I continue to be grateful for Preston’s continued engagement. Not only does he continue to engage, he does so in a very competent manner. Make no mistake, Preston is good.
I wish I could say he was right on the central point, but that would be going too far. I am feeling charitable today, but not that charitable.
Nevertheless, he is right about some things, and I want to begin by granting those points. I grant that some gun owners are far too cavalier about their weapons, loaded and all, and their children. I don’t think that is an imaginary category. I also agree that statistics can be slippery and should be used with caution. So far so good.
Pressed for time as I am today, I will try to be brief.
First, I am willing to go for Preston’s proposal that we agree to a mutual statistical disarmament. I do this, even though I am somewhat nervous about it. After all, when statistics are outlawed, only outlaws will have statistics. But before departing from that point entirely, I want to encourage Preston in the knowledge that I do know that correlation does not prove causation. But it does prove (assuming the statistics are honest, not cooked) that the claims for causation in the other direction need additional attention.
Suppose someone says that if we don’t stop eating pink jello we are all going to die of strange gelatinous diseases. Say that the attempts to outlaw this jello fail, and a backlash occurs and the consumption of pink jello in a particular state doubles. Let us also say that life expectancy in that state increases immediately by five years or so. I do not yet know that pink jello makes you live longer, but I do know that those who maintain that it makes you die sooner have a new problem for their thesis. Bring it back to our debate — an armed society is a polite society. I have not shown this in any billiard-ball-physics way, but I do know it intuitively. More of an art than a science.
That said, let me defend myself against the charge that I am moving the goal posts. If someone were to argue against concealed carry because he thought it was ineffective and even counterproductive, and he thought it far more efficient to have the cops show up and shoot all the bad guys dead, and good riddance, the argument should simply focus on which is the most efficient way to stop the bad guys.
But Preston is arguing for the way of non-violence, not-non-vigilantism. This is not primarily because violence is ineffective, but rather because it isn’t the Jesus-way. In other words, someone with Preston’s theology could grant that good guys with guns might stop bad guys with guns with 100% effectiveness, and still be opposed to it. And this is why my question about using a cell phone to call the cops is relevant.
“I know hardly any advocates for gun control who want to de-arm the police.”
Me neither, but it seems to me that for consistency’s sake Preston needs to be one of them. I understand someone calling the cops to do a job that the person calling cannot do. But I don’t understand how a person could call the cops to do something the person calling wouldn’t do.
That is as much as to say that Jesus wouldn’t do it, and so I won’t do it, but because it has to be done (right?) we had better ring up the devil.
I need to think about Preston’s specific arguments more but I do know one thing: He brought up the use of statistics, used them badly, had his head handed to him on that score, on his page and in Doug’s post……and *now* he’s getting rigorous about the hurdle needed for statistical proof. Actually it seems as if he wants to drop that particular approach. At least as a means of settling this particular skirmish… FWIW causation is an easier sell when you do something…and the statistics between before and after than when you don’t. Doug did that in at least… Read more »
So Preston is getting sharper!
Just like The Word says!????????
I’m got the feeling that the hurdle will be “really, statistically, how can we ever know”….(that the overwhelming statistical data against me is sufficient proof)?
If goal posts are outlawed, only outlaws will have goal posts!
But at least there is no such thing as concealed goal posts.????
Actually, concealing the goal posts is a common rhetorical tactic.
Lady Dunsworth, concealing the goal posts is also a comical rhetorical tactic!
What it does to the concealers “pants” is beyond funny!
Really tough to say that Preston got his “head handed to him” on statistics when all three statistics that Pastor Wilson cut-and-pasted were blatantly misleading and didn’t even come close to proving his point. The claim “States that have banned concealed carry have violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average” was copied-and-pasted straight from http://www.gunfacts.info. However, I looked it up, and it turned out to be a made-up number. First off, there are only 4 states that “ban” concealed carry – Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, and Hawaii. There are 3 other states that are basically “no… Read more »
The data also simply doesn’t support the claim that more guns means more violent crime.
No, I don’t think there’s a strong case for more guns meaning more violent crime. Someone who wants to commit a violent crime will usually do so with or without a gun. More guns simply makes violent crime (and suicide, and accidents) somewhat deadlier. In all cases, the data supports the fact that more guns means more gun deaths, as well as more homicides overall and (all else being equal) more suicides overall. However, more concealed carry permits and CC laws in general probably don’t affect crime or homicide much at all, as the active time engaged in legal CC… Read more »
Again, thank you for your admission that there’s no correlation between more violent crime and more firearms.
I said that there’s not a strong case, not that there’s no correlation at all. Such massive sociological statements are difficult to make because lab experiments on the direct phenomenon are impossible and natural experiments are never perfect. You have to have a large effect that carries across a lot of different situations before you can make a case, and even then it’s difficult to disentangle it from other effects. There certainly may be a correlation between firearms and violent crime, but I haven’t seen it proven, and I would guess it’s smaller than a number of other factors. It’s… Read more »
What? A guy can’t say thanks?
Jonathan wrote: I repeat – they simply took out the 1/3 of the no-issue states with the lowest crime numbers so that they could then claim “states that banned concealed carry have violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average”. Do you see how dishonest it is to use that statistic? They got the number by purposely excluding HALF of the actual no-issue states, specifically the ones with the lowest crime rates, while failing to exclude any shall-issue states that also have “small populations and geographic isolation” (like, say, North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont, or Maine), then try to… Read more »
Note how Katecho feels free to use the EXACT same deception that gunfacts uses, even after I pointed it out? You quote the 2 highest-violence no-carry states as if that proves anything, while purposely ignoring the low-violence no-carry states. Why isn’t quoting the very low violent crime numbers for Hawaii and Rhode Island, clear no-issue states, an equally good argument? I’m not sure why you use 2004 numbers either. There are numbers for 2011 available. 2004 was more than a decade ago. You quote the numbers for higher-crime states with high gun control (Illinois, Maryland) as if that proves your… Read more »
You quote the 2 highest-violence no-carry states as if that proves anything, while purposely ignoring the low-violence no-carry states. Why isn’t quoting the very low violent crime numbers for Hawaii and Rhode Island, clear no-issue states, an equally good argument? Race. Illinois was 542.9, Chicago Maryland was 700.5, Baltimore and District of Columbia was 1371.2. DC. Black males commit the majority of gun crimes. Those three “states” cities within them are notoriously high-crime. Hawaii and Rhode-island do not have the large urban concentration of young black males that commit the overwhelming number of gun crimes. Let’s go further. I bet… Read more »
Katecho claimed that I had to retract my argument. There wasn’t a single bit of your data that changed my argument. The data showed the largest drops (both absolute and ratio) BEFORE CCP, a SLOWER drop after CCP, and a RISE just 4-5 years after CCP. Your claim that it didn’t show anything independent of the CCP was only based on your claim that some imaginary hypothetical mathematical formula that you yourself say you don’t even know about could somehow account for Pastor Wilson’s claim – even though neither Pastor Wilson nor the gunrights site he took the statistic from… Read more »
Show me your links.
Here is an easy rebutal given the data you present
Does your table show violent rapes committed?
Or does your table show violent rapes thwarted?
If the data shows rapes thwarted then you have a case.
If the data shows rapes commited then your claim is completely unsubstantiated by the available data.
Katecho claimed that I had to retract my argument. There wasn’t a single bit of your data that changed my argument.
The data shows commited rapes, yes?
If so, it does not show thwarted rapes does it?
Yet, you make the error of proclaiming that your data shows now correlation between concealed carry and crime because you are using an irrelevant data set
Show the links to the gunfacts data set. If you don’t have them admit it forthrightly.
What the heck are you talking about? You seem to be in your own world with this new argument.
Katecho has already witnessed to seeing the same data on gunfacts as I did, as he made clear himself.
It appears the quotation was from http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/concealed-carry/ as a Fact under the Myth: Concealed carry laws increase crime Headline. Fact: In Texas, murder rates fell 50% faster than the national average in the year after their concealed carry law passed. Rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year after enactment, and 500% faster in the second. 4 Assaults fell 250% faster in the second year. 5 The ‘5’ is a hyperlink to a footnote here: 5. Bureau of Justice Statistics, online database, reviewing Texas and U.S. violent crime from 1995-2001. There is no information (that I see) on how… Read more »
Timothy, you read it wrong again. Look again. Pastor Wilson’s claim about Texas and the gunfacts claim you just cited are not the same thing. It is obvious that despite the fact that they use the same numbers, they are making two completely different claims, and that Pastor Wilson’s claim is clearly false. You’ve constantly been trying to be the judge of my statements in this dialogue, and you’re constantly proving that you cannot read these statements accurately, and often do not appear to read them honestly. The mistakes you keep making with numbers and statistics and supposed imaginary equations,… Read more »
You wrote: Look again. Pastor Wilson’s claim about Texas and the gunfacts claim you just cited are not the same thing. It is obvious that despite the fact that they use the same numbers, they are making two completely different claims, and that Pastor Wilson’s claim is clearly false. Pastor Wilson wrote: In Texas, the first year after concealed carry passed, their rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year than before, and 500% faster in the second year. The point to be made here is that we are not just measuring the effect of guns in active use,… Read more »
The fact that you still can’t acknowledge that in the first year after concealed carry passed, Texas’s rape rate clearly fell SLOWER than it had the year before, and just as slow in the second year, is why it’s worthless to dialogue with you. You looked at the data every way possible, the rate was clearly SLOWER every way you looked at it, now you see the original claim and can clearly see that Pastor Wilson misquoted it…and you still won’t admit that the statement was obviously wrong. By the way, the “lie” was that states that ban concealed carry… Read more »
The fact that you still can’t acknowledge that in the first year after concealed carry passed, Texas’s rape rate clearly fell SLOWER than it had the year before I posted the data showing that. Of course I acknowledge the trend and I am genuinely curious about where the competing claim comes from. This does NOT rebut the claims made by gunfacts.com I am NOT saying the claims by gunfacts.com are true or false because I do not have access to the data they used or their methodology. I DO KNOW that your data and methodology cannot refute their claim in… Read more »
Timothy, PLEASE get someone you trust, a former teacher or someone else who can understand these things, to read these comments and explain them too you. Every line you said in that comment is so irrelevant it’s ridiculous, and shows that you’ve been unable to understand just about everything that’s going on or are purposely being obtuse in order to make an argument. The “completing claim” is a false claim from Pastor Wilson. It was a mistake. The claims are different. There’s no competing data/methodology to show you because it doesn’t exist. The gunfacts.info claim about Texas is ridiculous and… Read more »
Jonathan now:
The gunfacts.info claim is NOT the same as Pastor Wilson’s claim….
Jonathan then: https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/ring-up-the-devil.html#comment-2652826419
Really tough to say that Preston got his “head handed to him” on
statistics when all three statistics that Pastor Wilson cut-and-pasted
were blatantly misleading and didn’t even come close to proving his
point.The claim “States that have banned concealed carry have
violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average” was
copied-and-pasted straight from http://www.gunfacts.info.
You have no credibility Jonathan.
Timothy, the comment you linked is from 5 days ago, when I DID believe that Pastor Wilson had copy-and-pasted all three claims, and was still taking his claim at face value. It wasn’t until I tried to further research the claims on my own that I realized that Pastor Wilson made a different claim than the gunfacts.info claim. That happened 3 days ago, and I told you at the very moment I realized it: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/dougwils/ring_up_the_devil/#comment-2656943628 I hadn’t realized exactly what they did wrong until I did research in direct response to this comment, but I can certainly prove my point.… Read more »
I hadn’t realized exactly what they did wrong until I did research in direct response to this comment, but I can certainly prove my point. The clearly false claim in Pastor Wilson’s post was a combination of a rather bad error by Pastor Wilson made on top of a clear abuse of statistics in the first place. Again, I can prove this, so don’t take my bet. You can prove this by citing the statistics used and the methodology employed by the people you disagree with. It appears to me that Pastor Wilson did get those numbers from that page.… Read more »
I’m sorry to have gotten condescending there.
Given the quality of your arguments I wouldn’t trouble yourself.
Your claim that Black males commit the majority of gun crimes is false. Your claim that large urban concentration of young black males commit the overwhelming number of gun crimes is false. I’m not going to dialogue with you on race issues, because you have shown yourself unable to dialogue on them. You blamed “welfare blacks” and “illegal Mexicans” for an obvious error by Pastor Wilson that had nothing to do with either. You blamed a rise in rape rates in Texas in 2000-2002 on Black people fleeing Hurricane Katrina, even though that didn’t even happen until 2005. You claimed… Read more »
While speaking at the Aspen Institute, Mr. Bloomberg, 72, said 95 percent of murders fall into a specific category: a male minority between the ages of 15 and 25, The Aspen Times reported. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/8/sughed-michael-bloomberg-suggests-disarming-minori/ Take it up with Bloomberg. Or these guys. http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime/19439 The analysis It’s true that around 13 per cent of Americans are black, according to the latest estimates from the US Census Bureau. And yes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black offenders committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008. Only 45 per cent of the offenders were white.… Read more »
You lied repeatedly again, provided “cites” that do NOT make the claims that you made, and provide rationales for some of your race statements that obviously were NOT what you were claiming in the original post. Anyone can look up your cites or google your quotes and verify what I’m saying. I’m simply not going to dialogue with you on this subject. You’ve proven that you can’t be trusted on it.
It is clear that large urban concentrations of young Black males have an outsized influence on crime rates that large urban concentrations of young Jewish males do not. You call this a lie. It is entirely scientific, when presented with raw data such as you presented to ask oneself, “What factors could be influencing this data that we are not seeing here?” As for your dialogue with me, I don’t care; It is enough that I expose the paucity of your ‘reasoning’. Let me be clear. If the data from gunfacts IS wrong, I want to know why. That includes… Read more »
The cites you claim, besides being proof of nothing (seriously, a quote from a speech?) are NOT making the false claims you originally made. Let me cite those again so that your attempts to distort away from them are not hidden. You jump to blame Black people whenever you could. You blamed “welfare blacks” and “illegal Mexicans” for an obvious statistical error by Pastor Wilson that had nothing to do with race at all. You blamed a rise in rape rates in Texas in 2000-2002 on Black people fleeing Hurricane Katrina to Houston, even though that didn’t even happen until… Read more »
Jonathan wrote:
These were lies…
They where statements. I stand by them.
It is apparent that whenever your worldview is challenged by competing narratives that you resort to shaming and bluster. When shaming and bluster fails, you attempt to silence (your ‘bet’ on one years no commenting).
When that fails, you bravely run away in an attempt to maintain your ‘virtue’.
Thank you Jonathan. I have never debated a Social Justice Warrior until now. I would keep your rhetorical scalp as a trophy, but its not worth having around. sad.
At this point, perhaps I should just consider it a badge of honor to be regarded as a liar by Jonathan. Jonathan has eloped with his own fantasies concerning what he assumes I must be arguing. I’m simply agreeing with Timothy that the pink jello doesn’t cause gelatinous diseases, and that Jonathan’s own data shows both a lack of correlation, as well as lack of causation. I used the 2004 data because that’s the data that the gunfacts website referenced in their stat. Hardly deceptive for me to do so. Jonathan seems to think that someone has denied that Hawaii… Read more »
Pastor Wilson stated “States that have banned concealed carry have violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average.” That statement is a lie. It is completely untrue. The fact that someone somewhere else said, “But it is true if you just don’t count any of the no-carry states with low violent crime rates!” doesn’t magically make a lie true. It’s like claiming that “Democrats have fewer abortions than Republicans”, then claiming you’re justified because you once read it somewhere (without noting that the place you read it had a tiny footnote which added, “As long as you don’t… Read more »
I used the 2004 numbers because that’s what the gunfacts website used for their statistic. Nothing nefarious about it. The gunfacts website also plainly notes that they didn’t include Hawaii and Rhode Island, and they indicated their reasons for not doing so, so Jonathan will need to look elsewhere for his conspiracy theories. It seems Jonathan is struggling to address me correctly because he has raced ahead in his own mind to assume arguments that I haven’t made. This is similar to the problems he had in addressing statistics related to the minimum wage issue. Neither Wilson or I have… Read more »
Pastor Wilson stated “States that have banned concealed carry have violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average.” That statement is a lie. It is completely untrue. The fact that someone somewhere else said, “But it is true if you just don’t count any of the no-carry states with low violent crime rates!” doesn’t magically make a lie true. It’s like claiming that “Democrats have fewer abortions than Republicans”, then claiming you’re justified because you once read it somewhere (without noting that the place you read it had a tiny footnote which added, “As long as you don’t… Read more »
Jonathan has assailed us with his studies and statistics unrelated to arguments that Wilson has actually made, but I wonder if he would circle back to Wilson’s actual argument and consider that: Since 2007, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared from 4.6 million to over 12.8 million, and murder rates have fallen from 5.6 killings per 100,000 people to just 4.2, about a 25 percent drop, according to the report from the Crime Prevention Research Center. “Murder rates drop as concealed carry permits soar”, Washington Times, July, 2015 Given Jonathan’s outbursts and accusations, I feel it necessary to… Read more »
katecho,
I thought that you might also be interested in this research. It is fairly new:
https://www.lris.com/2016/05/03/this-study-found-race-matters-in-police-shootings-but-the-results-may-surprise-you/
Talk to Gary Kleck about it – if you don’t believe me on CCP, believe him. I’m done arguing statistics with you because it’s a black hole that goes on forever – you don’t want to ever give an inch no matter how clearly wrong you (or the person you’re defending) is, you will constantly move the goalposts whenever you don’t see another way out, and you seem to be more concerned with YOU makes the argument rather than the facts contained in the argument you make. No more.
I’m done arguing statistics with you because it’s a black hole that goes on forever
Black to you, a dazzling sun to me. I like clarity, you are temperamentally incapable of it.
“When guns are grandchilded, only grandchildren will have guns.”?
Only grandchildren have guns now!????(?)
It’s just that not all grandchildren have them.
(And some of them should not!)????
Oh! And I think it’s the case that only outlaws have statistics now anyway.
Think Jonathan Gruber and Obama care.????
How about a new bracelet: “WWPD”
(What Would Phinehas Do.)
I think another semi-full of fainting couches would be ordered quickly.
Looking up his column, he’s arguing against using statistics by using statistics, and in accusing our gracious host of evading the topic, he’s at the same time evading the answers he’s gotten. He’s also recycling the tired “this many kids die from guns each day”, ignoring the fact that most of these “kids” are gangbangers in the inner city. He’s also refusing to acknowledge the flaws in the papers he’s citing. A great example is how the FBI study of whether armed citizens can stop mass killings admits that most of them occur in gun free zones where it is… Read more »
Gang banger deaths in the inner city are clearly caused by gun-toting cowboys in Idaho.
That’s why I haven’t been able to take this topic seriously for about thirty years or so.
Without necessarily indicting the gun-toting cowboys in Idaho, where do you believe that gang-bangers in the inner-city get their guns?
“The vast majority of criminally used guns come from a combination of direct legal purchases, straw purchases, and black market purchases.”
J’, wouldn’t you agree that your statement here also sounds like where gang bangers get their drugs? I think it does inform the discussion to say that prescription drug abuse shares some common ground with legal gun abuse. Both prescription drugs and legal gun sales are under some amount of government control. Yet both can still be abused, within a fairly high level of existing control.
Both prescription drugs and legal guns are a good thing, when used properly.
Yes, both prescription drugs and legal guns are a good thing, when used properly. Besides that, I don’t see what the point is that you’re making in your statement. Prescription drugs in bulk, for instance, are regulated much more heavily than guns are (the # of people allowed to buy prescription drugs in bulk is much smaller than the # of people allowed to buy guns, and even in small amounts the reasons you have to give and conditions that you’re supposed to have for buying prescription drugs are much more specific than the reasons you have to give for… Read more »
I suppose that my point is that you and I are not far apart , if at all, on some fundamentals. You might not be far apart from others commenting here. “Properly” is the difficult thing to achieve. There is some variation in “properly” from person to person. Law is supposed to apply to all of us without variation. Perhaps the best way to deal with guns is a “proper” culture in conjunction with “proper” law .
Tough to achieve on this topic!
What’s your evidence that “most” kids who die from guns are gangbangers? And no, that FBI study did not admit that most of them occur in “gun free zones where it is impossible for a lawfully armed citizen to be.” At least, I read the study and if that line was anywhere, I certainly missed it. It’s possibly correct, but it’s close – I count somewhere around half of the incidents as being in places where a private person with a CCP could have been around. 73 of the 160 incidents occurred in areas of commerce. The majority of those… Read more »
Look at the document. It clearly spells out which deaths are accidental, and which are intentional. Of those 3200 gun deaths per year among young people–thankfully much lower than the 4500 or so each year we had 20 years back if memory serves–only about 64 were accidental. Poke around; you will find it’s mostly gang/drug violence.
I think you’re mixing up under-14 accidental deaths and under-18 accidental deaths. From what I can tell, the under-18 accidental gun deaths is around 100 per year. As far as the idea that the 3200 gun deaths are most gang violence though, that’s ridiculously false. There were only about 2000 deaths due to gang violence TOTAL in America each year – that includes ALL ages and ALL methods of killing, not just guns (source – National Gang Center). According to the US Department of Justice, 24% of the victims in these cases are juveniles – so now we’re down to… Read more »
Statistics are actually a good thing. We tell anecdotes to support a position and what are statistics but a collection of anecdotes. The problem is the misuse of them. While I probably don’t side with his position on violence and guns, Jonathan showed how tricky the whole situation is. Yet this takes a lot of time, and there may be other issues not identified. People often have strong opinions on what the data says when the data is vastly insufficient or incomplete. Different people use the same data and come to different conclusions. Excluding data is legitimate for various reasons… Read more »
There might be an easier methodology, but it would be anecdotal. That in an of itself is not problematic since any statistical research into human behavior is anecdotal, including the collection of law enforcement statistics. It always follows a GIGO model.
The easier model: ask men who deal with violent behavior regularly and often about what works, and what does not.
More often than not they will tell you that a pleasant attitude is less safe than a pleasant attitude and artillery.
I think anecdotal information is also valuable (though lots of anecdotes equals statistical information).
I was mainly addressing the problems with statistics—or rather, the difficulty in getting valuable information from statistical data.
In concurrence… “…though lots of anecdotes equals statistical information” That was one of the points that i was trying to establish. Anecdotes create datum points, which create stats (in the realm of behavior), and yet we have the oft repeated phrase that anecdotal information is unreliable and so we have to rely upon “research” based upon statistics. All of this is still subject to GIGO well before the researcher adds his prejudice to the analysis. “Oh, they would not do that.” Really: “Why would a public research university…deliberately hide its work? Because, as lead researcher Amy Townsend-Small explained, “our funders,… Read more »
1. I’m pretty sure Michael Bellesiles was a historian, not a scientist. 2. He was enormously discredited for faking research – had a 3-professor panel condemn his errors, was forced to resign from Emory University, and had an award he had won rescinded by Columbia University. The National Endowment for the Humanities heavily criticized the Newberry Award for having offered him a minor grant early in the scandal’s development, demanded their name be removed from the reward, 3. For years after that incident he was shunned by the academic community. The negative response and outrage against his fables was enormous.… Read more »
If anything, this is a good example of the absolute non-objective bias on the part of the scientists as well. In the absence of any evidence of causation, and in the presence of their own research showing no causation, this statement: “That’s not to say contamination has not happened in this area or that it hasn’t happened in some of our participants’ wells since we stopped our study last year.” They readily admit that they hoped it did. They still do. It was reported in February because that is when it happened. Do not read any prejudice into it. Just… Read more »
RFB, EVERYONE in the world has non-objective bias. That’s part of being human. Your claim that “That is not science” because the researchers had a personal opinion is a ridiculous bar to clear that wouldn’t be possible for anyone. A human could lie about not having any personal opinions, or could try to hide their personal opinions…but they can’t avoid having them. And as long as they have them, isn’t it better that they openly admit them? The question of producing legitimate science work is not the impossible criteria of having “no bias whatsoever”. I doubt that even a robot… Read more »
Do you speak to all those who deal with violent behavior regularly, or just those who have pre-selected violence as part of their means for dealing with violent behavior and who already assumed it was a necessary part of their toolkit? In my experience most people who do Christian service in inner-city America, in violent slums overseas, and on peacemaking groups in war-torn countries are pretty anti-violence as a solution to the violence they encounter, especially the ones who put themselves in dangerous situations the most often. It’s a rather small pool (only a very select few wealthy Western Christians… Read more »
By deal with it I do not mean those who talk about it, or who are unintentional victims of it. By unintentional, I mean those who have not placed themselves intentionally in a place of danger. By unintentional, I do mean those who are wise like God says: “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” Those who intentionally place themselves into danger are complicit in the evil that befalls them. Those who play on the railroad tracks are are a much greater risk of being hit by a train. That is… Read more »
“By unintentional, I mean those who have not placed themselves intentionally in a place of danger. By unintentional, I do mean those who are wise like God says: ‘The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.’ Those who intentionally place themselves into danger are complicit in the evil that befalls them.” I can’t imagine what you think about the places that Jesus and his disciples, and much of the early church that followed them all chose to place themselves within. Not to mention Andre Trocme, Corrie Ten Boom and a million other… Read more »
and a million other people who worked to save targets from the Nazis
The nazis where defeated by men with guns. The Communists still rule china, the stand-alone citizen did not defeat them. The whites in S.A are now on the verge of genocided out of existence by the communists in S.A. They should defend themselves with guns.
Your insistence that pacifism is the only Christian response is not convincing to me.
It seems to me that your theology relies on the suffering Christ to the exclusion of the risen Christ.
The Nazis were “defeated”. Was that the goal? Were you satisfied? 60,000,000 people died in WWII, the vast majority of which died after we entered the war. 6 million of Europe’s 9 million Jews were killed, virtually all of them after we entered the war. Of the 3 million who were not killed, over 2.5 million had been ferreted out or hidden away via non-violent means before the Allies ever achieved “victory”. Only 200-300 thousand were freed from camps by the allies – less than 5% of the total population. During peace-time the Germans hadn’t even been trying to kill… Read more »
The idea that White South Africans are “on the verge of being genocided out of existence” is ridiculous.
http://www.genocidewatch.org/southafrica.html
And yet you count that as a “win” because we “defeated” someone in a war.
Yes, I do.
When Charles Martel won against the Muslims, he did a good thing.
When the Left Wing Nazis where defeated, it was a good thing.
Some things are worth fighting and killing for. Evil exists; killing it, when justified, is a moral good and an exercise in Christian virtue.
Here’s some facts on SA a little more solid than a poster: https://africacheck.org/reports/are-white-afrikaners-really-being-killed-like-flies/ Here’s another: http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-south-africa-racism-20150531-story.html “Left Wing Nazis”. You really go all-out in this political identification stuff. 60,000,000 died in World War II. How many of them were “evil”? Was killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in already-defeated nations also part of the exercise in Christian virtue? Do people who kill in war tend to come back more virtuous than when they left? And did the “win” not directly result in the “wins” for the Soviet, Chinese, North Korean, Vietnamese, and Cambodian governments which you also see as “evil”?… Read more »
Here’s some facts on SA a little more solid than a post
How do you know they are more solid than genocidewatch?
“Left Wing Nazis”.
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462143348&sr=8-1&keywords=Liberal+Fascism
60,000,000 died in World War II. How many of them were “evil”?
Mao killed about 40,000,000 . You would not kill Mao to save 40,000,000
http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Mao
I don’t think you get the point. Your “victory” in WWII immediately led to Mao. You make up imaginary hypothetical situations, like that I could predict exactly what Mao would do with some sort of future vision, walk up and simply kill Mao, and that would have no effect on future violence, and he wouldn’t be replaced by someone even more violent. My obedience is determined by the words and example of Christ, not by thinking through impossible made-up hypothetical situations. But from observing reality, I see that a commitment to violence leads us to kill a lot of people… Read more »
I don’t think you get the point. Your “victory” immediately led to Mao. Mao led to Mao. Evil exists and, morally, it must be confronted and defeated. , I see that a commitment to violence leads us to kill a lot of people all over the world whether we know that they’re going to commit violence or not, leads us to taking out millions of souls in “collateral damage” who weren’t even the actual target of our “cleansing of evil”, leads to retribution, hatred, new leaders committed to violence, and a general global attitude of “gain power and use it… Read more »
Violent people will rage against each other no matter what I or any other committed non-violent Christian does. I don’t believe we’ll ever be so numerous as to end war. People that you support will keep declaring them for at least my lifetime. But in terms of actually saving lives? In terms of actually working towards a world where the Nazi powers don’t gain power in the first place, or the Stalins/Maos/Pol Pots/Il-Sung’s don’t immediately replace them, or one violent war isn’t immediately followed by another? It’s the non-violent people committed to following Christ, not the people with guns, who… Read more »
Why do you assert that gun-owners are violent people? We own them to deter violence, not to initiate it. One well placed bullet to Mao’s head killing him would have saved the lives of 40,000,000 million souls. Mao, who quipped, “political power comes from the barrel of a gun’ . Why give that evil man that power over you? To do so is a failure of Christian prudence. I think we are squarely in the ‘yes/and’ area of Chesterton. Yes, pacifism can be a good, yes defensive violence can be a good. They are both a good when wielded with… Read more »
Gun owners are not violent people. I’ve mentioned several times that I myself am a gun owner. Only gun owners who own guns with the idea of using them for violence on others, or threatening to do so, are violent people. And no, you cannot make that claim about killing Mao automatically saving lives. We’ve killed three ISIS leaders, and ISIS has only become more brutal, not less. We used violence to dispose a moderate socialist Cambodian leader, only to see him replaced with Pol Pot, possibly the most brutal dictator in history. We eliminated Ghadaffi in Libya only to… Read more »
For all you know, an American assassination of Mao may have led to
nuclear war, World War III, and 200 million deaths instead of 40
million.
Or it may had led to the preservation of 40 million lives.
I follow Christ’s teachings and example, no matter what my enemy does.
If you think that is what He teaches, I will not try to dissuade you of it. We can disagree in good faith.
I say use as many statistics as possible. It’s impossible to get anywhere without knowing the facts first. But there are plenty of problem statistics for the gun-rights side, so he could have simply brought those up.
Matt, stats are not helpful when the discussion is comprised of shouting and heated rhetoric. Mark Twain has a great quote on statistics, you should read it. With firearms, the only good stats are the ones cutting the X. If you did not pay attention to high school science and physics or if you are gaining money or prestige by the climate change crowd, “The science is SETTLED!” If you are not worshiping mother earth or receiving huge amounts of money for embracing climate control, then you know that the statistics presented to the public are falsified and not anywhere… Read more »
Somewhat relevant.
Preston said, “women are 5 times more likely to be a victim of domestic homicide when her partner owns a gun; 1/3 of all murders of American women are committed by their intimate partners” Yes. And than there are all the gun suicides, mostly men, which far outweigh gun homicides. Really tragic, but it is actually men who are being offed by guns in the largest numbers, both as a result of homicide and suicide. So, what I often wonder is, is it healthy for us to have a gun culture that idealizes and romantisizes guns as an extension of… Read more »
We have problems with suicides in men (M:F ~7:2) here though not the US gun culture. So only 10% of suicides are by guns. Most are hangings.
As you can see by the pic of the cute armed granddaughter, that’s not the sort of thing Doug is promoting. ;^)
Rather than banning guns, I’d like us to actually look at the narrative we are teaching.
Do you own guns?
Could you be projecting a fear of healthy male libedo onto guns? As long as we’re psychoanalyzing, I mean.
Why would I fear a healthy male libedo? It’s the unhealthy ones I’m concerned about.
What narrative are “we” teaching and who is “we?”
Memi, l am about as certain as I can be, that the 1/3 stat. Is a deliberate urban myth.
(Aka “activist myth.) Google Glenn Keslers dec. 18, 2013 fact checker article re: Eric Holder and his repeat of bogus DV / female minority’s homicide statistics. It addresses a related fabrication that might be the source of the 1/3 stat you mention.
I don’t disagree with your point about teaching a good, accurate and responsible narrative about firearms.
In some ways, that is what this discussion is about!????
You mean the “1/3 of all murders of American women are committed by their intimate partners”? It is a myth, or rather a statistical distortion designed to confirm a narrative. It is true in the sense that about a third of woman murdered are murdered by intimate partners, BUT, what it doesn’t mention is how protected and sheltered women really are compared to men. Men are something like 96% of all homicide victims. So women, rather than being perpetual victims of random male violence, are actually well cared for and protected, at least within Western culture. That leftover 4%, about… Read more »
Memi, the 2013 Washington post fact checker article exposed a fabricated statistic re: minority women , and murder, that then morphed in the activist sub culture , to “all women”. In any case, you understood my point that stats are sometimes distorted to confirm a narrative !
“Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police’s, not only are you wrong — since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so — but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we… Read more »
“How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to
protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself?”
That’s a good point and one I believe Wilson has stated much better than Preston.
Where do you get the strange idea that someone who doesn’t shoot to kill somebody is assuming “no responsibility” for their own life?
There are a LOT of ways to protect your own life besides carrying a gun and shooting people, as the majority of unarmed US citizens demonstrate every day. The false assumption that the only options are “shoot with a gun or nothing” are indicative of how relying on guns often leads the pro-gun-killing crowd to fail to learn about literally everything else possible.
Like calling the cops who bring the guns…
Guessing you haven’t been following any of the rest of the conversation from the last few days?
“There are a LOT of ways to protect your own life besides carrying a gun and shooting people.”
are you assuming those who do carry guns don’t employ all the same methods to protect themselves in addition to the “leaded” option?
Yes, that is true for many of them. It comes out when they say things like “Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun” or “So you’re just going to stand there and watch when someone rapes and kills your wife?” If they are so focused on the gun that they can’t even IMAGINE that you could do something without a gun, then I don’t see how they’re going to suddenly come up with a non-gun response in the heat of the moment. This is part of what I wrote on that subject… Read more »
This is really then a discussion not of guns but of justifiable resistance of any kind. Guns, knives, or fists are all on the table as potentially sinful reactions to assault of any kind. Any kind of active resistance (tackle the assailant, grab the gun/knife etc.) would be a supposed violation of Christs “turn the other cheek” command. “I would have tackled the gunman officer but that would have ruined my witness to him, I’m an ambassador for Christ you know…” The question is then (which I’m sure you’ve already answered elsewhere) is any defensive resistance allowed and if so… Read more »
Except none of that is what I’ve argued at any point. I don’t base any of my positions on any single verse, but on the full witness of Jesus Christ and his apostles. I believe that what is forbidden is hate of my enemy, actions against my enemy that are not undertaken in love, and any judgement of my enemy that causes me to believe that I can choose life or death for him, or potentially send him to eternal damnation while he is in the midst of mortal sin. I could make an argument for that, but it’s long… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: It’s when we cease to consider our enemy as a human being to be loved in God’s imagine, when we choose “you deserve to live, and you deserve to die”, when we think we can separate the wheat from the weeds and take someone else’s life instead of risking our own, when we cease to try to combat evil by actions that demonstrate God’s goodness, that I believe we step over the line. Who is “we”? In his phrasing, it doesn’t appear that Jonathan has left any room for a God-honoring civic magistrate to actually bear and employ… Read more »
How could a Christian become a civil magistrate if Christianity is (entirely) pacifist?
This is the “ring up the devil” dilemma that Wilson has pointed out. How can Jonathan call upon the State to do something that he refuses to do on moral grounds? That seems hypocritical, at best.
Jonathan also needs to explain how the State can use sword-bearing violence, to act as God’s ministering agent of wrath, if violence against criminals is such an unloving and immoral behavior? Jonathan hasn’t reconciled his non-violence stance with all of Scripture.
“I believe that a tackle that stops a murder, a grabbing and pulling off of a person that stops an attempted sexual assault, a restraining of a person that prevents a suicide – all can be undertaken in love of both the instigator and the intended victim.” Whatever the merit of your overall position, there are problems with that paragraph. You equate murder with suicide and say to the would-be murder or rapist as you would say to the suicidal “I won’t let you do this thing…to yourself”? You almost make it sound like helping the victim is a secondary… Read more »
John, what you’re hearing and what I’m writing don’t appear to match. I named three different situations. I didn’t “equate” any of them. One is allowed to list different scenarios without implying that they’re all the same – in fact, the very reason I listed 3 different ones was because they’re obviously not the same at all. I said that it can be undertaken in love of BOTH the victim and the perpetrator. I absolutely never made helping the victim a “secondary consideration”, and I absolutely never said that I was “not too serious” about it. I am proud to… Read more »
I’d be delighted to hear those ways, if you’re willing to share them, and considering that you didn’t answer the question when asked in the previous thread.
I not only did list some of the ways in the previous thread, but I copied-and-pasted part of that response in a reply to this very comment 3 hours before you wrote your comment. I don’t blame you, Disqus appears very odd to me in what comments they show or don’t show in any particular time, but it’s probably better not to make such accusations. “1) ‘The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’People who wholeheartedly support the ‘kill them with the gun!’ side of the debate reject the… Read more »
So if you were in a situation in which you or those for whom you are responsible were in imminent danger of death of grievous bodily harm at the hands of another person, you would tackle him or try to talk him down.
Alright. Fair enough. I suspect that since you are male, that will work much better for you than it would for an average woman.
Thanks for answering.
What is not clear is whether Jonathan also thinks that the sword-bearing minister of God’s wrath is likewise strictly prohibited from actually using that sword. If not, why not? Or does Jonathan simply mean that law enforcement must first employ negotiation, prayer, and special tackling maneuvers before they are then permitted to use the sword?
I gave four potential responses out of dozens, and you respond seeming to claim that that there must only be two options available to me. And then you assume that a woman has less effective options. You are one of many people who continue to show that those who rely on guns tend to rely on them absolutely, and haven’t even done the basic thinking necessary to know the myriad other ways that you can engage to stop violence. Look up Dr. Liviu Librescu or Adel Termos or Angie O’Gorman or Antoinette Tuff or Dave Andrews, for instance. Those are… Read more »
In the gun debate, statistics are largely used by each side in an attempt to prove that their position is more effective, more utilitarian — that either prohibiting or encouraging private gun ownership will result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
But if people have a genuine liberty right to own and carry arms for the lawful purpose of self-defesnse, the utilitarian argument is the wrong one to be making. (Snyder again. http://www.thegunzone.com/rkba/noc-rev.html)
Rights don’t rise or fall on statistics.
“…the utilitarian argument is the wrong one to be making”
Another good point.
And if killing other people out of a desire to preserve your own physical life is out of line with Jesus, it’s still out of line no matter what a nation’s constitution says.
I do agree that the utilitarian argument is the wrong one for both sides to be making. It only makes sense from a utilitarian moral perspective, which is almost always non-Godly in focus.
“if killing other people out of a desire to preserve your own physical life is out of line with Jesus, it’s still out of line no matter what a nation’s constitution says.”
Agreed. But I don’t think it is.
Jonathan wrote: And if killing other people out of a desire to reserve your own physical life is out of line with Jesus, it’s still out of line no matter what a nation’s constitution says. If it is out of line, why does God give the sword of His vengeance to the State, to be a minister of His wrath against criminals? Recall that the sword is an instrument of death and wrath and just vengeance, not an instrument of correction and rehabilitation. Jonathan says some very pious sounding things, until we try to reconcile them with what God actually… Read more »
God gave those who captured, whipped, and killed our Savior on the cross the very means to do such a thing, and even deemed that it was necessary that they do it, that they MUST do it. That does not mean that they were not judged for those very acts. More relevantly, God specifically said that He gave the sword to the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Persians, and other enemies of Israel in order to punish the Israelites for the wrong they had done (See Ezekiel 1-33, for example 16, 23, 29, Jeremiah 1-43, for example 21, Isaiah… Read more »
Jonathan seems to be taking the position that God gives the sword of His wrath to the civic magistrate, only to then hold them guilty whenever they actually use it. Jonathan provides a list of unrighteous civic rulers, apparently in an attempt to preclude the possibility of the civic magistrate actually using the sword righteously. Given this predicament, Jonathan would be a hypocrite to call the police to deal with a life-threatening attacker, since the police might use lethal violence, and thus be guilty of using the sword that God gave them in the first place. Perhaps Jonathan will clarify.… Read more »
But Pastor Wilson, your statistics WERE cooked. That was obvious with the slightest bit of research – in fact, if you had even just looked at the fine print on the very site you copy-and-pasted the stats from, you would have already known this Pastor Wilson’s statistics were false for far more than that lack of showing causation. The claim “States that have banned concealed carry have violent crime rates that are 11% above the national average” was copied-and-pasted straight from http://www.gunfacts.info. However, I looked it up, and it turned out to be made up. First off, there are only… Read more »
Here are the forcible rape numbers in Texas in the relevant period: I replied to this yesterday and the comment did not post. 1. If we take your Texas figures and convert them to percentages against Texas’ population figures there is indeed a decline (Texas population increased) and the ratio of crime to population decreased. If the raw numbers increased with the population increase, then you would have a point. Since they decreased the effect is larger than with a stable population (true? check my math here) 2. During this population increase, what percentages where of violent peoples? We know… Read more »
Here is where I get the population numbers https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/census.html Here are the population numbers for the period you selected (U.S. Census estimated):Texas population 1993 17996764 1994 18338319 1995 18679706 1996 19006240 1997 19355427 1998 19712389 1999 20044141 2000 20949316 <–900,000 added to population corresponding to jump you cite 2001 21334855 2002 21723220 2003 22103374 First and last year converted to percentages*. (* 100 (/ 9922.00 17996764.00 )) 0.0551321337547128 <—initial percentage (* 100 (/ 8508.00 22103374.00 )) 0.038491861016331716 <—final percentage. Note the increase in population at the point where the crime numbers increase. Despite this, notice the overall percentage decrease in… Read more »
Nice work. Let’s see if Jonathan will retract.
