U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 20, 2009 03:46 PM UTC
86 Comments
Too bad they didn’t print it. Maybe this is another example of the print media die off.
Any crank phone calls from the bazooka boys yet? I got a few when I printed a letter back in Denver. I don’t even remember what the topic was, but I vividly recall a message on the machine. What a mouth breather (literally); spewing Rushballs of platitudes and suggesting harm might befall me.
Sometimes I wonder if perhaps you’re just the product of someone’s verbal noise-generating program, producing random strings of words and posting them as though they were human-produced speech-acts. That would explain a lot.
You should have posted your comments to people like Colin in this thread.
Is that clear enough for you to understand Harvey?
I posted my comments to Colin in the thread in which Colin posted, on another forum. I didn’t post the link to the column. I doubt anything you’ll ever say will be “clear enough for me.” My feeble mind just doesn’t vibrate at such a refined cognitive frequency, I guess.
I just got a chance to finally read through it. Very eloquent. Very moving. Well done.
At least these appear to be civil people with just a different opinion.
That first guy (Colin?) certainly did read a lot into your essay.
At least no one (that I saw) threatened you.
A very moving, horrifying, fascinating book. There was so much I had forgotten about that horrible day.
The Jefferson County sheriff’s office and other Jeffco officials come out very badly in the book. I knew there was a lot of concern about them covering up information about their previous encounters with the killers. However, I had read stories as they came out, in dribs and drabs, and hadn’t put it all together. The book does lay out very clearly the cover-up that the Jeffco law enforcement officials engaged in to obscure the fact that they had enough information to raise about a thousand red flags about one of the killers, but they dropped the ball. I don’t know if they would have prevented the massacre if they had acted on their information, but it’s a possibility.
I will spend some time today praying for all the victims (including survivors) and their families.
I have more sympathy now than I did before reading the book for the families of the killers. It appears they had no clue that their sons were capable of committing mass murder. Of course they didn’t! What parents would ever entertain such a thought about their child?
It’s a real shame. One thing you can bet on, though: if the sheriff had info on a black or Hispanic kid like he did on Harris, his deputies would have moved pronto.
at North HS, Civic Center Park, WashPark or the capitol you’d have many really nervous whiteys — but since its just some kids from Boulder…..
similarly, as a father, my chest aches and my spirit shudders at the thought of my daughter in a similar situation. I’ll never forget that day, as I had two children in school, although not at Arvada, and a great naivete was lost. I always believed our children were safe in school.
We as a culture, and as a society, have not dealt well with this tragedy, in my opinion. Too much shoved under a rug; too much hidden; too much not followed up on regarding the societal influences that could drive the two young murderers to commit such a heinous act.
Violence, militarization, and yes…guns, all need to be forcefully, deliberately, and responsibly addressed.
Thanks again, Steve. Sorry I couldn’t make the Pols mtg. yesterday. Would loved to have met David and RSB and to see you.
I was a lot more scared 4/20/99 than I was 9/11/01.
sponsored by Colorado Ceasefire. Tom Mauser, Daniel Mauser’s father, spoke, as did others, including parents of victims of the Virginia Tech shooting. We all, collectively and in solidarity, lamented the insanity gripping this nation, the insanity that views as an afront to God and Country any regulation to take AK47s off the streets, or to close loopholes to mandatory background checks, or to impose any responsibilities whatsoever on those who feel the need to own devices whose primary purpose is to injure or kill. The only afront to God and Country in this debate is the blithe disregard for the tragedic, profound, unrelenting suffering inflicted on people’s lives by this very same insanity.
This wasn’t the result of guns. They were around a long time before school shootings without incident.
Using it, or any other such tragedy, as an excuse to restrict guns is a cop-out. You don’t fix the problem, and you restrict a fundamental Constitutional freedom in the process. And what do you gain?
No, Columbine, and other such shootings are symptoms of a larger cultural sickness. The way we treat mental illness and instability with medication, rather than compassionate involvement. The way we send our children off to institutional schools with no thought of what goes on inside those walls. The way the mobile American society leads to unstable families and communities.
I don’t mean that as an indictment of anyone in particular. It’s far too broad a brush for that. It’s an indictment of us all.
but utter nonsense.
Imagine a society in which citizens had unusually easy access to a particular poison, and that that same society had an unusually high murder rate by means of that same poison.
What rational person would refute the probability of a connection between those two facts? And yet this right-wing refrain that there is no connection between exceptionally easy access to guns on national scale, and an exceptionally high national rate of deadly gun violence is absolutely identical to the above absurd notion, with the only alteration of replacing guns with a particular poison.
It is hard to understand how such a patently irrational position can be so frequently repeated.
That’s as realistic as saying if we didn’t have hemlock, Socrates wouldn’t have been killed, or if we didn’t have trees, nor would have Jesus Christ.
Killing exists because of the intent to kill. No more, no less. It happened before Sam Colt made men equal, and it’ll happen in a world where the hippies melt all the guns.
Making guns the target of an occurrence that’s clearly a symptom of more than their mere existence does a great disservice to identifying and healing the greater illness.
address my comparison that only changed guns for poison, and illustrates rather compellingly the folly of believing that the extraordinary accessibility of a convenient means of violence is in no way related to the extraordinary abundance of the use of that means of violence.
You also don’t explain the real variation in the world of recourse to deadly violence, which, coincidentally, corresponds, at least to some significant degree, to how readily available guns are.
Your comparison to hemlock and Socrates has nothing to do with what we are talking about. You take one example of one event, when I am talking about statistical realities. You imply that, since an incident in which a sentence of death had been laid down and a particular means had been used, that since that means is not necessary to carry out the sentence that, ipso facto, and alacazam, the flood of weapons, due to an absurdly dysfunctional social policy, into a society, correlated to a flood of violence using those very same weapons, in no way implies that the weapons have anything to do with the violence.
If you were setting out to demonstrate what irrationality, and argumentation based on misdirection, looks like, you could not have done a better job.
Put that in your corn pipe and smoke it.
You showed us a theoretical world where poison is a weapon of choice. I showed that it has already been a weapon of choice. Granted, it was a one-off thing: I’m sure the Athenian city-state never executed anyone else with arsenic. Just like I’m sure the intrigues of monarchic Europe didn’t actually hinge on just one such poison like arsenic.
History is full of famous murders, as is the most compelling of great literature. Has anyone suggested the banning of slings or scimitars or daggers or arsenic? Why are guns such a suddenly different invention, when human nature is full of examples of murder without it?
Of course, this is a topic on which I will not convince you. As a conservative, I believe in the lessons history tells us about human nature and the permanent states of the human condition, including that odd, evil drive that has always lead us to kill each other. And as a progressive, I’m sure you believe in the irrelevance of historical perspective on the human condition, as the point of progressivism is the perfection of human nature by fiat, plowing through any flaws that humanity may possess.
The good news is I still have the Supreme Law of the Land on my side. I didn’t want this to come to that; after all, you’re right inasmuch as there are some major social factors at play that need attention. In the end, though attacking gun ownership is not only tyrannical, it’s not going to solve the problem even if it’s successful.
if you don’t understand the difference between a prisoner executed to death having one means of execution removed and another put in its place, and a statistical social phenomenon involving the relative availability of a particular means of committing murder and a corresponding abundance of the use of the means, then no well-reasoned argument, that does not arrive at the conclusions that you have already assumed, will ever have any meaning for you.
You have outwitted me as completely as the moon’s eternal fusion illuminates the night sky. I tip my hat to you in humble submission.
But suggested the intrigue of monarchic Europe using arsenic opportunistically as a proper analogue. Which you ignored. And rightfully so, since it proves the point that murder’s been happening on such a scale for centuries, and wasn’t just a sudden occurrence as a result of Sam Colt’s invention.
in Medieval Europe, though there are for modern Europe.
Of course, I didn’t claim that murder began with the invention of the gun, or would end with its elimination. We are talking about rates, not existance v. non-existance. That’s what we in the business call “a false dichotomy.” There are, indeed, murders in the rest of the develoded world, even today, though at a fraction of the rate that they occur in the United States. And what are the differences between those other developed countries and the United States? We preserve a matrix of violent customs, beliefs, and institutions that other developed nations have strived, with some success, to transcend. We continue to impose the death penalty, symbolically reinforcing the notion that when we, collectively, are really, really mad, killing the object of our anger is the best sollution, and then wonder why we have more people rather than less, in comparison to other countries that don’t seek such collective revenge, who somehow manage to generalize the sentiment behind it to their individual decision making. And we have this bizarre, almost inconceivably irrational popular belief that letting anyone and everyone get hold of firearms at will has nothing to do with our over-the-top rates of firearm violence!!! It’s really like something out of some bizarre, dark satirical novel written by a warped but brilliant author.
Tap dance to the tune in your head to your heart’s content. Your arguments are as thin as dust-bowl soil, ready to blow away with the first gust of wind.
But I’d say that when the nobility in a country changes on a weekly basis, the rate among that population is rather high. We ended that, not with the banning of all arsenic, but with the end of the aristocratic system.
To a certain degree, I agree with you on the death penalty. I think that in a modern society where the risk of a violent criminal escaping jail is extremely low, the evil posed by taking that chance is infinitely less than the evil of offing the guy. I don’t agree that it’s some great embodiment of the violent spirit. You can look at the rates of violent crime in Texas vs. in Illinois if you want proof.
Furthermore, you managed to rattle off a handful of societal differences between Americans and Swiss, yet somehow think that the primary difference is guns. Seems to me that’s the false argument – there is zero proof that the difference is as a result of guns, rather than larger societal factors.
There is 100% proof that the ownership of guns is a Constitutionally-protected right.
[insert douchey Steve Harvey-esque closing ad hominem here]
that the European nobility were a small, incestuous class, and that palace intrigues and national murder rates aren’t exactly identical phenomena?
If by “zero proof” you mean that my observation is similar to a modern scientific theory, in that it is the most logical organization of available data but cannot aspire to “proof” since “proof” is a mathematical rather than scientific concept, than, yeah, you got me there.
And, gee, I just love this sudden aversion to what you call ad hominem remarks (which apparently don’t include calling someone “douchy”), when you attack me every time I post, and most of the offense I’ve inflicted on you comes in the form of simply making better arguments, and doing so with more flair. I mean, sure, “put that in your corn cob pipe and smoke it” and “your arguments are about as thin as dust bowl soil” is some pretty rough treatment (perhaps a bit of a stretch of what “ad hominem” really means, which refers more to comments like “douchy,” which, strangely enough, I didn’t make). But I thought you could take it.
Ha. If you say so. You sure like to assume the “scientific” mantle. Problem is, you do it without actually being scientific. That’s a trick thing to balance – I’ll give you that.
My point, if you must have it spelled out, is thus: When given the motive, means, and opportunity to carry out murder without a lot of hassle, certain people will do so, whether it’s with poison (your example that I pulled out of the real world, much to your chagrin) or with guns. Therefore, banning or massively restricting guns will not prevent such things from occurring. You’ll just change the tools by which it’s done.
Also, you’d have to change the Constitution. So there’s that.
