• Thousand Oaks parent: 'I don’t want thoughts and prayers. I want gun control.'
    145 replies, posted
Pretty sure most people on this forum who defend gun control don't advocate for selective control over only certain forms of firearms, but stricter laws across the board.
Oh I should explain then, I was taking (number of gun murders in US annually (I think I used 2011 because it was highest to be generous)) / (total # of firearms in country) Mass shooting figures would be even lower Then allow me to explain In 2004/5 Brazil passed national disarmament programs and tightened access to firearms to be some of the strictest in the world. (find summary of laws here) An optimist would think that gun death rates would drastically plummet but that has not been the case. While national rates have decreased meaningful amounts, the attribution to gun laws is a precarious position to take, namely for three reasons. 1.Massive inconsistencies across regions, with many regions experiencing increases in gun deaths and gun crime. With such a variety in changes to rate among regions, it is not possible to claim that the laws have been the cause of decreases. For example: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1383/983d7b25-7948-4707-ba14-5bb996346252/image.png As you can see, Espirito Santo for instance would appear to be greatly effected by the first gun control legislation. However, it could just as easily be the rate returning to normal levels independently of the new laws, as you can see a drastic spike right before. And later on you can see that the second round of laws seems to have had no effect, and later on the same kind of spike/return to normal levels occurs in a completely separate time period near the end of the chart. Because the latter spike happened completely on it's own, you cannot say that the rapid decrease of 10/03 happened because of those laws in Espirito Santo. And if you look at the other regions you can see either a complete lack of effect of the laws in the rates due to laws, or a small bump in crime directly after. 2.Unexplored but very viable contributing factors. I recently read an interesting research paper. I will simply paste the interesting parts instead of summarizing because apparently my claim was "reductive". In addition to the factors mentioned above, authors have discussed other yet untested hypotheses: an improvement in socioeconomic development indicators, preventive actions implemented by the municipal government, and greater social participation through organized civil society actions are among the factors considered to be important1,3,11,12. A possible role of stronger organized crime, which would function as a new social control mechanism that mediates local conflicts, has been pointed out in ethnographic studies as the factor responsible for the reduction in crime in São Paulo3,12,13,14,15. There are few, if any, studies that have analyzed the relationship between HMR and investment in social policies. It could be assumed that greater investment in social actions, especially in areas where there are more disadvantages, could reduce the possibility of conflicts as a result of a greater positive presence of the State as a reference and mediating institution16. According to Kawachi and cols. (1997)17, investments in social policies reflect and contribute to greater social capital, which, in its turn, is associated with lower violence levels. In this way, it could be assumed that the increase in social actions, policies and programs has a positive impact on the reduction in violence levels, a hypothesis that has yet to be proved. So if social, economic and criminal factors could be the cause to decreases seen, I think those need to be investigated. Because while gun laws negatively impact all citizens by reducing freedoms, things like standards of living increases and social equality positively impact all, and if they provide results in terms of reducing gun crime and crime as a whole, then it's a win-win in my eyes. 3.Lack of strong results. Take Sao Paulo for instance, this goes back to the disparity of results discussed earlier. Some regions showed improvement, while places like Sao Paulo has shown that after the incredibly restrictive gun control, the decrease in homicide rates actually slowed down drastically. [BELOW] https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1383/d3994f9d-c587-47dc-b821-66ff8f5a06a3/image.png And in Rio de Janeiro, you can see that the greatest drops in violent rates happened years after the laws were passed, and actually are back to increasing right now. [BELOW] https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1383/7218feb7-ea75-430f-9457-c10b02dcf075/image.png And today, nationwide murder rates are actually spiking, breaking records. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/world/americas/brazil-murder-rate-record.html Brazil suffers record murder tally in 2017, ahead of election | .. So to summarize: While it may seem at a glance that Brazils laws have been effective, upon investigation you can see that the gun laws have had little effect in short and long term reduction of violent gun crime. If the same results could be seen with the laws passed being less restrictive, then I would say that they are "worth it". But considering the age limits, plethora of checks, registration and licensing, etc... the decreases shown do not, to me at least, seem worth the loss of liberties. Security and freedom is always a tradeoff, and Brazil shows that the tradeoff is not 1:1. If you have to give up so much to receive so little in terms of security, then the trade is not worth it. So you see, the lawful citizens are essentially disarmed and the criminals abilities are nigh unaffected compared to the purported stringency of the laws passed.
