Subject:
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Re: Dan Rather is a Useful Idiot Extraordinare
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 3 Mar 2003 16:37:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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618 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Mike Petrucelli writes:
> True, but both articles cite that illegally owned firearms were/are
> responsible for the vast majority of crime.
You're stripping away the numbers for the sake of a punchline. According
to the first article, the number of firearms-related murders in 1996
England/Wales was 49. Forty-nine! Pittsburgh alone had 47 murders in 1996,
and we don't have a gun ban! It is flatly deceptive to refer to "the vast
majority of crime" without admitting the staggering smallness of the overall
number of crimes. I would submit that, given the 1996 population of the UK
(approximately 58,784,000), it is impossible to speculate on trends based on
a a sampling of about .00008%, other than to say "they have almost zero gun
crime, and they have tight gun control."
> The first article states that tighter gun control will not have any positive
> impact (but probably have a negative one) on the crime rate because of that.
Your selective quotation is misleading. The blurb you cite is taken from
a firearms expert (not a sociologist or criminologist) who opposes tighter
gun control, and he says it only speculatively. He gives no evidence, nor
does he cite any statistics or evidence. You are accepting his testimony
solely because it supports the case you're trying to make.
> The second confirms this.
Really? Where? The only part that even seems connected is this:
"Figures set to be released by the Home Office are to show that gun crime
has doubled since Labour won power in 1997, according to newspaper reports."
But that doesn't support your thesis in demonstrating any causative
relationship between increased gun control and increased gun crime.
In essence, you're using a vague, inconclusive statement in the second
article as verification of an unsubstantiated quotation from the first
article, and you're asserting them as if, together, they represent a proven
trend. This is speculative, unfounded, and post hoc reasoning at best.
> Also essentially the same thing happened in Canada and Australia after
> enacting tougher gun control. Several States in the US have had the same
> thing happen relative to the rest of the country.
Give me some data on that, please. Here's what I found, after a brief search:
Total murders in Canada
1997: 586
1998: 558
1999: 538
2000: 546
2001: 554
from http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/legal12a.htm
Total gun homicides in Australia
1996: 104 (and 35 of those occurred in a single incident)
1997: 79
http://reason.com/0010/ci.js.guns.shtml
Total homicides in Australia
1996: 312
1997: 322
from http://www.ssaa.org.au/ilasep98.html
If you're referring to a variance of a few incidents of crime as "proof"
that gun control caused an increase in the overall crime rate, you'll need
to do better. You're dealing with populations in the millions, and with
crime- rate-variance ranging in the low dozens! The statisitical margin of
error is much larger than the total number of crimes, so there's no way you
can uses those statistics as evidence for your case.
> The odds that there is no correlation is pretty slim when several 'tests'
> have been conducted with all the same result.
Please provide data from tests that demonstrate the same result, and
please demonstrate that a causative relationship has been established
between increased gun control and increased crime rate. The information
you've provided so far does not do so.
Rather than repeating the mantra of "gun control equals violence," let's
set that aside for a moment and instead ask ourselves the important
question. If and armed citizenry is really the key do reduced crime,
explain to me why the number of gun homicides in the US in 1999 was 11,127,
while the same year the number of gun homicides in Canada was 165. Neither
nation has particularly draconian gun control laws; if anything, Canada's
restrictions are tighter! And Canada has double the unemployment rate of
the US, and poverty is certainly no less widespread.
from http://www.jsonline.com/lifestyle/advice/dec02/101310.asp
Here's a postulate (which I don't actually believe, but for which there is
at least as much "evidence" as you have cited for your case): increased
socialization of public health care results in reduced levels of gun crime.
Or how about this: increased mandatory paid maternity leave results in
reduced levels of gun crime. Or how about this one: use of the metric
system results in decreased levels of gun crime.
Do you see how that's fallacious reasoning? My conclusions are consistent
with the data, if we use the US, the UK, and Canada as data sources, but I'm
merely *assuming* a causative relationship, just as you are merely assuming
a causative relationship between increased gun control and increased crime.
The funny thing is that I'm not even calling for tighter gun control!
I've simply come to the conclusion recently that the real issue isn't gun
control laws at all, but rather a much less "campaign-able" issue such as a
deeper problem in US culture on the whole.
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Dan Rather is a Useful Idiot Extraordinare
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| [snipped the numbers] Ok you are only siting the murder rate and calling it the crime rate. Armed robbery is where increase is. The murder rate is essentially unchanged between countries with or without strict gun control. I cannot seem to find any (...) (21 years ago, 4-Mar-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Dan Rather is a Useful Idiot Extraordinare
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| (...) True, but both articles site that illegally owned firearms were/are responsible for the vast majority of crime. The first article states that tighter gun control will not have any positive impact (but probably have a negative one) on the crime (...) (21 years ago, 1-Mar-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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