Face it, boss. You can’t post anything without spending your last paragraph being a pompous self-promoting windbag. It’s how you roll. And you got pissed because I called you on it.
between my observations on this matter and a scientific theory: It is the most logical organization of available evidence. That is what defines a scientific theory, and it is what distinguishes my observations on the probable relation between an extraordinarily easy access to guns in America and an extraordinarily high rate of gun violence in America. There is nothing arbitrary about the analogy.
And you, like all others who mainatain your completely untenable position, keep insisting that nothing, other than affecting people’s desire to kill, can affect the rate of violence in a society, because if people want to kill, they’ll find a way to do it. But many other societies have achieved far lower rates of deadly violence than we have. There are only two possible conclusions following from these premises: Either we (Americans) fail, for some reason, to do as good a job as other developed nations of positively affecting our citizens’ desire to kill, or you are mistaken in your completely arbitrary assumption that their are no other factors involved in determining national rates of deadly violence.
If the latter, game over. We have no way of knowing if that’s the case (that the arbitrary assumption that nothing other than the rate at which people have a desire to kill affects the rate of deadly violence), but there is no reason to assume that it isn’t (mistaken), and plenty of evidence to indicate that it is. We know that many acts of deadly violence are committed in acts of rage, often as the climax of an escalating interaction, that many others are in conjunction with the commission of opportunistic crimes, and that still others are the result of an overraction to suddenly induced fear or defense of property (“accidental” acts of deadly violence, such as shooting your own daughter mistaking her for a prowler). For these reasons, it is very reasonable to infer that the more convenient we make carrying out acts of deadly violence, the higher the rate will be, because all of these forms occur in part because of the convenience of the means to commit acts of deadly violence, and not just because of some invariate desire to do so.
But even if we consdier the small possibility that the argument in the preceding paragraph is wrong, that in fact, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, the only factor affecting rates of deadly violence is the rate of the desire to commit acts of deadly violence, then we still must ask ourselves if guns can have any influence on the rate of the desire. Given America’s fascination with guns, given the way they are romanticized and adored, given the aura of machismo so many associate with them (such as the two Columbine killers, and the Virginia Tech killer, who had all left plenty of evidence of their fascination with guns, and the increased feeling of power and importance those guns gave them), there is every reason to believe that the very ease of access to those weapons, in and of itself, actually increases the rate of the desire to commit acts of deadly violence.
From all angles, by all arguments, your tortured attempts to defend an indefensible position fall apart.
And, just to be straight, the phrase “ad hominem” means “at the person,” meaning “arguments” that attack the individual rather than their arguments. Everything, or nearly everything, I have ever posted to you attacks your arguments, including my glib phrases (such as “your arguments are as thin as dust bowl soil”). Yet you keep coming back with what a “douche” and “self-promoting pompous windbag” I am. Maybe reference to the notion that people shouldn’t resort to ad hominems isn’t your best line of attack, either.
What angers you about me is what angers all of the right-wing bloggers about me: I compose solid arguments undermining your arbitrary and easily disposed of positions.
The first parenthetical in the third paragraph should read: “…the rate of deadly violence is mistaken“).
Yep, that about sums it up. You argue that suggesting that a person’s desire to kill increases his propensity to do so is “untenable.”
After all, I know that my desire to have hot wings for lunch didn’t increase my propensity to make them. Oh. Wait… It did.
It’s just that simple: Wanting to do something makes you more likely to do something. You’re arguing with a definition. And that’s why you fail.
You wrote: ‘You argue that suggesting that a person’s desire to kill increases his propensity to do so is “untenable.”‘
1) I didn’t argue that a person’s desire to kill doesn’t increase his propensity to do so (ie, is one relevant factor), but, to the extent that I argued it at all, that it is not exclusively responsible for his propensity to do so (ie, the only factor).
2) And, in fact, I didn’t argue that your insistance that it is the only factor (which you have now tried to disguise by shifting to it merely being a factor, which would undermine your argument that no other factor, such as the availability of guns, can be relevant) is untenable, but rather your conclusion that the extraordinarily easy availability of guns in America has no relation to the extraordinarily high rate of deadly violence in America. To demonstrate the untenability of your conclusion, first I showed the improbability that desire to kill is the only factor, and then, allowing for the possibility despite that improbability that desire is the only factor, gave prominent examples of when guns ahve seemed to be a factor in cultivating and giving form to the desire as well as providing a convenient means for carrying it out.
I agree completely that “wanting to do something makes you more likely to do something.” I’ve never argued otherwise. What I’ve argued is that wanting to do something isn’t the only relevant factor in whether you do something. There are lots of things I want to do that I don’t because I lack the means to do them. I am suggesting that we make more effort to pose that same dilemma to those who want to kill.
My point all along is that poking on the gun problem is only poking on the symptom, not the disease. When you have people this (Columbine) off-kilter, they’re going to do messed up stuff, whether it’s with guns or with ANFO bombs or with whatever else. It’s such a focus on gun restriction that’s the straw man here – it makes a big damned bonfire, but you still end up with people who kill once it’s out.
My disagreement was that you made extremely salient points regarding all of the other factors, then seemed to focus on gun restriction as the solution – when clearly if these other factors are the problem, gun restriction won’t be a solution.
And besides that, it’s unconstitutional, illiberal, and tyrannical. For whatever that’s worth these days.
which is the actual infliction of deadly violence on innocent people, while working on the disease, which is the cultural matrix of violence at its root.
You say you’ve “never argued otherwise,” and then return to the refrain that depends on completely ignoring what you claim to have accepted.
Even this very conservative Supreme Court, that suprised constitutional scholars across the nation with an interpretation of the second amendment that the vast majority disagree with, held in the same opinion that gun regulation is not unconstitutional.
As for it being illiberal and tyrannical, so are laws against the violence itself, or, for that matter, all laws: They all limit liberty. “Tyrannical” is the buzz word of those who disagree with any given law: It should be limited to the imposition, or attempted imposition, of laws that are designed to serve the interests or values of some at the expense of others. Though gun advocates cast gun regulations in that false light, gun regulation is clearly designed to protect everyone from gun violence with restrictions that apply to everyone. And who would argue that reducing incidents of violence against innocent victims is a value that should not be assumed to be universal in our society, since those who hold any other value are are promoting something antithetical to our most fundamental legal prohibition?
One need not focus on one factor alone, and I make no such error. I advocate many policies, that have nothing to do with guns, that are directed toward the reduction of violence. But we are not discussing those policies right now. We are discussing guns, and since our current policies regarding them are one very salient factor in our astronomical rates of deadly violence (usually involving guns), they are also one very salient consideration.
I have argued that since will to commit violence is not the only factor in the commission of violence, just as will to travel to Europe isn’t the only factor in whether one travels to Europe; and since guns make the commission of acts of deadly violence that much easier, that, like a reduction in the price of a ticket to Europe, they make the commission of such acts that much more frequent.
You create a transparently false dichotomy when you claim that since other factors are relevant, guns cannot be. To you either easy access to guns is the sole and unique cause of deadly violence, or it is not a contributing cause at all. That is quite obviously false: They can be one among many causal factors, the redressment of any or all of which can have a dramatic ammeliorative effect. Sometimes, addressing even what is not the primary factor in a given phenomenon can have an extremely potent effect: For instance, the presence of air in this room is not the primary cause of my writing this post at this moment, but if the air in the room were to be suddenly removed, I would cease to write it, and might, in fact, be prevented from ever writing another.
I am not trying to insult you Yokel. You have made your arguments, and you have made them as well as they can be made. But they fail as arguments. You can believe whatever you want, but if you are defending your beliefs on the basis of arguments that do not survive scrutiny, then your beliefs are, by definition, arbitrary. That’s your choice. It’s not mine.
Peace.
Unfounded hyperbole (“astronomical rates”) b/w a hedge that by definition makes the argument self-defeating (guns cause astronomical violence that only usually involves guns). That about sums up your argument.
Let me finish: “I’m the smartest man in the world, and therefore you fail.”
Nothing in my arguments has ever implied that I think I’m the smartest man in the world. The only thing I have said, and demonstrated, is that my arguments on this topic in this place and this time are sounder and more compelling than yours. You hurl an endless barrage of fallacies, ad hominem attacks, selective disregard of facts and arguments that undermine your position, and general bile at me, determined to “win,” determined to protect your irrational ideology from the threat of reason, hoping and believing that sooner or later I will simply give up and allow you to claim an arbitrary and imaginary victory. And, undoubtedly, you are right.
Your argument now rests on insisting that “astronomical” is “hyperbole” in describing homicide rates three to ten times higher than those of other developed nations, and on my argument associating the easy accessibility of guns with deadly violence mentioning from time-to-time that our high rates of deadly violence are indeed effectuated by guns (but not, as you claim, relying on the irrational proposition that it could not be effectuated in any other way. Rather, I have systematically argued why it is highly unlikely that “other means” would come close to closing the gap were guns to become less accessable). And, of course, most of all, your final, most forceful, most heavily relied on argument against mine is that I’m a terrible person, and therefore you’re right and I’m wrong.
Yeah. Good job. You’ve really proven your meddle with that one.
That’s been the argument all along – that the continued insistence that guns cause violence is absurd, that we are the deadliest place on Earth is hyperbole, and that all you’ve got is the constant, unfounded insistence that whatever you say is an arbitrary, imaginary victory.
Though it is interesting that all of these extremely violent events tend to occur in places where guns are not easily available – gun-free school zones and cities and the like. (And that is frankly more systematic evidence than anything you’ve given – like the exaggeration regarding the orders of magnitude of violence that separate America from the rest of the world).
In fact, your argument all along has been based in denying that the definition of a term is its definition, and that that such an absurd denial is somehow “reason.” And that, perhaps, is your most grating quality – your continued insistence that using definitions and reason is irrational, while denying definitions and insisting that a fix will be a fix because you say so is “reason.”
eventually you were going to succeed in simply wearing me down and compelling me to concede that this debate is fruitless. You’re wrong on almost every point you’ve depended on for your argument, and on almost every representation of what I have based my arguments on, as I have systematically laid out in several of my posts, but I lack the ability to bring these facts home to you. If you insist that up is down, and in is out, then so they are, and so they shall be. Congratulations. I concede. Enjoy your victory, and your “wisdom.”
do you need to completely misrepresent every component of my argument? You said:
“that the continued insistence that guns cause violence is absurd, that we are the deadliest place on Earth is hyperbole.”
Of course, in reality, I argued that ease of accessability to guns are one contributing factor to the rate of deadly violence (not that “guns cause violence,” a nicely simplistic reduction that serves a nicely simplistic contrary conclusion). And I cited statistics indicating that the United States experiences the highest deadly violence rates of any developed nation, not, as you conveniently altered, that the United States is the “deadliest place on Earth.” It’s always easier to win an argument when you get to rewrite the opposing arguments so that they are defeatable!
In another post, you insisted that my statistics were an exaggeration. Just taking intentional homicide rates (which somewhat underestimate the difference in deadly violence rates, which include the difference in accidental shootings and suicides as a result of greater availability of guns), the US has a rate of 5.7 per 100,000, while Ireland has a rate of .62 per 100,000, while the European countries range from 1.1 to 1.4 per 100,000.International comparative homicide rates In other words, just taking intentional homicide rates, rather than the rates of all deadly violence, the range is actually from four times that in other developed nations (rather than 3X, as I said), to slightly less than 10X. No exaggeration, no hyperbole, just a horrific statistic.