As stated millions of times, the problem isn't completely gun control, the problem is mental health. People shouldn't be doing that shit in the first place, gun or not. And as we all know, healthcare in the US is abysmal.
...Except what you're implying in your original post is that the current spike in homicides in Brazil is the direct result of gun laws that took effect decades earlier. This post here hints at such laws somewhat lacking in effectiveness at best. Nothing in here shows a causal link or even a correlation between these laws being passed and the current increase. It's irrelevant to the original statement.
Oh I never attributed or even mentioned the recent spike in the original statement, but "modern Brazil" in whole-, [BELOW] https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1383/7b85af40-4f50-4b82-9fa5-084f878ad15b/image.png -which is supported and relevant because while private gun ownership by lawful citizens has plummeted, gun crime has not, sometimes even increasing. My original claim was about the ineffectiveness of gun bans, which my post supports.
I think this is like the 7th time I’ve posted this but here you go: Allocate the DoJ funds specifically for prosecution of straw purchase, the #1 source of illegal firearms, but which they currently lack the resources to pursue. -Allocate the ATF funds specifically for prosecution of unscrupulous FFL holders, the #2 source of illegal firearms, but which they currently lack the resources to pursue. -Raise liability on stolen firearms, or introduce safe storage laws. -Further restrict handguns, the overwhelmingly most common weapons used in crime. -Open the NICS to non-FFLs, then mandate background checks on all sales. -Fix the broken interaction between state and federal databases (due to HIPAA) which often causes mental issues to not be reported to the federal background check system. -Address suicide in some meaningful capacity. Address gang violence in some meaningful capacity. These are the social issues that are the most common root causes of gun violence. Granted in exchange I’d like to see some actual compromise made in good faith first because gun owners have absolutely every reason not to trust the pro gun control side. Give us at least something in return to prove you’re not just going to use this against us and keep asking for more until there’s nothing left to give. For example repeal some of the dumb feel good measures which demonstrably do nothing to increase public safety like: Taking short barreled weapons and suppressors off of the NFA. Reopen the machine gun registry. Pass a motion or ruling which declares that assault weapons bans are unconstitutional. I mean give us SOMETHING to work with.
the problem is less mental health than the general apathy of americans towards even their own families, never mind their friends or neighbors. Angry, bitter people without the reasons that made them into angry, bitter people who just want to strike back at a world they feel that abandoned them don't shoot up their workplace, school, or local bar. And America is extremely bad at containing the copycat phenomenon because of news houses who look at tragedies for every excuse to get TRPs instead of downplaying the shooter.
Pretty weird way to say that, honestly. Referring to "modern Brazil" as a whole, especially given current events, doesn't strike me as a particularly insightful way to say "things carried on as usual". As for your analysis, meh. It's not exactly actual statistical research demonstrating strong correlation and causal links. Like a lot of gun debate material, it basically consists in taking graphs and projecting your own foregone conclusion onto them, picking up on details that support your stance while glossing over those that don't, essentially confirmation bias, even if you don't realise it. Take your first graph, for example. You take a variation that could indicate gun laws having an effect (which honestly wouldn't be very strong evidence for that), then you look for a similar pattern elsewhere. Once you found it, you deduced that it meant that gun laws didn't have an effect. You didn't check whether that pattern was actually recurrent, nor did you try and find the source of the second spike and establish its cause, which is what you should do if you actually want to show those laws' ineffectiveness. The human mind is good at seeing patterns, and so things like this aren't much more significant than seeing familiar shapes in clouds. You also seem to confuse something not being able to be used as evidence for gun laws' efficiency with evidence of their being inefficient. You bring up socio-economic factors having a strong influence on crime rate, but don't seem to consider the possibility that Brazil going to shit on that front for the past decade may have simply cancelled out or overshadowed whatever progress the gun laws might have brought otherwise. You also make lots of baseless assumptions. For instance, you assume that homicide rates naturally decrease in a linear fashion when you claim that the gun laws "slowed down" São Paulo's decrease. Except if you were to extrapolate the pre-2005 homicide rate decrease, you'd get a 0 rate somewhere in 2007 and a rate in the -100s by 2018. I shouldn't have to explain why this is ridiculous. The decrease slowing down is normal, and probably has nothing to do with gun laws. You can throw this one out. Another assumption you make is that the effects of any new gun legislation is supposed to be instant. I see no reason to believe that. All in all, I find this analysis to be pretty inconclusive. You tend to connect the dots to form the shape you want, rather than because they have a good reason to be connected.
