As a writer, yr Wonkette is accustomed to people asking where we get our ideas (for the record: we mix up a special cocktail of opium and despair and inject it directly into our eyeballs). We would like to ask the same thing of Gun Owners of America chairman and weeping anal pustule Larry Pratt, a man so far to the right he was once deemed too much of an extremist to chair a presidential run
Oh, there <a href="http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/hicrc\/firearms-research\/guns-and-death\/" target="_blank">isn&#039;t a complete absence of studies</a>, but they&#039;re competing against a well-funded noise machine <a href="http:\/\/www.palgrave-journals.com\/jphp\/journal\/v30\/n3\/full\/jphp200926a.html" target="_blank">designed</a> to <a href="http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2936974\/" target="_blank">find nothing</a>.
Canada&#039;s number of guns per capita is less than a third that in the US; their number of households with a gun is less than half. Not all guns are the same - Canada&#039;s gun ownership is very heavily skewed towards long guns (less than 3% of households own handguns), and among long guns, <em>not</em> towards assault-style rifles. Canada also restricts magazine size to 5 for center-fire semi-automatic rifles, has strong regulation on storage and transportation of firearms, and has a national registry of firearms ownership that covers all handguns and AR-15 variants.
Meantime in the US while the number of guns per capita has been increasing over the past couple of decades, the percentage of households that own guns has been decreasing, correlating to the decrease in gun (and general) homicide (although there are clearly other significant factors over that timeframe).
Agreed! You can spray a theatre or classroom or mall or temple much faster than in the old days. Go back to colonial times and their water pistols were dogs who would piss on your friends when squeezed (the dogs). Then you had to wait a while until the dog &quot;reloaded&quot; from a bucket.
I think we have to push back in whatever smart way we can do to make sure that kids see, yeah smoking is just as much fun as you thought it was when you and your buddy were pretending with candy cigarettes yesterday.
Yes, that&#039;s older data, yes it&#039;s a narrower set of countries. But, I can&#039;t help noticing that Hartsmann is using (A) a dataset that contains but does not control for some major confounding factors, and (B) is using a parametric test. As Lambert sort-of explains somewhere in there, that kind of test is extremely vulnerable to missing correlations that really exist.
Lambert may have repeatedly shredded John Lott&#039;s attempts to claim that more guns mean less general crime, but he&#039;s never done more than reproduce Hartsmann&#039;s result that there&#039;s no correlation between guns and general crime. Significant correlations have been found between gun ownership rates and homicide rates, Hartsmann&#039;s graph notwithstanding. And Hartsmann ignores the primary cause of gun deaths in the USA - suicide - where the correlation between gun ownership rates and death rates is strongest.
The vast majority do want gun laws -- it&#039;s just the NRAssholes, and their wholly-owned legislators, who are the problem.
Oh, there <a href="http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/hicrc\/firearms-research\/guns-and-death\/" target="_blank">isn&#039;t a complete absence of studies</a>, but they&#039;re competing against a well-funded noise machine <a href="http:\/\/www.palgrave-journals.com\/jphp\/journal\/v30\/n3\/full\/jphp200926a.html" target="_blank">designed</a> to <a href="http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2936974\/" target="_blank">find nothing</a>.
Canada&#039;s number of guns per capita is less than a third that in the US; their number of households with a gun is less than half. Not all guns are the same - Canada&#039;s gun ownership is very heavily skewed towards long guns (less than 3% of households own handguns), and among long guns, <em>not</em> towards assault-style rifles. Canada also restricts magazine size to 5 for center-fire semi-automatic rifles, has strong regulation on storage and transportation of firearms, and has a national registry of firearms ownership that covers all handguns and AR-15 variants.
Meantime in the US while the number of guns per capita has been increasing over the past couple of decades, the percentage of households that own guns has been decreasing, correlating to the decrease in gun (and general) homicide (although there are clearly other significant factors over that timeframe).
I hate to say this, but I think I want one.
Dammit, I liked lawn darts. When I was a kid and immortal. I would never have allowed my own kids to touch them.
If only Trayvon had had a gun to protect himself from that thug.
Agreed! You can spray a theatre or classroom or mall or temple much faster than in the old days. Go back to colonial times and their water pistols were dogs who would piss on your friends when squeezed (the dogs). Then you had to wait a while until the dog &quot;reloaded&quot; from a bucket.
I think we have to push back in whatever smart way we can do to make sure that kids see, yeah smoking is just as much fun as you thought it was when you and your buddy were pretending with candy cigarettes yesterday.
About that about that... a series of old Lambert postings:
<a href="http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/deltoid\/1994\/03\/14\/international-00007\/" target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/1994/03/14/intern...">http://scienceblogs.com/del... <a href="http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/deltoid\/1994\/03\/17\/international-00021\/" target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/1994/03/17/intern...">http://scienceblogs.com/del... <a href="http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/deltoid\/1994\/04\/24\/international-00022\/" target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/1994/04/24/intern...">http://scienceblogs.com/del...
Yes, that&#039;s older data, yes it&#039;s a narrower set of countries. But, I can&#039;t help noticing that Hartsmann is using (A) a dataset that contains but does not control for some major confounding factors, and (B) is using a parametric test. As Lambert sort-of explains somewhere in there, that kind of test is extremely vulnerable to missing correlations that really exist.
Lambert may have repeatedly shredded John Lott&#039;s attempts to claim that more guns mean less general crime, but he&#039;s never done more than reproduce Hartsmann&#039;s result that there&#039;s no correlation between guns and general crime. Significant correlations have been found between gun ownership rates and homicide rates, Hartsmann&#039;s graph notwithstanding. And Hartsmann ignores the primary cause of gun deaths in the USA - suicide - where the correlation between gun ownership rates and death rates is strongest.
When we were kids we played with those trucks with the missile on top. Guns are for douchebags
I&#039;m holding out for a poop cannon...
nobody wants to sleep in the wet spot...
The story actually made me happy, because it reminded me of how little I&#039;ve been hearing about Pat Buchanan recently.
Also, YOLVB
(... Very Briefly)
What can you say about a guy who Wayne Lapierre asks WTF?
No no no no no, summer&#039;s the time for <a href="http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/sport\/ashes" target="_blank">cricket</a>.