"Our love affair with guns has nothing to do with tyranny, or militias, or self-preservation. Just ask any NRA member the following - if Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns, or the one we live in now? If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious. But it's not about life and liberty. It's all about the sheer hard-on of owning a gun."
American freelance writer Quentin R Bufogle.
Showing posts with label gun control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gun control. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Another tragic example of the 'empowering' effect of owning guns for self-defence
Unconfirmed media reports this morning are suggesting an unimaginable human tragedy - that legendary South African athlete Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead after mistaking her for an intruder.
If this turns out to be true, I await with baited breath Mr Kevin Baker's latest convoluted explanation of how, contrary to appearances, having a boyfriend who possessed guns for defensive purposes made Ms Steenkamp's life safer.
If this turns out to be true, I await with baited breath Mr Kevin Baker's latest convoluted explanation of how, contrary to appearances, having a boyfriend who possessed guns for defensive purposes made Ms Steenkamp's life safer.
Monday, December 24, 2012
The imperial delusion lives on
The SNP's Angus MacNeil and Labour's George Foulkes found some rare common ground a few days ago in condemning the Queen's 'silent' participation in a cabinet meeting, on the grounds that it breached a "vital separation of powers". Personally, I'm all for stunts like this - anything that undermines the ludicrous mythology of a monarchy that is "above politics" can only be a good thing, and means that the debate about the sort of Head of State we want in future will at least be marginally more clear-sighted. In a democracy, people who wield power are held accountable for their actions - or at least that's the theory. I look forward to Prince Charles being subjected to a long-overdue Paxman sneerfest one of these days.
No, what took my breath away was not the Queen's cabinet appearance, but the naming of a part of Antarctica in her honour. We know all about the extent to which individual Tory politicians lack self-awareness, but this is the clearest example yet of an institutional self-awareness problem on the part of the entire Tory/Lib Dem government. This is an administration that wants the world to believe that its upholding of British sovereignty in the Falkland Islands is not about imperialism, but self-determination. As I've said many times, that's a perfectly defensible position, because the Falklands are not an empty land - they contain thousands of people who want to retain the constitutional link with the UK, and who are the only stable population the islands have ever had.
But to ride roughshod over Argentina's Antarctic claim - which is no more or less legitimate than Britain's, because Antarctica really is an empty land - will send a powerful signal to the whole world that Britain's actions in the South Atlantic are in reality driven by the old, unreconstructed imperial impulse. Just how moronically insensitive can they get? Why not rename somewhere in the UK after the Queen? Or why not give her a beach in Pitcairn, if for some reason it really had to be an overseas "possession"? Oh no, that's not good enough for imperialist Tory governments - nothing but a continent will do for their monarch.
Yup, it's true - Cameron thinks he's Benjamin Disraeli. With a bit of luck, that delusion might just be taking a slight knock in 2014.
* * *
I feel slightly queasy. I can't stand Piers Morgan - but he's currently running rings round the American gun lobby quite brilliantly, and speaking vital truths to his adopted country in the unapologetic way they need to be spoken.
All the same, though - Piers Morgan. It's a bit like discovering that Political Betting's Plato is my local SNP candidate.
And on that downright disturbing note, I'll wish you all a very happy Christmas!
No, what took my breath away was not the Queen's cabinet appearance, but the naming of a part of Antarctica in her honour. We know all about the extent to which individual Tory politicians lack self-awareness, but this is the clearest example yet of an institutional self-awareness problem on the part of the entire Tory/Lib Dem government. This is an administration that wants the world to believe that its upholding of British sovereignty in the Falkland Islands is not about imperialism, but self-determination. As I've said many times, that's a perfectly defensible position, because the Falklands are not an empty land - they contain thousands of people who want to retain the constitutional link with the UK, and who are the only stable population the islands have ever had.
But to ride roughshod over Argentina's Antarctic claim - which is no more or less legitimate than Britain's, because Antarctica really is an empty land - will send a powerful signal to the whole world that Britain's actions in the South Atlantic are in reality driven by the old, unreconstructed imperial impulse. Just how moronically insensitive can they get? Why not rename somewhere in the UK after the Queen? Or why not give her a beach in Pitcairn, if for some reason it really had to be an overseas "possession"? Oh no, that's not good enough for imperialist Tory governments - nothing but a continent will do for their monarch.
Yup, it's true - Cameron thinks he's Benjamin Disraeli. With a bit of luck, that delusion might just be taking a slight knock in 2014.
* * *
I feel slightly queasy. I can't stand Piers Morgan - but he's currently running rings round the American gun lobby quite brilliantly, and speaking vital truths to his adopted country in the unapologetic way they need to be spoken.
All the same, though - Piers Morgan. It's a bit like discovering that Political Betting's Plato is my local SNP candidate.
And on that downright disturbing note, I'll wish you all a very happy Christmas!
Sunday, December 16, 2012
In wake of Newtown, Baker goes sinister
Question : If you were an American libertarian blogger who had spent almost every waking moment over the last decade advancing the fantastical notion that a gun free-for-all has made your country safer, how do you think you would react to this latest horrific gun massacre in Connecticut? Would you a) take a step back and quietly reflect on whether you might, after all, have been missing something, or b) boast about how right you've been all along, and then make a blood-curdling threat about what you and like-minded folk will do if anyone tries to take your guns away?
Long-term readers of this blog who can remember Mr Kevin Baker will probably be able to guess the answer. Here are his latest constructive musings on his favourite topic -
"Newtown, Connecticut is not Dunblane, Scotland"
This is true. There are two key differences between Newtown and Dunblane -
1) Only 18 people died in Dunblane. 27 died in Newtown.
2) Lessons were actually learned after Dunblane. When even President Obama is so cowed by the gun lobby that he authorises his press secretary to make the extraordinary observation that "today is not the day to have a debate about gun control" (when is, for pity's sake?) it seems highly probable that the equivalent lessons will not be learned as a result of Newtown, and consequently these entirely avoidable tragedies will continue to happen - perhaps with increasing frequency, as gun control laws are perversely loosened in some parts of the US.
"Yes, 27 people and one creature are dead, eighteen of those dead people are small children - first-graders. Yes, it's horrible, senseless, inexplicable.
And no, the guns were not at fault."
No, the guns were not at fault. They were all too effective. Just how 'inexplicable' is it that a man with a gun was able to kill far more people in a short space of time than he ever would have managed with his bare hands, or with the proverbial cricket bat?
"Let me just say again for the record:
I won't license.
I won't register.
I won't turn them in.
If you want to make me and several million other law-abiding, tax-paying citizens into felons, beware what you wish for. You may get it."
That does sound disturbingly like code for: "If we don't get our own way, we'll create a bloodbath, and then blame it on everybody but ourselves". True enough, the guns won't be entirely to blame for that either - the other key factors will be the sense of victimhood on the part of the perpetrators, and their failure to take responsibility for their own choices and actions. Those are the typical hallmarks of most 'senseless, inexplicable' massacres.
It should be remembered that the process of turning a "law-abiding citizen" into a felon is a remarkably simple one - it consists of that citizen making a conscious decision to no longer obey the law.
Long-term readers of this blog who can remember Mr Kevin Baker will probably be able to guess the answer. Here are his latest constructive musings on his favourite topic -
"Newtown, Connecticut is not Dunblane, Scotland"
This is true. There are two key differences between Newtown and Dunblane -
1) Only 18 people died in Dunblane. 27 died in Newtown.
2) Lessons were actually learned after Dunblane. When even President Obama is so cowed by the gun lobby that he authorises his press secretary to make the extraordinary observation that "today is not the day to have a debate about gun control" (when is, for pity's sake?) it seems highly probable that the equivalent lessons will not be learned as a result of Newtown, and consequently these entirely avoidable tragedies will continue to happen - perhaps with increasing frequency, as gun control laws are perversely loosened in some parts of the US.
"Yes, 27 people and one creature are dead, eighteen of those dead people are small children - first-graders. Yes, it's horrible, senseless, inexplicable.
And no, the guns were not at fault."
No, the guns were not at fault. They were all too effective. Just how 'inexplicable' is it that a man with a gun was able to kill far more people in a short space of time than he ever would have managed with his bare hands, or with the proverbial cricket bat?
"Let me just say again for the record:
I won't license.
I won't register.
I won't turn them in.
If you want to make me and several million other law-abiding, tax-paying citizens into felons, beware what you wish for. You may get it."
That does sound disturbingly like code for: "If we don't get our own way, we'll create a bloodbath, and then blame it on everybody but ourselves". True enough, the guns won't be entirely to blame for that either - the other key factors will be the sense of victimhood on the part of the perpetrators, and their failure to take responsibility for their own choices and actions. Those are the typical hallmarks of most 'senseless, inexplicable' massacres.
It should be remembered that the process of turning a "law-abiding citizen" into a felon is a remarkably simple one - it consists of that citizen making a conscious decision to no longer obey the law.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
No, Virginia, America hasn't gone bat**** crazy - and here's the proof.
Far too much nonsense is spoken on this side of the pond every time someone in the US commits a mass murder with legally-obtained firearms. There seems to be a genuine belief among some commentators that less guns would somehow make incidents like this less likely to happen. What poppycock. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Just like the civilians of Hiroshima weren't actually mass-murdered and irradiated by an atomic bomb - if Harry Truman hadn't had a nuclear weapon handy, he could just as easily have got the job done by bashing people over the head with a police truncheon, one-by-one.
As you know, at moments like this I much prefer to turn to Kevin Baker and his Fan Club over at The Smallest Minority, an oasis of non-paranoid thinking in an otherwise communist world. And I'm so glad I popped over there today, because it turns out that the real problem in this instance is not that there are too many guns in American cinemas, but that there are far too few, and that in any case the noble minority who sensibly have a firearm in their pocket as they're munching on their popcorn haven't given anything like enough thought to the logistics of shooting someone in the head in such challenging terrain -
"I took my grandson to see Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter on its opening weekend. When we got to the theater, I took my Kel-Tec PF9 out of the center console (in a pocket holster) and put it in my pants pocket. He saw. "You carry a gun in the theater?" he asked. "It's my job to protect you," I replied.
Now I have to practice head-shots with the thing. Maybe I ought to get the laser..."
Also worthy of note is the first reply to Baker's latest inspiring attempt to make the world a safer place -
"I felt it important enough to break my silence here and note that violent crime continues to drop in this country and world wide, making incidents like this outliers. Of course the media will cover this story to the point of nausea and make it seem like it happens everywhere all the time which it does not."
Nothing very surprising there, you might think, until you discover that this was Markadelphia, regarded by the KBFC as the blog's resident liberal "Antichrist" figure. And that usefully illustrates America's real problem - it's not that there are millions of gun zealots out there, it's that the so-called left are too cowed to face them down directly, and indeed that many on the left buy into the gun free-for-all ideology themselves. How else can we explain that the first response of a 'liberal' to a blogpost about defending yourself in a cinema with guns talks about anything other than the fact that the post is just utterly unhinged? I mean, if this incident is such an 'outlier', Mark, don't you think it might have been worthwhile to point out that the belief that it's too risky to take your grandson to the cinema without a lethal weapon may just be a tad disproportionate? Or if it isn't disproportionate, that it might be more rational (and fairer on others) to just forego trips to the cinema until such time as the whole unspeakable mess is sorted out?
In truth, of course, while a 'newsworthy' event like this is certainly an outlier, the daily toll of routine gun deaths in the US is anything but. 81 Americans per day die from firearm violence - and the per capita death rate is almost twenty times higher than Scotland's.
As you know, at moments like this I much prefer to turn to Kevin Baker and his Fan Club over at The Smallest Minority, an oasis of non-paranoid thinking in an otherwise communist world. And I'm so glad I popped over there today, because it turns out that the real problem in this instance is not that there are too many guns in American cinemas, but that there are far too few, and that in any case the noble minority who sensibly have a firearm in their pocket as they're munching on their popcorn haven't given anything like enough thought to the logistics of shooting someone in the head in such challenging terrain -
"I took my grandson to see Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter on its opening weekend. When we got to the theater, I took my Kel-Tec PF9 out of the center console (in a pocket holster) and put it in my pants pocket. He saw. "You carry a gun in the theater?" he asked. "It's my job to protect you," I replied.
Now I have to practice head-shots with the thing. Maybe I ought to get the laser..."
Also worthy of note is the first reply to Baker's latest inspiring attempt to make the world a safer place -
"I felt it important enough to break my silence here and note that violent crime continues to drop in this country and world wide, making incidents like this outliers. Of course the media will cover this story to the point of nausea and make it seem like it happens everywhere all the time which it does not."
Nothing very surprising there, you might think, until you discover that this was Markadelphia, regarded by the KBFC as the blog's resident liberal "Antichrist" figure. And that usefully illustrates America's real problem - it's not that there are millions of gun zealots out there, it's that the so-called left are too cowed to face them down directly, and indeed that many on the left buy into the gun free-for-all ideology themselves. How else can we explain that the first response of a 'liberal' to a blogpost about defending yourself in a cinema with guns talks about anything other than the fact that the post is just utterly unhinged? I mean, if this incident is such an 'outlier', Mark, don't you think it might have been worthwhile to point out that the belief that it's too risky to take your grandson to the cinema without a lethal weapon may just be a tad disproportionate? Or if it isn't disproportionate, that it might be more rational (and fairer on others) to just forego trips to the cinema until such time as the whole unspeakable mess is sorted out?
In truth, of course, while a 'newsworthy' event like this is certainly an outlier, the daily toll of routine gun deaths in the US is anything but. 81 Americans per day die from firearm violence - and the per capita death rate is almost twenty times higher than Scotland's.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Vote for Ron?
In theory I have the right to vote in the forthcoming US presidential primaries, although it remains to be seen whether I'll actually be able to exercise that right, because on previous occasions my requests for a ballot paper have only met with a 70-75% success rate. However, assuming I do get the opportunity, I'll be in the novel position of deciding who to vote for in the Republican primary - there's absolutely no point in participating in the Democratic ballot, because for better or worse it's a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama will be the candidate. So here's the dilemma : how do I go about deciding who is the least worst of all the extreme right-wing candidates vying for the presumptuous post of Global Emperor? Or should I even be trying to decide that? Should I instead vote for the most extreme candidate of the lot, to maximise Obama's chances of being re-elected?
Before my New Year's Resolution to stop posting at PB, I explained my dilemma over there. The poster Edmund of Tokyo had some very solid practical advice - I should plump for Rick Perry, because he has the dual attributes of being fundamentally unelectable, but also not the sort of chap who would blow up the world in the unlikely event that he is elected. This is a persuasive argument, but I'm actually coming round to the peculiar idea that I might vote for Ron Paul instead. I say 'peculiar' because in many ways he stands for all the things I most detest - abolition of what little there is of a welfare state in the US, completely unfettered gun ownership rights, etc, etc. But the beauty of a Paul candidacy would be the long-overdue airing of certain issues that will otherwise remain buried, ie. does the US have any right to maintain a global empire in the 21st Century? Is it really OK for it to carry out extra-judicial killings on other countries' sovereign territory? Should it stop and question its uncritical support for Israel once in a while?
And if the calamity happened and Paul actually was elected President, one point of reassurance is that he would have a relatively free hand to pursue his constructive agenda in the foreign policy sphere, but to some extent might be hampered by Congress in his attempts to leave the poor to starve.
All of this may be totally academic, of course, because if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucuses today (Tuesday), the momentum behind him would probably be unstoppable, and the contest would be over before it really started.
NOTE : 'Vote for Ron' is slang for voting for no-one, or for 'none of the above' (RON stands for 're-open nominations').
Before my New Year's Resolution to stop posting at PB, I explained my dilemma over there. The poster Edmund of Tokyo had some very solid practical advice - I should plump for Rick Perry, because he has the dual attributes of being fundamentally unelectable, but also not the sort of chap who would blow up the world in the unlikely event that he is elected. This is a persuasive argument, but I'm actually coming round to the peculiar idea that I might vote for Ron Paul instead. I say 'peculiar' because in many ways he stands for all the things I most detest - abolition of what little there is of a welfare state in the US, completely unfettered gun ownership rights, etc, etc. But the beauty of a Paul candidacy would be the long-overdue airing of certain issues that will otherwise remain buried, ie. does the US have any right to maintain a global empire in the 21st Century? Is it really OK for it to carry out extra-judicial killings on other countries' sovereign territory? Should it stop and question its uncritical support for Israel once in a while?
And if the calamity happened and Paul actually was elected President, one point of reassurance is that he would have a relatively free hand to pursue his constructive agenda in the foreign policy sphere, but to some extent might be hampered by Congress in his attempts to leave the poor to starve.
All of this may be totally academic, of course, because if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucuses today (Tuesday), the momentum behind him would probably be unstoppable, and the contest would be over before it really started.
NOTE : 'Vote for Ron' is slang for voting for no-one, or for 'none of the above' (RON stands for 're-open nominations').
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Word-Search Friday : Conservapedia on Gun Control
Just before I embark on this epic post, a quick reminder that if you haven't already voted, today (Friday) is the last chance to vote for your top ten political blogs and your top ten political bloggers in the Total Politics Blog Awards. In all honesty, it'll be a relief to remove the banner from the top of the page after midnight - it's been making me feel slightly self-conscious!
Anyway, to business. After a bit of a hiatus, here's a disappointingly unalliterative Word-Search Friday, this time devoted to some indisputable facts on the subject of gun control, as revealed by the internet's only 'Trustworthy Encyclopedia'. If only I'd known this stuff before I first got into the 'debate' with the American gun enthusiasts a couple of years ago - I'm quite sure I'd never have maintained my tragic allegiance to the forces of darkness for as long as I have...
And here (in bold) are the words you're looking for -
Genocide : What Conservapedia reveals has "only ever occurred" after the introduction of gun control. It appears Hitler's liberalisation of Germany's gun laws prior to the Holocaust was a mere figment of our imagination, as was the fact that Iraq was awash with legally-owned guns when Saddam Hussein carried out his genocidal atrocities against the Kurds and others.
Superficially appealing : How Conservapedia characterises the argument that gun control "somehow" leads to less crime. I do hope they paid Kevin Baker royalties before inserting the word "somehow" into that sentence.
Shift voters leftwards : What Conservapedia reveals is the inevitable political effect of introducing gun control. A great pity that Hitler did liberalise the gun laws, then - he could have saved the world an awful lot of hassle if he'd simply gone in the opposite direction.
Primarily defensive weapons : What Conservapedia reveals guns are. However, with 15 gun deaths per year for every 100,000 people in the US, we shouldn't entirely overlook the popularity of the "secondary" function of firearms.
Emotionally dependent on government : What Conservapedia reveals gun control makes people. Jeez, guys, for once will you put your trustworthiness and scrupulous encylopedic neutrality to one side and simply call a spade a spade - gun control is for girls.
Finland : a country that Conservapedia reveals has a higher rate of gun ownership than the US, but a lower rate of crime. The fact that Finland also has by far the highest gun death rate in western Europe is, by contrast, merely an astonishing coincidence.
Pekka-Eric Auvinen : A Finnish mass-murderer who Conservapedia invites us to conclude would have been stopped by an "armed citizen" if only Finland had US-style gun laws. For the avoidance of doubt, there is absolutely no contradiction in the fact that Conservapedia has already praised Finland to the skies for having the laxest gun laws in western Europe, and we most certainly have no business entertaining the thought that Auvinen would never have attacked anyone with guns in the first place had the laws not been quite so lax.
Washington DC : A jurisdiction which Conservapedia points out has traditionally had strong gun control legislation, but also one of the highest crime rates in America. In case you're wondering, the fact that Washington DC borders jurisdictions in which legal guns have long been readily accessible, and the fact that there are no border controls preventing those guns from crossing into Washington DC, is of no relevance whatsoever.
The Crusades : A topic which Conservapedia reveals is no longer taught by some history teachers in English schools as a result of gun control. (Seriously - I'm not making this up. The article actually says that.) Others topics that the absence of guns has disgracefully erased from the English school curriculum include the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Holocaust.
"Cultural reasons" : Conservapedia's devastatingly convincing explanation for why the much lower gun death rate in "England" has nothing whatever to do with the UK's strict gun control legislation. Statistical evidence? Pah, who needs it, when you've got non-specific "cultural differences" to fall back on. Yet more royalties to Kevin Baker.
"Comparison can be difficult due to the presence of other factors" : Conservapedia's devastatingly convincing explanation for why we should pay no attention to the fact that other countries, such as Japan and Signapore, manage to have both strict gun control and low overall crime rates. Let me guess - would those factors be "cultural" in nature?
"Controversy" : What Conservapedia reveals there has been over the success of Australia's gun control laws of 1996 and 2002, before going on to note in passing that overall gun violence has decreased since they were passed.
"No doubt contributes to its reputation as a peaceful and neutral country" : What Conservapedia reveals widespread gun ownership has done for Switzerland. Did Jimmy Carr learn his deadpan delivery from the Trustworthy Encyclopedia?
As ever, the solution will be here in a few days.
Anyway, to business. After a bit of a hiatus, here's a disappointingly unalliterative Word-Search Friday, this time devoted to some indisputable facts on the subject of gun control, as revealed by the internet's only 'Trustworthy Encyclopedia'. If only I'd known this stuff before I first got into the 'debate' with the American gun enthusiasts a couple of years ago - I'm quite sure I'd never have maintained my tragic allegiance to the forces of darkness for as long as I have...
(Click to enlarge)
And here (in bold) are the words you're looking for -
Genocide : What Conservapedia reveals has "only ever occurred" after the introduction of gun control. It appears Hitler's liberalisation of Germany's gun laws prior to the Holocaust was a mere figment of our imagination, as was the fact that Iraq was awash with legally-owned guns when Saddam Hussein carried out his genocidal atrocities against the Kurds and others.
Superficially appealing : How Conservapedia characterises the argument that gun control "somehow" leads to less crime. I do hope they paid Kevin Baker royalties before inserting the word "somehow" into that sentence.
Shift voters leftwards : What Conservapedia reveals is the inevitable political effect of introducing gun control. A great pity that Hitler did liberalise the gun laws, then - he could have saved the world an awful lot of hassle if he'd simply gone in the opposite direction.
Primarily defensive weapons : What Conservapedia reveals guns are. However, with 15 gun deaths per year for every 100,000 people in the US, we shouldn't entirely overlook the popularity of the "secondary" function of firearms.
Emotionally dependent on government : What Conservapedia reveals gun control makes people. Jeez, guys, for once will you put your trustworthiness and scrupulous encylopedic neutrality to one side and simply call a spade a spade - gun control is for girls.
Finland : a country that Conservapedia reveals has a higher rate of gun ownership than the US, but a lower rate of crime. The fact that Finland also has by far the highest gun death rate in western Europe is, by contrast, merely an astonishing coincidence.
Pekka-Eric Auvinen : A Finnish mass-murderer who Conservapedia invites us to conclude would have been stopped by an "armed citizen" if only Finland had US-style gun laws. For the avoidance of doubt, there is absolutely no contradiction in the fact that Conservapedia has already praised Finland to the skies for having the laxest gun laws in western Europe, and we most certainly have no business entertaining the thought that Auvinen would never have attacked anyone with guns in the first place had the laws not been quite so lax.
Washington DC : A jurisdiction which Conservapedia points out has traditionally had strong gun control legislation, but also one of the highest crime rates in America. In case you're wondering, the fact that Washington DC borders jurisdictions in which legal guns have long been readily accessible, and the fact that there are no border controls preventing those guns from crossing into Washington DC, is of no relevance whatsoever.
The Crusades : A topic which Conservapedia reveals is no longer taught by some history teachers in English schools as a result of gun control. (Seriously - I'm not making this up. The article actually says that.) Others topics that the absence of guns has disgracefully erased from the English school curriculum include the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Holocaust.
"Cultural reasons" : Conservapedia's devastatingly convincing explanation for why the much lower gun death rate in "England" has nothing whatever to do with the UK's strict gun control legislation. Statistical evidence? Pah, who needs it, when you've got non-specific "cultural differences" to fall back on. Yet more royalties to Kevin Baker.
"Comparison can be difficult due to the presence of other factors" : Conservapedia's devastatingly convincing explanation for why we should pay no attention to the fact that other countries, such as Japan and Signapore, manage to have both strict gun control and low overall crime rates. Let me guess - would those factors be "cultural" in nature?
"Controversy" : What Conservapedia reveals there has been over the success of Australia's gun control laws of 1996 and 2002, before going on to note in passing that overall gun violence has decreased since they were passed.
"No doubt contributes to its reputation as a peaceful and neutral country" : What Conservapedia reveals widespread gun ownership has done for Switzerland. Did Jimmy Carr learn his deadpan delivery from the Trustworthy Encyclopedia?
As ever, the solution will be here in a few days.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Solving the mystery of the British noble savage
My exchange on gun control with Roberta X has been continuing on a thread which is now several days old, so I thought I'd switch to a fresh post for my latest response. I had asked Roberta if she hadn't told me a couple of years ago that she'd been held up at gunpoint twice, and whether the greater likelihood of that happening in her country didn't lead her to a fairly obvious conclusion. This was her response -
"Yes, I have been held up twice at gunpoint -- but I have never been beaten up, which is far more likely in London or Glasgow than Indianapolis. Nor have I ever suffered a "hot" robbery, also much more common there than here.
I do worry about you; I know where murder is most likely to strike here and what the risk factors are (illegal drugs, dating men into drugs, living in certain neighborhoods -- I got robbed in areas I should have known better than to be in at the time of day I was in them). Your rate of violent crime is higher and it is more likely to strike outside of "high risk" zones."
You’re very carefully talking about robberies, violent crime, etc – but not murders. There’s a good reason why you’re avoiding that subject, namely the fact that the murder rate is three times higher in your own country, a statistic that can in no small part be attributed to the rate of gun ownership. I’m not in any way diminishing the terrible trauma caused by robberies, but life goes on after them. Life does not go on if you’ve just been murdered. Therefore, if gun control helps prevent murders, it’s fulfilling its primary objective, regardless of whether we give any credence to your deeply implausible suggestion that it's somehow increasing the rate at which lesser crimes are committed.
And as I’ve already pointed out, you and Kevin Baker are unwittingly harming your own case by harping on about Britain’s violent crime rate – if we’re such a violent society in comparison to the United States and yet have a much, much lower homicide rate, what can possibly explain that discrepancy other than obvious factors such as the extent of gun control? You simply don’t have a credible answer to that question, and Kevin ludicrously flaunts his own inability to answer – “Cultural differences! Oooh, la mystère!” Well, as I said on the previous thread, it must be a hell of a weird “cultural phenomenon” that makes British thugs more likely than their American counterparts to beat someone senseless, but simultaneously far more likely to refrain from actually killing anyone.