You are making my claims to be something they aren't: For the first graph, I was showing how spikes and drops can occur naturally, independently of passed laws. With the small scope of that charts source, recurrence could not be determined and I never claimed that it could. You are just extrapolating my rather conservative claims to be something they weren't. The variety of changes in rates demonstrate the probable lack of impact of the laws. In my conclusion I simply pointed out that the supposed effectiveness was not demonstrated by declines one would expect. And yes, this is very much evidence of the laws being inefficient. I believe that effective gun control would absolutely result in short and long term decreases in gun violence. If not, what's the point? The data shows that this was not the result obtained or at least had very mixed and varied results, some more effective in different regions. Socioeconomic factors overshadowing benefits of gun laws is totally a possibility, and I would love to find something that investigates that aspect, if I could find something like that. (I do not speak Spanish or Brazilian, so the availability of studies and data tables I can use is limited) I will not throw out my claims regarding Sao Paulo's decrease however. If gun laws were effective in their aims, then post-implementation there is no plausible reason why the decrease in rates would slow down to decreases in rates slower than that of natural decreases. Perhaps the rates would have increased during that period in a large swing, if there weren't laws passed? But I was not able to find anything that would explain that. And I did not solely claim that effects should be instant, rather that results should be shown either in the short or long term, open to either possibility. And from data we can both see, neither occurs except on the national scale at rates consistent with the international decrease in gun crime. My analysis is not supposed to be conclusive, rather, pointing out flaws with the common assumption that Brazil's gun laws were effective in achieving their goals and going back to my original claim that there is a large disparity in the distribution or arms between the citizenry and criminals, the benefits of which are highly doubtful.
Yes, it is. You state any chosen gun has less than a .01% chance of killing directly before saying that, meaning you are talking about the chance of any given knife killing someone. There are far more knives than rifles in the U.S.
Thats rich coming from the guy with a long history of flyby shitposting in every gun related thread in existence.
Those were originally my words, but in the time since writing them I've got two more items to add to the list: -Mandate the military to actually report documented mental illness issues to civilian authorities. -Address mental illness among veterans in some meaningful capacity. These should be no-brainers, yet we've seen several mass shootings in the last few years carried out either by veterans with a history of mental issues, or veterans who weren't able to get the help they needed.
Come back when you have an actual argument
Actually, my writing was rather exploratory, and I can tell you only skimmed what I wrote because here and: there (^) you seem to ignore or haven't read what I mentioned here (below), explicitly talking about cultural attitudes, gang activity, and socioeconomic factors, the very things you accuse me of ignoring completely: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1383/6e63308e-8660-4a47-8d4c-79b93ed52aff/image.png And I literally just wrote all of that (the large post I made on page 5 here) analyzing trends and the data. I explained what the evidence has shown, and that did support my argument.
As pro gun control crowd (that still hasn't had the time to work through Zombie dude's collection of gun crime statistics) I agree with every point here. Especially the social issues bit, for the following reasons: A person living in the USA is very unlikely to use a gun in self defense even once in their life. (Also the problem of epidemiology means rare events get self-reported at huge overestimates. ) A person has many chances every day to use a gun inappropriately (getting sad, getting angry, etc) IMO guns should be a privilege, to be earned if you pass a certain standard.
This implies that people who commit these crimes are carrying their weapons every day. People who carry everyday are likely legally doing so, and are also astronomically less likely to commit a crime.
