One posting that Lott has admitted to posting read as follows:
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(cont..)
I had [Lott] for a PhD level empirical methods class when he taught at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania back in the early 1990s, well before he gained national attention, and I have to say that he was the best professor that I ever had. You wouldn't know that he was a 'right-wing' ideologue from the class. ... There were a group of us students who would try to take any class that he taught. Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors more to be exposed to other ways of teaching graduate material.
Mary Rosh also gave More Guns, Less Crime a rave review on Amazon.com:
Lott writes very well. He explains things in an understandable commonsense way. I have loaned out my copy a dozen times and while it may have taken some effort to get people started on the book, once they read it no one was disappointed. If you want an emotional book, this is not the book for you.
Lott says he didn't post the Amazon review; his 16-year-old son did. The "Mary Rosh" e-mail address belongs to his four sons, Lott told Chatterbox—it's derived from their first names—and Lott has used it now and then so that, if he fails to answer a response, it won't be interpreted as "me conceding things." Lott now says the deception was "wrong."
We know Lott invented an online persona. Did he invent the 98 percent figure? Did he invent the survey it purportedly came from? We don't know. "People who are on the gun-control side of the debate," says Polsby, "are hurting on account of Bellesiles. And they want a scalp. John, for one reason or another, is a beautiful scalp to get. For one thing, he's not a terribly good witness on his own behalf." Is Lott the Bellesiles of the right? Chatterbox is not yet prepared to say.
[Clarification, Feb. 5: In the Minneapolis lecture that Gross attended, Lott recited the "98 percent" statistic, but did not specifically attribute it to a study that he himself had conducted. Gross simply deduced that he, Gross, had participated in whatever study produced the 98 percent figure. Also, although the anti-gun-control group, Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, is part of the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, MGOCRA is not technically a party to the lawsuit about whether CSM can keep its name.]
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Originally posted by NUKE
MT, do you own a gun?
No, I lease with an option to buy.
PS. I know elephants are big, but I don't own one of those either.
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Ok... we are back to it. there is one survey that really doesn't amount to much .... does it matter if 98% of the time when you point a gun at someone they stop agression or not? I would say that it is probly right in any case unless there more than 2% with a death wish.
So one of his kids gave him a good review on Amazon?
The man has thousands of footnotes to his data and after all these years the best the rabid anti gun nuts can come up with is this?
Where is their data to dispute all of his highly controversial findings? Note that none of his findings are in dispute. none of the hard data is in dispute and the premis that more guns equal less crime is never challenged in any way.
There actually are better attempts at trying to debunk Lotts data out there but he addresses them in his books. Actual scholars look at his data and try to show where it is flawed. They do make some points in my opinion but do very little to weaken the case and.. their conflicting data is usually even weaker than the weakest Lott data they attack.
You would have to read the books and then track down the data... I have chjecked some of it and it all came out legit (the little I checked) ... there hundreds of footnotes tho... I am sure that if they were radicaly flawed like bellsailes data.... someone would have gleefully torn them apart by now.
you can go to Lotts site tho if you want to get the rebuttals.
If you are morally against buying a copy(s) of his book(s) I will buy them for you and send them to you. I think you will see that one or two tiny little points of data in such a heavily footnoted work would make Lott the patron saint of researchers ...
I defy you to find any work of research with as many points of data and footnotes that is as free of error or bad data.
All of us have read books on WWII or war that are heavy with data and footnotes and seen data that was erronious. If it was pretty unimportant we simply ignore it.
And... you should do a little more research on bellasile.... not as inocent as "the flood stole all my data" The man was given the highest award for his book and the best reviews by every liberal anti gun establishment in America and abroad... he was a huge sensation... till.... someone checked his facts. every footnote was questionable.... they asked him to please help in defending himself.... the flood had taken every bit of his data!
no problem.... simply go back to the sources and retrieve the data... most were town halls and universities anyway... public record right? uh... wrong... none of the universities or townships footnoted had heard of him and none of em even had the kind of data that he claimed to have gotten from them..
Lott has one survey that is questionable and probly didn't exist... bellasiles would be hard pressed to find even one data point in his book that had ever even had a nodding aquaintence with fact.
one book was attacked feverishly by people who hadn't even read it and the other was given the highes awards this country can give by people who had not read it or had not even done a cursory test for it's factual basis.
lazs
lazs
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One of his kids did that? I read above it was Mary Rosh...his "shades" account identity.
I went to Lott's website, can you point out where he mentions that it was his child?
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read your own article curval... in it Lott says it was his 16 year old son who wrote that. I have not heard him say anthing at all about it, just going by what the author of the article said. Course... he could be lying since he really gives no proof.
still.... nothing very damaging in the articles is there? Read the books. Look at the reams of data (all footnoted) and you will be amazed that the guy didn't get at least a dozen data points screwed up. It is a monumental study... Can you imagine how many liberals went livid when they seen it and went over every single fact with a fine tooth comb? And this is the best they can do?
No data by ANY source anywhere shows that concealled carry causes problems. So why not allow it? What problems could it possibly cause?
Show me a study that shows a gun ban in the U.S. or anywhere has caused crime to go down. There are plenty that shows it went up... the best the liberals can do is say that "ecopnomics" have to be factored in.... well.... if you have a crime ridden community where people are afraid and have no way to protect themselves.... well.... that communities "economics" are destined for the crapper.
lazs
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even without a survey tho... what would you think the percentage of people who had a gun pointed at them would be attack the gun wielder?
lazs
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I thought you were talking about his website.
But okay, he "claims" a sixteen year old son wrote the amazon review.