The mystery Kevin needs to solve for us is the mystery of the British noble savage. Alternatively he could just consider the obvious explanation – thugs in this country are much less likely to be armed with guns.
"As for riots, given that the States are far larger than Scotland and much more diverse, it is not at all surprising "we" have had riots more recently. Culturally, you've a lot more in common with England and they've had riots even more recently. (Indianapolis, the last riot per se was over a decade ago, smallish and actually resulted in some resolution of the specific issue)."
The point about cultural similarities with England is monumentally silly. We’re culturally closer to the Republic of Ireland than we are to the parts of England that suffered riots – when was the last serious riot in Dublin? We’re culturally closer to New Zealand than America – when was the last serious riot in Auckland? I’m sure we’re very grateful for your “Riot Forecast” service, but your time might be better spent explaining your extraordinary proposition that arming the rioters with guns will somehow assist matters in the unlikely event that we have such a major incident in the near future.
"As for ABB, he failed to obtain guns illegally *once.* He tried via legal means and succeeded. Do you really think if he had been stymied there, he would have folded his hands and said, "That's it for me, then"? I don't think just "any criminal" can lay hands of a gun in either of our countries (it helps to be a careerist instead of a whackjob); but I am sure that a determined one can. ABB had determination."
First point – you still haven’t answered the question of whether it would have been a good thing if, having failed in a serious attempt to obtain guns illegally, he had been prevented from doing so legally. Your implicit answer seems to be “it doesn’t matter”, which is frankly bizarre. However, you raise an interesting point about the determination of criminals to lay their hands on weapons, and this probably gets to the nub of why gun control is such a successful tool in suppressing the murder rate – as you openly conceded yourself, not all criminals will go to any lengths to obtain a gun illegally. Some may, but others will just commit crime opportunistically, and if they don’t happen to have a gun to hand at the time, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that they’re much less likely to kill anyone.
"You cannot get rid of guns. It's impossible; not even totalitarian states manage to do so. All you can do is reduce the law-abiding to a pool of helpless victims for any lunatic or predator.
That is an unacceptable outcome."
Nobody is claiming we can “get rid of guns”. But people certainly are claiming that we can limit access to them, and as a result suppress both the gun death rate and the overall homicide rate. The statistical evidence from our two countries leaves you on very weak ground in attempting to dispute that.
"Yes, I have been held up twice at gunpoint -- but I have never been beaten up, which is far more likely in London or Glasgow than Indianapolis. Nor have I ever suffered a "hot" robbery, also much more common there than here.
I do worry about you; I know where murder is most likely to strike here and what the risk factors are (illegal drugs, dating men into drugs, living in certain neighborhoods -- I got robbed in areas I should have known better than to be in at the time of day I was in them). Your rate of violent crime is higher and it is more likely to strike outside of "high risk" zones."
You’re very carefully talking about robberies, violent crime, etc – but not murders. There’s a good reason why you’re avoiding that subject, namely the fact that the murder rate is three times higher in your own country, a statistic that can in no small part be attributed to the rate of gun ownership. I’m not in any way diminishing the terrible trauma caused by robberies, but life goes on after them. Life does not go on if you’ve just been murdered. Therefore, if gun control helps prevent murders, it’s fulfilling its primary objective, regardless of whether we give any credence to your deeply implausible suggestion that it's somehow increasing the rate at which lesser crimes are committed.
And as I’ve already pointed out, you and Kevin Baker are unwittingly harming your own case by harping on about Britain’s violent crime rate – if we’re such a violent society in comparison to the United States and yet have a much, much lower homicide rate, what can possibly explain that discrepancy other than obvious factors such as the extent of gun control? You simply don’t have a credible answer to that question, and Kevin ludicrously flaunts his own inability to answer – “Cultural differences! Oooh, la mystère!” Well, as I said on the previous thread, it must be a hell of a weird “cultural phenomenon” that makes British thugs more likely than their American counterparts to beat someone senseless, but simultaneously far more likely to refrain from actually killing anyone.
The mystery Kevin needs to solve for us is the mystery of the British noble savage. Alternatively he could just consider the obvious explanation – thugs in this country are much less likely to be armed with guns.
"As for riots, given that the States are far larger than Scotland and much more diverse, it is not at all surprising "we" have had riots more recently. Culturally, you've a lot more in common with England and they've had riots even more recently. (Indianapolis, the last riot per se was over a decade ago, smallish and actually resulted in some resolution of the specific issue)."
The point about cultural similarities with England is monumentally silly. We’re culturally closer to the Republic of Ireland than we are to the parts of England that suffered riots – when was the last serious riot in Dublin? We’re culturally closer to New Zealand than America – when was the last serious riot in Auckland? I’m sure we’re very grateful for your “Riot Forecast” service, but your time might be better spent explaining your extraordinary proposition that arming the rioters with guns will somehow assist matters in the unlikely event that we have such a major incident in the near future.
"As for ABB, he failed to obtain guns illegally *once.* He tried via legal means and succeeded. Do you really think if he had been stymied there, he would have folded his hands and said, "That's it for me, then"? I don't think just "any criminal" can lay hands of a gun in either of our countries (it helps to be a careerist instead of a whackjob); but I am sure that a determined one can. ABB had determination."
First point – you still haven’t answered the question of whether it would have been a good thing if, having failed in a serious attempt to obtain guns illegally, he had been prevented from doing so legally. Your implicit answer seems to be “it doesn’t matter”, which is frankly bizarre. However, you raise an interesting point about the determination of criminals to lay their hands on weapons, and this probably gets to the nub of why gun control is such a successful tool in suppressing the murder rate – as you openly conceded yourself, not all criminals will go to any lengths to obtain a gun illegally. Some may, but others will just commit crime opportunistically, and if they don’t happen to have a gun to hand at the time, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that they’re much less likely to kill anyone.
"You cannot get rid of guns. It's impossible; not even totalitarian states manage to do so. All you can do is reduce the law-abiding to a pool of helpless victims for any lunatic or predator.
That is an unacceptable outcome."
Nobody is claiming we can “get rid of guns”. But people certainly are claiming that we can limit access to them, and as a result suppress both the gun death rate and the overall homicide rate. The statistical evidence from our two countries leaves you on very weak ground in attempting to dispute that.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
To what do I owe the honour this time?
I've just spotted another visit to this blog from Tucson, Arizona (ie. Mr Kevin Baker) on my stats. Now, of course we all know that the great man is ordinarily far too busy Crusading For Liberty to grace us lesser mortals with his presence, so the obvious question - to what do I owe the honour this time? A couple of weeks ago it was the Norwegian atrocity, this time it must be...of course, it's the riots in London. Presumably I'm supposed to have come to my senses by now and realised that things would be so much better if only the rioters had easy access to firearms.
And sure enough, here's the Baker post saying pretty much that. Jeez - is there any social ill that can't be instantly solved for us by an influx of these barbarous weapons?
And sure enough, here's the Baker post saying pretty much that. Jeez - is there any social ill that can't be instantly solved for us by an influx of these barbarous weapons?
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Too many legal guns in England and Wales? You'll feel better once you have some more.
Yet another virtuoso display of logical gymnastics from Mr Kevin Baker that must surely put him in firm contention for the US Olympic team. He cites the increase in the number of legally-owned weapons in England and Wales as 'evidence' of the foolishness of gun control. So just run this past me again - legalising more categories of weapon would decrease the number of legally-owned weapons? No, of course not. Even Baker himself would have to concede the blindingly-obvious - that whatever problems we may have now with an undesirably high number of legal weapons, that number would be much, much higher without legislative restrictions. So gun control does work to depress the number of legally-owned weapons. And why does that matter so much? Kevin, astoundingly, is rather keen to remind us of the reason himself -
"Forgotten Derrick Bird so soon?"
Er, no we haven't, Kevin. You, on the other hand, might wish to forget him rather urgently, because there must surely be a better advert for the legendary "responsibility of legal gun-owners" than the mass-murderer Mr Bird.
In a similar peculiar vein, Baker goes on to claim that gun control has somehow contributed to the problem of illegal weapons. Oh yes, of course it has, Kevin, it's well known that the UK has a much worse problem with illegal guns than countries with fewer legal restrictions on gun ownership, such as - to pluck an example out of thin air - the US.
He also makes bizarre reference to grenade attacks -
"There have been grenade attacks in the UK. In 2003 a 63 year-old woman lost a leg when a grenade was tossed into her Liverpool home, for example."
Are we supposed to conclude that "owning a gun for defensive purposes" would have given her premonitory powers that it was going to happen, enabling her to know exactly when to start firing wildly through her window?
Finally, if you're ever tempted to take one of Kevin's "rigorous statistical analyses" seriously ever again, you might want to consider this schoolboy howler -
"The population of England and Wales is a bit over 62 million"
No, it isn't, Kevin. That's the population of the whole United Kingdom, including Scotland and Northern Ireland. Just goes to confirm what I've always said - to hell with guns, America needs to invest in some damn good geography teachers.
UPDATE : Having thought about this some more, there's another point that baffles me. After the Cumbrian massacre, Kevin and his Fan Club assured us that the only problem was not that Derrick Bird obtained his weapons legally, but instead that there weren't a whole lot of other gun owners out there in a position to leap into action when needed and shoot Bird on sight (after all, "when there are only seconds to spare, the police are only ever minutes away").
And yet we now learn from Kevin that gun control has been an abject failure because this country is supposedly awash with guns anyway, of both the legal and illegal variety. So, according to his very own logic, it appears that widespread gun ownership isn't much use at 'protecting' the public from the likes of Derrick Bird after all. But between you and me, I think most of us had worked that out already.
"Forgotten Derrick Bird so soon?"
Er, no we haven't, Kevin. You, on the other hand, might wish to forget him rather urgently, because there must surely be a better advert for the legendary "responsibility of legal gun-owners" than the mass-murderer Mr Bird.
In a similar peculiar vein, Baker goes on to claim that gun control has somehow contributed to the problem of illegal weapons. Oh yes, of course it has, Kevin, it's well known that the UK has a much worse problem with illegal guns than countries with fewer legal restrictions on gun ownership, such as - to pluck an example out of thin air - the US.
He also makes bizarre reference to grenade attacks -
"There have been grenade attacks in the UK. In 2003 a 63 year-old woman lost a leg when a grenade was tossed into her Liverpool home, for example."
Are we supposed to conclude that "owning a gun for defensive purposes" would have given her premonitory powers that it was going to happen, enabling her to know exactly when to start firing wildly through her window?
Finally, if you're ever tempted to take one of Kevin's "rigorous statistical analyses" seriously ever again, you might want to consider this schoolboy howler -
"The population of England and Wales is a bit over 62 million"
No, it isn't, Kevin. That's the population of the whole United Kingdom, including Scotland and Northern Ireland. Just goes to confirm what I've always said - to hell with guns, America needs to invest in some damn good geography teachers.
UPDATE : Having thought about this some more, there's another point that baffles me. After the Cumbrian massacre, Kevin and his Fan Club assured us that the only problem was not that Derrick Bird obtained his weapons legally, but instead that there weren't a whole lot of other gun owners out there in a position to leap into action when needed and shoot Bird on sight (after all, "when there are only seconds to spare, the police are only ever minutes away").
And yet we now learn from Kevin that gun control has been an abject failure because this country is supposedly awash with guns anyway, of both the legal and illegal variety. So, according to his very own logic, it appears that widespread gun ownership isn't much use at 'protecting' the public from the likes of Derrick Bird after all. But between you and me, I think most of us had worked that out already.
Are you listening, Jimmy Wales? Yes, anti-Scottish racism is possible - and you have the word of an English court for that.
I must admit that I'm really, really impressed that a postman has been convicted by an English court of racially-aggravated criminal damage for calling Andy Murray a "useless Jock" in graffiti. The usual complacent response if we complain about that kind of insult is that we need to locate our sense of humour, and of course the bizarre excuse for allowing Anne Robinson to get away with an anti-Welsh diatribe on TV was that Wales' status as one of the four countries of the UK ought to give Welsh people a resilience that other ethnic minorities don't have.
Spare a thought tonight for one man, though - Jimmy Wales, the founder and dictator of Wikipedia. In all likelihood, he's currently spinning round and round, muttering "does not compute, does not compute, does not compute". After all, it's less than a year since he loftily assured us that anti-Scottish racism was literally impossible on the grounds that "Scots are not a race", and decreed that part of the Wiki biography of Baroness Deech must therefore be purged to reflect that 'fact' -
"It is not appropriate to term the comments 'racist' - particularly without a source, as Scots are not a race, and the remarks were purely political and not about Scots as an ethnic group at all. I remain unconvinced that this incident is of any importance whatsoever outside of a narrow portion of the blogosphere."
He then went on to claim that Deech's anti-Scottish remarks on Any Questions? had been a "joke" - and in all apparent seriousness cited as 'evidence' the fact that some of the English audience-members had laughed!
* * *
I was also amused to read the story of the Swedish man who was arrested for illegal possession of nuclear material, and for trying to split atoms in his kitchen -
"Handl, 31, said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.
Only later did he realise it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police."