Ah, this is probably how I managed to mix him up with Zombinie. I primarily see (or at least notice) both of them in gun control-related threads. Whoops.
Two things: First, not really that relevant I don't think and not what I was getting at, people can get angry or sad at home too. Second, the effects of CCW on crime rates is uncertain. The more robust recent studies Moody et al. (2014) and Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang (2014) (Taken from the meta-analysis of gun crime vr gun carrying research at rand) "Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang (2014) found suggestive evidence that shall-issue laws increase assault by 8 percent (see the figure below). In the dummy specification, shall-issue laws significantly increased rape by 12 percent, although estimates of this effect from the spline model were uncertain. The authors also found suggestive evidence that shall-issue laws increased rates of robbery, although estimates again became uncertain in other specifications. Effects of shall-issue laws on murder rates were uncertain. " "Moody et al. (2014) critiqued the decision to treat models without state-specific trends as the preferred ones. Thus, Moody et al. (2014) reestimated the hybrid models in Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang (2014) and incorporated the state-specific trends and their additional covariates into the corresponding county-level analyses. In doing so, the authors found, as they had with their county-level analyses, that their specification improved model fit over that of Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang (2014). These hybrid models found that shall-issue laws significantly increased assault rate trends and increased robbery rate levels, but they also significantly reduced murder rate trends. As noted earlier, Moody et al. (2014) did not demonstrate either that their model estimates were less biased than those in Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang (2014) or that the latter’s model suffered from omitted variable biases. " Included as much context as I could to be as fair as possible. There's papers in the Rand page that show no effect or decreased effect. The point being that saying "they are astronomically less likely to commit a crime" seems to be hyperbole and unfounded, as far as I can tell?
What Axel is saying is that there are a thousand fucking factors why Brazil is as it is today. Our rampant inequality, our corruption, corporate interests both domestic and foreign consolidating power at opportune times and draining our resources, our militaristic police culture and poorly trained officers, our crises and economic hurdles, our mismanaged prison system, an education index lower than Mexico and Azerbaijan, and so many fucking more reasons. You acknowledge other factors exist in that big post of yours, and accuse gun control advocates of not paying enough attention to them, but you're doing the same fucking thing? It's frankly insulting in the face of all the way bigger problems we have to see you say "modern Brazil is the result of their gun laws", how absurdly fucking ignorant
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sorry, I got carried away. that was dumb.
Dude, don't get so upset, it's a completely inconsequential mistake. The point in the end is still that he doesn't speak the language.
This is a contradictory statement. You did willingly admit that : So Brazil did experience the decreases you say effective gun control should result in. The expected decline did happen. While I can't infer from this data alone that it was the result of stricter gun control - if I want to be scientifically rigorous, that is - you can't deduce from those rates that it was ineffective either. You did try, though, by making the claim that rates varied in a mixed way if we look at more local areas, and that such variations mean that Brazil's gun laws have been ineffective. The first part of this claim is misleading at the very least, the second is outright false, scientifically untrue. First off, it is demonstrative of your selective vision when it comes to portraying a faithful global picture of the situation. If nationwide rates have decreased, it is a mathematical impossibility that it was a tossup locally with as many increases in rates as there were decreases. For numbers to check out, you should either have the decreases covering a wider part of the population, or being deeper than the increases have been. It seems you haven't noted either, which is indicative of confirmation bias. Secondly, the claim that different variations in