And my argument is, very simply, that there is every reason to draw the obvious conclusion that our far less stringent regulation of firearms is a relevant contributing factor to this far higher rate of deadly violence. I pointed out that behavior depends both on will and means, and gave examples of how the provision of more convenient means, holding the variable of “will” to do something constant, raises the rates at which people do almost anything: Easier access to flights increases travel, even if the desire has not changed, though a person could have taken a boat. It is so simple, so obvious, so indisputable, and yet you are so committed to negating it!
Okay, that’s it. I do quit. You can be called on every falsehood, every logical fallacy, every misrepresentation of the argument you are combatting, and yet you will insist on your victory, so here you have it.
You give a false example. If you’re really attempting to prove your point, you’d compare the rates of violence w/rt the rates of gun ownership. That is, after all, the point you say you’re making. While no country in that table appears to have quite the percentage of guns, many come close. From the US’s 39%, Norway is second with 32%. Yet the rates of violence are 3.72/hundred thousand in the US to 0.3-per in Norway.
There are other countries in the high-twenties that fall in a similar spread.
There is no correlation between gun prevalence and violent crime, by your own source.
No wonder you quit. Not only has your badgering insistence on victory failed, but your attempt at actually providing an example just backfired horribly. I don’t blame you.
and the concept of correlation within it. To isolate the meaasure of a correlation between two variables, regression analysis produces the line that best fits a scatter-graph of the data, and then calculates the intensity of the relationship between the two variables, determining the mathematical probability that that relationship exists by chance. In the social sciences, the standard probability used is .05. Outliers not only do not eliminate the chance that such a probability will be obtained, but, in social analyses, they almost always exist. Your claim that, since some small minority of countries with low rates of deadly violence have nearly the same percentage of guns as the US (not a measure of intensity of regulation or ease of accessibility, siince it doesn’t address distribution or barriers to purchase, but we’ll skip that part), the data doesn’t show any correlation between ease of access to gun, demostrates a complete lack of an understanding of how data is read, what correlation means, and how correlation is determined.
By my own source, a strong correlation is indicated, because the example you pointed to is an exception rather than the rule. That’s what correlation means.
I quit because I have a life, and law school finals to deal with, and can’t keep responding endlessly to someone (I’ll leave the ad hominems to you) who just won’t give up no matter how badly he’s beaten. You’ve been wrong on evey point, on every logical argument, on every attempt to misrepresent my arguments, on every claim, and yet you keep insisting, as I said before, that up is down, in is out, and, despite all of the above truths, you have prevailed in this debate. And, as I said before, congratulations on your victory. Far be from me to deprive someone of their delusions.
There aren’t enough developed countries in the world for the analysis to be statistically significant. Therefore, it is only suggestive. But see the final argument below, which returns to the innevitability of the conclusion I (and, frankly, all rational people the world over who are not desparate to believe the transparently false absurdity that greater ease of access to guns does not, all other factors held constant, increase rates of deadly violence) recognize as true.
You’re hilarious.
You say my mention of multiple nations in the neighborhood of the US regarding gun distribution, all with lower rates of violence is not correlation, but that your mention of nations on the low-low end of the chart is a correlation. That, of course, is based on little more than your constant, unfounded attitude of “I’m right, therefore you’re wrong.” Which is not argument, but idiocy.
The variable in question is not that of violence rates – that’s not the argument. The variable in question is whether higher gun ownership rates correlate with higher violence rates. Your chart suggests they clearly do not.
There are six countries on the list that have ownership rates >20%. Only one (the US) has a firearm homicide rate >1/100,000. Clearly, gun ownership does not necessarily correlate to gun violence. What was to be demonstrated by your argument is clearly disproven by the numbers.
Your syllogism below begs any number of questions. First of all, Premise #1 is directly contradicted by the numbers above. Furthermore Premise #2 is in the form of a conclusion, not of a premise – thus leading to the intended Conclusion through a fallacy, rather than through any logical proof. As a result, your conclusion lies on a premise that is disproven above, and a bias that is not a premise at all.
Point 1) below is not disputed.
Point 2) holds a fallacy – that the will to go to Europe is supported by ease of obtaining plane tickets. But it’s a false analogy. After all, you could sell plane tickets to the seventh circle of hell for a penny, and their ease of acquisition would not correlate with more people going. In relation to guns, the numbers above, again, tend to agree with the latter rather than the former.
Point 3) is countered by the numbers again. In Finland, where nearly 1/4 have access to guns, the non-gun homicide rate is 4x that of the gun homicide rate, in Canada where access is at 30%, the non-gun rate is twice the gun rate, and in New Zealand, where the access is just less than Finland, the non-gun rate is EIGHT TIMES that of the gun homicide rate. Clearly easy access to guns doesn’t even correlate with a higher rate of gun violence. It appears that only in the US is the gun the weapon of choice in committing homicide. Your third premise in support of #2 is also disproven.
So, basically you form an argument based on false logistics, begged questions, and an ignorance of the data.
Good luck with your law finals. Hopefully you actually use real support for your conclusions in that one.
1) correlation does not mean correlation of each and every data point, without exception, but rather a statistical probable relationship between two variables. I explained how it is determined. You want to claim your own private definition for the statistical term, that’s your choice. And my knowledge of what constitutes a correlation, and how it is determined, is based on training in, and professional work with, statistical data analysis, not some amorphous claim to always being right.
2) By the true meaning of correlation, rather than your bastardized version insisting on the impossibly high bar of perfect correlation (almost never achieved in any analysis of social phenomena, due to the enormous number of interacting and intervening variables), there is indeed a correlation between the two variables under discussion.
