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[penguinofhonor]

The hell do you even read that thing?

It's measured in incidents/ownership per 100,000 people. The squarey line corresponds to the left Y axis, the diamondy line corresponds to the right Y axis.

The rate of change seems to decrease slightly though

Actually yeah I forgot to figure in the trend that already seemed to be happening before the laws were enacted.

Let's try some (very basic) extrapolation. You can see that the rate of gun crimes increased by 213 over 10 years, or by 21.3 per year. Because of this you could predict that in the next three years it would increase by 63.9, to 537.9, and it increased to 554, which is pretty close, especially when you consider my math is pretty rough. This could show the laws didn't really have an effect on the trend we see here, although you'd probably need some more complex math to be more accurate.

[palsch]

It's also well worth remember that guns were never that big a deal in the UK. There has never been a widespread gun culture. You wouldn't expect gun laws to have that broad an effect. Just grabbing some quick numbers from wiki, the 1997 act which tends to get most of the attention only removed handguns from 57,000 (about 1 in 960) people. Guns have never been a popular or realistic self-defence tool in the UK while their use in crime mainly comes from gangs and smuggled weapons that are an entirely separate issue.

I'd also say you really need to pay attention to the footnotes in those charts. The counting methods for crimes has changed several times during the periods looked at. The biggest change was in 1998/9 (the year after the 1997 Act) which changed to a more victim-based methodology (contemporary account here) greatly increasing the number of crimes recorded.

As to the graph, exactly what makes up violent crime? What are the rates that deal with firearms used in crime? Given the nature of Home Office statistics these are questions that largely mean finding data sets and definitions for each year. The closest thing to a useful comparison across time I can find is this BCS document looking at crime trends 1980-2005. My favourite little fact skimming that; the most common crime in 1981 was the theft of milk bottles from doorsteps, with over 10% of households reporting they had been victims. However, I can't find a single mention of gun crime (which, given this is a victim based survey, isn't much of a surprise). Instead the most important trends in violent crime have been in domestic violence, showing a sharp increase and then peak in the early-mid 90's, falling off again later in the decade. Looking at broad violent crime numbers is going to be vulnerable to such trends completely hiding any factors you should actually be watching.

You wouldn't simply expect to see a strong correlation between such gun laws and crime rates given the marginal nature of guns in society and culture, and you certainly wouldn't expect any direct correlation between legal gun ownership and crime rate, even were the latter consistent and continuously defined. The only methodology you could use to reach any conclusions as to the direct effect of the gun ban would be multivariate control; calculating the effect for all factors other than gun control so you can strip them out of the statistics leaving you with only the gun control factor. Given that there is pretty much no way you can control for all cultural factors that build up crime rate I'd say this is pretty well impossible.

The ban pushed a cultural trend strongly against guns into law, helping path the way for the stronger gun-crime fighting measures I mentioned above. Trying to measure a direct effect on crime from that law alone is to miss the point somewhat.

[Starver]

Let's try some (very basic) extrapolation. You can see that the rate of gun crimes increased by 213 over 10 years, or by 21.3 per year. Because of this you could predict that in the next three years it would increase by 63.9, to 537.9, and it increased to 554, which is pretty close, especially when you consider my math is pretty rough. This could show the laws didn't really have an effect on the trend we see here, although you'd probably need some more complex math to be more accurate.

One could as easily (and equally incorrectly)take the '86-'89 range of 356 to 474, thus a rise of 118 over those three years, and suggest that the figure in '92 should be around 592, rather than 554.  Maybe that little rise in the crime stats indicates a trend that desperately needed the lowering of gun ownership at that juncture, given how there'd been shift into a higher rate a couple of years previously, and the change in measures regarding ownership managed to do a bit of "carbon sinking", at just about the same time as the "carbon dioxide production rate" was increasing, for one reason or another.

Of course, I don't believe that, for a number of reasons.  Not least because legal gun ownership has a loose tie to illegal gun usage, at the best of times.  Also I've already indicated my belief that the transition to stricter gun laws prompts a degree of leakage from the legally owned pool to the illegally owned one[1] (noting that there'll also be a lag/disconnection from "illegally owned" to "illegally used", and different societal constraints as to how proportionate or visible this second transition occurs.).

And, as others have indicated, "Violent crimes" is a different measure.

I was wondering about another analogy about gun control.  Take a crisp (US: 'chip') packet and get all the air out of it.  You could stomp on it, but that could cause a lot of noise, and ruin the packet.  But it's a matter of a few seconds work to smooth it out and roll and/or fold it up in an air-expelling way.  As someone who has helped pack away a hot air balloon (worryingly, to which I had been recently entrusting my continued, or at least not rapidly decreasing in rate, altitude above the ground), it takes a whole lot more time and planning to get it all empty of air and folded up.  Not that I would have considered 'stomping' on it (in a scaled-up manner, requiring a Monty Python-sized animated foot), but that wouldn't have been a wise move.

