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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Mictlantecuhtli]

An additional way that guns can increase crime is by triggering aggression of a potential offender. This “weapons effect” is said to occur because angry people are likely to associate guns with aggressive behavior (Berkowitz and Lepage, 1967). Similarly, it has been suggested that the presence of a gun is likely to intensify negative emotions such as anger (Berkowitz, 1983).

http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v09n2/altheimer.pdf


I find this quote relevant.  I wasn't taking any particular position, Wizkid.

11. Adolescents who commit suicide with a gun use the family gun
Well DUH. If they're going to commit suicide with a gun, they need a gun. What's the easiest gun to get? The family gun. Do you really need a study to say this?

12. The case-fatality rate for suicide attempts with guns is higher than other methods
I would assume so, they're very violently destructive weapons.

Isn't particularly insightful, either. Especially after you concede

This seems to be true, though. However, was this also corrected for poverty levels, which is also shown to correlate with suicide?

Hint: Most of the point of my infodump was the suicide section.

Keeping my nose away from anecdotes and snark.

[Flying Dice]

How, constitutionalist of you. Would you hold the same opinion on a issue where the constitution was siding with the other side? I mean, say, Slavery? Suffrage, a better one? The Founders intended only propertied males could vote. The underpinning of what they saw as the fundamentals of our government wAS the Propertied class.

Those are fundamentally different issues; we're discussing the distribution of power among the government, not equality or citizen rights. That aside, note that slavery was outlawed, universal suffrage granted to all citizens of 18 years of age or older, etc. via Constitutional processes. It contains the structure by which it may be changed, and we have made use of that structure on 27 occasions to effect changes to our core laws as new issues came to the forefront of legal and political thought. Slavery was not outlawed because Lincoln signed an executive order declaring it so, and presidents are not allowed to declare war simply because they say that they can. Nor are they allowed to overthrow laws regarding privacy and due process simply because they claim it is necessary. The legislative process and the placement of the powers of war and the purse in the hands of Congress are essentially different from the social structure of the U.S. at any given time, because they are constants, rather than the progressing variables of commonly held views on human rights.

Presidentialism as a democratic system is deeply flawed, and inevitably trends towards authoritarianism--not because of some insidious motivation, but because the office of president inevitably seeks to accomplish its own mandate, and does so by gathering as much power as possible. All other things being equal, the executive will always be able to gather power more readily than the legislature or judiciary. There's a strong argument to be made that the parliamentary system (with proportional representation and the division of the office of the executive between the administrative office and the figurehead--for example, the British PM and the Queen, one who fills the role of the executive in day-to-day affairs, the other who is the heart of the cult of personality that invariably surrounds the president in our system) is more stable precisely because it more effectively limits executive power.

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, Chaos - Micts stuff was just outright better than yours. Because I could read it. Your post is a messy jumble that is painful to parse, using a source with clear bias, cherry-picked data and fairly blatant attempts at information manipulation. (Looking at 33-37 is enough to determine that)

It may claim to be "just the facts" - but it's clearly anything but. The facts are pretty obviously shaped so as to lead to inappropriate conclusions. They're applying quite a bit of interpretation and extrapolation, and from a pretty limited data set - the US government has actively taken action against research and statistics that may cast gun ownership in a poor light See the 1997 fiscal omnibus bill (page 245), which cut all gun safety research funding and specifically forbade using funds in a way that might promote gun control. It has, from all reports, been interpreted quite loosely.

But the main problem is that while Mict's sources including actual research, JustTheFacts finds data that supports what it wants; of the many samples available, it generally chooses the one that supports its arguments and then extrapolates out from there.

This isn't facts - this is poor statistics being paraded as facts.

This isn't to say it's wrong, but it's certainly not what I'd call a trustworthy source of information on account of it's central premise being incredibly dishonest. I'm mostly ignoring your rambling presentation of it, here, and pulling directly from the linked source.

[Chaoswizkid]

I wasn't taking any particular position, Wizkid.

That's fair, although I'd still really like links to sources if anyone is posting anything official. I had way too much trouble finding the sources.