The Kevin Baker Fan Club must be outraged by Handl's arrest, though - after all, we all know that it is far too dangerous for governments to have a monopoly on any weapon. We'd all be much, much safer if there were millions of private owners of nuclear material. And the idea that radioactive discharges would become more common is a myth - because of course if anyone was behaving irresponsibly, a good guy would soon nuke his house to snuff out the problem.
Spare a thought tonight for one man, though - Jimmy Wales, the founder and dictator of Wikipedia. In all likelihood, he's currently spinning round and round, muttering "does not compute, does not compute, does not compute". After all, it's less than a year since he loftily assured us that anti-Scottish racism was literally impossible on the grounds that "Scots are not a race", and decreed that part of the Wiki biography of Baroness Deech must therefore be purged to reflect that 'fact' -
"It is not appropriate to term the comments 'racist' - particularly without a source, as Scots are not a race, and the remarks were purely political and not about Scots as an ethnic group at all. I remain unconvinced that this incident is of any importance whatsoever outside of a narrow portion of the blogosphere."
He then went on to claim that Deech's anti-Scottish remarks on Any Questions? had been a "joke" - and in all apparent seriousness cited as 'evidence' the fact that some of the English audience-members had laughed!
* * *
I was also amused to read the story of the Swedish man who was arrested for illegal possession of nuclear material, and for trying to split atoms in his kitchen -
"Handl, 31, said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.
Only later did he realise it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police."
The Kevin Baker Fan Club must be outraged by Handl's arrest, though - after all, we all know that it is far too dangerous for governments to have a monopoly on any weapon. We'd all be much, much safer if there were millions of private owners of nuclear material. And the idea that radioactive discharges would become more common is a myth - because of course if anyone was behaving irresponsibly, a good guy would soon nuke his house to snuff out the problem.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Make your fallout room NOW
The dregs of my exchange with the Kevin Baker Fan Club are still carrying on back at the original thread, and it suddenly occurred to me what it was Baker's fatuous suggestion of how the Norwegian victims could supposedly have saved themselves reminded me of. It's Protect and Survive - the infamous series of Public Information films to end all Public Information films, that would have been shown on TV had there been a significant and imminent danger of nuclear war. They contain a series of incredibly complex and faintly ludicrous instructions about how people should spend every waking moment before the potential Soviet attack "making sure everything is ready for you and your family". It was of course the ultimate distraction technique on behalf of the government - the problem we face is not the weapons, or our trigger-happy attitude to using those weapons, the only problem is your own lack of readiness. You see, thermonuclear war needn't be the big deal everyone thinks it is - it's perfectly survivable as long as you're prepared. So if you get killed, it's nothing to do with our recklessness as a government, it's entirely your fault for not choosing the correct "fallout room", fortifying your "inner refuge" with the requisite number of hardcover books, having sufficient supplies of tuna to last for at least fourteen days, and having enough batteries to listen to the BBC Wartime Service on your trusty transistor radio.
And so it is with the Kevin Baker Fan Club. A psycopath kills dozens with legally-obtained weapons? Oh, it's not the weapons or the laws we should be looking at, that's a peripheral issue. The only problem was that Norway failed to introduce a National Indoctrination Programme advising young men that in such a situation they are required to calmly attract the gunman's attention by running towards him and pelting him with rocks. You see, widespread gun ownership is no big deal, and gun massacres are perfectly survivable. If you don't survive them, it's largely your own fault.
In truth, of course, while some people would have survived a nuclear attack, that would have been principally down to the luck of their location as much as anything. For most people, the advice in Protect and Survive would have been utterly useless. All that the absurd perception that an individual could "take responsibility for his own survival" achieved was to give certain people an alibi for not focusing on what should have been the first and only priority - making sure the unthinkable never happened in the first place. I'd suggest the same truth applies to potential gun massacres of the type we've just seen. Whatever Kevin and co might like us to believe, it's really not OK if these weapons are everywhere - some attacks are not survivable, however much responsibility we all take for our own personal safety.
And so it is with the Kevin Baker Fan Club. A psycopath kills dozens with legally-obtained weapons? Oh, it's not the weapons or the laws we should be looking at, that's a peripheral issue. The only problem was that Norway failed to introduce a National Indoctrination Programme advising young men that in such a situation they are required to calmly attract the gunman's attention by running towards him and pelting him with rocks. You see, widespread gun ownership is no big deal, and gun massacres are perfectly survivable. If you don't survive them, it's largely your own fault.
In truth, of course, while some people would have survived a nuclear attack, that would have been principally down to the luck of their location as much as anything. For most people, the advice in Protect and Survive would have been utterly useless. All that the absurd perception that an individual could "take responsibility for his own survival" achieved was to give certain people an alibi for not focusing on what should have been the first and only priority - making sure the unthinkable never happened in the first place. I'd suggest the same truth applies to potential gun massacres of the type we've just seen. Whatever Kevin and co might like us to believe, it's really not OK if these weapons are everywhere - some attacks are not survivable, however much responsibility we all take for our own personal safety.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Witnessing the collapse
It has to be said that Kevin Baker's whole argument against gun control legislation has been collapsing around his ears over the last 48 hours or so (which perhaps explains why, for approximately the seventeenth time in our off-and-on exchanges, he has just abruptly declared that he is "done here"). Over the last two years, he has repeatedly claimed that there is no basis whatever for thinking that less gun control leads to more deaths - he always attributes Britain's much lower homicide rate to the vague concept of "culture". But he tripped up badly the other day when trying to make a cheap point about a UN report several years ago that labelled Scotland the "most violent country in the developed world", in spite of the fact that we have a homicide rate that is more than three times lower than that of the US -
"Maybe if the Scots had guns they would kill each other at astronomical rates. Given their obviously hyper-violent culture ....
Then again, there might be a few more deaths but a lot fewer Glasgow smiles."
Now, you might think that this is a relatively small concession - that he is saying less gun control would lead to only a very small number of extra deaths. But let's pursue the logic a bit further. Baker is claiming that Scotland's culture is literally the most violent in the western world (ie. more violent than the US), and is also conceding that adding more guns to the equation would increase the homicide rate - it seems logical to conclude, therefore, that US-style levels of gun ownership would lead to a homicide rate that doesn't merely match that of the US, but that actually exceeds it. We are thus not talking about "a few more deaths", as Baker puts it - but possibly three or four times as many. Even if we were to accept for the sake of argument Baker's risible presumption that more guns for "defensive purposes" would solve all our other problems of violence, would a quadrupled homicide rate really be an acceptable trade-off for fewer "Glasgow smiles"? I know what I think.
And Kevin really wonders why most of us in the UK think that strict gun control "somehow" saves lives? The answer to that question came out of your own mouth, Kevin.
You might also be wondering if Baker's comment about Scotland wasn't intended to be taken seriously. But in fact the notion of a trade-off between more gun homicides and preventing lesser types of assault has been a recurring theme of his comments over the last couple of days. For example, he said this in a reply to Tris this afternoon -
"I keep getting accused of "conflating violent crime and gun crime." Yes, I understand why you see it that way, but I have a hard time understanding why getting shot is somehow an entirely different class from being stabbed or raped or curb-stomped by a gang of feral youths. This whole exchange with James came from one story about a young father who was beaten to death by such a gang for having the temerity to ask them to stop vandalizing his property.
You're glad that, on a dark night it never occurs to you that you might get shot in the back. I congratulate you. But do you concern yourself about getting stabbed or beaten or raped? Because that still happens. And you have no way to defend yourself against a gang, or a criminal with a broken bottle, for that matter. You're not even allowed pepper spray...
And you've seen blades.
You're not worried about one of them "losing it"?"
Of course what he's actually being accused of is not conflating violent crime and gun crime, but conflating homicides with lesser assaults. Only by pretending that being assaulted is just as bad as being murdered can he seriously claim that Scotland with its wretched gun control is not a much safer place than his own country. It's especially intriguing that he accepts without surprise that Tris has never seen a gun in Dundee - isn't that a rather powerful indication that gun control works (however imperfectly) in its aim of keeping the most deadly weapons off the street? Kevin's answer to that would be that we need an influx of guns (thus risking a quadrupled homicide rate) to protect ourselves against the thugs who carry knives or even just use their fists - but isn't a more rational response that if we can so thoroughly protect ourselves against guns by keeping guns off the street, why can't we do the same thing with knives? Perhaps the Kevin Baker Fan Club shouldn't sneer quite so much at the UK's tough knife laws, or at ideas like knife amnesties.
Now let's move on to Baker's most recent (and, if we are to take him at his word, final) response to me on the previous thread. I had pointed out that I previously referred him to abundant statistical evidence of the link between gun control and a reduced risk of both homicide and suicide, and that he had casually dismissed all of it out of hand. His response was that he preferred to look at three meta-studies of the statistical evidence, which showed no such link. The reason for this preference was not, as you might cynically suppose, that the findings were more to his taste, but this -
"...far too often the "researchers" know what they believe and are out to prove it, almost always with the money of groups that support their personal biases. Your example of Dr. David Hemenway is one.
I point you to look at the raw data whenever I can. That convergence chart is mine, drawn from the government statistics. I reference these three studies because they are all government-funded and all draw similar conclusions over three different decades on two different continents."
Well, a few points leap out at me here. Firstly, Baker does have an advantage on me that, however one-eyed he is on this topic, he's an obsessive about it in a way that I am not, and can reference these publications in his sleep in a way that I cannot. I'm therefore left in the position where I have to wonder whether to take his word for it that only three meta-studies have ever been carried out in the whole of academic history on such an important topic. I would just note that while that's possible, such a claim does raise suspicions. Secondly, Baker is not, as he insists, simply pointing me to "raw data" - meta-studies provide an interpretation of raw data, just as every other study does. Thirdly (and perhaps most importantly) one of the people doing the interpreting is none other that Colin Greenwood, former police inspector, passionate advocate of the liberalisation of the UK's gun laws, and author of The Historical English Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Hmmm. We could perhaps wish for more objective researchers. When I pointed this out to Kevin, this was his rather unconvincing response -
"Yes. He wrote "Historical English Right" when?
In 2000, some 28 years after publishing Firearms Control.
It's amazing what happens when people look at the raw data themselves, and then dig into the history. Sometimes they learn something.
I've seen it happen many times. I very seldom see it go the other way."
And what about those researchers who Kevin so casually dismisses out of hand? Did they have "hoplophobia" implanted into them in the womb, or did they perhaps - just perhaps - form their own view on the basis of the raw data, just as Kevin claims Greenwood did?
"Once again, if "gun control" WORKS, why can't anybody prove it? You insist it's proven. I point to three studies that say it isn't."
And I pointed to umpteen studies that say it is. Oh, but wait - those don't count because the researchers were biased and bribed. How do we know they were biased? Oh, because they conducted studies 'erroneously' proving that gun control WORKS, and because a meta-study conducted by Colin Greenwood contradicted them. But how do we know that Colin Greenwood approached the topic with an entirely open mind, and that his study is therefore credible in a way that the others are not? Because it 'correctly' concludes that gun control doesn't work.
Circular logic, much?
Lastly, Kevin goes into his favourite teacherly tone of address, to wearily remind me that if only I would APPLY myself to the homework he has set me, it's not ENTIRELY impossible that even a lost soul like me could aspire to attain his own immense wisdom one day -
"Look it up. Check more than one source. I recommend you read six or seven."
It's sorely tempting at this point to recommend to Kevin that he might care to look up fifteen or twenty sources on how much pride Thomas Hamilton invested in his legally-owned firearms, and thirty or forty sources detailing the horrific wounds he inflicted on Primary 1 pupils with those self-same weapons.
Anyway, what he's referring to is the Tottenham Outrage, an incident in 1909 that he seems to have a fascination for. Perhaps it's because it harks back to what he perceives as a better time in Britain, before the pernicious effects of socialism kicked in, when men were still men and were prepared to take direct violent action to protect both themselves and their community. The lesson presumably being - this is what you could be again, Britain, if only you would listen to us. But there's something curious about this - hasn't Baker repeatedly chided me for my supposed (ie. imaginary) belief in the "perfectibility" of the human race, and the idea that there is a "solution to every problem"? Isn't that precisely what he's proposing here - that there is a better, nobler kind of humanity that can be fashioned, and that in so doing we create the 'solution' to incidents like the Tottenham Outrage, or indeed the recent massacre in Norway?
So I'm not quite sure whether it's Kevin or I who is the misty-eyed idealist. The difficulty I have with all this, though, is that when I think of idealism and creating a better world, I tend to think of better education, safer streets, longer and healthier lives for all, etc, etc. Kevin's dreams aren't of these things - the better world he strives for is one in which armed Britons will once again charge the streets of Tottenham in hot pursuit of trigger-happy robbers.
None of which causes me to revise my suspicion that the Kevin Baker & Fan Club 'philosophy' is not really about liberty and self-defence - it's above all else a macho world view that glorifies strength (ie. their self-image of themselves) and vilifies weakness and dependence.
"Maybe if the Scots had guns they would kill each other at astronomical rates. Given their obviously hyper-violent culture ....
Then again, there might be a few more deaths but a lot fewer Glasgow smiles."
Now, you might think that this is a relatively small concession - that he is saying less gun control would lead to only a very small number of extra deaths. But let's pursue the logic a bit further. Baker is claiming that Scotland's culture is literally the most violent in the western world (ie. more violent than the US), and is also conceding that adding more guns to the equation would increase the homicide rate - it seems logical to conclude, therefore, that US-style levels of gun ownership would lead to a homicide rate that doesn't merely match that of the US, but that actually exceeds it. We are thus not talking about "a few more deaths", as Baker puts it - but possibly three or four times as many. Even if we were to accept for the sake of argument Baker's risible presumption that more guns for "defensive purposes" would solve all our other problems of violence, would a quadrupled homicide rate really be an acceptable trade-off for fewer "Glasgow smiles"? I know what I think.