Lott says he didn't post the Amazon review; his 16-year-old son did. The "Mary Rosh" e-mail address belongs to his four sons, Lott told Chatterbox—it's derived from their first names—and Lott has used it now and then so that, if he fails to answer a response, it won't be interpreted as "me conceding things." Lott now says the deception was "wrong."
But, just above it says:
One posting that Lott has admitted to posting read as follows:
I had [Lott] for a PhD level empirical methods class when he taught at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania back in the early 1990s, well before he gained national attention, and I have to say that he was the best professor that I ever had. You wouldn't know that he was a 'right-wing' ideologue from the class. ... There were a group of us students who would try to take any class that he taught. Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors more to be exposed to other ways of teaching graduate material.
Rrrright.
Typically you simply believe whatever the man says.
He obviously admitted to using the Mary Rosh identity in that case, but he denies the Amazon review.
He is so Kerryesque it isn't funny.
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whole bunch of sound and furry over one little thing eh curval?
So.. could we at least admit that you have nothing of substance except that you simply don't like firearms and that no matter what the evidence shows you would like to take away peoples rights to defend themselves.
again.... show me where giving people the right to carry concealled has caused any problems. and... either way... explain why you are against it.
lazs
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It isn't just one little thing lazs.
No, I'm not going to start a back and forth gun debate AGAIN. I've written how I feel about guns many many times and you and I have played gun thread ping pong enough.
I was making a comment about this Lott character and his "stats".
You clearly regard him as some sort of authority on the issue. To me he appears to be an obsessed weirdo.
To each his own.
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Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever used a firearm to prevent a crime, stop a crime in progress or to apprehend a criminal or criminals?
My regards,
Widewing
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curval... what stats did you prove wrong? Lott quoted a survey that was given to him and it was probly nonexistent. He shoulda checked that one out better... he obviously checked out all the hundreds of other more important stats in his book or the anti gun nuts would be all over em. They have the will... they have the agenda and they have had the time... and.... they have bupkus, nada..
wide... do you mean anyone in the world or anyone on the board?
lazs
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so nashwan... you are saying that the reason that there is so much gun violence in DC is because the criminals know that the citizens are unarmed and helpless?
No, I'm saying there's so much gun violence in DC because it's so easy to get guns.
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well... that seems kinda dumb on the face of it... they have very strict laws against firearms in DC and it is much harder to get guns there than in neighboring states.... this is fact, otherewise... why leave the area to get guns?
But... in the states with easy access to guns.... the crime is down while DC it continues to go up.... and you explain this as... The criminals still manage to get guns? Why don't the criminals in the easy to purchase states prey on their own citizens? Why commute so to speak?
It is also silly to say that it is easier to get guns in DC than the neighboring states because it weakens your position... according to your logic... if DC had the same laws as the other states then it would have less access to guns... You are basicly saying that the stricter the gun laws the easier it is for criminals to get guns.
lazs
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Originally posted by Nashwan
No, I'm saying there's so much gun violence in DC because it's so easy to get guns.
Incorrect. This is a result of a violent under-culture. Obviously poverty and drugs contribute to this, but I'll wager if you gave every gangbanger a million dollars, they'd still be shooting each other. Anyone with a shred of common sense would realize that if every gun on earth disappeared tomorrow, the murder rate would be unchanged. Knifes, swords, bats and axes would be substituted.
Access to legally purchased weapons would be denied to anyone with a rap sheet under Federal law anyway. I've been to enough guns shows to know that you don't see this element there trying to buy firearms. So, anyone who claims this as a source of guns for career criminals doesn't know what they're talking about. Then again, no one every accused the anti-gun people of knowing what they were talking about. Many are all about emotional response, usually devoid of reasoning.
This problem isn't solved by emotional response, it's solved by rational programs to educate and employ and enable people caught up in violent cultures, providing a way out that has tangible rewards for effort and hard work.
Until we as a nation address the root causes of this violent under-culture, things will change little. Especially in the neighborhoods where the culture florishes.
Naturally, there is no program that can provide a solution to purely evil people. We will always have these to contend with.
What always bothered me was the billions of dollars spent in useless government endeavors that easily could have been spent providing for better schools, housing and opportunities for families and individuals stuck in the endless cycle of poverty and hopelessness. Sure, there are going to be people who will not bother to take advantage of opportunity, they'd rather remain poor. We will always have a certain percentage of the population with no desire to change their circumstances. That would be their choice. As it is now, the vast majority of folks suffering in poverty really don't have a choice.
So. how do you fix this? Beats the hell out of me. It's obvious that no single solution can do it. Surely we have enough creative thinkers to devise solutions. The problem as I see it is that government will ultimately mismanage any program. There's no doubt in my mind that the worst managers work for the government, as no private employer would tolerate them for long. Yeah, there's no simple solution.
So, there's a lot of reasons for violence, but guns isn't one of them. Until our society wakes up and recognizes that this is a cultural issue, things will stay at the status quo and the not-so-deep thinkers will continue to assign blame to what scares them, rather than the actual cause.
It reminds me of the "War on Terror".... We don't have a war with terror, what we have is a war with radical Islam, the most violent culture on the planet. And like gun violence is blamed on guns, terrorism is blamed on terrorists. Once again, the root cause of the violence is ignored, and once again, little progress will be made.
My regards,
Widewing
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I will go further.... I say that there should be no parole...
criminals serve their sentance but.... when released.... they have payed their debt to society... they should have all their rights as an American citizen restored to them.. if they had a gold watch and a sixgun on em when they were arrested for that bank robbery... then when they get out they should be given back their gold watch and six gun. and... they should be able to vote like everyone else. no parole officer of any of that crap.
lazs