11. Adolescents who commit suicide with a gun use the family gun
Well DUH. If they're going to commit suicide with a gun, they need a gun. What's the easiest gun to get? The family gun. Do you really need a study to say this?

12. The case-fatality rate for suicide attempts with guns is higher than other methods
I would assume so, they're very violently destructive weapons.

Isn't particularly insightful, either.

Are you saying I wasn't being insightful? If so, I'd say that the studies were not very insightful. Also, "Do you really need a study to say this?" was not directed at you, but rather at Azrael and Hemenway and other associated authors.

Yeah, Chaos - Micts stuff was just outright better than yours.

I don't see how, considering each point is a statement, followed by a short paragraph, followed by a nebulous reference that's incredibly difficult to find for every single one of the points. With my points, I either sourced them through JustFacts or I sourced them directly. Either that, or I did the cross-reference research necessary to pick through what they did or did the research necessary to pick apart what they did.

Because I could read it. Your post is a messy jumble that is painful to parse, using a source with clear bias, cherry-picked data and fairly blatant attempts at information manipulation. (Looking at 33-37 is enough to determine that)

Are you serious? I can understand the difficulty to read, I got quite frustrated later, but I did go in-depth into each one I could actually find the source article for. And my source has clear bias? The absolutely vast majority of articles that Mict sourced were by very clearly biased individuals. They were same individuals over and over and over again drawing the same conclusions for more gun control. Not only that, but I showed how on the articles I could find, I picked them apart to show that they were being bias. For example, they concluded that criminals hardly ever get shot by people because they interviewed prisoners from a city during a time when guns were banned in that city. That's just so unprofessional it's sickening. But my data is cherry-picked and blatant attempts at information manipulation? I hardly used anything from JustFacts, just that opener and then the graphs.

Also, I looked at 33-37 (I'm assuming you mean from the JustFacts site?). I'm not sure what you mean. 33 is a historical report, 34 was the specifics of the gun ban, 35 is about the Supreme Court ruling, 36 is where the data for the Washington D.C. graph is taken (all FBI or US Census sources) and 37 is more FBI sources. The only data manipulation that might be there was this:

NOTE: By performing calculations with the data above (140 slayings in 2009, which is a 25% drop from 2008) and 2008 data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Just Facts has determined that these "slayings" include both homicides and nonnegligent manslaughters, not just homicides.

Which I don't see as being significant enough to invalidate the whole thing.

It may claim to be "just the facts" - but it's clearly anything but. The facts are pretty obviously shaped so as to lead to inappropriate conclusions.

Again, didn't use them that much, I don't see how you can draw that conclusion, and I don't see how you think any of Mict's sources are any better (other than readability).

They're applying quite a bit of interpretation and extrapolation, and from a pretty limited data set

And up front about it when they do, including the equations used, the numbers used for each variable, and why they did what they did.

the US government has actively taken action against research and statistics that may cast gun ownership in a poor light See the 1997 fiscal omnibus bill (page 245), which cut all gun safety research funding and specifically forbade using funds in a way that might promote gun control. It has, from all reports, been interpreted quite loosely.

How is this relevant? Are you saying that this ruins credibility because the data is so small? Doesn't that mean that credibility for everyone on all sides if the data is apparently so small that no conclusions can ever be drawn?

But the main problem is that while Mict's sources including actual research,

Actual research that has this nebulous dead-end. Again, I looked into every single article that I could actually conjure up from the depths of the internet, and in every single case there was either something wrong or there was something done to push the conclusion toward a desired result. A lot of JustFacts is just slapping up the data and letting the data speak for itself.

JustTheFacts finds data that supports what it wants; of the many samples available, it generally chooses the one that supports its arguments and then extrapolates out from there.

Perhaps, but I don't see where else they'd get the data considering the FBI and US Census sources. Not only that, I don't see how it only posts the data that supports what it wants, considering the Right-to-carry data showing that it has no real effect. Throw up some counter data if you want, I'd be glad to see it.

I'm mostly ignoring your rambling presentation of it, here, and pulling directly from the linked source.

My presentation of it isn't rambling. I just straight-up copy paste it and let it sit there. All of the rambling is picking through the studies that were referenced that I could find and showing why they are wrong and do not actually lend credit to the conclusions they want to draw.