And Kevin really wonders why most of us in the UK think that strict gun control "somehow" saves lives? The answer to that question came out of your own mouth, Kevin.
You might also be wondering if Baker's comment about Scotland wasn't intended to be taken seriously. But in fact the notion of a trade-off between more gun homicides and preventing lesser types of assault has been a recurring theme of his comments over the last couple of days. For example, he said this in a reply to Tris this afternoon -
"I keep getting accused of "conflating violent crime and gun crime." Yes, I understand why you see it that way, but I have a hard time understanding why getting shot is somehow an entirely different class from being stabbed or raped or curb-stomped by a gang of feral youths. This whole exchange with James came from one story about a young father who was beaten to death by such a gang for having the temerity to ask them to stop vandalizing his property.
You're glad that, on a dark night it never occurs to you that you might get shot in the back. I congratulate you. But do you concern yourself about getting stabbed or beaten or raped? Because that still happens. And you have no way to defend yourself against a gang, or a criminal with a broken bottle, for that matter. You're not even allowed pepper spray...
And you've seen blades.
You're not worried about one of them "losing it"?"
Of course what he's actually being accused of is not conflating violent crime and gun crime, but conflating homicides with lesser assaults. Only by pretending that being assaulted is just as bad as being murdered can he seriously claim that Scotland with its wretched gun control is not a much safer place than his own country. It's especially intriguing that he accepts without surprise that Tris has never seen a gun in Dundee - isn't that a rather powerful indication that gun control works (however imperfectly) in its aim of keeping the most deadly weapons off the street? Kevin's answer to that would be that we need an influx of guns (thus risking a quadrupled homicide rate) to protect ourselves against the thugs who carry knives or even just use their fists - but isn't a more rational response that if we can so thoroughly protect ourselves against guns by keeping guns off the street, why can't we do the same thing with knives? Perhaps the Kevin Baker Fan Club shouldn't sneer quite so much at the UK's tough knife laws, or at ideas like knife amnesties.
Now let's move on to Baker's most recent (and, if we are to take him at his word, final) response to me on the previous thread. I had pointed out that I previously referred him to abundant statistical evidence of the link between gun control and a reduced risk of both homicide and suicide, and that he had casually dismissed all of it out of hand. His response was that he preferred to look at three meta-studies of the statistical evidence, which showed no such link. The reason for this preference was not, as you might cynically suppose, that the findings were more to his taste, but this -
"...far too often the "researchers" know what they believe and are out to prove it, almost always with the money of groups that support their personal biases. Your example of Dr. David Hemenway is one.
I point you to look at the raw data whenever I can. That convergence chart is mine, drawn from the government statistics. I reference these three studies because they are all government-funded and all draw similar conclusions over three different decades on two different continents."
Well, a few points leap out at me here. Firstly, Baker does have an advantage on me that, however one-eyed he is on this topic, he's an obsessive about it in a way that I am not, and can reference these publications in his sleep in a way that I cannot. I'm therefore left in the position where I have to wonder whether to take his word for it that only three meta-studies have ever been carried out in the whole of academic history on such an important topic. I would just note that while that's possible, such a claim does raise suspicions. Secondly, Baker is not, as he insists, simply pointing me to "raw data" - meta-studies provide an interpretation of raw data, just as every other study does. Thirdly (and perhaps most importantly) one of the people doing the interpreting is none other that Colin Greenwood, former police inspector, passionate advocate of the liberalisation of the UK's gun laws, and author of The Historical English Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Hmmm. We could perhaps wish for more objective researchers. When I pointed this out to Kevin, this was his rather unconvincing response -
"Yes. He wrote "Historical English Right" when?
In 2000, some 28 years after publishing Firearms Control.
It's amazing what happens when people look at the raw data themselves, and then dig into the history. Sometimes they learn something.
I've seen it happen many times. I very seldom see it go the other way."
And what about those researchers who Kevin so casually dismisses out of hand? Did they have "hoplophobia" implanted into them in the womb, or did they perhaps - just perhaps - form their own view on the basis of the raw data, just as Kevin claims Greenwood did?
"Once again, if "gun control" WORKS, why can't anybody prove it? You insist it's proven. I point to three studies that say it isn't."
And I pointed to umpteen studies that say it is. Oh, but wait - those don't count because the researchers were biased and bribed. How do we know they were biased? Oh, because they conducted studies 'erroneously' proving that gun control WORKS, and because a meta-study conducted by Colin Greenwood contradicted them. But how do we know that Colin Greenwood approached the topic with an entirely open mind, and that his study is therefore credible in a way that the others are not? Because it 'correctly' concludes that gun control doesn't work.
Circular logic, much?
Lastly, Kevin goes into his favourite teacherly tone of address, to wearily remind me that if only I would APPLY myself to the homework he has set me, it's not ENTIRELY impossible that even a lost soul like me could aspire to attain his own immense wisdom one day -
"Look it up. Check more than one source. I recommend you read six or seven."
It's sorely tempting at this point to recommend to Kevin that he might care to look up fifteen or twenty sources on how much pride Thomas Hamilton invested in his legally-owned firearms, and thirty or forty sources detailing the horrific wounds he inflicted on Primary 1 pupils with those self-same weapons.
Anyway, what he's referring to is the Tottenham Outrage, an incident in 1909 that he seems to have a fascination for. Perhaps it's because it harks back to what he perceives as a better time in Britain, before the pernicious effects of socialism kicked in, when men were still men and were prepared to take direct violent action to protect both themselves and their community. The lesson presumably being - this is what you could be again, Britain, if only you would listen to us. But there's something curious about this - hasn't Baker repeatedly chided me for my supposed (ie. imaginary) belief in the "perfectibility" of the human race, and the idea that there is a "solution to every problem"? Isn't that precisely what he's proposing here - that there is a better, nobler kind of humanity that can be fashioned, and that in so doing we create the 'solution' to incidents like the Tottenham Outrage, or indeed the recent massacre in Norway?
So I'm not quite sure whether it's Kevin or I who is the misty-eyed idealist. The difficulty I have with all this, though, is that when I think of idealism and creating a better world, I tend to think of better education, safer streets, longer and healthier lives for all, etc, etc. Kevin's dreams aren't of these things - the better world he strives for is one in which armed Britons will once again charge the streets of Tottenham in hot pursuit of trigger-happy robbers.
None of which causes me to revise my suspicion that the Kevin Baker & Fan Club 'philosophy' is not really about liberty and self-defence - it's above all else a macho world view that glorifies strength (ie. their self-image of themselves) and vilifies weakness and dependence.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Are you YOUNG? Are you MALE? Can you supply your own ROCKS? Enlist with your local crack suicide squad NOW!
Kevin Baker has posted another reply on his own blog. In all honesty there isn't a huge amount to see - it follows his normal practice of saying all the things that have been comprehensively debunked many times before, but saying them LOUDER!!!! (For the uninitiated, that's an affectionate tribute to one of his many delightful catchphrases.) The main gist is that it doesn't matter a damn that the UK with its strict gun control regime has a much lower homicide rate than the US, because the gap used to be wider still, but has "converged" even as successive British governments have introduced progressively more stringent restrictions on gun ownership. But just one problem (the same one as usual) - where is the remotest rational basis for believing, as Baker does, that this "convergence" has actually been caused by the changes in the law? Let's not forget that Baker's first proposition is that the huge difference in murder rates between our two countries can't possibly have anything to do with gun laws or levels of gun ownership, but must have everything to do with the vague, all-purpose explanation "culture". But, by contrast, he simultaneously believes that increases in the British homicide rate over the years can't possibly have anything whatever to do with "cultural" changes (of which there have of course been plenty), but must have absolutely everything to do with the strengthening of the gun legislation. That, as I've now pointed out umpteen times, is magical thinking on an industrial scale.
This is the true position :
Gun control legislation was at one time minimal in the UK, for the very good reason that there wasn't really a gun problem. Rates of gun ownership were always a tiny fraction of what they were in some other countries, especially the US. To listen to Baker's account of what happened, you'd think there was once a US-style gun free-for-all in Britain which coincided with a golden age of peace and harmony. Then those dastardly socialist politicians took all the legal guns away, and all hell broke loose. 'Fraid not, Kevin. Gun control has been progressively strengthened in an attempt not to reverse a former prevalence of gun ownership, but to maintain as far as possible the status quo of a society that is largely unarmed, and in which gun violence is a rarity. It's been like swimming against the tide, unfortunately, and the increasing number of illegal weapons has meant that the legislation has at times felt like damage limitation rather than a comprehensive solution. But the idea that the damage has not in fact been significantly limited, and that the problem would not now be much, much worse if the legislation had not been in place, simply doesn't stand up to the remotest scrutiny.
Now briefly to a couple of Kevin's random jibes -
"But hey! At least they're not killing each other with GUNS! Because somehow that makes a difference."
Kevin, this is really not a hard concept to understand, so just for you, I will try one more time to explain. You're correct that the weapon typically used to commit violence in a society wouldn't matter if the same number of people were going to die anyway, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Self-evidently there are murders in Scotland (as there are in every country in the world), and those murders are largely carried out with weapons other than firearms, but they are also dramatically fewer in number than would be the case if more violent offenders were armed with guns. That is the relevance of a comparison between the homicide statistics in Arizona and Scotland, two jurisdictions with broadly similar population sizes, but very different rates of gun ownership.
"Back when I wrote What We Got Here is ... Failure to Communicate, I noted that Thomas Sowell pointed out one major difference between those who believe humans are perfectible and those like me who believe human nature doesn't change. Those who believe in human perfectibility believe in solutions. Those like me see trade-offs."
And I pointed out to you at the time that you were ascribing to me a belief in "human perfectibility" that I do not hold, but it seems you had your fingers firmly stuck in your ears on that day as well.
"Hey, maybe he's right. Maybe if the Scots had guns they would kill each other at astronomical rates. Given their obviously hyper-violent culture ...."
Now, the truly frightening thing is that you honestly believe that's a joke. I doubt it would exceed the astronomical US levels of gun murder, but by European standards we could well be facing carnage. Many a true word spoken in jest, Kevin. Still, maybe it wouldn't be so bad - as long as we had crack suicide squads of "young men with rocks" on every street corner, what harm could guns do us?
This is the true position :
Gun control legislation was at one time minimal in the UK, for the very good reason that there wasn't really a gun problem. Rates of gun ownership were always a tiny fraction of what they were in some other countries, especially the US. To listen to Baker's account of what happened, you'd think there was once a US-style gun free-for-all in Britain which coincided with a golden age of peace and harmony. Then those dastardly socialist politicians took all the legal guns away, and all hell broke loose. 'Fraid not, Kevin. Gun control has been progressively strengthened in an attempt not to reverse a former prevalence of gun ownership, but to maintain as far as possible the status quo of a society that is largely unarmed, and in which gun violence is a rarity. It's been like swimming against the tide, unfortunately, and the increasing number of illegal weapons has meant that the legislation has at times felt like damage limitation rather than a comprehensive solution. But the idea that the damage has not in fact been significantly limited, and that the problem would not now be much, much worse if the legislation had not been in place, simply doesn't stand up to the remotest scrutiny.
Now briefly to a couple of Kevin's random jibes -
"But hey! At least they're not killing each other with GUNS! Because somehow that makes a difference."
Kevin, this is really not a hard concept to understand, so just for you, I will try one more time to explain. You're correct that the weapon typically used to commit violence in a society wouldn't matter if the same number of people were going to die anyway, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Self-evidently there are murders in Scotland (as there are in every country in the world), and those murders are largely carried out with weapons other than firearms, but they are also dramatically fewer in number than would be the case if more violent offenders were armed with guns. That is the relevance of a comparison between the homicide statistics in Arizona and Scotland, two jurisdictions with broadly similar population sizes, but very different rates of gun ownership.
"Back when I wrote What We Got Here is ... Failure to Communicate, I noted that Thomas Sowell pointed out one major difference between those who believe humans are perfectible and those like me who believe human nature doesn't change. Those who believe in human perfectibility believe in solutions. Those like me see trade-offs."
And I pointed out to you at the time that you were ascribing to me a belief in "human perfectibility" that I do not hold, but it seems you had your fingers firmly stuck in your ears on that day as well.
"Hey, maybe he's right. Maybe if the Scots had guns they would kill each other at astronomical rates. Given their obviously hyper-violent culture ...."
Now, the truly frightening thing is that you honestly believe that's a joke. I doubt it would exceed the astronomical US levels of gun murder, but by European standards we could well be facing carnage. Many a true word spoken in jest, Kevin. Still, maybe it wouldn't be so bad - as long as we had crack suicide squads of "young men with rocks" on every street corner, what harm could guns do us?
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Stand down from Warp Factor Four, Mr Baker
Well, it seems my guess as to the identity of the mystery visitor from Tucson was bang on the money - Kevin Baker has left a long comment on the previous thread. As ever, let's go through it point by point (weary sigh)...
"I see you're still outstandingly skilled at avoiding the point."