What is there for me to retract? Timothy’s population numbers don’t help Pastor Wilson’s claims AT ALL. Anyone who can read and understand Timothy’s comment, my comment, and Pastor Wilson’s original claim can easily see that Timothy misread the statistics badly and actually further proved my point. * Rapes still dropped fastest BEFORE the CCP law was passed (1993-1995), both in total numbers and as a % of population. * The decrease in rapes still slowed noticeably WHEN the CCP law was passed (1995-1999), both in total numbers and as a % of the population. * Rapes began to increase… Read more »
Ok, I don’t know where you got those numbers and I missed the “first year that concealed carry permits were granted in Texas” note. Here are the raw and percentages 993 | (* | 100(/ 9922.00 17996764.00)) 0.0551321337547128 | | 1994 | (* | 100(/ 9102.00 18338319.00)) 0.04963377504775656 | | 1995 | (* | 100(/ 8563.00 18679706.00)) 0.04584119257551484 | | 1996 | (* | 100(/ 8376.00 19006240.00)) 0.04406973709686924 | <—–CCP laws in effect | 1997 | (* | 100(/ 8011.00 19355427.00)) 0.041388908650788224 | | 1998 | (* | 100(/ 7913.00 19712389.00)) 0.040142267890512916 | | 1999 | (* | 100(/ 7614.00… Read more »
You get the same numbers I get, though I didn’t double-check your population numbers, but I trust you on them. The numbers show exactly what I said they show. You can’t “absolutely” know that CCP laws had no effect from those numbers alone. Despite the fact that rape rates clearly drop fastest 1993-1995 BEFORE the CCP law was in effect, that the decrease slowed considerably in 1996, the moment CCP laws went into effect, and actually reversed and started to increase a few years later, you would need a very in-depth study to know for sure that CCP laws had… Read more »
Hi Jonathan, But what you can know, for certain, was that the claim of Pastor Wilson, which was “In Texas, the first year after concealed carry passed, their rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year than before, and 500% faster in the second year.” is an outright falsehood. And that absolutely no look at the mere raw data like that could come even close to supporting his assertion. The 93% faster and 500% faster describes an acceleration. I.e. the second derivative of the function. I.e. we have a “rate of change” vs a “change in the rate of… Read more »
No, Timothy, that’s obviously not what they’re claiming at all. No one would make such a ridiculous claim with those numbers – there’s absolutely no way to do that with those numbers and you would never analyze that data with any function that could come remotely close to doing what you want it to do anyway. It’s clear that Pastor Wilson simply stated something that was factually untrue. I would be willing to bet you a 1-year ban bet (whoever loses cannot comment on this site for 1 year) that they did not do that. If you can prove they… Read more »
No, Timothy, that’s obviously not what they’re claiming at all. How do you know that? And the fact that you are going to such great lengths .. Not great at all; I think like this all the time when I am writing or debugging software programs. I must take what I see on the page at face-value. Thinking like this is second nature to me. … to try to defend a claim that I can easily show was made in with an obvious error I am analyzing your claims. You will not that when I overlooked a thing, I acknowledged… Read more »
Timothy, if this is “second nature” to you, then why aren’t you applying your “second nature” to Pastor Wilson’s original and obviously false claim? I can tell “they’re obviously not claiming that at all” because NO mathematical fitting could possibly turn those slow-downs in rape rates into accelerations in rape rates, and because such a loose stat that simply cites “Bureau of Justice Statistics” as the source is obviously not based on complex mathematical fit models that only exist in your own head. I repeat, there is NO mathematical fit that could possibly give the results that you’re claiming might… Read more »
Timothy, if this is “second nature” to you, then why aren’t you applying
your “second nature” to Pastor Wilson’s original and obviously false
claim?
I am. I have asked you for the same dataset that gunfacts used. Presumably they posted that. I want to know where you got it.
You say the numbers you got independently are the same, but I don’t know that as I cannot compare them.
I asked you before, I am repeating the request.
Where did you get the data in your rebuttal to Pastor Wilson’s claims?
Did you derive them yourself? or did you copy them from another website?
If you did copy them, what website did you copy them from?
thx
Huh? I already told you very clearly that I didn’t copy any such claims from other websites, nor have I seen these supposed “facts” debunked anywhere else. No need to go all bold when I answered you hours ago.
I got the raw numbers (which no one can derive themselves, obviously) directly from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and other online government websites, just like gunfacts says they did. I just posted the numbers in year-to-year context, rather than cherry-picking and warping them first.
So your numbers/dataset did NOT come from the gunfacts website.
You do not know that you have the numbers that they used to develop their claims; you posted numbers from a different source.
Do you have a link to the numbers that they used?
You use the term “cherry-picked”. Could there be valid reasons for choosing some sets over others that you discount as dishonest?
If I don’t have that dataset, (I presume you know where it is) then I don’t know if apt comparisons are being made.
They simply cite the Bureau of Justice Statistics. You and I both are using those numbers. We’re all working from the same data. I know how they got their false claims. I know how Pastor Wilson further distorted the false claim into something that was completely untrue, and not merely unreasonable and meaningless cherry-picking. If there is any valid reason for choosing two different crimes in different states and then focusing on the 2nd year after in one claim, on the 4th year after in a different claim, and ignoring all the other years before and after, it was not… Read more »
They simply cite the Bureau of Justice Statistics. You and I both are
using those numbers. We’re all working from the same data.
Link please.
1. But that decline does not track with ANYTHING related to CCP numbers. The decline was largest BEFORE the CCP law was even in effect, slowed the first year it came into effect, and stopped almost completely just 4 years after the CCP law came into effect. 2. No, your constant attempts to blame education problems and violence and abortion and politics and everything else on non-White people is tiring, and you have no evidence whatsoever that the #’s of non-White people is driving the rape numbers I posted. Most of all, you’re completely ignoring that Pastor Wilson’s numbers completely… Read more »
Did you check the percentages for each? or did you just look at raw counts?
Here are some actual statistics, if anyone really wants to make that the focus on their argument (which I think is misguided). Concealed Carry Permits “This research suggests that the rate at which CHLs (concealed handgun licenses) are issued and crime rates are independent of one another — crime does not drive CHLs; CHLs do not drive crime.” Texas A&M Public Health Professor Charles D Phillips in “Concealed Handgun Licensing and Crime in Four States” in the Journal of Criminology https://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/24/study-says-concealed-carry-permits-dont-affect-cri/ “The results provide no evidence that the [right to carry] laws reduce or increase rates of violent crime.” University… Read more »
From your New England article (as an example). Do you think this journal would print research that said other than guns are bad? So this is publication bias. Next Fifteen victims (3.6 percent) were killed under legally excusable circumstances. Four were shot by police acting in the line of duty. The rest were killed by another member of the household or a private citizen acting in self-defense. so is this homicide or not homicide? They seem to be included yet later the article says Although our case definition excluded the rare instances in which a nonresident intruder was killed by… Read more »
Bethyada, I posted 16 studies from 16 different researchers published in 12 different peer-reviewed journals in a diverse range of fields. Making a (false) claim that a single one of those journals wouldn’t post pro-gun research is a red herring. And you’re wrong about your attempted criticism. The phenomenon being studied in that article is increased risk of suicide/homicide for the homeowners. Of course intruders would not be included in those statistics – that’s not at all surprising, and doesn’t affect the case that the homeowners were more likely to be killed at all. But if you’re a homeowner, then… Read more »
It shows how much you misunderstand when you say, “Things like prior convictions, assault, drug use, domestic violence were associated with homicide yet controlling for these gave a higher OR. “Yes, because people who have been were somewhat more likely to be in homes WITHOUT guns than similar people without records, as it is illegal for them to even own them. Which is what I thought, except that the study says this Previous episodes of violence were reported more frequently by members of case households…. Physical fights in the home while household members were drinking and fighting severe enough to… Read more »
I tried to look into it, and you’re right that it isn’t immediately apparent which factors caused the adjusted odds ratio to move. I read through a few criticisms of and defenses of Kellerman, and none of the ones that I saw address that issue. However, I don’t consider even the crude ratio of 1.6 to be ~1. Did you check Dahlberg (1.9), Wiebe (1.4), Cummings (2.2), or Anglemeyer (2.0 average from reviewing the previous 4 studies and 2 others)? It looks like Kellerman is indeed an outlier on the high side, and something around 2.0 is more the norm.… Read more »
It might help you understand the “justifiable homicide” part if you read these cases. 27-year-old Ashley Doby, whose mom is a 911 dispatcher and dad is a long-serving police officer, was shot and killed by her mother when she mistook her for an intruder as she let herself in through the front door at 11:50pm. (Despite being a 911 dispatcher herself, she was so flustered that she failed to tell either 911 or her husband what happened, or even that her daughter had suffered a gunshot wound, until after the ambulance arrived.) She was not charged with homicide because it… Read more »
‘Democide’ the murder of a populace by its government.
The numbers in the 20’th century are over 100 million killed.
Put that ‘risk factor’ into the studies.
Are you suggesting that heavily armed populations have done a better job of resisting that than populations who tried other means of resistance? I don’t think you’d have a great case for that. Yemen, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq are some of the most heavily armed nations in the world. Lack of guns can definitely be an outcome of a democidal government (which will try to absolutely control everything in its citizenry), but I don’t know of any evidence whatsoever that it’s a cause. Non-violent resistance and violent resistance have been approximately equally effective in overthrowing governments in the 20th century… Read more »
No, Look again. Democide, the murder of the citizenry by the government. These governments used force to kill the people they did not want.
Russia, Germany, China, Cuba.
All disarmed.
We will keep our guns.
Noticed you didn’t have anything on your list that happened in your lifetime? Don’t know exactly how old your mom and dad are, but there’s a decent chance none of those even happened in your parents’ lifetime. And it’s a weird list. None of those four countries had a significant difference in gun ownership levels before/after the oppressive governments you name came into power. The Chinese people were generally too poor to have guns – there was never any mass disarmament before they imposed their horrifically destructive moves. Nazi Germany didn’t practice mass disarmament either, in fact the loosened gun… Read more »
I am not thinking statistically. I am noting that when a government decides to kill me, I want the ability to shoot back.
When they put you up against the wall (Bill Ayers phrase) you comfort yourself with the fact that your are statistically irrelevant.
To pivot back to the theological discussion, God made us free and as long as there is evil in this world (Hello Eric!) then we will bear our swords in our own defense.
Your argument fails to persuade me, mine yours.
You are a good guy though. God bless.
Well here in Australia in 1996 we had one of the biggest mass shootings of all time at Port Arthur in Tasmania. 35 dead. This elicited shock and horror from the general populace and empowered then prime minister John Howard to act. His government brought in new tough anti gun laws and initiated a gun buyback scheme. Yes there were protests. Some politicians (Rob Borbidge of Queensland) lost government because of it. Not everyone was happy but the overall feeling was one of civic duty for the greater good. Legislation was drafted, debated and enacted all within 4 months. Slowly… Read more »
You are now at the mercy of your government. When/if it turns tyrannical you will have no defense against it as it will be armed and you will not.
Tell us, what is the secular trend of your Australian government? Is it growing towards God or away from Him? Does it enshrine abortion in its laws? Sodomy? If it does, why do you expect the secular trend to turn away from these things and towards God? (Or do you even want such a thing?)
John 18:36
Romans 13:1-2
I don’t need a gun.
now where did that eye roll emoji go…???? There it is!
Are you on the right blog?
You only need a gun if you’re going to take your job of protecting your family seriously (though there are other good reasons for them).
A comment that obviously resonates substantially louder in the US than in Australia.
I do.
That’s not true. Monash University Shooting, Hectorville siege, Hunt family murders, Logan shooting, all mass shootings after Port Arthur. Also misleading because there has been successful mass killing with stabbing, blunt instrument, arson totaling in the 70s murdered, many more injured. To Timothy’s point, Australia’s largest mass killings were times like the Gippsland massacres.
Monash was 2 deaths and Hectorville 3. I guess it depends on your definition of what a ‘mass’ shooting is. There’s certainly no one running around with semi automatics blowing away dozens of innocent victims anymore.
There was also the Cairns child massacre in 2014. Eight children were killed. That probably doesn’t count though because those were stabbing murders, and Australians are not yet ready to surrender all their knives in such a display of consistency.
Whatever. I think the point stands.
As does mine.
To the theology of your stance.
Let me start by saying ‘pacifism (employed correctly) is a positive good’
I do not understand your theological basis for asserting that it is the only good (in these matters).
My position is that God is a ‘yes-and’ God. He is most merciful and most fearsome. The two go together. Chesterton’s Lion and Lamb, fully fierce, fully meek is a favorite illustration of mine. I think it encompasses both the pacifist and the warrior.
Thoughts?
Look this whole argument goes nowhere. Gun culture is so firmly entrenched in American life that it’s just not worth debating.
Again with the pious insistence that the evil is somehow external, in the gun, rather than an issue of the heart.
For a different take on the “gun culture”, have a gander at the statistics here. Gun culture indeed.
Thanks for the link; Concealed Carry people are good people.
Personally, I prefer open-carry people.
They point out the data issue I raised about Jonathan’s failed rebuttal; to wit:
Unfortunately, this analysis cannot attempt to quantify the positive
effect, if any, of the Texas Concealed Handgun Law, as there is no data
available regarding the number of crimes prevented or the number of
lives saved when a concealed handgun is used in self-defense.
The “None. Zip. Nada. Zero.” point? or some other point?
Cheap shot.
Not at all. Your interpretation of Scripture demands that you turn in your knives. Quit being a hypocrite.
Sorry. Hypocrite? That was uncalled for.
Not it wasn’t.
It was perfectly in keeping of what you demanded of me.
Now is your kingdom not of this world or not? If not, disarm yourself.
If you are going to preach to me about a thing you will not do then you are a hypocrite.
Own it.
I didn’t demand anything of you. I didn’t preach to you.
You quoted scripture in support of your position. You stated “I don’t need guns”
Well, you don’t need knives either do you?
By what principled reason are you refusing to disarm yourself of your murderous knives?
Why the double standard?
Sorry I just don’t have the energy.
fair enough.
Better make your points before knives are confiscated.
Better take your shots before guns are outlawed.
The liars are telling us that the evil is in the gun, or the knife, or the cards, or the dancing, or the alcohol; as if wickedness and sin was in some external object, rather than in the heart. God forbid that we examine our hearts. That might lead to repentance.
Or your definition of None. Zip. Nada. Zero.