[Chaoswizkid]

Double Post for additional clarity.
In the interest of cleaning up all I posted:

Spoiler: Self-Defence Gun Use (click to show/hide)

Gun Threats and Self-Defense Gun Use
1-3 Guns are not used millions of times each year in self-defense

We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.

Hemenway, David. Survey research and self-defense gun use: An explanation of extreme overestimates. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 1997; 87:1430-1445.

Hemenway, David. The myth of millions of annual self-defense gun uses: A case study of survey overestimates of rare events. Chance (American Statistical Association). 1997; 10:6-10.

Cook, Philip J; Ludwig, Jens; Hemenway, David. The gun debate’s new mythical number: How many defensive uses per year? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 1997; 16:463-469.

 

4. Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments and are both socially undesirable and illegal

We analyzed data from two national random-digit-dial surveys conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.  Criminal court judges who read the self-reported accounts of the purported self-defense gun use rated a majority as being illegal, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and to carry a gun, and that the respondent had described the event honestly from his own perspective.

Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah. Gun use in the United States: Results from two national surveys. Injury Prevention. 2000; 6:263-267.

 

5. Firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense.

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Center, we examined the extent and nature of offensive gun use.  We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense. All reported cases of criminal gun use, as well as many of the so-called self-defense gun uses, appear to be socially undesirable.

Hemenway, David; Azrael, Deborah. The relative frequency of offensive and defensive gun use: Results of a national survey. Violence and Victims. 2000; 15:257-272.

 

6. Guns in the home are used more often to intimidate intimates than to thwart crime.

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, we investigated how and when guns are used in the home. We found that guns in the home are used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime; other weapons are far more commonly used against intruders than are guns.

Publication: Azrael, Deborah R; Hemenway, David. In the safety of your own home: Results from a national survey of gun use at home. Social Science and Medicine. 2000; 50:285-91.

 

7. Adolescents are far more likely to be threatened with a gun than to use one in self-defense.

We analyzed data from a telephone survey of 5,800 California adolescents aged 12-17, which asked questions about gun threats against, and self-defense gun use by these young people.  We found that these young people were far more likely to be threatened with a gun than to use a gun in self-defense, and most of the reported self-defense gun uses were hostile interactions between armed adolescents.  Males, smokers, binge drinkers, those who threatened others and whose parents were less likely to know their whereabouts were more likely both to be threatened with a gun and to use a gun in self-defense.

Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew.  Gun threats against and self-defense gun use by California adolescents. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. 2004; 158:395-400.

 

8. Criminals who are shot are typically the victims of crime

Using data from a survey of detainees in a Washington D.C. jail, we worked with a prison physician to investigate the circumstances of gunshot wounds to these criminals.
We found that one in four of these detainees had been wounded, in events that appear unrelated to their incarceration. Most were shot when they were victims of robberies, assaults and crossfires. Virtually none report being wounded by a “law-abiding citizen.”

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Oen, Roger; Pitts, Khalid R. When criminals are shot: A survey of Washington DC jail detainees. Medscape General Medicine. 2000; June 28. www.medscape.com

 

9-10. Few criminals are shot by decent law abiding citizens

Using data from surveys of detainees in six jails from around the nation, we worked with a prison physician to determine whether criminals seek hospital medical care when they are shot. Criminals almost always go to the hospital when they are shot. To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals.  But the data from emergency departments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals are afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shot went to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Oen, Roger; Pitts, Khalid R. Medical Care Solicitation by Criminals with Gunshot Wound Injuries: A Survey of Washington DC Jail Detainees. Journal of Trauma. 2000; 48:130-132.

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Do Criminals Go to the Hospital When They are Shot? Injury Prevention 2002: 8:236-238.

My response:

Spoiler: Self-Defense (click to show/hide)

4. Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments and are both socially undesirable and illegal

I found this:

First, they narrowed the incidents to 35 from 146 by removing persons they thought were witnesses, or persons who wouldn't give a description of the incident, or persons who they thought were criminal actors.
From the survey:
"a majority of the judges rated 18 of the 35 (51%) as probably illegal and 15 of the 35 (43%) as probably legal."