Really? Well, let's recap then. We have a situation where a man driven by a paranoid, hate-filled ideology murders dozens of innocent people with legally-obtained firearms. According to you, the main issue we have to address is that those innocent people shouldn't have run away - and then you accuse others of being outstandingly skilled at avoiding the point? Brazen, Kevin, I'll give you that.
"When rampage shootings occur (almost always in disarmed victim zones) they continue until one of two things happens: the shooter decides he's finished, or a good guy with a gun shows up and stops him. The only other way such shootings stop is when the shooter is overwhelmed by his potential victims."
Kevin, focusing on how shootings stop is a counsel of despair, which if I may say so rather misses the point. What is rather more salient is how they start, or if you like, how they were enabled. This one, like so many others, was enabled by legal access to firearms. It's no coincidence, therefore, that violent gun deaths are disproportionately high not in "disarmed victim zones" as you put it, but in heavily-armed territories such as the one you live in.
"So, "the strictest gun laws in the world" didn't prevent Cumbria's massacre, and Norway's gun laws didn't prevent this massacre."
What a peculiar way of putting it. First of all, to the best of my knowledge the UK's gun laws are not "the strictest in the world" - I believe that honour (and it's a great one) may well belong to Japan. And the UK's laws didn't prevent Derrick Bird carrying out a massacre for a very simple reason - they permitted him to own the guns he used to kill. From which there are only two possible rational conclusions to choose between...
1) The laws weren't strict enough to prevent the massacre, and therefore should be tightened further.
2) The laws weren't strict enough to prevent the massacre, but should be left as they are because the risk of avoidable deaths is somehow outweighed by the right of a minority to enjoy their weapons.
There is no third option that allows you to claim that Bird's murderous actions were brought about by the law denying him access to other weapons - that's logic-bending nonsense, and you know it.
"We bear the primary responsibility for our own safety. The State can help, but the State cannot wrap us in swaddling our entire lives."
In a democracy, we are the masters of the state - it is not a foreign entity. In the UK, we exercise the responsibility for our own safety largely by collective means, rather than the individualistic cowboy tactics you prefer to put your faith in. Which strategy is more successful, and therefore more responsible? The respective violent death rates in our two countries will assist you with that one.
"If you accept that you have a duty to your society, to your fellow-man, then defending them against attack is morally right."
Regardless of which side of the gun debate we fall on, surely the true moral imperative we should be focusing on here is the responsibility of the individual not to kill others. The fact that you seem more interested in the victims' "immoral" actions in doing what they could to save themselves in a state of almost unimaginable stress does, I'm afraid, tell us rather a lot about your philosophy.
"Breivik is at fault here, no doubt about it..."
Well, that's big of you.
"...but the death toll is as high as it is because we no longer teach people - average people - that it's important for all potential victims to be as dangerous as they can. No, we teach them to wait for the State to save them.
And you can see how well that works."
Oh, I can indeed. Homicides in 2009 :
Scotland 79
Arizona 324
Gun deaths in 2009 :
Scotland 2
Arizona 198
Next question?
"I see you're still outstandingly skilled at avoiding the point."
Really? Well, let's recap then. We have a situation where a man driven by a paranoid, hate-filled ideology murders dozens of innocent people with legally-obtained firearms. According to you, the main issue we have to address is that those innocent people shouldn't have run away - and then you accuse others of being outstandingly skilled at avoiding the point? Brazen, Kevin, I'll give you that.
"When rampage shootings occur (almost always in disarmed victim zones) they continue until one of two things happens: the shooter decides he's finished, or a good guy with a gun shows up and stops him. The only other way such shootings stop is when the shooter is overwhelmed by his potential victims."
Kevin, focusing on how shootings stop is a counsel of despair, which if I may say so rather misses the point. What is rather more salient is how they start, or if you like, how they were enabled. This one, like so many others, was enabled by legal access to firearms. It's no coincidence, therefore, that violent gun deaths are disproportionately high not in "disarmed victim zones" as you put it, but in heavily-armed territories such as the one you live in.
"So, "the strictest gun laws in the world" didn't prevent Cumbria's massacre, and Norway's gun laws didn't prevent this massacre."
What a peculiar way of putting it. First of all, to the best of my knowledge the UK's gun laws are not "the strictest in the world" - I believe that honour (and it's a great one) may well belong to Japan. And the UK's laws didn't prevent Derrick Bird carrying out a massacre for a very simple reason - they permitted him to own the guns he used to kill. From which there are only two possible rational conclusions to choose between...
1) The laws weren't strict enough to prevent the massacre, and therefore should be tightened further.
2) The laws weren't strict enough to prevent the massacre, but should be left as they are because the risk of avoidable deaths is somehow outweighed by the right of a minority to enjoy their weapons.
There is no third option that allows you to claim that Bird's murderous actions were brought about by the law denying him access to other weapons - that's logic-bending nonsense, and you know it.
"We bear the primary responsibility for our own safety. The State can help, but the State cannot wrap us in swaddling our entire lives."
In a democracy, we are the masters of the state - it is not a foreign entity. In the UK, we exercise the responsibility for our own safety largely by collective means, rather than the individualistic cowboy tactics you prefer to put your faith in. Which strategy is more successful, and therefore more responsible? The respective violent death rates in our two countries will assist you with that one.
"If you accept that you have a duty to your society, to your fellow-man, then defending them against attack is morally right."
Regardless of which side of the gun debate we fall on, surely the true moral imperative we should be focusing on here is the responsibility of the individual not to kill others. The fact that you seem more interested in the victims' "immoral" actions in doing what they could to save themselves in a state of almost unimaginable stress does, I'm afraid, tell us rather a lot about your philosophy.
"Breivik is at fault here, no doubt about it..."
Well, that's big of you.
"...but the death toll is as high as it is because we no longer teach people - average people - that it's important for all potential victims to be as dangerous as they can. No, we teach them to wait for the State to save them.
And you can see how well that works."
Oh, I can indeed. Homicides in 2009 :
Scotland 79
Arizona 324
Gun deaths in 2009 :
Scotland 2
Arizona 198
Next question?
The man has absolutely no shame
A day or two ago, I noticed on my stats that this blog had received a couple of visits from Tucson in Arizona, which just happens to be the home of our beloved friend Mr Kevin Baker. I didn't think anything much of it until I recalled that part of Baker's initial reaction to the Cumbrian massacre last year was "I wonder what James Kelly will have to say about all this", apparently thinking that such an incident ought somehow to have made me question my belief that easy legal access to guns is a bad thing, as opposed to...well, confirming that belief. Was he really delusional enough to think the same thing as a result of dozens of murders in Norway carried out with legally-obtained firearms? I have my suspicions. After all, we learn on his blog that the problem in Norway was not Breivik's guns, or even his extreme right-wing ideology - no, it was simply that the victims "ran away". Baker quotes another blogger who said this -
"When (the shooter) began shooting, everyone ran.
That last factor alone is responsible for almost all of the dead. A tight group of young men taught to run at danger instead of away from it could have overpowered him almost at once."
And then he adds his own observation -
"Yes, had a group of young men charged the shooter, some of them would have been wounded or killed. But no one charged the shooter, and literally dozens are dead."
Jesus. Quite simply...Jesus.
Now, I'm not going to claim that the Kevin Baker Fan Club are ideologically fellow travellers of Breivik, because the Norwegian is a Christian fundamentalist and as I understand it Baker is an atheist. And of course one is a mass-murdering psychopath, and the other is a non-violent blogger. But, all the same, you wouldn't have to look far to spot the overlaps between the KBFC's own angry, paranoid rhetoric and Breivik's. Bearing that in mind, and also the fact that yet another legal gun owner has just done something that legal gun owners supposedly don't do, you might have thought that if we can't hear anything sensible from the direction of Tucson, Arizona, at the very least a period of dignified silence and reflection might have been in order.
"When (the shooter) began shooting, everyone ran.
That last factor alone is responsible for almost all of the dead. A tight group of young men taught to run at danger instead of away from it could have overpowered him almost at once."
And then he adds his own observation -
"Yes, had a group of young men charged the shooter, some of them would have been wounded or killed. But no one charged the shooter, and literally dozens are dead."
Jesus. Quite simply...Jesus.
Now, I'm not going to claim that the Kevin Baker Fan Club are ideologically fellow travellers of Breivik, because the Norwegian is a Christian fundamentalist and as I understand it Baker is an atheist. And of course one is a mass-murdering psychopath, and the other is a non-violent blogger. But, all the same, you wouldn't have to look far to spot the overlaps between the KBFC's own angry, paranoid rhetoric and Breivik's. Bearing that in mind, and also the fact that yet another legal gun owner has just done something that legal gun owners supposedly don't do, you might have thought that if we can't hear anything sensible from the direction of Tucson, Arizona, at the very least a period of dignified silence and reflection might have been in order.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The gun control dividend
A few months ago, I suggested that you didn't need to look much further than the disparity between US and European life expectancy to work out that the much-vaunted "choice" and "excellence" of the US health system simply doesn't deliver what is claimed of it. But there is also another all-too-familiar factor at play in the relatively low US life expectancy figures -
"The US remains far behind most other affluent countries in terms of life expectancy. One of the possible causes of this life expectancy gap is the widespread availability of firearms and the resulting high number of US firearm fatalities: 10,801 homicides in 2000. The European Union experienced 1,260 homicides, Japan only 22. Using multiple decrement techniques, we show that firearm violence shortens the life of an average American by 104 days (151 days for white males, 362 days for black males)."
So it seems we can reasonably conclude that male life expectancy in this country is boosted by several months as a result of our saner gun laws.
"The US remains far behind most other affluent countries in terms of life expectancy. One of the possible causes of this life expectancy gap is the widespread availability of firearms and the resulting high number of US firearm fatalities: 10,801 homicides in 2000. The European Union experienced 1,260 homicides, Japan only 22. Using multiple decrement techniques, we show that firearm violence shortens the life of an average American by 104 days (151 days for white males, 362 days for black males)."
So it seems we can reasonably conclude that male life expectancy in this country is boosted by several months as a result of our saner gun laws.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The pain of responsibility
'Epsilon Given' has left a series of lengthy comments on my last post about gun control (or was it about intuition?). For the sake of convenience, I'm going to reply in a fresh post. He started by making a point that I wish some of his fellow travellers would take a moment to consider -
"Scotland and Arizona, besides having different populations, they also have different cultures, histories, population densities, flora and fauna, mental health institutions, etc. That is, it is not entirely clear that it's justified to compare the two populations (despite both being "common law" institutions)."
There's some truth in that, and I've repeatedly made the point to Kevin Baker and his Fan Club that their own comparisons between different jurisdictions of the US (supposedly 'proving' that gun control causes more crime) are largely nonsensical, because they're often comparisons between affluent, sparsely-populated rural areas where you would expect a low crime rate anyway, and densely-populated urban areas with high rates of poverty. It has to be said, though, that the comparison between Scotland and Arizona is somewhat more meaningful - the raw population sizes are similar, and the urban/rural split of the two jurisdictions aren't a million miles apart. I'm also struggling to see how 'flora and fauna' is much of a factor in influencing the rate of gun crime!
"I'd like to see the claim that knives, or even fists, are somehow "safer" than guns justified: determine the number of violent encounters per 100,000, and compare Scotland's to Arizona's. If knives really are less deadly that guns, then there should be comparable numbers of violent encounters, but less murders, in Scotland."
Your implication that it might be possible to demonstrate that knives are just as dangerous as guns is questionable enough. (No-one would dispute that they're very dangerous - and lethal in many cases - but they're clearly not in the same league as guns because it's easier to escape from an assailant armed with a knife.) But "even fists"? Come now, Epsilon. I'll return to this massive credibility problem later on.
"Let's *really* make sure that the "homicide" figure in Arizona is strictly "murder". American crime reporting has this nasty habit of including justifiable homicide with murder--in part, because justifiable homicide is often determined by a jury."
While we're about it, let's also make sure that all unjustified killings are included in the US statistics. The gunning down of the innocent Aberdonian businessman Andrew de Vries in Texas in 1994 doesn't seem to have been counted, for instance - had it happened in the UK, it almost certainly would have been.
"How do these statistics change over time? If violence increases after guns are banned in Scotland, then it's disingenuous to compare Arizona and Scotland, and then say "See, gun laws work!" It would be equally disingenuous to compare these numbers, if violence *decreases* after a "shall issue" gun permit law is passed in Arizona."
Epsilon, the correlation between gun control regimes and gun death rates is so overwhelming that these technical quibbles simply won't wash. Forget about Arizona and Scotland for the moment - look at Finland. The most liberal gun ownership laws in western Europe, and a country that sticks out like a sore thumb that's gone septic at the top of the leaderboard for gun deaths. In every sense other than its gun laws it's a normal northern European country, easily comparable to its neighbours - so you'd have a near-impossible job explaining that phenomenon away.
It's also worth pointing out that if you talked to average people from the UK and tried to make the claim - as the likes of Kevin Baker have done, seemingly with a straight face - that any increase in violent crime since 1996 has somehow occurred as a result of our strengthened gun laws, you'd be met with a chorus of laughter. The whole concept of householders routinely owning or using guns for 'defensive' purposes was already an alien one prior to 1996. A practice has to have meaningfully existed before its 'removal' can be claimed to have made a difference.