3) your selective use of isolated numbers, selected from a larger data source for their convenience to your argument, to argue a position that not even those isolate numbers support (since the United States has both the highest number of households with firearms, and the highest intentional murder rate) is one more sign of your ineptness in this kind of analysis and argumentation.
4) Premises ARE conclusions, in the sense that they are assertions that can either be supported or refuted, upon which new conclusions are based. That’s why I followed my two premises with the arguments supporting them.
5) I haven’t read past the point addressed in number 4 above, and will not continue to waste my time with you. I have avoided stooping to your level of belligerence and ad hominem attacks, and have instead addressed every point you have made, every misdirection you have attempted, flawlessly, only to have to return to do it again. I won’t comment on your intelligence, though I do rescind the diplomatic and conciliatory statement I made in an earlier post: I no longer can say it with a straight face.
I won’t respond to you again. It is completely pointless.
Your criticize that I use a handful of numbers to draw a line. Yet you use ONE number (the US’s trends) and claim that is all the proof you need. You criticize that I selectively use isolated numbers, yet I’ve used 500% of the numbers you’ve used. When you actually look for correlation, rather than making your own conclusions based on one set of numbers, and implying that correlation comes form one set of statistics and drawing a line with whatever slant you want through a point, the US numbers are outliers, whereas the trends I describe hold true for all the other nations.
What does that mean? That there are more complex problems to the violence in the US than merely guns. Period.
First, I described what correlation is, noting that you selecting only those individual data points from a larger data source that happen to support (actually, “only weakly refute” is more accurate) your argument, and threw in the aside that the one most important data point (using your system of selecting individual data points) completely runs contrary to your argument.
You argue that making an action, that occurs at varying rates across nations, more convenient to commit does not increase its frequency, even though, arguing by analogy, and exercising the most rudimentary logic, it is completely obvious that it does increase its frequency.
You don’t seem to understand what “correlation” means, or what a premise is, or how to interpret an argument by analogy, or how to recognize a refutation of a logical fallacy, or when your factual errors and assertions have been debunked, or, in general, anything relevant to this debate.
But, take heart, I am sure that there are two or three people who read this blog, who, like you, start with their conclusions, and then go to the most absurd lengths imaginable, arguing the most absurd assertions imaginable, to support the most absurd conclusion imaginable, one refuted by all observation and common sense, but comports with their desired beliefs. And I am sure that they will congratulate you on the brilliance of your argumentation, because, like you, they are absolutely and utterly clueless.
You claim that the data, which is most strongly characterized by data points which combine very low homicide rates with zero households with guns in them, supports your conclusions. Okey-dokey.
You feel like you’re taking crazy pills? You’re an absolute raving idiot. Period.
Here we have spent thousands of words and dozens of posts arguing whether making the commission of an act that occurs at a certain frequency more convenient to commit increases the frequency, and, after several more misdirections, misrepresentations, and mischaracterizations on your part to refute that obvious fact, you conclude with a statement irrelevant to that particular point, that “there are more complex problems to the violence in the US than merely guns,” a point which I not only acknowledged long ago in this debate, but actually included in the column that started this thread!!! But it has nothing to do with whether the particular point you are struggling to refute is true or not. It’s like, occasionally interspersed into an argument about whether the sky tends to appear to be a shade of blue to most observers, you yell “but rainbows aren’t blue!” Okay, sure, you bet.
I’m not sure if you are for real, or if you are some twisted joke. You have spent all of this time arguing this point: That making the commission of acts of deadly violence more convenient does not increase the frequency of the commission of acts of deadly violence. The basis of this assertion is that, as you say, people will find a way to commit acts of deadly violence if that is what they want to do. I have utterly destroyed that position by pointing out the simple truth that the frequency of the will to commit an act is not the only variable relevant to the rate at which it is committed, and have given numerous examples of why that is so, arguments demonstrating the logical irrefutability that it is so, and an appeal to the intelligence of a five-year-old to recognize the obviousness of the fact that it is so. And, somehow, you keep coming back with earnest arguments, that in no way have addressed any of the absolutely conclusive refutations already given, about why increasing the general convenience of committing an act does not increase the frequency in which the act is committed.
I tried, as hard as I could, not to stoop to your level with the ad hominem attacks, and, frankly, there is no ad hominem attack that would do you justice at this point.
I won’t read any more of your responses, because it is impossible, when I do, not to point out the absurdities you rely on in each and every attempt to refute the self-evident. Keep posting, keep telling me why the few data points with a relatively high rate of guns in households (always less than the US) corresponding to a relatively low rate of deadly violence overrule the far larger number of data points in which zero guns in households correspond with low rates of deadly violence; and that the frequency with which actions occur is determined only by the frequency of the will to commit the actions, despite the obvious fallacy of that assertion (since people clearly do not do everything they wish to do, in large measure because they often lack means convenient enough for them to act on their will to do so), and whatever other assinine positions you want to earnestly present as representing the extent of your capacity to exercise reason. I won’t respond anymore, but I will post this entire thread every single time I want to draw attention to the “qualities” you have chosen to exhibit in this debate. I will erect it as a monument to you. If you are right, as you keep insisting, that you have soundly thrashed me with these “arguments,” then you can consider it to be my humble way of honoring your accomplishment. Personally, I think it represents you as you have chosen to be: A complete and utter jack-ass, in every conceivable way. But, either way, let each admire this monument to you as they see fit. In tribute to you, as a service to you in gratitude for your having taken the time to educate me on these matters, I will draw attention to it at every possible juncture, and endeavor that it is read by as many people as possible.
No need to thank me: It is the least I can do.
snort Huh? Oh, you’re done complaining about fallacies by invoking fallacies and complaining about ad hominems by making them? I hardly noticed.