homicide rates depending on locality is evidence that gun control measures have been ineffective is symptomatic of a poor grasp of statistics and its intricacies. It's basically the same thing as claiming "this nationwide poll isn't representative, I know lots of families where the distribution is different from what is displayed there". One of the basic principles of statistics is that the larger a sample, the more representative it is of the commonalities of its elements. Thus, an analysis based on the entire country is more representative of the effects of a situation shared by all of its constituents (for instance, being subjected to a piece of federal legislation) than one based on a single city. So if you want to judge the efficacy of a law, positive effects nationwide are much stronger as evidence supporting it than negative, locally isolated effects are as evidence against it. The contraposition to that basic principle is that the more locally you go, the more likely you are to observe discrepancies and anomalies. Seeing locally more mixed results isn't just not evidence of a law's ineffectiveness in the slightest, it's also perfectly normal. Considering that Brazil is a large, very diverse country, with huge huge social inequalities, with rich, safe areas to live in and other, poorer areas much more prone to criminality, important discrepancies in crime rate variations are to be expected, and completely unsurprising. So no, these numbers aren't evidence of Brazil's gun laws being ineffective. You've made several baseless assumptions and demonstrated a lack of scientific rigor before coming to that conclusion. Excuse me? Is this what you think the natural decrease would have been? https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/2687f668-6f06-4e40-b56f-dc7145795fb0/image.png If we put proper axes on your own graph here, we can plainly see that a 0 homicide rate would have been reached in the city - as I already pointed out - in mid 2007, if it were to keep decreasing at a constant, pre-2005 rate. After that, it would've gone into the negatives. Do you consider resurrections to be natural? I don't. The downwards slope of homicide rates in São Paulo was bound to gradually become flatter. It's basic maths. The burden of proof is on you to calculate what a natural decrease would have looked like, and to show that it would've been steeper had gun laws not been introduced. To imply that this graph shows that gun control getting stricter resulted in the decrease in homicide rate slowed down drastically is an insult to the intelligence of anybody who went through high school, honestly. Kind of contradicting yourself within the same post there. ...And in other posts for that matter. Sorry, I'm sure you've dedicated some amount of time to it, but the way you set up your analysis makes it worth very little when it comes to judging the efficacy of these laws. You made lots of undisclosed hypotheses, baseless assumptions, jumped to conclusions and made some mathematically disprovable claims. Unfortunately, it's not an edge case in any way when it comes to FP. Especially in gun debate threads, posters typically sift the internet for the most convenient graphs to use as support for their point, then very liberally interpret their contents in a way that seems to assert their argument. This generally takes the form of a temporal graph and a correlation (or lack thereof), most of the time without the poster specifying the necessary assumptions made to validate or infirm said correlation. Social statistics like crime rate are incredibly complex functions with multiple unaccountable-for parameters. Entire fields of mathematics are dedicated to problems like separating signal from noise. Yet armchair analysts on this forum who carelessly slap together a couple stats, without any regard for rigor or deep analysis, to come to their own, predetermined conclusion are popular for some reason. People just seem to take a cursory glance at the contents to determine which "camp" the post falls into and rate/respond accordingly, without actually looking at the arguments and verifying their adequation to logical principles or trustworthiness. It's even more ridiculous if they gloat about "being rational" and "basing their opinions on facts" afterwards. I feel kind of ashamed for the people who rate posts like yours without really giving it a second thought, simply because it validates their narrative. I think it's time people started being more rational indeed, and learned to have a more critical eye on this kind of "analysis", whether it comforts their worldview or not.