From the survey itself:

However, our results should not be extrapolated to obtain population based estimates of the absolute number of gun uses. If we have as little as 1% random misclassification, our results could be off by orders of magnitude.

No dice on that one.


5. Firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense.
Maybe. Probably. I couldn't actually find the survey, though. Link if you can find it. I might hand it to you though. It makes sense. However, it's also a moot point. If taking away firearms does not at least decrease the number of times they are used to intimidate by the same amount as use in self-defense is decreased, then this actually isn't support for anything against firearms bans, and I'll get to why firearms bans don't accomplish this later.


6. Guns in the home are used more often to intimidate intimates than to thwart crime.
Can't find this survey either. However, I did find that this has been edited. Links from 2012 list this not as the 6th entry from the Harvard site, but as the 42nd entry and state the following:

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, we investigated how and when guns are used in the home.
Major findings: Guns in the home are probably used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime; other weapons are far more commonly used against intruders than are guns.

Emphasis mine. Given that this survey was conducted in 2000, sounds like someone edited the entry to make it sound more supportive of their argument rather than let it have basically no real conclusion. It would help if the survey were readily available, but I'm not going to dig all day through references to try and find it.


7. Adolescents are far more likely to be threatened with a gun than to use one in self-defense.
Maybe because firearm possession by adolescents is illegal? This doesn't seem that strong of an argument. I found the study though!

Results: Approximately 4% of the adolescents reported ever having been threatened with a gun; only 0.3% reported using a gun in self-defense. Boys, smokers, adolescents who threatened others, and adolescents whose parents knew little about their whereabouts in the afternoon after school were more likely to report being threatened with a gun. Most episodes of self-defense gun use seem to be hostile interactions between adolescents with weapons.

Just 4% and 0.3%. Yeah, the conclusion is right, but it made it sounds like there was maybe 20% threats and maybe 5-10% self-defense or something like that. This is just that firearms pretty much don't affect the lives of teenagers in California where the study was conducted. Still, I'm just going to point to firearm possession being illegal for minors and this being a silly point because of it.


8. Criminals who are shot are typically the victims of crime

I didn't even try to find this report. The summary speaks for itself. Criminals were shot by other criminals and none of the incarcerated criminals were shot by a law abiding citizen in a city where guns were banned until 2005.

9-10. Few criminals are shot by decent law abiding citizens
What else you posted:

Using data from surveys of detainees in six jails from around the nation, we worked with a prison physician to determine whether criminals seek hospital medical care when they are shot. Criminals almost always go to the hospital when they are shot. To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals.  But the data from emergency departments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals are afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shot went to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.

No, not necessarily. First of all, the "millions of self-defense gun uses each year" claim seems to come from this guy named Kleck. In his interview, he states:

Our results ended up indicating, depending on which figures you prefer to use, anywhere from 800,000 on up to 2.4, 2.5 million defensive uses of guns against human beings -- not against animals -- by civilians each year.

Unfortunately, only the high end of that figure is used by anyone. It's used by gun control activists to show just how absurdly large the number is, and it's used by people who don't want gun control to show how important defensive use of guns is. That number varies a lot, though. Also in the interview,

Fifty-four percent of the defensive gun uses involved somebody verbally referring to the gun. Forty-seven percent involved the gun being pointed at the criminal. Twenty-two percent involved the gun being fired. Fourteen percent involved the gun being fired at somebody, meaning it wasn't just a warning shot; the defender was trying to shoot the criminal. Whether they succeeded or not is another matter but they were trying to shoot a criminal. And then in 8 percent they actually did wound or kill the offender.

8% of 800,000 is only 64,000. You don't get 100,000 criminals shot at 8% until 1.25 million cases of self-defense, and at 2.5 million is where you get 200,000.
Checking the number against what I already referenced,

Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year.

Sounds like the lower end is more accurate than the high end.
I couldn't find this study, anyway, so I can't really delve into it. Link if you can find it, please.

Spoiler: Policy Evaluation (click to show/hide)

Policy Evaluation
1. States with more gun control laws have lower levels of firearm homicide and firearm suicide.