So, whether or not you consider it a good thing to have the amount of guns in the US that are presently there, whatever other comparisons you have there...  I can't see it being possible to (even within a generation, massive social upheavals and/or crises notwithstanding) make a significant reduction in ownership (legal and illegal) and usage (most especially for the latter).

But, I tell you, I like the situation we have here in the UK, w.r.t. arms[2].  There are idiocies in the situation[3], but then there are in all situations.  As there are failings (e.g. Roald Moat, the already violent criminal with a misplaced grudge, and Derrick Bird, a legal gun owner of fragile mental state)[4].  Have I ever seen a gun, except in the media?  Not 'in the wild', save for some clay pigeon/grouse shooting undertaken some distance away from me.  And that's with a friend who was a member of a gun club (a relatively rare thing, for an urbanite at least...) and close contact with members of the Police armed response team (socially).  Ok, so I'm not an 'inner city' person (nor from a rural area), and those people just mentioned are of course responsible with (and held responsible for) their weapons.

Parallel-me from the US might consider this all too strange.  What was the point again?


Oh yeah, I started off pursuing the "lies, damn lies and statistics" route.  Still, the rest I feel justified and so I'll let stand as my opinion, even if any particular person doesn't agree over the facts.  And (as I forgot to mention, but my post-predecessor/ninja did) counting methodologies change too.



[1] Of course, starting from a lower point of ownership means there's less pressure behind the 'leak'.

[2] Although strangely, I felt more comfortable having landed inadverently in the midst of a Palestinian 'demonstration' in Berlin, a decade back (the Berlin locals of that ethnicity making their feelings known after some something that had happened in Israel), than I subsequently did when only within earshot of a proto-Anti Capitalist-style march, a few months later, in London.  But maybe not so strangely.  The former were families with kids, orderly and quiet apart from the speakers, while the latter were largely disaffected youths making as much noise as they may.  Weapon-wise, we've seen what riots can do even without guns.

[3] Olympic shooting teams famously having to go abroad to train.  (Not heard mentioned before London2012, so maybe handled better, but I remember it being highlit during the run-up to one of the prior events, probably Beijing, but maybe Sydney.

[4] Interesting that the Wiki overview page for Deaths by firearm in England has 72 sub-pages, quite a few of which are positively historic, and most of those I dipped into are back before I was born!  (Back before I was born...  And I'm pretty much convinced that I'm positively an old fogey, w.r.t. to most of the forum-goers.)

[GreatJustice]

I have no idea what you're saying.  If statistics show something then they must also show the opposite thing at the same time, apparently?  No, they don't.

If you say "You can't use these statistics to prove that gun laws don't work because they measure crime differently", then how can you say "You can look at these statistics to prove that gun laws work"?

I was pointing out why the indicators you pounced on are flawed (the drugs one is clearly a database error, the "violent crime" arises because the UK counts a lot more crimes as violent, while "crimes" is similarly a meaningless statistic since it depends on what the country regards as crimes) and pointed to some other indicators that seem more comparable (both countries have pretty much the same definition of murder and murder is not often left unreported or uninvestigated).  I don't see why this means the statistics should magically start pointing in both directions.

But your argument against "rape" was that there were different prosecution methods used, the exact same argument of which could be used with murder. In fact, murder is even trickier because in the US you also have Castle Laws, justified self defense, etc etc that muddies the water further.

A slight fall in the rate of gun ownership (with a nicely misleading set of axes to suggest it's a huge drop) accompanied by a slight decrease in the rate of increase of violent crime is meant to prove your point how exactly?

Uh, a ~20% decrease is not "slight" by any stretch of the word.

I have no idea what I'm meant to be looking at here, or what piece of legislation you're trying to show the effect of.

This one

[Leafsnail]

If you say "You can't use these statistics to prove that gun laws don't work because they measure crime differently", then how can you say "You can look at these statistics to prove that gun laws work"?

Because I'm talking about two different things sets of statistics?  We have very different definitions of violent crime but very similar definitions of murder.  Therefore comparing "violent crime" is flawed while comparing well defined crimes that are not massively underreported (such as murder) is not.

But your argument against "rape" was that there were different prosecution methods used, the exact same argument of which could be used with murder. In fact, murder is even trickier because in the US you also have Castle Laws, justified self defense, etc etc that muddies the water further.

