The claims are baloney and lies, based on distorted date and misrepresentations of results from ones with better data. [More]Satisfied Rapex customers attack John Lott.
The new study in question is here. Look at all the vitriol and snottiness, particularly in "Comments."
These children have no idea what the fight is really about, do they?
I'll be sure and link to the rebuttal when it happens.
[Via Al N]
10 comments:
My comment on the snarky lefty's blog (Yes, I'm scaring the white folks again, children. Avert your eyes.) --
How many economists (with their social scientist dates) can dance on the head of a gun control pin?
The fascinating thing about intellectuals is that they actually believe that their trench warfare over footnotes and data actually MEANS anything in the grand scheme of things as we are faced with today.
All of your snarky arguments are about to be overwhelmed by events. Either the society collapses under the economic tidal wave that is about to hit (in which case those who have firearms will no doubt survive better than those who eschew them, and the armed will be ill-disposed to obey any scheme that works toward their disarmament) or the Obamanoids will proceed with AWB2 and the federal seizure of control over all private transfer of arms (the ill-named lie called "the gunshow loophole") thus sparking armed civil disobedience if not outright civil war.
In the first event, you left-wing academics are either going to be stew for the cannibal's pot, or pulling plows for those who are armed.
In the second, those who advocate citizen disarmament of the "gun nuts" are going to be hiding in deep cellars and caves from those people who, having lost family members to a predatory government, will be using Bill Clinton's Serbian rules of engagement to wipe out the political, media and intellectual underpinnings of that tyrannical regime.
In any case, your footnotes will be used for kindling.
Kinda makes you want to go buy a firearm, doesn't it? Better hurry, before they're all gone.
Mike Vanderboegh
sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com
Laughing here, MVB.
I remain skeptical about any relationship between gun ownership and crime. One side presupposes that the guns which are owned are available for defense (not specifying Dr. Lott here), and the other side presupposes that when a new law is passed, it immediately has an effect on criminals' ownership of weapons. I think may- or shall-issue debates are meaningless--regardless of the attitude of state government toward permits, self-defense, and especially defense of property, are discouraged. The number of armed citizens are too few to make a difference, and anyway, they're not going out of their way to defend urban neighborhoods from gang fights. That's sort of significant, because any exploration of the violent crime rates shows the majority of it happens in large cities.
I have quite a number of handguns in my gun safe, but not one of them are any use to me when I go to work in a GFZ. 45superman discusses the skepticism of St. Louis police officials with regard to armed citizenry. I've looked into it before. Sorry, not enough people applied for permits to make a difference, and who knows whether or not they carry.
Sales figures indicate that the number of guns in American hands increases every year. Yet the crime rate has fluctuated according to my UCR data that goes back to 1960. It has risen sharply after "gun control" legislation passed, and it has also dropped after legislation was passed.
This does not detract in any way from my belief that individual use of weapons lowers the likelihood of becoming a victim. Those safety-minded individuals, however, tend to stay away from dangerous locations.
TJP, I'm pretty much right there with you.
When examing data, keep a few things in mind.
1. Do not confuse what is coincidental with what is causal.
2. Do not unnecessarily establish relationships with things that occur independently.
3. Expect randomness and clumping.
Sez Anon:
1. Do not confuse what is coincidental with what is causal.
2. Do not unnecessarily establish relationships with things that occur independently.
3. Expect randomness and clumping.
You know, these are lessons I learned from my first marriage, especially the clumping part. Right up to the time I caught her with her lover. Then there was randomness, clumping AND humping.
It doesn't matter one whit whether an armed citizenry has an effect on the crime rate. Not even a little bit. You see, the right to defend myself and my life and my loved ones and my property and my right to the tools that make that practical is not predicated on how much good it does everybody else. If others benefit, fine, but it has no bearing on my rights or on whether or not my rights are my rights.
While one incident in my life may be statistically insignificant to the world at large, it's a damn big deal to me. And nobody, no government, no politician, no Caspar Milquetoast has the power to legitimately deny me what rights I was born with in the continuance and futherance of my life so long as I don't unjustifiably harm another.
So, while I believe the overall crime rate continues to remain rather stable, regardless of whether I am armed or not, it just doesn't matter when it comes to my rights. I await the study that shows the stable crime rate to only be stable as to occurrence but has shifting geography as some venues' populations deal more directly and forcefully with criminals on the spot. Places where a dead housebreaker does not put a homeowner on trial, soon see their crime move to another less demanding area, often within the same county or state. So the rate may stay the same in the macro sense, but I think we would find some very sparse data points mixed with very crowded data points were such a study to be done.
Omg they used excel to plot their data. And it was the default graph, these guys are a fucking joke.
I had to leave a message over there directed at the idiot from James Madison U. I can't stand it when idiots claim that the individual right is something new and that the 2nd is really about a "collective right".
I decided to give him a bunch of quotes from our founding fathers and from others over the years to prove that the right is for the individuals and that is what the founding fathers plainly pointed out.
I also tossed a couple of quotes that seemed to fit him.
yeah, but assholes like that will then say "the founding fathers couldn't have possibly foreseen the circumstances of today, so even though they said it, and I lied about that, they would say something different today and I am still right, you damn gun/liberty nut."
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