Using state data from 2007-2010, we found that states with more key firearm laws had fewer firearm homicides and fewer firearm suicides, after controlling for poverty, unemployment, education, race and non-firearm violence-related deaths.

Fleegher, Eric W; Lee, Lois K; Monuteaux, Michael C; Hemenway, David; Mannix, Rebekah.  Firearm legislation and firearm-related fatalities in the United States.  JAMA-Internal Medicine. 2013; 173:732-40.

 

2. “Shall issue” laws have no significant effect on the overall homicide rate

We analyzed the effect on homicide of changes in state-level gun carrying laws using pooled cross-sectional time-series data for 50 states from 1979-1998.  There was no statistically significant association between changes in concealed carry laws and state homicide rates.  The finding was consistent across a variety of models.

Hepburn, Lisa; Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David.  The effect of nondiscretionary concealed weapon carrying laws on homicide.  Journal of Trauma. 2004; 56:676-681.

 

3. Child access prevention laws may reduce unintentional child firearm fatalities

We analyzed the effect on unintentional firearm fatalities to children of child access prevention (CAP) laws, which allow a firearm owner to be charged with a crime if a child gains access to an unsecured firearm, using pooled cross-sectional time series data for 50 states from 1979-2000. We found that states that enacted CAP laws–with felony rather than misdemeanor penalties– experienced grater subsequent declines in the rate of unintentional firearm deaths for children age 0 to 14 compared to states not enacting CAP laws.

Hepburn, Lisa; Azrael, Deborah; Miller, Matthew; Hemenway, David. The effect of child access prevention laws on unintentional child firearm fatalities, 1979-2000.  Journal of Trauma.  2006; 61:423-28.

 

4. Some gun policy evaluations are designed to ensure that no effect will be found.

This article on statistics describes the limitations of studies that claim no effect of gun shows, and no effect of the Australian gun buyback.

Hemenway, David.  How to find nothing.  Journal of Public Health Policy. 2009; 30:260-68.

 

5. Results of a flawed study results should not affect policy

This paper highlights the serious flaws in a study that found no effect of gun shows on homicide or suicide.

Wintemute, Garen; Hemenway, David; Webster, Daniel; Pierce Glenn; Braga Anthony A.  Gun shows and gun violence: fatally flawed study. American Journal of Public Health. 2010;100;1856-60.

 

6. The Brady Bill has major limitations in scope, monitoring and enforcement

One section of this chapter discusses the three aspects of regulation: the rules, monitoring of those rules, and punishments if the rules are not complied with.  The Brady bill is discussed as an example of a law with major deficiencies in all three aspects.

Hemenway, David. Public policy. In: Guohua Li and Susan P. Baker, eds. Injury Research:Theories, Methods and Approaches. New York: Springer, 2012.

My response:

Spoiler: Gun Control Policies (click to show/hide)

1. States with more gun control laws have lower levels of firearm homicide and firearm suicide.

You know what's bad? When I looked up that study, Google looked back at me and only spat out 4 links. Where it's hosted on Harvard, two links in a discussion on HockeysFuture, some "Spokesman" site, and this very thread. However, revising the search with just the title and the publication, I was able to find it on Harvard's site anyway. It seems they don't have consistent citations.

Anyways, phew, took a look at this, looked into other stuff about this, and this is what I have to say.
The corrected statement should be "States with more gun control laws have lower levels of combined firearm homicide and firearm suicide." I took the liberty of dissecting their data and separating it into Legislative Score vs. Homicides and Legislative Score vs. Suicides and put it into a Google Doc. I couldn't figure out how to do trendlines on the Google Doc, so I have charts from the Google spreadsheet and also from Excel and the Excel ones have both the trendlines and their corresponding R² values. I include the ones from the Google Doc just to show that I'm not messing up the data anywhere. Don't bother with the order of "x vs. y" titles, I know they're different but now that I've done it I'm too lazy to go back, screencap, cut, paste, etc. to fix it.
As you can see for the homicide rates, there's just way too much variation there. There is definitely a slope, but its so small that it's really not that meaningful. According to this site on R² values, I'm pretty sure that means that you can't draw any useful conclusions.
The suicide rates one, though? Even I was surprised at this. Looks like you might have something there. The R² value even agrees. However, my entire argument against gun control isn't about protecting people from themselves, its about protecting people from bad people, so I'm only going to look at the homicide rates. I just value the life of someone who isn't determined to kill themselves as being more valuable than the life of someone who is determined to kill themselves. I believe that there are other social precautions that can be enacted that don't involve gun control to fix that problem anyway.

Anyway, some more stuff on that:






2. “Shall issue” laws have no significant effect on the overall homicide rate
Pretty sure this talks about right-to-carry laws, and I'd have to say that they may well be right. Without looking at their study, I'll just post some data I've got from JustFacts.



Seems pretty correct to me. It looks like each state just follows the national average with a bit of variance. However, I'm not sure that anyone can conclude that they don't do anything, just that we don't have any data to conclude anything about them. They might be of more benefit or less benefit, or maybe they do nothing, we just don't know yet due what seems like other factors.


3. Child access prevention laws may reduce unintentional child firearm fatalities
Sure, sounds good. This is the kind of stuff I'd like more of, if I understand it correctly. I'm cool with this.


4. Some gun policy evaluations are designed to ensure that no effect will be found.

This article on statistics describes the limitations of studies that claim no effect of gun shows, and no effect of the Australian gun buyback.

Gun shows are something I could see myself liking more regulation of. As for the effect of the Australian gun buyback, there's just so much back and forth crap on that that you're going to be hard pressed to find anything useful for either side. Although, I will say that this is still by Hemenway. I don't think he or Azrael can be considered unbaised on this issue which generally hurts their credibility. That doesn't nullify their credibility (although I've already nullified some of their findings anyway), that just hurts it.


5. Results of a flawed study results should not affect policy
This mentions more stuff about gun shows, so see above.


6. The Brady Bill has major limitations in scope, monitoring and enforcement

One section of this chapter discusses the three aspects of regulation: the rules, monitoring of those rules, and punishments if the rules are not complied with.  The Brady bill is discussed as an example of a law with major deficiencies in all three aspects.

In point 1, they base their entire case on the whole Brady regulations thing and judging laws and all that, and here they say that it's full of holes. Granted that's the Brady Center in point 1, but that is still definitely involved with the Brady Bill. Anyway, I don't care enough about this to look it up either. I'm fine with better regulation, I just don't want regulation that shows more evidence that it does more harm than good.

Snark and a bunch of JustFacts stuff removed. Women and Homicides sections removed because I don't have access to the source links, Suicide section removed because my response is largely unimportant.

[GreatJustice]

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/

Gun ownership and many topics are researched already, including;

Spoiler: Homicide (click to show/hide)

Homicide
1. Where there are more guns there is more homicide (literature review).

Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries.  Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.

Hepburn, Lisa; Hemenway, David. Firearm availability and homicide: A review of the literature. Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal. 2004; 9:417-40.


2. Across high-income nations, more guns = more homicide.

We analyzed the relationship between homicide and gun availability using data from 26 developed countries from the early 1990s.  We found that across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides. These results often hold even when the United States is excluded.

Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew. Firearm availability and homicide rates across 26 high income countries. Journal of Trauma. 2000; 49:985-88.


3. Across states, more guns = more homicide

Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten year period (1988-1997).

After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide.

Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. Household firearm ownership levels and homicide rates across U.S. regions and states, 1988-1997. American Journal of Public Health. 2002: 92:1988-1993.


4. Across states, more guns = more homicide (2)

Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003. We found that states with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide.  This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.

Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. State-level homicide victimization rates in the U.S. in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003. Social Science and Medicine. 2007; 64:656-64.

I'm pretty skeptical of this one. Let's see, comparing European gun ownership (using gunpolicy.org and unodc.org), we can produce a neat graph:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Western Europe is actually fairly similar to the rest of Europe, by the way. As you can see, there's no real correlation with gun ownership and "more homicide", unless they meant something other than "gun ownership" for "more guns".

Across American states, though?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No correlation at all. So uh, yeah, pretty skeptical of those claims.

[Leafsnail]

Are you really telling me you can't find Mict's sources?  He directly quoted from the articles, so you can just paste a paragraph into Google and it will immediately come up with the HSPH article, which properly cites every study it draws from.

I'm pretty skeptical of this one. Let's see, comparing European gun ownership (using gunpolicy.org and unodc.org), we can produce a neat graph:

Hmm yes, I think I will just use raw data without thinking about any other factors

[Leafsnail]

No wait you just decided to include a bunch of poorer countries, didn't you.  Because clearly failed states with no real police presence are more comparable to the US than developed countries.

[GreatJustice]

Are you really telling me you can't find Mict's sources?  He directly quoted from the articles, so you can just paste a paragraph into Google and it will immediately come up with the HSPH article, which properly cites every study it draws from.

I'm pretty skeptical of this one. Let's see, comparing European gun ownership (using gunpolicy.org and unodc.org), we can produce a neat graph:

Hmm yes, I think I will just use raw data without thinking about any other factors

The HSPH article is obviously easy to find, it's the studies it references that are a pain. I've found one of them so far, and that article was mostly relating to sexual abuse (so I might get to that at some point). It really doesn't help to know all these citations that I can't access.

No wait you just decided to include a bunch of poorer countries, didn't you.  Because clearly failed states with no real police presence are more comparable to the US than developed countries.

No. Here's Western Europe (all very much "developed states")

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Try again.

[Leafsnail]

It's not enough to have the articles cited, I was them delivered to me on a silver platter *conjures graphs out of ass*

[Leafsnail]

Although to be honest, I'm impressed that even the worst European state had slightly less than seven murders in it.  Your graph seems to imply there's some kind of "sweetspot", where if exactly 30 people in your country own guns you'll only have less than one murder per year.

(seriously though assuming you're using the standard units there are no western European countries with homicide rates remotely as high as those on the left)

[10ebbor10]

Can't find the source of that graph. Google reverse image searching obviously leads to a number of visually similar graphs. Which is useless.

Edit: Using Wikipedia it's clear that there are no West European countries with rates so high as there're in the graph. (Assuming rates are correct).

The only countries in Europe with rates above 4 are almost all Former Sovjet states. And a statistical outlier (Greenland, due it's extremely low population)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 
 Belarus 4.9 473 Europe Eastern Europe
 Georgia 4.3 187 Europe Eastern Europe
 Moldova 7.5 267 Europe Eastern Europe
 Russia 10.2 14,574 Europe Eastern Europe
 Ukraine 5.2 2,356 Europe Eastern Europe
 Estonia 5.2 70 Europe Northern Europe
 Greenland 19.2 11 Europe Northern Europe 
 Lithuania 6.6 219 Europe Northern Europe
 Albania 4.0 127 Europe Southern Europe

[Bauglir]

Hey, be fair, guys. With a coefficient of determination that low, he can't seriously be claiming that graph actually tells you anything about how gun ownership relates to homicide rates.

EDIT: I admit I'm being a bit facetious - the claim is pretty clearly that there's no correlation, but it's incredibly weak given the lack of controls applied to the data.

[Leafsnail]

Right, and he also plucked numbers out of the air to further illustrate that.

[Owlbread]

Presidentialism as a democratic system is deeply flawed, and inevitably trends towards authoritarianism--not because of some insidious motivation, but because the office of president inevitably seeks to accomplish its own mandate, and does so by gathering as much power as possible. All other things being equal, the executive will always be able to gather power more readily than the legislature or judiciary. There's a strong argument to be made that the parliamentary system (with proportional representation and the division of the office of the executive between the administrative office and the figurehead--for example, the British PM and the Queen, one who fills the role of the executive in day-to-day affairs, the other who is the heart of the cult of personality that invariably surrounds the president in our system) is more stable precisely because it more effectively limits executive power.

The better system by far is one in which there would be a PM and a democratically elected Head of State. The issue with your admiration for our own archaic, abysmal and corrupt legislative system is that our PM is filling a role that is increasingly more Presidential, while the Monarch's importance is declining. We're moving towards an American-influenced Presidential system whether you like it or not, that's just the pull of things at the moment.