The UK has justified self defence too, although not nearly as much.  You're right that it's a confounding factor but it's a confounding factor that would cause the UK to record a higher rate of murder (because we'd count some things as murder that the US wouldn't).  In any case you're clearly being willingly obtuse if you can't see that murders are generally recorded more than rape (hint: there's usually a murdered corpse which is hard to ignore).

Uh, a ~20% decrease is not "slight" by any stretch of the word.

That is clearly the crux of my argument, and not the "this graph doesn't really show anything and you wouldn't expect a small piece of legislation to show a massive impact within 4 years".

This one

So you're not going to answer me and instead you'll throw in an irrelevant new source?  Well yes, there will be more crimes involving handguns if you ban handguns because there is now a new crime involving handguns.  That's the whole point of a ban!  So the "total number of crimes involving handguns" goes up because it's now a crime to own handguns, but that's fine as long as the crimes which involve people being hurt go down.  And hey:

The Metropolitan Police said its official figures showed a 20% drop in armed robberies of commercial premises between April and July this year, compared with the same period last year.

[alway]

Man brings gun to theater, shoots self in ass.

[Nadaka]

Someone with a conceal carry permit should know better than to carry a loose gun in their waistband with a round in the chamber.

I also want to know what kind of gun it was. Most gun simply should not be able to fire from a simple impact.

[RedKing]

What, not every single individual with a concealed carry permit is a smart, trained, sensible person? SAY IT AIN'T SO!

This is part of my problem with concealed carry. So you have to take a training course and pass a test. Whoop-de-freakin-do. You have to do the same to get a driver's license and there are still millions of bad drivers. You have people go through parenting courses and they're still bad parents.
I deal with people every day who go through all kinds of training courses annually and still can't remember how to do jackshit right.

[Frumple]

Heeheeheehee... want to know what Florida's concealed carry course was? A 45 minute or so lecture, followed by an eight or so question true/false test -- where all the answers were true -- and firing a round from a pistol into a target in the back room of the gunshop that was hosting it. That, a $200 processing free on the background check/paper work, and you're done if you the clear the check.

Competence check it was not. Blindfolded drunk idiot, etc., etc.

[Zangi]

So, basically worse then a driving course...  Do I have to be a Florida resident to sign up?

[Frumple]

I actually don't know, though I'd imagine so. Then again... maybe not. The Florida permit isn't valid in all states, though... a lot of concealed carry permits don't cross borders, or only cross some. So you could likely get one if you're from out of state, but it might not cover your area.

And belated to RK, down here in Florida, at least, you don't actually have to take a training course to get a driver's liscense. Just pass the test. I've never been in drivers ed, any equivalent, or even really fucking taught anything about driving (the totality of my driving knowledge prior to obtaining the liscense was almost stictly observation... and video games.) and the idiots still handed one out to me. No accidents yet, but I neither drink nor am addicted to speeding or ever in any particular hurry. Most of the primary causes are thusly avoided

Stuff like that's why I'm a little agreeable toward stronger regulation, especially regarding qualification, heh.

[Nadaka]

The Florida ccw permit is valid in more states than any other ccw permit IIRC.

http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/news/concealed_carry.html/

[Starver]

Competence check it was not. Blindfolded drunk idiot, etc., etc.

Any figures out there for drop-outs and fails (e.g. not give "True" for all (or a sufficient number) of the eight questions, or failing the target shooting phase)?

Sorry, just curiosity piqued.  I doubt it's actually a relevant question.  (For this thread in this forum, that is, although it probably is something that should be asked in the context of how valid the course/test is.)

(the totality of my driving knowledge prior to obtaining the liscense was almost stictly observation... and video games.)

Deserves some humorous come-back, but I'm not up-to-date on the currently in vogue driving (or partly driving-based) games that are out there.  I doubt Carmageddon, Mario Kart Racing, GTA, Micro Machines or Spy Hunter references would do the business.

[RedKing]

The Florida ccw permit is valid in more states than any other ccw permit IIRC.

http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/news/concealed_carry.html/

While Florida's law allows licensees to carry stun guns, knives, and billy clubs in a concealed fashion

WHAAAAAAA???!?

What the holy fuck is wrong with you people? I can get a license for a shiv? Srsly?? I could put a stiletto in my boot and it would be legal?
Combine that with the "stand your ground" law, and the generally high percentage of fruitcakes in the Florida population....I'm honestly fucking amazed that the streets don't run red with blood down there.

[RedKing]

(the totality of my driving knowledge prior to obtaining the liscense was almost stictly observation... and video games.)

Deserves some humorous come-back, but I'm not up-to-date on the currently in vogue driving (or partly driving-based) games that are out there.  I doubt Carmageddon, Mario Kart Racing, GTA, Micro Machines or Spy Hunter references would do the business.

Well, Frumple does occasionally wonder why pedestrians don't count for extra points.