You claim that low rates of household ownership results in low rates of gun violence. But, according to your own source, high rates of household ownership also result in low rates of gun violence. Yet you ignore that little bit because it doesn’t fit with your prejudice. (You were being ironic in criticizing me of that very thing, right?)
Apparently, only American guns convey the power to make people commit violence. They must be recovered and thrown in Mount Doom lest they ruin us all.
The crux of your argument (besides insisting that you’re the acme of brilliance) is that if the number of guns were zero, the amount of gun violence would be zero. Well, no kidding – Last time I checked, the rate of laser vaporization violence was indeed zero. But that argument rests on an impossibility – that the Pandora’s box of firearms can be closed again. It can’t – the number of guns will never be zero again. Well, until they all become obsolete to laser pistols. (After all, the rate of scimitar murders is at an all-time low)
But until then, we’ll always have guns, and they’ll be used by folks both good and bad, for purposes both good and bad. And making tilting at that windmill the focus of the policy risks ignoring all the other social issues that can be improved and can actually reduce murders (better care of the mentally ill comes to mind).
In other words, it’s a brilliant argument, except it’s idiotic – it won’t work.
You say:”You claim that low rates of household ownership results in low rates of gun violence. But, according to your own source, high rates of household ownership also result in low rates of gun violence. Yet you ignore that little bit because it doesn’t fit with your prejudice.”
Look at how correlation is determined, look at the number of data points that correlate in the manner I claim and the number that correlate in the manner you claim, and do the math.
“complaining about ad hominems by making them?”
After your relentless barrage of belligerent stupidity, heavily seasoned with virulent insults, and even peppered with the hypcricy, while calling me childish names, that my criticisms of your arguments were “ad hominems,” you finally wore me down. You’re an obnoxious, ignorant jack-ass, incapable of producing or understanding a logical argument, incapable of reading or interpreting data, intellectually dishonest enough to select only the data that serves your needs and ignore the rest, and aggressively hostile toward those who don’t indulge in simmilar follies.
“Apparently, only American guns convey the power to make people commit violence”
Your favorite straw man. Nothing in my arguments have suggested any such thing, as I have spent much time pointing out to you. All of my arguments argue the simple truth that guns are one salient factor, which does not (as those with some tiny speck of rational capacity understand) mean that they must therefore be the only salient factor. Your barrage of fallacies, repeated endlessly even after having them carefully and clearly debunked multiple times and in multiple ways, is a tribute to the depth of your absolute moronic incapacity to reason or understand. I would compare your intelligence to that of a chimp, but I would be loathe to insult chimps in such a way.
“The crux of your argument (besides insisting that you’re the acme of brilliance) is that if the number of guns were zero, the amount of gun violence would be zero”
More of your repeated and compounded misdirection, either as a result of your dishonesty (an intentional attempt to defeat reason knowingly), or your stupidity (an incapacity to recognize and mobilize reason), I don’t know which (though I suspect the latter). The data I have referred to, the bulk of the data in the data source I provided, the data that you have conveniently ignored, are all of the nations that have no-households-with-guns and very low murder rates by any means. Now, of course, you will once again point out that there are a minority of data points in which those countries with low murder rates have a relatively high rate of households-with-guns, and that, therefore, the exception is more compelling than the norm as proof of what is normatively true. That is how your brilliant mind works.
Too be stupid is nothing to brag about. To be stupid and belligerent about it is even less to brag about. To be so obstinantly stupid and obstinantly belligerent about it, so incapable of understanding a series of “two-plus-two-equals-four” arguments, and to so virulently insult the person making them to have the gall to not be as stupid as you, achieves a depth of ugliness that is hard to characterize.
It’s pretty sad, really.
I’m looking at all the data, and there are two trendlines:
Low gun ownership with low gun violence.
High gun ownership with low gun violence.
The trend you keep trying to see has an even smaller sample size: high gun ownership and high gun violence. Basically, in that category you’ve got the US, South Africa, and Columbia, each with their own unique social issues that tend to skew the data.
In other words, using ALL of the samples, there is no direct correlation between gun ownership and gun violence, your cherry-picking of numbers from homogeneous Europe notwithstanding.
That’s how you use statistics.
According to the data I linked to, on an anti-gun-control site, 18 developed countries have sero-to-ten-guns-per-household and low murder rates, seven have 10 or more guns per household (though all less than the United States, and some as much less as one-third) and low murder rates, while three you miscategorized as having low murder rates (Finland, Canada, and Italy, all above the median murder rate) have relatively high guns-per-household, with the United States maxing out by far on both counts (excluding the no longer salient violence in Northern Ireland, which was never a country in any case, but conveniently used by the compilers of this data to try to distort it). The data you are relying on to disprove my arguments don’t really prove or disprove anything.
And, in fact, I have never relied on this data to make my argument. I included it when you insisted that my estimate of America’s deadly violence rate being 3 to 10 times that of other developed countries was hyperbole and exaggeration, to show that the less contrasting measure of homicide rates (a sub-set of deadly violence) does indeed indicate precisely the range I indicated. Of course, you ignored the fact that you were wrong about that, and that I provided the statistics, from an anti-gun-control site, that you insisted did not exist. Since debunding that one-among-many acts of misinformation on your part, I have merely responded, when necessary, to your attempts to use the data I supplied to disprove my arguments, not as a means to prove my own. For my part, I do not consider this data to be particularly relevant except as an indication of the relative homicide rates among developed countries.
All you have managed to do throughout this debate is to muddy the waters to obscure the fact that your arguments have not held up, ignore the arguments that have demolished them, create absolutely transparent straw men, and hurl insults.
There is one trend line: Low households-with-guns (not “gun ownership,” because it doesn’t tell us how many guns per household) with low homicide rates (which is more circumsribed than deadly violence).
