Blablahb said:
spartan231490 said:
False. If you actually looked at my sources, one of them compares European countries, it's the havard study titled "gun control is counterproductive", and countries with more guns per capita have fewer murders. The data does speak for itself, it shows that gun control and gun bans don't reduce crime or murder rates.
Oh, that for a change. That study is bullshit because they haven't controlled for a single relevant variable, and concluded that a correlation is the same as a causal relation.
Norway for instance has a population much thinner than other countries. Socio-economic circumstances aren't the same...
It wasn't a study, it was a political pamphlet; Controlling for exterior variables is about the first thing you learn when learning how to do academic writing.
TheKasp said:
Good to know that Norway and Western Europe are both US states for you... /facepalm.
Norway is a country, western Europe is a region within a continent. Neither contain any place with gun laws like in the US, and the crime rates are a lot lower as a result.
It's so good to know that people will just blatantly ignore data that opposes their position, and lie about things to distract people from noticing. They said right in the study that it's a correlation, not causation,
"It is important to note here that Profs. Kates and Mauser are not pro-gun zealots. In fact, they go out of their way to stress that their study neither proves that gun control causes higher murder rates nor that increased gun ownership necessarily leads to lower murder rates" and it's far from the only study. I have provided you with MOUNTAINS of data, that you ignore from up on your high horse where you can just shoot down studies and data out of hand without providing data of your own, or for that matter without good reason. Russia has a low population density too, and an extremely low gun per capita, and their murder rate is almost 4 times higher than the US. As mentioned in the Harvard study.
Yes, you control for other variables, but that's kinda hard to do when you need to find a statistically significant number of countries that are similar in culture, population density, and average socio-political status. Furthermore, even when you don't control for variables, data such as this is pretty damn conclusive: "Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that
the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of
the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population)." I bolded the important parts. This is not just a coincidence, and to cut you off at the pass, of course this doesn't prove causation, but it's pretty damning evidence against the suggestion that fewer guns is a cause for less crime.
Also, even more amusing to me is that you violate your own rule about not controlling for relevant variables by comparing the US to European countries, two places with radically different cultures, economic systems, race make-up, population densities, economic system, political system, and socio-economic make up.
Blablahb said:
The murder rate in the US is between 2 and 33 times higher than in comparable European countries. Even former eastern block countries are safer.
It's also amusing to me that you say eastern block countries are safer, directly in conflict with the data found by a Harvard study(at least with regards to Russia) in addition to it being completely irrelevant(by your own standards) because of all the uncontrolled variables as listed above.
I also like how you completely ignored fully half of the post you are quoting, and tried to cut it out of your post like it didn't exist. Maybe because you have no answer for this other damning piece of evidence?
spartan231490 said:
Look at the UK, "the homicide rate in England and Wales has averaged 52% higher since the outset of the 1968 gun control law and 15% higher since the outset of the 1997 handgun ban.[42]" That's from the Justfacts.com source I posted earlier. The data is not on your side.
Not to mention all of the various sources I posted earlier that you just blanket ignored by saying that they were comparing between US states and that somehow made them irrelevant. Guess what, it doesn't, it's one of the most relevant comparisons that can be made because of the relatively similar culture and socio-economic status across states. Still huge differences in these uncontrollable variables(due to the low number of available data points), but much closer than comparisons between European countries, and god in heaven better than comparing the US to European countries, our culture, economic system, social structure, and socio-economic status is so different from Europe any comparisons of that nature are meaningless.
Blablahb said:
TheKasp said:
How about you finally ball up and give us a study / sources to back up your claims.
Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Think of socio-economical circumstances yourself please. You'll note that the United States, because of its free availability of murder weapons, is right up there just below warzones, and even above Brazil and its favela wars between drug gangs.
Note how the Netherlands and Switserland are extremely close together, despite the Swiss very low population density and extreme affluence, compared to the Dutch very heavy population density and normal affluence for the region. This is because murder weapons are present in every single Swiss home, and Switserland is the nr 1 highest ranking country in Europe for 'family drama' murders.
Other than that I can of course build on the simple blunt, irrefutable fact, that you can't kill people without weapons, so without firearms, there will *always* be fewer murders and less severe violence. There's no point in even trying to refute that, unless you can prove firearms are less lethal than hitting someone with your bare hands. Good luck with that.
Wikipedia, that's convincing. Not to mention, it's just a list of unrelated data points, with far far far too many differences between countries for it to be relevant. Here, why don't you try reading some studies:
http://www.guncite.com/Kleck-Hogan.html
http://theacru.org/acru/harvard_study_gun_control_is_counterproductive/
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
http://www.largo.org/klecksum.html
http://www.largo.org/Lott.html