You know what? You're right. What I should have written was something closer to "modern Brazil, with all it's gun violence, has had mixed/poor results from their incredibly restrict gun control schemes. Gun control is not the silver bullet many anti-gun advocates seem to think it is, as gun violence rates can increase or decrease greatly completely independently of gun control measures, hinting to the incredible importance of social and economic impacts that are seemingly ignored in lieu of gun control. I think that because of the great variety of results shown in different areas all impacted the same due to federal laws, social, economic and gang factors should be taking the limelight in terms of legislation, because while gun control can give little/no results and reduces liberty across the board, reducing inequality, encouraging social outreach programs, and going after gang crime directly would benefit the whole of the population without (as far as I can tell) negatively impacting law abiding citizens. Today Brazil has a one sided force equation, with minuscule defensive power of citizens and massive offensive power of criminals who still very much have access to firearms. That's really the essence of my view, an inequality of power due to gun laws. But overall in terms of violence, "Modern Brazil" is not the Nation it is today solely due to gun laws. I suppose that was the message I accidentally sent and re-reading it from the eyes of someone who isn't the writer I totally get it. What I meant with my statement was that modern Brazil is result in part because of those laws and their varied effectiveness and the lack of defensive means of citizens which I find very concerning as someone who values that. I was in the wrong to phrase my initial statement that way, it did not accurately explain the message I was trying to convey and overly-distilled my sentiment. I understand where you are coming from and apologize, I also dislike it when people make broad claims about the US. I should be more delicate when discussing other people's nations in a negative light. I don't know how I can make myself much clearer here. Obviously the rate would never continue at that rate, but for the decrease to almost flat-line right after legislation was passed should show that either the legislation was not significant by any stretch in terms of desired effect, or that the decreases shown before (significant) and after are possible completely independently of gun legislation (social, economic etc). Only because you take them out of context. The analysis in whole is not supposed to be conclusive in terms of providing a silver bullet explanation and account for all changes. That's what the first sentence obviously means in context. And the second clause below is discussing a specific set of data and the claims I make related to that specific set. Those are completely separate things and you are fictitiously combining them. I genuinely like your analysis of my writing as a whole and you make some very good points but at places like that and in the past you seem to purposely misunderstand my claims
Flatline? I'm not sure we're looking at the same graph here. The downwards slope between 2005 and 2007 is basically the same as the one between 2001 and 2003. As I've already explained, you can't realistically expect the same slope as 2003-2005 to keep up for two additional years. This sort of thing doesn't work linearly. It's a lot harder to go from a 50 to 25 homicide rate than to go from a 25 to 0 rate, especially in São Paulo which has more on its plate than gun proliferation alone. Again, if you're going to claim that the introduction of gun laws hindered the natural decrease in homicides, you're going to have to prove that the decrease would've been deeper otherwise. Not eyeball some graph and say that it didn't go as low as you conveniently and baselessly expected it to. For starters, I'm not vainly trying to conclude anything based on such limited sets of data like you are. So I don't really have to look at either scale, I only need to point out why you're wrong in your own interpretation of them. It seems you haven't read my point very well, as the misleading part isn't "investigating the micro", it's claiming that the results are mixed when it's evidently not the case considering that the global values have decreased. No it shouldn't. I've already explained this. The more locally you look, the more likely you are to find statistical anomalies and discrepancies. Heck, if we go down to the level of a single household I can give you areas with a 100% homicide rate. Doesn't say anything about the effectiveness of legislation, though. Among thousands of cities, you're bound to find a lot that wouldn't see significant change, even under effective legislation. This is even more true when you consider that gun ownership supposedly only partly influences homicide rates, and so the impact of gun control can vary depending on the factors behind the local criminal rate. A city with a low crime rate would obviously be rather unaffected by legislation, as would those with low ownership rates. Any socio-economical change, like a big factory closing, can potentially locally negate whatever positive impact gun control may have had. So, once again, it's a normal phenomenon, not indicative of gun control's effectiveness or lack thereof. ...Except it still would still be effective for all the other regions where it does have a positive impact (since, you know, nationwide decrease)? How can you even call that ineffective? Of course it doesn't change anything for the 99% of people who wouldn't have been murdered either way, that's not the point of such legislation. What matters is reducing the amount of homicides overall, not making sure that you get less homicides in every single town in the country. What a weird argument. I'm not purposely misunderstanding them, by "being conclusive" I meant inferring any sort of conclusion for the data you presented, which is what you did in the second quote by coming to the conclusion that local discrepancies are evidence of gun laws being ineffective. They're not, and so I've said that your analysis is inconclusive as a whole because every conclusion you've made in it were based on false reasoning.
Yeah that's way more sensible, thanks for taking the time to write it. My bad for getting pissed, and not even reading the context behind the spanish thing. That one sentence is really all I had a problem with, not your other posts. The whole "modern Brazil is the result" thing is an overvaluation of gun control as a cause rather than a judgement on its effectiveness. The particular quirks of gun ownership in Brazil are its own pandora's box, my worries come from the lack of a strong gun culture resulting in less gun safety awareness in the general populace's mind, and the policies that come packaged with pro-gun rhetoric, as its advocates have vastly different historical justifications than in the US. Don't let me stop you from discussing the statistics though, just be mindful of the other factors
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