"Why should I trust *any* data? Whenever I try to look up this data on my own, I always run into obstacles obtaining it. The data *I* want never seems to be available--admittedly, I can't look too deeply, because of time constraints--but, in the end, why should I trust data other people select as "important"? A Stupid Example: I requested "guns per gun death"--in part, because I wanted to test the claim "more guns means more death"--but Arizona gun stats are almost non-existent, as is the category of illegal gun stats for Scotland. Even if these stats were available, though, I would have to understand that a statistic like "illegal guns" is, at best, and educated guess, and so my analysis (and conclusions) of such data would probably be meaningless anyway."
The equivalent question is - why should you determine for others what data they consider to be important? I've already pointed out that I personally don't understand the relevance of your interest in illegal gun stats for Scotland. One of the key articles of faith for the American gun lobby is that gun control regimes are totally useless at preventing criminals from getting their hands on illegal weapons. A very low absolute rate of gun homicide in Scotland - covering both legally-held and illegal weapons - is compelling evidence that such a proposition is deeply flawed.
"In my half-hearted attempt to obtain these numbers, I learned that Scotland had a significant drop in violence this last year. Are we comparing a "bad" Arizona year to a "good" Scotland year? How can *that* be fair?!?"
Are we talking about 2009, or 2010? I think Lallands Peat Worrier noted himself that 2009 saw a particularly low number of gun deaths in Scotland, but the disparity between the two jurisdictions in other years was still massive.
"Although I really wish I had the time to gather this data, and crunch these numbers, why should we trust any of this as "meaningful"? Societies change all the time. When we look over all the countries of the world, we see no correlation between "strictness of gun control" and murder rates and even suicide rates."
Simply not true. See above, and here.
"And, when all things are considered, we are talking about very. small. numbers."
I'd have to respectfully suggest that the difference between two gun deaths in Scotland in 2009, and one hundred and ninety-eight gun deaths in Arizona in the same year, is not a "small" one. However, even if it were, as a mathematician you should understand better than most the huge difference between "small" and "not statistically significant".
"And to further complicate things, in America, we have *counter-intuitive* results: Every time a change in gun law is considered, there is a claim that passage of such laws will result in an increase of gun violence. Yet, with Florida's "shall-issue" permits, and lately, the Heller decision that affected Washington D.C., violence--both gun and non-gun--*dropped*. And these aren't just isolated incidents. It happens time and time again, to the point that the debate among criminologists in the United States *isn't* "Do guns cause crime?"; it's "What effect, if any, do guns have in lowering crime?"."
Come now, Epsilon. We've been down a very similar road before. These will be all of America's criminologists - except for all the ones you've dismissed out of hand because of spurious objections to their methodology.
"Something is counter-intuitive if we get a result that we don't expect to come about. The example I just gave was "increased gun ownership decreases gun crimes"--and there are statistics that seem to demonstrate that this indeed may be the case. Often, counter-intuitive conclusions are the results of incorrect assumptions. Here are some reasons why increased gun ownership might not result in increased gun violence:
Guns aren't as lethal as many people think, and alternatives--knives, fists, rocks, baseball bats, bottles, even rope--are more lethal than many people realize. Making guns difficult to obtain and carry may neutralize the first "threat", but these other threats are still there, and much more difficult to control besides!
There's a strong whiff of weasel words here - "not as lethal as many people think", "more lethal than many people realise". We've already seen that you want to plant a seed of doubt in people's minds about the self-evident truth that guns are more lethal than fists - so if you truly think both those 'weapons' are equally lethal, why shy away from making that bizarre claim directly? I think we can probably guess.
"Additionally, it's easier to counter these other threats with a gun, than it is to counter these other threats with like threats; hence, when you have a legitimate need for self defense, you're better off with a gun."
This is the familiar 'have your cake and eat it' argument, so beloved of the US gun lobby - we're expected to believe that the lethality of the weapon in the hands of an attacker makes little or no difference to the outcome ("fists" will be just as good if he has a murderous intent), but in the hands of a defender the lethality of the weapon suddenly becomes all-important, and only a gun will do.
""Shall Issue" permits include a background check for past mental and legal problems. The people who would apply to such things would be law-abiding, and generally healthy mentally. Such people who carry guns aren't likely to go on crime sprees!"
But they do, Epsilon, and they stubbornly keep on doing it. The post-Dunblane restrictions were put in place because a 'law-abiding' person got through a series of background checks, enabling him to legally acquire guns that he used to massacre schoolchildren. The recent inquiry into the Cumbrian massacre last year confirmed that the correct procedures were followed in licencing Derrick Bird to own his weapons legally.
Even leaving these repeated incidents aside, background checks simply aren't fine-tuned enough to discriminate between those people we might be relaxed about owning guns, and those who really shouldn't be allowed to do so for good reasons that fall short of potential mass-killing sprees. If the checks were sufficient, we wouldn't see legally-owned guns falling into criminal hands in the US at a mind-boggling rate, because their owners weren't responsible enough to store them securely. We wouldn't see children accessing their parents' guns for the same reason. And what about abusive relationships? Is the ubiquity of gun ownership in the US intervening positively or negatively in those relationships? In other words, is it more likely to be the abused or the abuser who will be threatening the other with the gun? What evidence I've seen points strongly to the latter conclusion - which, as it happens, is precisely what 'intuition' would lead us to expect.
"Those who take self defense seriously--whether or not they carry a gun--will learn techniques to recognize potential assaults. They'll be more aware of their surroundings, they'll watch out for characters "scoping out" parking lots..."
Yes, I've met people like that, and what a delight it was. Often, they're self-appointed policemen who feel they've got a God-given right to ask other law-abiding people to justify their actions. I'm not sure how arming such arrogance with a gun is supposed to enhance my freedom.
"Those who choose to carry a gun are more likely to be mentally prepared if something bad happens. While it's impossible to know in advance how you'll react if you are in a violent situation, if you've thought about what you'll do, you're more likely to do something that will help protect yourself and those around you."
Preparedness is good, but it helps tremendously if what you're readying yourself to
do isn't wholly counter-productive. Faced with many threats, an attempt to escape may well be the most effective course of action, and 'talking yourself' into feeling that you must react by facing down an assailant with a gun could easily put yourself and others at more risk.
"Those who choose to carry a gun are more likely to recognize the responsibility that lethal force represents, and thus less likely to heatedly argue, and more likely to peacefully pull themselves from an argument before it comes to fighting."
If it's got to the point in the US where the main reason people aren't starting arguments is because they fear they might be shot if they do (or that they might shoot someone else), then you've got a problem as a society. It also strikes me as a fairly obvious curtailment of freedom - an implicit threat that causes a kind of self-censorship when considering whether to express a point of view forcefully, or what might be described as a personal "Finlandisation" syndrome.
In any case, the idea that gun ownership generally makes people calmer and rarely has the opposite effect simply doesn't stack up. I refer you back to the point I made earlier about domestic violence - in the majority of cases, the gun is simply empowering the abuser to be more abusive and terrorising.
"Criminals don't want to get shot. If they have reason to believe their victims will be armed, they are less likely to engage in behavior that can end with them in the hospital, or dead."
That's a very weak point. In large swathes of the US, criminals presumably know that there's a significant risk that anyone they attack may possess a gun. If that had a significant deterrent effect, you'd expect the homicide rate in the US to be considerably lower than in the UK, not two-and-a-half times higher.
"And, yes, I have concluded that every responsible person should know how to use a gun, should carry one, and should be prepared to use it in self-defense--but I have concluded that every responsible person should also know what to do when someone gets injured or sick, or when there's an earthquake, or there is flooding, or a tidal wave, or a forest fire, or a hurricane, or even plague and famine and general societal collapse. Being prepared for danger is a moral responsibility that all of us should accept."
As far as the danger posed by guns is concerned, we all do have a moral responsibility - to take the actions that the evidence suggests will be most effective in collectively protecting ourselves. For some individuals that means the painful necessity of giving up both the right to own an item they're particularly fond of, and the comforting but illusory sense of absolute personal control over their own safety. But whoever said acting responsibly was a pain-free thing?
"Scotland and Arizona, besides having different populations, they also have different cultures, histories, population densities, flora and fauna, mental health institutions, etc. That is, it is not entirely clear that it's justified to compare the two populations (despite both being "common law" institutions)."
There's some truth in that, and I've repeatedly made the point to Kevin Baker and his Fan Club that their own comparisons between different jurisdictions of the US (supposedly 'proving' that gun control causes more crime) are largely nonsensical, because they're often comparisons between affluent, sparsely-populated rural areas where you would expect a low crime rate anyway, and densely-populated urban areas with high rates of poverty. It has to be said, though, that the comparison between Scotland and Arizona is somewhat more meaningful - the raw population sizes are similar, and the urban/rural split of the two jurisdictions aren't a million miles apart. I'm also struggling to see how 'flora and fauna' is much of a factor in influencing the rate of gun crime!
"I'd like to see the claim that knives, or even fists, are somehow "safer" than guns justified: determine the number of violent encounters per 100,000, and compare Scotland's to Arizona's. If knives really are less deadly that guns, then there should be comparable numbers of violent encounters, but less murders, in Scotland."
Your implication that it might be possible to demonstrate that knives are just as dangerous as guns is questionable enough. (No-one would dispute that they're very dangerous - and lethal in many cases - but they're clearly not in the same league as guns because it's easier to escape from an assailant armed with a knife.) But "even fists"? Come now, Epsilon. I'll return to this massive credibility problem later on.
"Let's *really* make sure that the "homicide" figure in Arizona is strictly "murder". American crime reporting has this nasty habit of including justifiable homicide with murder--in part, because justifiable homicide is often determined by a jury."
While we're about it, let's also make sure that all unjustified killings are included in the US statistics. The gunning down of the innocent Aberdonian businessman Andrew de Vries in Texas in 1994 doesn't seem to have been counted, for instance - had it happened in the UK, it almost certainly would have been.
"How do these statistics change over time? If violence increases after guns are banned in Scotland, then it's disingenuous to compare Arizona and Scotland, and then say "See, gun laws work!" It would be equally disingenuous to compare these numbers, if violence *decreases* after a "shall issue" gun permit law is passed in Arizona."
Epsilon, the correlation between gun control regimes and gun death rates is so overwhelming that these technical quibbles simply won't wash. Forget about Arizona and Scotland for the moment - look at Finland. The most liberal gun ownership laws in western Europe, and a country that sticks out like a sore thumb that's gone septic at the top of the leaderboard for gun deaths. In every sense other than its gun laws it's a normal northern European country, easily comparable to its neighbours - so you'd have a near-impossible job explaining that phenomenon away.
It's also worth pointing out that if you talked to average people from the UK and tried to make the claim - as the likes of Kevin Baker have done, seemingly with a straight face - that any increase in violent crime since 1996 has somehow occurred as a result of our strengthened gun laws, you'd be met with a chorus of laughter. The whole concept of householders routinely owning or using guns for 'defensive' purposes was already an alien one prior to 1996. A practice has to have meaningfully existed before its 'removal' can be claimed to have made a difference.
"Why should I trust *any* data? Whenever I try to look up this data on my own, I always run into obstacles obtaining it. The data *I* want never seems to be available--admittedly, I can't look too deeply, because of time constraints--but, in the end, why should I trust data other people select as "important"? A Stupid Example: I requested "guns per gun death"--in part, because I wanted to test the claim "more guns means more death"--but Arizona gun stats are almost non-existent, as is the category of illegal gun stats for Scotland. Even if these stats were available, though, I would have to understand that a statistic like "illegal guns" is, at best, and educated guess, and so my analysis (and conclusions) of such data would probably be meaningless anyway."
The equivalent question is - why should you determine for others what data they consider to be important? I've already pointed out that I personally don't understand the relevance of your interest in illegal gun stats for Scotland. One of the key articles of faith for the American gun lobby is that gun control regimes are totally useless at preventing criminals from getting their hands on illegal weapons. A very low absolute rate of gun homicide in Scotland - covering both legally-held and illegal weapons - is compelling evidence that such a proposition is deeply flawed.
"In my half-hearted attempt to obtain these numbers, I learned that Scotland had a significant drop in violence this last year. Are we comparing a "bad" Arizona year to a "good" Scotland year? How can *that* be fair?!?"
Are we talking about 2009, or 2010? I think Lallands Peat Worrier noted himself that 2009 saw a particularly low number of gun deaths in Scotland, but the disparity between the two jurisdictions in other years was still massive.
"Although I really wish I had the time to gather this data, and crunch these numbers, why should we trust any of this as "meaningful"? Societies change all the time. When we look over all the countries of the world, we see no correlation between "strictness of gun control" and murder rates and even suicide rates."
Simply not true. See above, and here.
"And, when all things are considered, we are talking about very. small. numbers."
I'd have to respectfully suggest that the difference between two gun deaths in Scotland in 2009, and one hundred and ninety-eight gun deaths in Arizona in the same year, is not a "small" one. However, even if it were, as a mathematician you should understand better than most the huge difference between "small" and "not statistically significant".
"And to further complicate things, in America, we have *counter-intuitive* results: Every time a change in gun law is considered, there is a claim that passage of such laws will result in an increase of gun violence. Yet, with Florida's "shall-issue" permits, and lately, the Heller decision that affected Washington D.C., violence--both gun and non-gun--*dropped*. And these aren't just isolated incidents. It happens time and time again, to the point that the debate among criminologists in the United States *isn't* "Do guns cause crime?"; it's "What effect, if any, do guns have in lowering crime?"."
Come now, Epsilon. We've been down a very similar road before. These will be all of America's criminologists - except for all the ones you've dismissed out of hand because of spurious objections to their methodology.
