10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down

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It's funny, every anti-gun liberal that cites the 2A spouts the "Well Regulated" part and blatantly ignores the "Shall not be infringed" part.

Excuse me, but there are multiple ways to interpret the operative clause "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The prefatory clause is meant to clarify that we're talking about weapons of the type that would be used by the militia (which is basically how the opinion of US v. Miller reads).

The left doesn't believe in rights. Only entitlements for some.....

Watch it, I'm very much left of center.

Whoa! "multiple ways to interpret the operative clause"??? Wow! Now we're getting somewhere! I guess this means that there's possible interpretations of the 2nd Amendment other than it being a mandate to issue a machine gun to every child at birth and a main battle tank upon receiving his/her drivers license. The NRA will be very upset to hear this, but at least the rest of us who think there should be sanity in our firearms laws and that society should be something other than an armed camp can take solace in the fact that we now agree that there are ways to interpret the 2nd amendment that don't turn the country into a tinder-box.

If "A well regulated Militia" is "necessary to the security of a free State", then is it more likely that the purpose of not infringing "the right to keep and bear arms" is to allow for the equipping of said militia

‘It is nothing unusual in acts . . . for the enacting part to go beyond the preamble; the remedy often extends beyond the particular act or mischief which first suggested the necessity of the law.’” J. Bishop, Commentaries on Written Laws and Their Interpretation §51, p. 49 (1882) (quoting Rex v. Marks, 3 East, 157, 165 (K. B. 1802)).

The data comes from these two sources, BTW (as per the links in the article thomas81 posted):

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf (page 87)
http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/conten ... 0.full.pdf (page 4)

To illustrate the power of the association between gun ownership and gun death, I just ran a regression analysis based on those data, yielding an R-Squared of 0.4963.

In other words, almost 50 percent of the variation in gun deaths between US states can be statistically explained by a single variable: Gun ownership. Vague correlation?

Second of all, it is incorrect to claim that the causation is "entirely presumed". Several studies have specifically linked the mere access to guns several types of gun-related deaths

The following are referenced in the Pediatrics link from thomas81's post:

Injury and suicide among adolescents:
http://depts.washington.edu/hiprc/pdf/LockboxJAMA.pdf

Suicide in general:
http://www.healthandlearning.org/docume ... auma04.pdf

Another look at the gun ownership/homicide correlation (with control for different variables)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447364/

An illustrative example from the article comparing "high-gun" and "low-gun" states:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... /table/t3/

Other examples I came across:

Gun-related deaths in domestic violence against women:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447915/

Homicide and suicide risk:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/1 ... 9.full.pdf

A review on the scientific studies of the relative risks and benefits of having a gun in the home (Conclusion: The risks outweigh the benefits)
http://www.iansa.org/system/files/Risks ... 202011.pdf



If you check the links I provided, you will see that the *homicide* link also is robust.

Besides, are only bullets fired with the intent to kill others lethal?

... Oh, and one more thing...




Could you please elaborate? Last time I checked, the effect of sample size on the accuracy of statistical estimates follows the law of diminishing returns. A lot of opinion polling organizations (see LINK) don't bother with larger sample sizes than 1,500 because larger sample sizes have very little effect on the margin of error. Sample sizes of 1,905 - 2,400 people should be more than adequate if you want to test a simple correlation between two variables.

It is reasonable to accept more stringent statistical standards for the search for the Higgs-Boson, for instance, but I doubt that the conclusion that private property rights are good for economic growth (one of the only truly robust conclusions in the social sciences) would even hold at that standard. Nonetheless, market economies are in general much more wealthy than non-market economies.

On a more serious note, though:

STICK TO f***ing PEER-REVIEWED SCIENCE WHEN DISCUSSING THE EFFECT OF GUNS!

There is no reason (unless one is deliberately trying to misrepresent reality) to embrace biased sites advocating countless pro-gun/anti-gun beliefs with either overt or covert agendas, cherry-picking "studies" to suit their particular political positions. Just look at the science... How hard can it be?

After all, one of the rationales for the institution of peer review is to weed out the unscientific crap and allow those who have the scientific skills and the scientific integrity to provide the actual facts.

The political debate about guns in the US, however, seems to have a lower standard of evidence than the average YouTube video...

... In other words... Why did I even bother with this post?

/Out.

It seems pretty reasonable to me to assume that if the number of guns floating around in the hands of the public will be somewhat correlated to suicide and homicide rates. People arguing against that data are barking up the wrong tree.

This article fails to realize the purpose of the second amendment. An armed population is necessary not only to discourage invasion, but to pressure our own government into following the rules. The founding fathers knew very well that the government they were creating should be overthrown should it become a tyranny.

As a matter of utility, guns should not be overly controlled by the very thing the second amendment was designed to control. As far as the crime issue goes, you must look at our past: the idea of gangs became popular during the time of the wild west. The fact that old habits die hard coupled with population concentration and poor education systems means that crime in the more western states is inevitable.

Also, keep in mind that criminals, by definition, do not have to follow gun regulations; only law-abiding citizens do. According to the punishment system, those who abuse this right does not deserve it, even if abuse is involuntarily from lack of training.

One of the first things Hitler did upon his rise to power was abolish the right of the citizens to own firearms. Imagine how much more difficult the holocaust would have been if he hadn't done this, especially at the time of the uprising in Warsaw.

The US Gov could decide tomorrow to completely ban all firearms and I wouldn't care one bit. However, even I must admit that the statistical evidence in favor of gun control is very weak at best. If we did ban guns outright, the overall homicide rate would likely continue to follow the current trends. The only difference would be that when some nut decides to go on a full-blown killing rampage, he would probably be somewhat less successful at doing so. But as far as overall statistics? There would probably be no discernible difference. There's no way to prove that even one life would be saved.

I would love it if reducing violence were as simple as enacting gun control laws. Unfortunately, it's not.

I dunno - - I think a killer without a gun is much less effective than a killer with a gun.

Intuitively, that seems like it would be correct. I used to be in the same pro gun control boat as you, but I looked up some statistics, and I couldn't... find... really, anything to support my position. Either the NRA has done an amazing job of taking over Google and hiding the facts, or gun control just isn't very effective.

Granted, my research has not been very thorough.

I hardly think a professional army - ours or a foreign invader - is going to worry much about a bunch of disorganized yahoos with guns. I'm going to put more trust in our government to fight a foreign invader, rather than the guy down the street hoarding weapons. After all, Red Dawn was only a movie - and a very bad one at that - especially the remake.

AS far as the old west is concerned, despite what you see on TV and movie westerns, while there was a lot of violence, the fact of the matter was, it was curbed in municipalities by concerned citizens, with strong gun control laws, enforced by often famous, no-nonsense law men including Wyatt Earp or Wild Bill Hickok.

It's just common sense, though, that Adam Lanza wouldn't have had such a high body count were he using - say - a knife or pitch fork, or just a regular fire arm.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer