At 8/27/07 11:03 AM, Proteas wrote:
It's misinformed halfwits such as yourself that are why I don't take much stock in the rhetoric put forth by the anti-gun crowd. Next you'll be trying to argue that semi automatic weapons should be outlawed because they look inherintly dangerous.

Semi-auto weapons wer ebanned here after Michael Ryan killed 16 people (and wounded 15 others) with a couple of them. Coincidentally nobody has been killed with one on UK soil since.

Coincidentally, xMoriaOrc was using the excuse/argument put forward by the pro-gun brigade. Thanks for giving that one a kicking - it saves me the effort.

At 8/27/07 10:23 AM, tony4moroney wrote:

At 8/27/07 01:18 AM, xMoriaOrc wrote: The V-tech guns he got was illegal

he bought it due to a lax in background checking. if gun purchases were outlawed to begin with he wouldnt even be able to purchase those guns he used.

Just as making alcohol illegal completely stopped the flow of it? Or how since a lot of drugs are illegal, there are never problems with them?

most of the killers use illegal guns

proof?

In no state in the union can people with recent violent felony convictions purchase firearms. Yet the National Institute of Justice survey of prisoners, many of whom were repeat offenders, showed that 90 percent were able to obtain their last firearm within a few days. Most obtained it within a few hours. Three-quarters of the men agreed that they would have "no trouble" or "only a little trouble" obtaining a gun upon release, despite the legal barriers to such a purchase.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa109.html

At 8/27/07 11:14 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: Coincidentally nobody has been killed with one on UK soil since.

Coincedentally, you live in the UK.

At 8/27/07 11:23 AM, Proteas wrote:

At 8/27/07 11:14 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: Coincidentally nobody has been killed with one on UK soil since.

Coincedentally, you live in the UK.

Coincidentally, a drop from 2-8% to the sum of 0 shows it worked.

As I've stated elsewhere, 53% of Britain's gun crime is air rifles, brandishing replicas as real weapons increases every year...and gun crime using actual, live round firing guns has decreased. Coincidentally.

At 8/22/07 12:35 AM, cellardoor6 wrote:

At 8/21/07 11:20 PM, Cuppa-LettuceNog wrote:

At 8/21/07 06:45 AM, cellardoor6 wrote:

But how many of those cases in which gun's prevented crimes did gun's prevent crimes involving guns in the first place?

Doesn't matter. More crimes are prevented by law abiding citizens than are caused by them, and more crimes are prevented by guns than are CAUSED overall in the first place.

So wait.. youre just going to take that statistic on it's face value and then go to an all encompassing conclusion that guns therefore do more good then harm?
I think it's pretty important we at least get an understanding behind it. How many of those instances would be entirely non-existent had a gun not been present in the first place? How many of these instances were preventable by another measure.. as someone else pointed out a man stopped an assailant with a cabbage head. You could prevent the advances of a threatening individual with a tazer gun, pepper spray or less lethal defensive weapon effectively.

Therefore, there is no logical reason to ban guns, not only because there is no merit in that there is no proof it will take guns away from criminals and there is PROOF that gun bans DON'T take away guns from criminals

There is actual, substantiated proof that the majority of these illegal arms were possessed through straw-man purchases and gun dealers doing illegal trades. Both sources of which are eradicated through gun control.

Murder rates to the high degree that occurred AFTER the gun ban are STATISTICALLY PECULIAR compared to how they were BEFORE the gun ban.

But there are also several factors to consider such as immigration - homogeneous countries have been shown to have a drastically lower instance of hate crime, obviously. also, inflated statistics due to anomalous instances, as someone else pointed out earlier the victims of the london bombings were included in the murder statistics and also, a changing societal attitude not necessarily correlating with gun control.

Nope, what D2Kvirus claimed CAN be correlated with the buy-back of guns in Australia, only a fool would deny it. HOWEVER, he can't use it for grounds to ban guns in the US, because not only does Australia have a completely different situation, but because I have provided proof that in the US, getting rid of guns in the similar way Australia did will not work.

Where was this proof and secondly i guess this shows that it is in fact possible to implement a successful gun control policy.

You might say that the murder increase in the UK due to gun bans can't be applied to the US, but it can

So here you're saying 'UK's circumstances are different to our own therefore your point is moot' but funnily, when it conveniences you, youll draw up a comparison.

because I have also proved that legal gun owners prevent more crime in the US than they cause.

Except this isn't so much proof as it is an inane reading of statistics at face value. youve never proved it considering you can't prove that these crimes would've still occurred even provided there were no guns in those circumstances which is the purpose of gun control or that they couldn't been prevented just as effectively with another form of self defense such as tazer guns or pepper spray. as someone else said a cabbage head has been used to prevent a crime.

I've showed solid correlation, I've validated it by what HAS happened in the UK after bans, and by what WILL happen in the US after bans based on the irrefutable facts that guns cause more good than harm in the US.

so youre validating a correlation by using the special circumstances of one country, the special circumstances of another and then - at a total disregard for your previous statements claim that this is comparable and 'proof'.

And according to the FACTS, it would CAUSE crime in the US if such a thing was implemented.

Except that according to these facts youve presented crime would reduce. The murder rate has increased in the uk, but murder by firearms is still low, their murder rate is lower then ours and overall, crimes have reduced in the uk.

At 8/27/07 11:49 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: Coincidentally, a drop from 2-8% to the sum of 0 shows it worked.

Now you're just rattling off bullshit, man. 2-8% is the representative percentage of crimes where so called "assault weapons" were used prior to the ban, no where does it state that it magically dropped down to zero during the ban, and you're going to be hard pressed to find any evidence to say that it actually DID.

And I've got a really good question for those of you reading who were for a renewal of the AWB; whatever became of that whole "blood in the streets" thing you said would happen when the ban ended, hm?

As I've stated elsewhere, 53% of Britain's gun crime is air rifles, brandishing replicas as real weapons increases every year...and gun crime using actual, live round firing guns has decreased. Coincidentally.

Oh really... doesn't this just confirm the oft stated pro-gun mantra that "people will just find other ways to harm each other if guns are banned?"

At 8/28/07 12:20 AM, cellardoor6 wrote:

At 8/27/07 11:52 AM, tony4moroney wrote: But there are also several factors to consider such as immigration

Meanwhile, gun crime went up, and murder went up in the UK since 1997.

As D2K pointed out, most of the "gun" crime now is committed with air rifles and replicas. It would be more relevant to compare gun violence.

As I pointed out, you're getting your information on "murder" from a site that changed counting methods in 1998, which records homicide instead of murder, and which includes about 100 deaths that can't possibly be attributed to gun involvement, and 250 murders which started during the 70s but weren't recorded until the early 2000s.

because I have also proved that legal gun owners prevent more crime in the US than they cause.

Except this isn't so much proof as it is an inane reading of statistics at face value.

THEN, when they tell me to prove these variables of aliens and UFOs affecting some study. I'll pull an Elfer and say "NO, no, no it's YOUR job to prove your point".

Congratulations, you're pulling a me by being right for once, sort of. He just dismissed your statistics without a valid reason for doing so.

If I were the one trying to dismiss those statistics, I'd say that they're erroneous because they place all crimes on the same level, and I'd wonder what types of crimes make up those 2 million DGUs. For example, nobody needs a gun to trespass, but what if aiming a gun at a trespasser and telling them to git off yer property counts as a DGU? Same goes for things like petty theft, etc.

However, since the difference is so large, and he has (I believe) access to the reports that you got the estimate from, it's his job to show that there's some sort of significant flaw in the numbers, or at least flawed methodology in the collection of the statistics.

No, I showed how it has no merit. If gun bans didn't work in the UK, a country with a much more favorable situation for gun control (Island, doesn't border 3rd world country, low minority rate etc)

By the by, cellardoor, I'd recommend that you stop using "minority rate" as an exacerbating factor for the US gun problem. For that argument to be valid, you'd have to prove that minorities are inherently more violent than white people, not just that they commit more crime in a single instance. You'd have to show that it holds when at equal economic footing, etc. etc.

What I would do if I were you is cite what the minority crime problem already suggests: the US has a much higher rate of gang-related violence, and the presence of gangs is more ubiquitous in the US. This argument has lots of advantages:

- People can't accuse you of racism
- It's already self-evident that gangs are inherently violent, no graphs needed.
- Bonus argument: Since they're organised, they can share firearms between them whenever they're needed, making them even more dangerous for fewer resources.
- Bonus argument: With a profit motive for the firearms trade, gang fighting over territory and resources will become even bloodier than it already is.

At 8/28/07 08:30 AM, cellardoor6 wrote:

that changed counting methods in 1998

Prove it. Then prove that there is some other more accurate source.

Waht do you mean prove it? Go look around the site, and look for the reason why the graphs change colours in 1998. Know your source.

which records homicide instead of murder

Actually I linked to the part that stated SPECIFICALLY murder as well, which has gone up since 1997.

I must have missed that, because all I saw were two sources on homicide that you misrepresented as murder. Which page did you link to it on? I'll go check it out.

and which includes about 100 deaths that can't possibly be attributed to gun involvement

Doesn't matter, murder still went up.

and 250 murders which started during the 70s but weren't recorded until the early 2000s.

Prove it.

I already pointed you to this. Your source, victims of Dr. Harold Shipman, read the footnotes.

Congratulations, you're pulling a me by being right for once, sort of.

No you're not right. You're wrong, because you create the most ridiculous excuses for not accepting what are the most persuasive facts this debate has ever and will ever see.

Persuasive? Ok, let's look at one of your claims from earlier.You claim that on page 14, we can see an increase in homicide from 1997 to the present day. Since it dipped by one going into 97/98, I'll even take it easy on you and use that value. This goes up to 746 in 05/06. Assuming constant population (Given the tendency for population growth, this assumption helps YOU, not ME), we get this data:

97/98
Mean: 0.0000116733
SD: 0.003416590000
N: 52084500

05/06
Mean: 0.0000146685
SD: 0.003784530000
N: 52084500

Performing an unpaired t-test on this data yields p = 0.6716. That means that there's a 67% probability that this difference is due to chance and not an actual effect of any change to the system.

You have the lowest fucking standard of "proof" that I have ever seen. Check your statistics for significance BEFORE you post them.

You repeatedly nit-pick each thing, all while entirely failing to even prove the things you claim that somehow discredit what I've stated.

What is it that you think I'm actually claiming? I posted my actual opinions on this topic a page or two ago, after you called me out on it, and you failed to respond to them.

If I were the one trying to dismiss those statistics, I'd say that they're erroneous because they place all crimes on the same level

Prove it.

No. I'm not the one who has an interest in proving those statistics wrong. I'm just saying that if I was going to try to dismiss them, instead of going tony's route and saying "You have made unspecified misinterpretations of data," my first idea would be to examine the types of crimes considered to be DGUs.

Then, prove that something other than the OFFICIAL STATS FROM THE UK HOME OFFICE are more credible.

I'm not arguing with the credibility of your sources, I'm arguing with your abuse and misrepresentation of the statistics within.

However, since the difference is so large, and he has (I believe) access to the reports that you got the estimate from, it's his job to show that there's some sort of significant flaw in the numbers

That's your job.

Pff, he's the one arguing with those statistics, he can do it if he wants to. To be honest though, he probably won't be able to.

No I wouldn't. I'd only have to prove, as I did, that in the US, they commit crime at a higher rate, which boosts the nation-wide rate, thus making it appear that if the US had the same racial-make up as the UK, it would therefore have a lower murder/gun crime rate, and vice versa. Therefore, racial make-up is a factor.

No, that doesn't show anything. Unless you show that they're inherently prone to crime, you can't reliably say that the UK would have similar problems with similar racial makeup. You can only blame racial proportions if race is the actual underlying cause of violence.

By the way, this is why I consider most gun control arguments pretty weak. People make the mistake of claiming that guns are the cause of violence, when they aren't.

What I would do if I were you is cite what the minority crime problem already suggests: the US has a much higher rate of gang-related violence, and the presence of gangs is more ubiquitous in the US.

Prove it.

Pff. Ever seen a "gangster" in the UK that wasn't a middle-class white kid trying to look tough? I sure haven't. On the other hand, I've never been to the UK, but you know how it is.

Then prove that the higher murder rate doesn't exist to the same degree among those minorities who don't belong to gangs.

You know what, if you can find me any sort of reliable surveys about who's involved in organised crime, I'd be happy to do it. Otherwise, we'll just have to accept "Members of criminal organisations are more likely to be criminals" as intuitive.

This argument has lots of advantages:

- People can't accuse you of racism

Pfft.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But when you say "minorities" most people just don't want to hear it. If you say "gang violence," they have to recourse.

- It's already self-evident that gangs are inherently violent, no graphs needed.

Prove it. Prove that the average person in a gang is more likely to be violent than both a white citizen or a non-gang minority. (this is a given but I'm trying to show you how ridiculous it is when you nit-pick everything)

See, this is why I said that it was "self-evident". Even you admit that it's a given, and I think it's something that everyone we debate with will be able to agree on.

The assumption "Gangs are responsible for more violence than an average dude" is not as much of a logical leap as "Any increase in the homicide rate for a given year must imply a proportional increase in the murder rate"

In any case, surveys about violent gang membership tend to be unreliable.

Prove that minorities have a high enough gang membership rate to cause their higher nation-wide violence/gun crime rate higher for each minority group.

The first google image search result for "crips" suggests that minorities have a higher incidence of gang membership than the general population. Judging by this sample, slightly over 100% of the crips are black men.

- Bonus argument: Since they're organised, they can share firearms between them whenever they're needed, making them even more dangerous for fewer resources.

Prove it.

Um, ok.

A: People have hands (You can check this yourself! Look it up at the end of your arm furthest from the shoulder)
B: People often activate firearms with their hands (Source: 1985 Schwarzenegger hit Commando)
C: People can remove guns from their hands with trivial surgery after firing them (Source: Bruce Campbell's shotgun in Army of Darkness. Note that the same may not be true of chainsaws.)
Therefore, people can share guns.

- Bonus argument: With a profit motive for the firearms trade, gang fighting over territory and resources will become even bloodier than it already is.

Prove it.

A: It happened with alcohol prohibition
B: It happened with drug prohibition
Therefore, probably this too, and even if it doesn't happen, it still doesn't make a gun ban a good idea.

</Elfer tactics>

Hey, all I asked you to do was show that the variance was statistically significant. For someone who goes on and on about how much you've proved through statistics, you'd think you'd know about significance, right?

But hey, how about I use some of your tactics?

As you can see on this highly relevant graph, gun and non-gun murder rates have dropped off in every western nation that has implemented stricter gun control methods.

</cellardoor6 tactics

At 8/28/07 10:53 AM, Elfer wrote:

At 8/28/07 10:01 AM, Cellardoor6 wrote:

No. I'm not the one who has an interest in proving those statistics wrong. I'm just saying that if I was going to try to dismiss them, instead of going tony's route and saying "You have made unspecified misinterpretations of data," my first idea would be to examine the types of crimes considered to be DGUs.

which is what i said.

to paraphrase: 'who's to say that in many of these reported instances of dgu the victim couldnt have defended his/herself with another weapon i.e tazer, pepper spray.' which can be likened to 'what are the underlying circumstances that led to these defensive uses?' and then extended to - and could they have been resolved in another way?

Pff, he's the one arguing with those statistics, he can do it if he wants to. To be honest though, he probably won't be able to.

you mean this source cellar cited? it doesn't specify the reasons behind the dgu however of interesting note:

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively."

That would mean only 240 000 of these estimated defensive uses are legitimate.

"The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually."

So there's also a discrepancy of 1.9 Million between the studies, definitely not relative error and it brings into question the legitimacy of his estimates based on his questionable findings.

His studies were anonymous telephone calls with no strong criteria and have undergone multiple analyzes that question the credibility of his finding, flawed methodology and the likelihood of a gross overestimation

"Self-report surveys of rare events easily lead to huge overestimates [Page 1444] of the true incidence of such events, particularly if the event in question has some potential social desirability. Researchers who claim that such survey incidence data are accurate must show how they have eliminated the enormous problem of false positives. Kleck and Gertz do not accept, let alone meet, this burden of proof. Their survey methodology does not ensure a Specificity rate of well over 99%. Attempts to determine the external validity of their estimates only buttress the presumption of massive overestimation. The conclusion seems inescapable: the Kleck and Gertz survey results do not provide reasonable estimates about the total amount of self-defense gun use in the United States."

http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Hemenway1.
htm

So it's fair to say that there aren't actually 2 million legitimate defensive uses a year, and that this number is grossly inflated, whereas the numbers for homicides are actually based on just that - real cases of homicide not estimates and anonymous telephone calls.

Ok, well, since other people who are against a gun ban have generally been failing to make a convincing argument, I'll bring something up.

Take a look at page 36 of this report. Look at table 2c, which we can use as a measure of confirmed firearm violence.

In the 98/99 period, there were 864 injuries due to non-air firearms, the type that are supposed to be eliminated by the ban. Seven years later, in 05/06, there were 3821 firearm injuries. Performing an unpaired t-test on this data yields P < 0.0001, i.e. the probability that this happened by chance is less than one in ten thousand.

If a firearm ban is truly effective, how can you explain this rising trend of firearm violence?

Elfer, I'm fairly certain that several people up here (I know I have twice and I think wolvenbear has as well) have already brought up the idea that America's weak border security and close proximity to countries that have been known for smuggling drugs and guns is a major factor as to how a gun ban would fail. It's just that none of the gun ban advocates are interested in trying to refute this claim, and their arguments against cellardoor6 claim the most attention (I guess people are drawn to a flame war).

There has never been a gun that killed someone, it's the person with the gun that kills.

Thus getting rid of guns would be pointless, the people that cause harm with guns should be arested..

At 8/28/07 03:20 PM, Transkar wrote: All of you guys give stupid reasons...and I mean both sides. Guns weren't meant to be used for hunting or against robbers.......WE NEED TO HAVE GUNS TO KEEP OUR GOVERNMENT IN CHECK! What do you think happened in Europe when Hitler and the commies took over? The first thing they did was ban all guns and collect them from homes. If we have no self defense against our government, how are we to defend ourselves from a police state?

Well said. Too bad most people are not smart like you.

Learn from history and you can then you are smart.

At 8/28/07 09:31 PM, cellardoor6 wrote:

I already pointed you to this. Your source, victims of Dr. Harold Shipman, read the footnotes.

Prove that he and his murders are what caused the statistically peculiar increase in homicide.

See the big spike of about 250 cases, and the footnote that says that his murders affected the total in recent years, especially that one? Yeah.

Where are your data sets? You just say "we get this data" without even caring to elaborate, and you use "SD" and "N" knowing full well most people won't have a clue what you're talking about.

Where are my data sets? I used the one you provided, and the population from the 2001 census of England and Wales. SD is standard deviation, and N is "number". For someone who throws around statistics while yelling "proof proof proof" all the time, I'd think you'd know a bit about them.

If you were honest, you'd do have data sets for each year, from the beginning of the gun ban to the present-day, over the course of 10 years, then measure the trend deviation from what was previously the average homicide amount.

Why should I analyze the changes every year? If there is indeed an effect, it would be cumulative.

Performing an unpaired t-test on this data yields p = 0.6716.

What data set did P equal in your little equation you haven't shown? Or are you just using a computer program, without knowing what each thing actually means? What equation did you use to find P?

It's an unpaired t-test. It's a very fundamental tool for analyzing significance of data. I told you what it was, it's not my fault you can't look this shit up. Open any book on statistics.

That means that there's a 67% probability that this difference is due to chance and not an actual effect of any change to the system.

Mhmm.. from one year to the next, not from 1997 until 2007, in comparison to previous years.

I took the change between 1997 and 2006, which was the latest year that data was available. If I'm not horribly mistaken, 2006 did not immediately follow 1997.

No, you need to prove that the stats are erroneous. You can't just claim something, and then expect me to disprove this variable that you yourself have not PROVED to exist, let alone proven to have an effect on the stat.

No, I mean that I don't care, and I bet there are plenty of defensive gun uses, and it's tony who was arguing with that point, not me. The only thing I'd frown on is that you use a highball estimate of 2 million rather than the low end of 800,000 to make your point.

Um murder went up, not just homicide. The gun bans have failed to alleviate gun crime (which has gone up), and have failed to alleviate murder. Even IF murder with guns has gone down, this still shows that the gun ban is illogical and ineffective, because it doesn't/hasn't reduced murder over all, because people will just use another method, and have used other methods.

This is true. My issue, however, was with you repeatedly linking to homicide stats and labeling them as murder stats, linking to overall gun crime stats and claiming them to be gun violence stats, etc.

Check out page 36 of the report. Very interesting numbers that strongly point to the ineffectiveness of a gun ban, and it even distinguishes between real firearms and air rifles.

Therefore, since in the US, whites are less likely commit violent crimes with firearms than the minorities, it is almost certain that we would have a much lower rate of these things if we SHARED the same ethnic make-up as the UK, if 91% of the population in the US was made up of non-Hispanic whites, instead of 66% as it is now.

No, you're not getting it. Saying that the minority population of your country is a reason that the gun ban wouldn't work isn't a proper argument unless minority status itself is a major factor in causing crime. You're getting cause and effect mixed up.

Saying that the minority population itself is responsible for high crime rates implies that there is an inherent criminality to minorities. However, if we instead used gang violence as the contributing factor, the case is steadier, and it provides an underlying cause for the high rate of murder in general and the high rate of murder among minorities.

I sure haven't. On the other hand, I've never been to the UK, but you know how it is.

It's overrated.

I hear they got big clocks and shitty weather tho.

If you're going to create some sort of variable to cast doubt on my use of certain stats, YOU have to PROVE that this variable you claim even exists or has a statistical effect, otherwise you're just talking shit.

Actually, saying that gang violence is at least somewhat responsible for high minority crime doesn't cast doubt on your stats. I never said that you were wrong about it, I'm saying that arguing from a perspective of gang violence has advantages and carries less baggage than arguing from race.

THEN, when you tell me to prove UFOs effect the situation, I'm going to act like you and say that it is YOUR JOB to do it.

That's basically what you do.

No, I just ask you to show statistical significance for the things you're talking about. You seem to frequently misunderstand how significance works, and judging from your confusion over something as elementary as a t-test, I'm guessing you actually know fuck all about determining whether or not a change is actually significant.

And yet you won't accept something that SHOULD be intuitive to you like "Certain minority groups tend to be more violent in the US than the white majority, therefore if the US had a lesser proportion of them, there would be less violence, statistically."

But when you're comparing to the UK, and saying that it would work better there because they don't have the same sort of minority problem, you would have to show that a larger minority population there would result in more crime.

It doesn't matter if their race is inherently more violent or not, it matters about how they happen to behave in the US. Because regardless of the REASON they do this, them doing it still boosts the nation-wide rates, in comparison to other countries that don't have the same issue.

Again, when you say that it "boosts" the rate, this means that you're claiming that minorities are causing crime only by virtue of being minorities. If we just injected 40 million middle-class blacks into society, and none of them became gang members, I doubt they'd have a crime rate higher than the general population, since there's no incentive.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But when you say "minorities" most people just don't want to hear it. If you say "gang violence," they have to recourse.

Yeah, but you haven't proven that the higher rate of violence among minorities is exclusive to gang members.

Right, but my point is that it's not important. Using gang violence instead of race gives your opponents one less thing to bitch about.

What I'm saying is, gang violence is at least partially responsible for the higher violent crime rate in the US. I didn't say that I proved anything about minorities wrong, I'm saying that this argument is much more difficult for people to disagree with, and it would be advantageous to use it rather than the race argument.

.....Therefore, people can share guns.

That didn't amount to proof. You have the "lowest standard" for proof I've ever seen.

B: It happened with drug prohibition

Prove that this effects gangs today.

You misunderstand the point of the bonus arguments. They're logical inferences, not proven fact. Gangs work together to violently enforce rule over territory, so it makes logical sense that they would share guns amongst one another for a common goal.

Likewise, gangs already deal in contraband substances because there's a profit motive, and it's likely that they'd become involved more heavily in the arms trade if guns were prohibited.

At 8/29/07 12:34 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: Prove that this is what caused the peculiarly high murder rate, and therefore the correlation between higher murder rates and the gun ban can't be made.

There's a footnote at the bottom of the page that had that homicide graph on it. For proof that it exists, GO READ IT.

Which you didn't provide. You didn't clearly provide the equations and structure of the equations that supposedly ended up in the results you provided.

I said "unpaired t-test" in the first post. It's not my fault that you don't know what it is, and are too lazy to learn.

SD is standard deviation, and N is "number". For someone who throws around statistics while yelling "proof proof proof" all the time, I'd think you'd know a bit about them.

I do know about them, but nobody in their right mind would ever use those abbreviations without clarifying them.

Nobody in their right mind? What about "anybody discussing statistical significance, especially in the context of a t-test"?

This leads me to believe that you're just spouting out numbers that you really don't even understand.

Look, if you don't believe me, go do the analysis yourself. There is NOTHING preventing you from doing so other than your own ignorance. By the way, to use a program to obtain all of these values for me, I would have to make over 52 million seperate data point entries. So no, I didn't do that.

You'd have to gauge the difference form year to year all the way from 1997 to the most recent year, then compare this to an equal period of time before the gun ban, (adjusting for population growth each year if you were as picky with your own points as you are with mine).

Why? If the gun ban was really a good idea, we should be able to see a statistically significant drop over time. Also, I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get me to compare with that method. Do you want me to model the change in homicide before and after the gun ban, then compare the derivatives? Since they changed crime reporting and counting methods in recent years, this would be nearly impossible to do.

It's an unpaired t-test.

That you didn't even clarify. All you did was post a conclusion, without clarifying HOW you got them, without sourcing WHAT info you used, nor even clarifying the structure of the equation.

I said "unpaired t-test" right after the data provided, to show how I obtained the probability. Standard deviation is the square root of the variance. Variance is the mean of the squares of the differences between data points and the mean. N is the number of data points, in this case the population of England and Wales.

Look, it's not my job to spoon-feed you a lesson on basic stats. Didn't you tell me in another thread that you understood stats far better than the average person, what with your business technology degree?

Actually it IS your fault. You didn't even mention or provide WHAT DATA WAS USED IN THE EQUATION before you came to your conclusion. That's deceptive as all hell.

Actually, I did. I said that I used the number of homicides and the population.

You'd have to find the difference from year to year, in a series from 1997 to 2006, because each individual year could have any fluke or freak occurrence to sway the entire conclusion. But comparing year by year, for 10 years in a row shows the overall effect it has had as a TREND.

Actually, the best way to go about it, if a t-test was used, would be to take the means of ten-year periods from before and after the gun ban, I guess. Or better yet, five year periods, so there's a buffer time after the gun ban for any changes to actually take effect (i.e. for criminal systems to be set up for arms distribution, much like how prohibition decresed alcohol use briefly, until alcoholism rocketed up again once the infrastructure was in place).

Which was ridiculous, because you used that, while failing to prove that the non-murder homicides somehow made the entire homicide rate higher, somehow making homicide rates irrelevant in comparison between pre-ban and post-ban years.

Again, that site with the graphs had footnotes about the additional homicides, as well as other graphs mentioning the change in counting methods, which is represented by the change in colour.

Check out page 36 of the report. Very interesting numbers that strongly point to the ineffectiveness of a gun ban, and it even distinguishes between real firearms and air rifles.

Holy shit I can't believe I haven't found that yet. Not including air-guns, Firearm crimes have quadrupled, serious injury due to firearms has tripled, and deaths by firearms have increased almost double until recently (the recent lows are probably due to pending cases).

Well, actually since this is crimes reported, the pending cases wouldn't have an effect, since you don't need to have a trial to figure out if someone really died of a gunshot wound. Still, violence in general is WAY up.

I can't wait to see how D2kvirus reacts to that.

Yep. And I already checked it out, there's less than a one in ten thousand probability that it could happen by chance. Too bad nobody is going to respond to it...

No, you're not getting it. Saying that the minority population of your country is a reason that the gun ban wouldn't work isn't a proper argument unless minority status itself is a major factor in causing crime.

It doesn't matter if it's their race and race only that causes it, because they still belong to a group that has a unifying factor of race, which are several times more likely to commit violent crimes and violent crimes with firearms, than the white majority.

This means that if the US had a lesser proportion of these groups of people, there would be lesser gun crime,

This is where people are going to have a lot of problems with this argument, because it really sounds like you're blaming crime on skin colour rather than an underlying factor. I'd be more inclined to just break it down into a list of possible factors, which fleshes out my argument and gives the appearance of social awareness. Instead of "race" you could say "economic disparity and culture of violence"

Again, while the argument you're making is statistically true, it's unfortunately phrased and takes a short-sighted view of the situation.

Thus making an across the board comparison of two country's murder rates, and blaming gun control or lack of it for the difference is ridiculous, when considering this variable, as well as others.

Saying that the minority population itself is responsible for high crime rates implies that there is an inherent criminality to minorities.

Within a certain country there is.

There can't be an inherent criminality in only one country, unless that country has secret fishmind rays that tell people to kill. Actually, we should add that to the list of cultural differences between the US and UK.

You'd have to prove that gang membership is so much more prevalent among those minorities than it is among whites,

Ok. Whites only make up about 12% of gang members, but they comprise 81.7% of the general population. Sample size of 300,000,000 is large enough to assume significance of this disparity without calculations.

Yes this is youth gangs, but unless there's a giant goofy crossover at about age 20, it's a good estimate.

You'd have to prove that it's the gang violence itself among minorities that causes their overall higher violence/gun violence rate for that minority group as a whole.

Only if I were trying to disprove your argument about minorities, which I'm really not.

Well arguing from the perspective of gang violence in and of itself has no basis right now. Unless you can prove that non-gang members who belong to minority groups aren't more prone to violence/ gun violence than whites, then your point is moot.

No, since I'm arguing against a gun ban, rather than against your argument directly, all I would have to do is show that gang members are more violent than the general population for the argument to be relevant.

No... Therefore if other countries had the same proportion of these people then that country would also have a disproportionately high rate of these crimes also.

See, this is where you make the logical jump that isn't supported by US statistics. To claim that other countries would be more violent with the same racial make-up is to claim that minorities are inherently violent no matter where they are or what their situation is.

You can't compare the UK and the US across the board in areas of violent crime and violent guncrime, and have gun control the only thing used as a determination of that difference.

I agree. Way too many differences, not enough controls. The only way we could look at the effectiveness of a gun ban overall is in the same country with and without one. So far in the UK, it hasn't really been working. And when the US assault weapon ban was lifted, the world did not end. Seems like bans are relatively ineffective to me.

Yeah, and gang violence is much more prevalent among minorities than whites, therefore we'd have less gang violence itself if we had less of those minorities,

Not necessarily. Since gang violence is mostly fueled by contraband sales profit, there will always be someone around who wants to make that money. For example, during alcohol prohibition, it was all white dudes. In Russia, there's still drugs and weapons being traded, but primarily by the Russians.

You use these "logical inferences" to BOOST something that you claim as fact, as part of the proof.

You're mixing up cause and effect again. The bonus arguments are results that would likely occur if I was right and a gun ban was implemented. They don't support my actual argument that the US has a gang violence problem.

Likewise, gangs already deal in contraband substances because there's a profit motive, and it's likely that they'd become involved more heavily in the arms trade if guns were prohibited.

That's almost certainly true.

But prove it, plz. Or I will deny it and disallow you from pretending it means anything.

Ok. Sneaky Irish commit gun-related shennanigans with UK gangs! Hey guess what, this also suggests that gun bans don't stop criminals from getting guns. Life is funny like that, I guess. (Also note the "growing trend" in modifying fake guns to fire live ammunition)

Proteas, try killing somebody with an air rifle or a replica gun - without using it as a bludgeon. You may find it's a bit difficult. And I don't hear you saying "Yes, nobody has been killed with a semi-automatic weapon since they were banned - maybe there's a connection." Odd, that.

Coincidentally, cellar, you may want to take a look at this: a map of youth deaths using guns or knives this year (since David Cameron is trying to blame video games). Note the shootings are mostly in London, with individual instances in Manchester and Liverpool. And, as I have stated numerous times, the words "gang-related" regularly follow after the first couple of days of procrastinating about teenagers being shot/stabbed. It's not a coincidence.

And the other thing to come from that map is that not all of the victims (or, indeed, those arrested) were black, let alone Latino. Of course, why they're in street gangs that take their cues from COmpton or Watts seriously needs investigating. For a start: are people rewinding Menace II Society before the "Increase the peace" message, thereofr emissing the point and revelling in the idea of being a prick that waves guns around?

:Now, on to my point. Why do gun stores sell semiautomatic weaponry without having to fill out some kind of form or going through a screening process or something?

--Im an avid hunter, ive been hunting for 4 years now. And semi automatics arent bad. Fully automatics do and they require a special license to own. Also a special permit to fire which also states where and how many shots.

If you're a deer hunter, or a duck hunter, or any kind of hunter, you don't need semiautomatic fire to kill one deer.

--A deer hunter doesnt use semi auto. they use lever or bolt most often. And duck or any waterfowl semi or pump is preferred. i have a semi auto 12 guage. its under my bed. im 13 years old. semi is nice cuz when the birds swoop in you can drop 2 or 3 every time. ( in ohio the clip limit is 3 so thats the most )

If you collect guns, you should be willing to fill out a form of some kind to get a gun you probably won't use. The fact that there is no control on these guns in most places leads to things like... oh, I don't know, the V-Tech rampage?

--how does it lead to the vtech rampage? learn more about it. he obtained the gun on the streets and not from a retail store. I know a lot more about guns than you do so.

Don't you think?

--No i dont think so. I think that maybe anyone with a felony ( definitly no buying guns ) shouldnt be allowed. Also any type of physco past. ( which im pretty sure they said the vtech guy had a ciolent past ) also maybe dont allow immigrants to buy...we dont know their past as well. but remember this and i quote

"for every law the government makes , there is one more illegal thing people will always do"

remember that. government outlawed drugs did they not? so how come people can still do them?

ill let you think about this one.

What is the deal? You guys that want gun control put a dangerous amount of trust in the government. Now, lets think perspectively from the founding fathers who actually knew what they were taling about. They knew from experience that a nation where the people could not defend themselves properly was not a nation at all.

You "people" need to wake up, the pro gun control people are just trying to take the last bit of power than is still in the hands of the people, so that they can impose their warped agenda.

The fact that you could save lives by banning firearms is simply wrong, if someone is going to kill someone they will find a way.

At 8/29/07 05:08 PM, Transkar wrote: It's no surprise that neither of you morons payed any attention to what I said.

That's because you basically said "YOU PEOPLE ARE LIKE HITLER"

That's considered a no-no in most debates.

At 8/29/07 10:03 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: While use of real firearms in crime causing injuries has quadrupled since the 1997 gun ban, the injures by use of air guns has actually gone down. Fatal injury with guns has gone up, but is low in 2006/2006 probably due to pending cases

Gun ban didn't work...

Actually, since it's just crimes reported, pending cases wouldn't have any effect on it. If someone dies of a gunshot wound, you tend to know that it's happened before the person is convicted.

However, it's not as though this lack of a statistically significant change is supportive of a gun ban. Since the only deviation in the time period from the endpoints was upward, it would suggest that the gun ban isn't doing anything to reduce gun fatalities at all.

And it's CERTAINLY not reducing gun violence in general.

If you want guns out of the hands of civilians, change the constitution.

At 8/22/07 10:14 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: What a moron, indeed...

Whatever. Gun murders have went up. Home robberies have went up.

And your link shows that people are converting the replicas into working guns...making them fall into the category of...GUNS.

Because crime has ALSO risen with other weapons, it doesn't negate the rise in gun crimes. You keep trying to dance around the point "all in one city", "all gang activity", "not widespread". But none of that matters.

The facts on hand, which remain unchanged by your asshattery:
1) Gun crime in England was irrelevant before the ban. That it is still relatively low is not a success of said ban.
2) The gun ban was predicated on a mass shooting, of which England has had ONE. Pointing to lack of further shootings proves nothing.
3) Despite the gun ban, gun murders have gone up every year, as have armed home invasions. Banning guns, therefore, did not lower the murder rate.
4) Crime has dropped in the US since 97, despite there being no meaningful gun legislation (the AWB was useless).
5) The point about all of England's crime being centralized is irrelevant. When New York city reduced their murder rate by about 50%, the national murder rate dropped by about 20-25%. Combined, LA and New York are responsible for a good chunk of crime.

Therefore, by the above shown (and proven again and again) facts, the gun ban did not make England safer. And without banning guns, the US has become safer.

At 8/22/07 10:26 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: Read the whole article, note that the graphs show that, on neither graph, does it state that blacks commit the most murders, so therefore your "argument" of tribal lineage being easy to blame is patently false.

Your graph indeed shows the most murders happening to coloureds. The bottom line is the plain gray one, which stands for whites. The lines from top to bottom are: colored (the greenish-gray line), black (black), asian (green), white (gray).
Furthermore, the sentence that is right above the graph states:
"The homicide rate for coloureds has almost always been higher than other race groups, exceeding 60 murders per 100,000 since 1980 (Figure 1). This does not, however, show the full picture. When analysed according to age and gender, the extent of violence within the coloured community becomes clearer. "

So what conclusion does this draw in the paper?

"Criminologists have shown that certain communities are affected by high levels of violence.9 One explanation is that members of such communities are more willing to use violence in everyday matters. The theory is that these people exist on the fringes of society and create their own set of rules about how to behave. These 'subcultures' see violence as normal and are more willing to use violence in situations where other people would not. They are also more likely to carry a weapon and more willing to fight to protect their 'honour' or 'status'. Young adult males are more likely to engage in this type of behaviour, and thus increase their chances of being both victims and perpetrators of violence.
It has been argued that South Africans have become accepting of violence - that they are part of a 'culture of violence'. If true, the coloured community would seem to represent the extreme of this 'violent culture'. They have a long history of unemployment, inadequate housing and health care, high rates of alcohol use, and family dislocation (see 'Still marginal: Crime in the coloured community' in this issue). The high number of gangs in the Western Cape is a result of this phenomenon.10 They have filled a gap in the community, giving young males a sense of identity. Gangs use violence to achieve their goals and have normalised the carrying and use of weapons. The continued high rate of knife use is undoubtedly connected to this behaviour. "

So, those dead are likely killed by people within the community. They blame coloureds for most coloured deaths, and blacks for most black deaths. And it's pretty likely that some of the Asian and White deaths are done by the black/coloured community as well, as this paper points out that they are indeed the most violent.

At 8/26/07 12:00 PM, D2Kvirus wrote: Cellar, how is it that you jump from ignoring one argument that holes your "argument" beneath the waterline to ignoring another so frequently?

Wait, wait wait. YOU, of all people, don't get to accuse someone else of jumping from argument to argument, as that's your sole tactic of debate.

Me: Gun crime went up.
You: But only in two cities!
Me: But those two cities are where 90% of all crime is.
You: That's only gangs.
Me: But gang crime has went up. Not down...
You: Gun crime is higher in America! HAHA. Gun control works!

Etc.

But you'll ignore this and call me a liar.

Well, considering that the paper you provided makes the conclusion that blacks and coloureds commit more crime, and you use it to say that Asians are the most violent, I feel free to call you a liar.

At 8/27/07 11:20 AM, milinko959 wrote: Just as making alcohol illegal completely stopped the flow of it? Or how since a lot of drugs are illegal, there are never problems with them?

It didn't stop the flow, but it SEVERELY reduced it. It also led to a massive increase of crime in the country. When something is made illegal/banned, less people do it. Because law abiding people tend to follow the law. And common people, in addition to not WANTING to break the law, in cases like this have fewer resources to break the law (unless they make it themselves). This leads to an increase in crime for those who ignore the law. In the case of liquor, this is not a problem. If you have liquor and I don't...this doesn't lead to violence.
However, when killers and criminals have guns and the law abiding don't....well, that's good for no one but the criminal.

In no state in the union can people with recent violent felony convictions purchase firearms. Yet the National Institute of Justice survey of prisoners, many of whom were repeat offenders, showed that 90 percent were able to obtain their last firearm within a few days. Most obtained it within a few hours. Three-quarters of the men agreed that they would have "no trouble" or "only a little trouble" obtaining a gun upon release, despite the legal barriers to such a purchase.

This goes through what is known as a straw purchase. In which someone who is not barred from having a gun buys a gun legally for a criminal.
See: Columbine.

At 8/27/07 11:49 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: Coincidentally, a drop from 2-8% to the sum of 0 shows it worked.

As I've stated elsewhere, 53% of Britain's gun crime is air rifles, brandishing replicas as real weapons increases every year...and gun crime using actual, live round firing guns has decreased. Coincidentally.

Yea, not quite.
http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF05.
htm
Since 1997, Handgun and shotgun violence has increased.

And since "airguns" can't account for homicides...we'll toss that stupid argument out.

Oh, and since you tout laws as being responsible for England's "safety",
http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/academ ic/icjs/staff/documentation/filetodownlo ad,66240,en.pdf

Using imitation guns was made a felony in 1994. It has increased in prevalence every year since.

Oh, and the "0" number of gun murders since 1997...
Someone must not have gotten the memo.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/londo n/6363713.stm
If only he had a head of lettuce....

At 8/27/07 11:52 AM, tony4moroney wrote: So wait.. youre just going to take that statistic on it's face value and then go to an all encompassing conclusion that guns therefore do more good then harm?
I think it's pretty important we at least get an understanding behind it. How many of those instances would be entirely non-existent had a gun not been present in the first place? How many of these instances were preventable by another measure.. as someone else pointed out a man stopped an assailant with a cabbage head. You could prevent the advances of a threatening individual with a tazer gun, pepper spray or less lethal defensive weapon effectively.

So your entire argument is "if the crime had never been committed by a criminal, this talk wouldn't be neccessary"?

And who cares if it "could" be prevented another way.
That's demanding a victim justify defending themselves. Which is stupid.

But there are also several factors to consider such as immigration - homogeneous countries have been shown to have a drastically lower instance of hate crime, obviously. also, inflated statistics due to anomalous instances, as someone else pointed out earlier the victims of the london bombings were included in the murder statistics and also, a changing societal attitude not necessarily correlating with gun control.

So now we get to the crux of the problem of your argument. There's more than one factor involved in analyzing gun control. You cite this when someone points out a failure in gun control, but ignore it when gun control "succeeds".

Where was this proof and secondly i guess this shows that it is in fact possible to implement a successful gun control policy.

Not quite. The gun crime was dropping in Australia before the ban or buy back. It continued to drop at the same rate. (by D2K's own link). That's like saying "we've been paying down the family debt at a grand a month. Dad got a second job. THAT'S why our debt is now lower!" Really? If the rate of exceleration didn't increase (that is, if you didn't start paying MORE per month), then Dad's second job didn't help make your debt lower. (Tho it probably made life nicer.)

Except that according to these facts youve presented crime would reduce. The murder rate has increased in the uk, but murder by firearms is still low, their murder rate is lower then ours and overall, crimes have reduced in the uk.

So, murders have increased. Therefore, banning guns world wide would increase because crime is still low?

That logic don't make sense, bud.

At 8/28/07 08:00 AM, Elfer wrote:

At 8/28/07 12:20 AM, cellardoor6 wrote:

As D2K pointed out, most of the "gun" crime now is committed with air rifles and replicas. It would be more relevant to compare gun violence.

As the link I posted proves, air gun crime was high before the ban. It HAS increased. But it's not like people weren't doing it before.

As I pointed out, you're getting your information on "murder" from a site that changed counting methods in 1998, which records homicide instead of murder, and which includes about 100 deaths that can't possibly be attributed to gun involvement, and 250 murders which started during the 70s but weren't recorded until the early 2000s.

It's D2K's link. He posted it, and we've used it to discredit him. If you present flawed evidence, you can't go "aha, there's a problem with it!" once people use it to shoot you down. If nothing else, it shatters his whole point to begin with. INDEED, he's used that inflated number to argue that gun crimes are going down. Take out the overinflation, and what it shows is a continuing upward trend.

At 8/28/07 12:04 PM, tony4moroney wrote: to paraphrase: 'who's to say that in many of these reported instances of dgu the victim couldnt have defended his/herself with another weapon i.e tazer, pepper spray.' which can be likened to 'what are the underlying circumstances that led to these defensive uses?' and then extended to - and could they have been resolved in another way?

It's an irrelevant question. (Though as I explained, tazers and pepper spray aren't great defensive weapons. Unless your attacker is really close, and preferably unarmed.)
Better question: How many of these people wouldn't have to defend themselves if they weren't put in the situation by a criminal.

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively."

That would mean only 240 000 of these estimated defensive uses are legitimate.

Depends on your use of the word "legitimate". To me legitimate= "protecting an innocent civilian from being victimized by a criminal."
Though that proves criminals are undeterred by laws, and gives credence to loosening gun laws...not tightening them.

survey stuff deleted for space

So it's fair to say that there aren't actually 2 million legitimate defensive uses a year, and that this number is grossly inflated, whereas the numbers for homicides are actually based on just that - real cases of homicide not estimates and anonymous telephone calls.

While this paper offers up some problems with the K&G survey, it is a VERY weak rebuttal.

Every study has its flaws. For example, the original NCVS study, while much more extensive, ONLY uses people who are actually victimized. Therefore, the use of a gun in self defense is severely downplayed. As most people who ACTUALLY become victims rarely use a weapon of any kind in self defense. Under this rather major flaw in the NCVS, no self defense (unless failed) would hit the records. That alone makes the entire study worthless.
This revue severely downplays that problem when attacking K-G.

The charge of bias is pure speculation. There is a chance for error, of course, and bad memory, but the idea that there's huge numbers of people who are deliberately lying to inflate the stat is unfounded and has nothing to back it up other than either wishful thinking, or an overzealous attempt to discredit he study.

While there are problems with the study that seem to bloat the numbers, there's also some that seem to deflate the numbers, such as a lack of respondants from New York and Detroit.

Bottom line: the study may over estimate the use of guns, but all the others dramatically under report. Even assessing a penalty of 50% for overinflation (more than fair) that still leaves 1 mil crimes prevented.

Guns don't kill people, llamas kill people.

At 8/29/07 10:24 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: Proteas, try killing somebody with an air rifle or a replica gun - without using it as a bludgeon. You may find it's a bit difficult. And I don't hear you saying "Yes, nobody has been killed with a semi-automatic weapon since they were banned - maybe there's a connection." Odd, that.

Um, there have been quite a few people killed with semi-automatic weapons. You're so full of shit.

Here's several:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engla nd/london/6363713.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engla nd/2724089.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engla nd/merseyside/6964312.stm

A semi-auto is a weapon that only needs a trigger pull to fire a gun. As such, most pistols qualify.
Exceptions: revolver, shotgun, single action rifle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-automa tic_firearm

Most weapons nowadays are semi-auto. Since you are ridiculously lumping semi-auto rifles (which are rarely used in crimes anyways) in with all semi-auto weapons (which are obviously still in use), you either know shit about guns (definate), have an agenda, or both.

Here's the better question: How many times had that happened before? None?
Wow, that gun ban sure made a difference. Eye rollie.

At 8/29/07 05:08 PM, Transkar wrote: It's no surprise that neither of you morons payed any attention to what I said.

You jumped into a debate and called everyone stupid before making a point that had been hit on. Since your only contribution with to appeal to emotion, and to call quite a few people who are intelligently debating the issue stupid, there wasn't a whole lot to address. Oh, and since you consider all the other issues irrelevant, you really aren't setting yourself up as an intellectual.
Sure, that was ONE point of the 2nd amendment. But it was not the only use.

At 8/30/07 01:20 AM, WolvenBear wrote:

At 8/29/07 10:24 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: Proteas, try killing somebody with an air rifle or a replica gun - without using it as a bludgeon. You may find it's a bit difficult. And I don't hear you saying "Yes, nobody has been killed with a semi-automatic weapon since they were banned - maybe there's a connection." Odd, that.

Um, there have been quite a few people killed with semi-automatic weapons. You're so full of shit.

Here's several:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engla nd/london/6363713.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engla nd/2724089.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engla nd/merseyside/6964312.stm

And how many of those were gunned down with semi-automatic rifles, as per the 1988 ban? None - in other words, if anyone is full of shit...even you have the intellect to gather I'm talking about you, right?

At 9/22/07 02:11 PM, D2Kvirus wrote: And how many of those were gunned down with semi-automatic rifles, as per the 1988 ban? None - in other words, if anyone is full of shit...even you have the intellect to gather I'm talking about you, right?

D2K,

In the US semi-auto rifles such as the AK-47, M-16 and UZI "clones" are readily available. In some cases they are even quite affordable (a Romanian AK clone costs about $350...a M-16 clone however is more than double that).

However, these weapons are used in less than 1% of TOTAL gun crimes (including non-violent gun crimes such as stolen guns). Considering the relaitvely low number of murders involving a firearm (usually about 15-20K), these weapons are even less frequently used <bait> because they are NOT particularly well suited for murder or other violent crime.</bait>

An assault rifle ban is simply irrational public policy.

At 9/22/07 02:11 PM, D2Kvirus wrote:

At 8/30/07 01:20 AM, WolvenBear wrote:

At 8/29/07 10:24 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: Proteas, try killing somebody with an air rifle or a replica gun - without using it as a bludgeon. You may find it's a bit difficult. And I don't hear you saying "Yes, nobody has been killed with a semi-automatic weapon since they were banned - maybe there's a connection." Odd, that.

And how many of those were gunned down with semi-automatic rifles, as per the 1988 ban? None - in other words, if anyone is full of shit...even you have the intellect to gather I'm talking about you, right?

I cut out my response for space. Note how you claim "no one has been killed with a semi-automatic weapon." I show you that indeed, people have. Now you change it to rifle. Now, in fairness, that may be what you MEANT, but it's not what you SAID. Yet, instead of making the claim "Oops, I spoke wrong", you actually have the temerity to claim that I'm somehow incorrect because you can't properly articulate what you mean? That's some balls!
So, since you indeedwere wrong with your original statement, yet are pretending you're correct, I'm calling you on it AGAIN. You're either trying (and failing) to make me look stupid by refusing to acknowledge your mistake, or you're playing little word games, pretending you said one thing when you said another.

And again, I never accuse you of being full of shit. I flat out call you a liar. You even lie about what you say when you're wrong. AND You lie by ommission in saying that this law prevented some problem, as opposed to simply being a panicy reaction to a single event. Much as the private schools who had never had a single act of gun violence freaked out after Columbine, then touted their measures as what was keeping their students safe...the case that the law is protecting people from dying is pure Post Hoc faulty reasoning.

No, Wolfy, you showed that you're happy to be completely wrong in order to try and make a point, making yourself look like a fool in the process.

Were any of those three gunned down with a semi-automatic and/or automatic machine gun? No.
Were any of those three gunned down with a pump-action shotgun? No.

In other words, you're an idiot - neither of the weapons banned in 1988 were used, so therefore you were wrong in your usual obnoxiously ignorant manner.

Coincidentally, the first two were gang related, and the third a result of the shooter missing the target and Rhys getting caught in the crossfire (which is one in the eye for the theory playing computer games makes you a dead-eye for headshots, while we're here).

Stick to confusing New England with the United Kingdom in future, Wolfy.