"Something is counter-intuitive if we get a result that we don't expect to come about. The example I just gave was "increased gun ownership decreases gun crimes"--and there are statistics that seem to demonstrate that this indeed may be the case. Often, counter-intuitive conclusions are the results of incorrect assumptions. Here are some reasons why increased gun ownership might not result in increased gun violence:
Guns aren't as lethal as many people think, and alternatives--knives, fists, rocks, baseball bats, bottles, even rope--are more lethal than many people realize. Making guns difficult to obtain and carry may neutralize the first "threat", but these other threats are still there, and much more difficult to control besides!
There's a strong whiff of weasel words here - "not as lethal as many people think", "more lethal than many people realise". We've already seen that you want to plant a seed of doubt in people's minds about the self-evident truth that guns are more lethal than fists - so if you truly think both those 'weapons' are equally lethal, why shy away from making that bizarre claim directly? I think we can probably guess.
"Additionally, it's easier to counter these other threats with a gun, than it is to counter these other threats with like threats; hence, when you have a legitimate need for self defense, you're better off with a gun."
This is the familiar 'have your cake and eat it' argument, so beloved of the US gun lobby - we're expected to believe that the lethality of the weapon in the hands of an attacker makes little or no difference to the outcome ("fists" will be just as good if he has a murderous intent), but in the hands of a defender the lethality of the weapon suddenly becomes all-important, and only a gun will do.
""Shall Issue" permits include a background check for past mental and legal problems. The people who would apply to such things would be law-abiding, and generally healthy mentally. Such people who carry guns aren't likely to go on crime sprees!"
But they do, Epsilon, and they stubbornly keep on doing it. The post-Dunblane restrictions were put in place because a 'law-abiding' person got through a series of background checks, enabling him to legally acquire guns that he used to massacre schoolchildren. The recent inquiry into the Cumbrian massacre last year confirmed that the correct procedures were followed in licencing Derrick Bird to own his weapons legally.
Even leaving these repeated incidents aside, background checks simply aren't fine-tuned enough to discriminate between those people we might be relaxed about owning guns, and those who really shouldn't be allowed to do so for good reasons that fall short of potential mass-killing sprees. If the checks were sufficient, we wouldn't see legally-owned guns falling into criminal hands in the US at a mind-boggling rate, because their owners weren't responsible enough to store them securely. We wouldn't see children accessing their parents' guns for the same reason. And what about abusive relationships? Is the ubiquity of gun ownership in the US intervening positively or negatively in those relationships? In other words, is it more likely to be the abused or the abuser who will be threatening the other with the gun? What evidence I've seen points strongly to the latter conclusion - which, as it happens, is precisely what 'intuition' would lead us to expect.
"Those who take self defense seriously--whether or not they carry a gun--will learn techniques to recognize potential assaults. They'll be more aware of their surroundings, they'll watch out for characters "scoping out" parking lots..."
Yes, I've met people like that, and what a delight it was. Often, they're self-appointed policemen who feel they've got a God-given right to ask other law-abiding people to justify their actions. I'm not sure how arming such arrogance with a gun is supposed to enhance my freedom.
"Those who choose to carry a gun are more likely to be mentally prepared if something bad happens. While it's impossible to know in advance how you'll react if you are in a violent situation, if you've thought about what you'll do, you're more likely to do something that will help protect yourself and those around you."
Preparedness is good, but it helps tremendously if what you're readying yourself to
do isn't wholly counter-productive. Faced with many threats, an attempt to escape may well be the most effective course of action, and 'talking yourself' into feeling that you must react by facing down an assailant with a gun could easily put yourself and others at more risk.
"Those who choose to carry a gun are more likely to recognize the responsibility that lethal force represents, and thus less likely to heatedly argue, and more likely to peacefully pull themselves from an argument before it comes to fighting."
If it's got to the point in the US where the main reason people aren't starting arguments is because they fear they might be shot if they do (or that they might shoot someone else), then you've got a problem as a society. It also strikes me as a fairly obvious curtailment of freedom - an implicit threat that causes a kind of self-censorship when considering whether to express a point of view forcefully, or what might be described as a personal "Finlandisation" syndrome.
In any case, the idea that gun ownership generally makes people calmer and rarely has the opposite effect simply doesn't stack up. I refer you back to the point I made earlier about domestic violence - in the majority of cases, the gun is simply empowering the abuser to be more abusive and terrorising.
"Criminals don't want to get shot. If they have reason to believe their victims will be armed, they are less likely to engage in behavior that can end with them in the hospital, or dead."
That's a very weak point. In large swathes of the US, criminals presumably know that there's a significant risk that anyone they attack may possess a gun. If that had a significant deterrent effect, you'd expect the homicide rate in the US to be considerably lower than in the UK, not two-and-a-half times higher.
"And, yes, I have concluded that every responsible person should know how to use a gun, should carry one, and should be prepared to use it in self-defense--but I have concluded that every responsible person should also know what to do when someone gets injured or sick, or when there's an earthquake, or there is flooding, or a tidal wave, or a forest fire, or a hurricane, or even plague and famine and general societal collapse. Being prepared for danger is a moral responsibility that all of us should accept."
As far as the danger posed by guns is concerned, we all do have a moral responsibility - to take the actions that the evidence suggests will be most effective in collectively protecting ourselves. For some individuals that means the painful necessity of giving up both the right to own an item they're particularly fond of, and the comforting but illusory sense of absolute personal control over their own safety. But whoever said acting responsibly was a pain-free thing?
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Intuitively, this shouldn't be happening...
Believe it or not, I've still been receiving the odd comment on the gun control posts I wrote before Christmas. This rather extraordinary one was left by Epsilon Given a day or two ago, although to begin with you might be hard-pressed to spot any connection with the subject in hand...
"Just for the record, I'd like to clarify just what "counter-intuitive" means to a mathematician.
Intuition is a funny thing. It generally leads us to truth, and a good intuition helps us to discover new theorems, even entirely new lines of thought.
When something we expect to be false, or nonsensical even, turns out to be true, we call such things "counter-intuitive". As we encounter these things, we sometimes adopt them into our intuition--but there is no shortage of things to surprise us!
Historically, we have encountered many counter-intuitive ideas--ideas that often met fierce resistance every step of the way to acceptance. The square root of -1, for example. Or a number for "nothing". Or the irrationality of the square root of 2.
And sometimes, proving something counter-intuitive can lead to your death. The person who first proved that the square root of 2 was irrational, for example, was drowned at sea by his fellow Pythagorians.
I'll give several more counter-intuitive examples that I'd expect to go over your head without deep explanation, unless you are already acquainted with them. You can cut up a unit sphere into nine pieces, and re-assemble them to make two unit spheres (Banach-Tarski Paradox). You can have two intersecting lines both parallel to a third line (hyperbolic geometry). There are more irrational numbers in the interval between zero and one, than there are integers (Georg Cantor's diagonal argument). When we "generalize" the factorial function, the factorial of 1/2 is 1/pi (Gamma function). e^(i*pi)+1=0 (Euler's Formula).
Heck, I spent many hours trying to trisect an angle using a compass and straightedge, and I spent hours trying to integrate e^(-x^2) in terms of "elementary functions", because I was told that these were impossible--and this conflicted with what I was taught in our culture, that "nothing is impossible". Later, I actually read the proof that demonstrated, once and for all, that the former is impossible, and more recently I learned that the latter proof is done along the same lines, so to me, these are no longer counter-intuitive.
The idea "More guns, less crime" is, like all these other things, counter-intuitive. Our intuition tells us that getting rid of guns will decrease violence. But we can find statistics that show when we ban guns, violence increases. And we can find statistically that, internationally, there is no correlation between gun laws, gun ownership, the murder rate, and the suicide rate, from country to country. As I have examined these things closely, I've come to the conclusion that honest people with guns is a good thing, because they can defend their lives against dishonest people determined to do harm.
I have seen the statistics and the studies. I have thought about the philosophies behind the two positions. In all this, I have come to the conclusion that more guns really do mean less crime! And that, more importantly, if you value liberty and security, then you shouldn't depend on the State for protection--it is your duty to protect yourself and those you love--and nothing can change that. Indeed, the State, more often than not, cannot protect you--and occasionally, the State is even your enemy.
And that those who believe otherwise, might as well believe that the moon is made of cheese, or that imaginary numbers really are imaginary, for all the truth that their position holds."
Words fail me. Epsilon, this is not the first time that I've had to make the elementary point to you that I do - honestly, truly - know what "counter-intuitive" means, and have done all along. Your apparent belief that if I take issue with anything you say it must mean that I've simply misunderstood the terminology you use (and require a detailed explanation to bring me up to speed) is...well, a touch bemusing, to say the least. I'll simply reiterate what I said to you before - some things that are counter-intuitive turn out to be true. Many don't. I note that you confirm that at the outset yourself, so your point is...?
The latter part of your comment essentially boils down to this - you've generously had a little think about the statistical evidence on our behalf, you've selectively culled the bits that suit you, you've declared your side of the argument the winner on that basis, and thus regard yourself entitled to feel morally superior to those of us who don't "do our duty" by "protecting" ourselves with a gun.
Well, let me put this to you. Here is the compelling evidence (as opposed to intuition) that those of us on the other side of the argument in Scotland look towards. It suggests overwhelmingly that our approach has succeeded in protecting the public. Might I suggest therefore that we are equally entitled to think - valuing security and liberty as we do - that it would be a disgraceful dereliction of our collective "duty" if we were to suddenly decide to indulge the wishes of a minority to own handguns, and thus compromise the safety and liberty of everyone?
"Just for the record, I'd like to clarify just what "counter-intuitive" means to a mathematician.
Intuition is a funny thing. It generally leads us to truth, and a good intuition helps us to discover new theorems, even entirely new lines of thought.
When something we expect to be false, or nonsensical even, turns out to be true, we call such things "counter-intuitive". As we encounter these things, we sometimes adopt them into our intuition--but there is no shortage of things to surprise us!
Historically, we have encountered many counter-intuitive ideas--ideas that often met fierce resistance every step of the way to acceptance. The square root of -1, for example. Or a number for "nothing". Or the irrationality of the square root of 2.
And sometimes, proving something counter-intuitive can lead to your death. The person who first proved that the square root of 2 was irrational, for example, was drowned at sea by his fellow Pythagorians.
I'll give several more counter-intuitive examples that I'd expect to go over your head without deep explanation, unless you are already acquainted with them. You can cut up a unit sphere into nine pieces, and re-assemble them to make two unit spheres (Banach-Tarski Paradox). You can have two intersecting lines both parallel to a third line (hyperbolic geometry). There are more irrational numbers in the interval between zero and one, than there are integers (Georg Cantor's diagonal argument). When we "generalize" the factorial function, the factorial of 1/2 is 1/pi (Gamma function). e^(i*pi)+1=0 (Euler's Formula).
Heck, I spent many hours trying to trisect an angle using a compass and straightedge, and I spent hours trying to integrate e^(-x^2) in terms of "elementary functions", because I was told that these were impossible--and this conflicted with what I was taught in our culture, that "nothing is impossible". Later, I actually read the proof that demonstrated, once and for all, that the former is impossible, and more recently I learned that the latter proof is done along the same lines, so to me, these are no longer counter-intuitive.
The idea "More guns, less crime" is, like all these other things, counter-intuitive. Our intuition tells us that getting rid of guns will decrease violence. But we can find statistics that show when we ban guns, violence increases. And we can find statistically that, internationally, there is no correlation between gun laws, gun ownership, the murder rate, and the suicide rate, from country to country. As I have examined these things closely, I've come to the conclusion that honest people with guns is a good thing, because they can defend their lives against dishonest people determined to do harm.
I have seen the statistics and the studies. I have thought about the philosophies behind the two positions. In all this, I have come to the conclusion that more guns really do mean less crime! And that, more importantly, if you value liberty and security, then you shouldn't depend on the State for protection--it is your duty to protect yourself and those you love--and nothing can change that. Indeed, the State, more often than not, cannot protect you--and occasionally, the State is even your enemy.
And that those who believe otherwise, might as well believe that the moon is made of cheese, or that imaginary numbers really are imaginary, for all the truth that their position holds."
Words fail me. Epsilon, this is not the first time that I've had to make the elementary point to you that I do - honestly, truly - know what "counter-intuitive" means, and have done all along. Your apparent belief that if I take issue with anything you say it must mean that I've simply misunderstood the terminology you use (and require a detailed explanation to bring me up to speed) is...well, a touch bemusing, to say the least. I'll simply reiterate what I said to you before - some things that are counter-intuitive turn out to be true. Many don't. I note that you confirm that at the outset yourself, so your point is...?
The latter part of your comment essentially boils down to this - you've generously had a little think about the statistical evidence on our behalf, you've selectively culled the bits that suit you, you've declared your side of the argument the winner on that basis, and thus regard yourself entitled to feel morally superior to those of us who don't "do our duty" by "protecting" ourselves with a gun.
Well, let me put this to you. Here is the compelling evidence (as opposed to intuition) that those of us on the other side of the argument in Scotland look towards. It suggests overwhelmingly that our approach has succeeded in protecting the public. Might I suggest therefore that we are equally entitled to think - valuing security and liberty as we do - that it would be a disgraceful dereliction of our collective "duty" if we were to suddenly decide to indulge the wishes of a minority to own handguns, and thus compromise the safety and liberty of everyone?
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