High households-with-guns doesn’t correlate clearly to either low or high homicide rates. It is mixed.
This indicates, to the extent that it indicates anything, that striving for low households-with-gun rates is a good idea if you are striving for low homicide rates.
It also demonstrates that variables aren’t isolated in the real world.
I linked to the site to refute one of your many false, though very emphatically declared, factual assertions. You then tried to use it to disprove my arguments that had not in any way sought to rely on this data. At some point thereafter, you began to imply that all you had to do was show that the data didn’t make my arguments for me in order to prove my arguments false, all the while ignoring, or falsely claiming that the data debunked, arguments made which in no way relied on this data.
You may succeed in convincing yourself that you are making consistent and coherent arguments, but you I’m not as easily fooled as you are. Go back to the syllogism, to the arguments made in support of it, to the and to the decisive debunkings of your fallacious attempts to undermine it.
And really don’t know that you’re engaging in self-criticism.
Anyway, you’re cherry-picking the data, implying that in an argument about gun violence, all violence should be counted, and gun-specific violence should be ignored.
When, in reality, it’s the opposite that should be true, given the argument you’re making. You want to prove that in a world without guns, we’d have a world without violence, because there would be no guns. So in a world with guns, one presumes, you’d have violence committed with them.
But there are a statistically-significant number of nations where, despite an above-average percentage of gun-ownership, and an above-average level of violence, that violence is committed by guns at a rate equivalent to the rate where guns are less available.
The simple fact remains that you cannot prove that even should we be able to drastically reduce the number of guns, we would not necessarily be able to reduce the amount of violence. We’d still have organized crime, gangs, poorly-treated mental illness, and a society of independent anti-authoritarians to contend with.
I’ll now allow you to flip your lid and resort to another string of vile ad hominems, apparently all spurred by a comment or two regarding your pomposity. The truth hurts, I suppose. And apparently, a lot.
I swore I wouldn’t stoop to replying to my reply, but I missed an opportunity.
“The truth hurts, I suppose. And, apparently, a statistically-significant amount.”
At least I can take solace in knowing I won’t do the reply-to-my-reply bit four or five more times.
I don’t really care about this argument any more. And I should never have let you turn it into a nit-picking argument on how to interpret inconclusive statistical data. As those who posted the data correctly observed, it demonstrates nothing at all. I made the mistake, while refuting your abuse of that data, of falling into the trap of mistakenly implying that the data said the opposite of what you were trying to say with it, rather than stating the more accurate observation that it says nothing at all. Yes, you finally got me twisted up enough to make a mistake. Congratulations.
But you haven’t addressed the dozens of logical fallacies and factual errors you have insisted on throughout this argument. And you haven’t addressed the syllogism, which is completely unaffected by the meaninglessness of the data comparing households-with-guns to murder rates, other than to try to debunk it through logical fallacy (such as suggesting that since making something that no one wants to do easier to do does not increase the rate at which it is done, therefore making something that some people do want to do easier to do won’t increase the rate at which it is done either).
It’s a shame you’re such a such a complete and utter asshole. This could have been a respectful and mutually illuminating debate between decent people who simply disagree. I did, in fact, get something out of it, both in the form of the argument I eventually zeroed in on, and in the realization that at least one data set comparing one set of measures of approximately relevant variables is completely uninformative.
To anticipate your objection: The reason why it’s uniformative rather than contradictory is because it really shows no discernable correlations in a comparison of two non-isolated variables. That can mean either that they don’t interact, or that their interaction is indiscernable due to the other intervening factors.
But one thing remains conclusive: The rate at which the will to do something and the ease and convenience of available means to do it both combine to affect the rate at which it is done (not to imply that no other factors are also involved, but that these two, taken on their own, are certainly involved). All of these posts, all of these red herrings, all of these insults, all of these misdirections, all of these clouds of obfuscation, don’t shake that one unshakable fact.
I should have just kept posting that one sentence over and over again in response to everything you have posted in refutation, because it is the only sentence that really matters in the end. If you make something significantly easier to do that a significant number of people want to do, it will be done at a greater frequency. It requires an enormous force of counter-rational will to convince oneself that this is not self-evidently true, because it so obviously is.
And my point, all along, is that you can’t isolate it in the first place. Furthermore, attempting to do so either in polling or in legislation will get you the same result: No result.
The data set I linked to for another purpose, which it did serve, does not tell us anything, one way or the other, about what relationship does or does not exist between gun ownership rates and deadly violence rates. That means it’s as if it were never cited. It does not undermine those arguments, which were the only arguments I made or intended to make until I got diverted into refuting the arguments you made based on the data set, that do not depend on it for their validity. See the new last post on the thread for a more complete explanation.
This is the stuff that really defines you:
“Yep, you’ve come unhinged
It’s pretty sad, really.”
I entered this discussion expressing and arguing my views, and then found myself being villified by you, with all sorts of really ugly and inappropriate insults, for not living up to your standards of humility. All you’re good for is to try to inflict personal damage on those who disagree with you. This is your contribution to the world? This is what you want your children to see, and emulate? This is what you think it means to be a constructive and positive member of the human race?
I should be more sad than angry, really, as a result of this encounter with such a piece of human garbage as you. It wouldn’t really matter if your delusions were true, and your arguments weren’t the conveniently shifting ground and misdirections and straw men and disregard of factual and logical conclusions that have contradicted your weak attempts at argumentation every step of the way that they in fact are. Your hostility, your belligerence, even if not combined with ignorance (as they are), would be ugly and shameful enough.
You started accusing me of ad hominem attacks before I had ever made them, but after you had. And then, after a flood of really disgusting personal insults, I finally started to return in kind. Yes, be proud, you can provoke the anger of those you attack. That is just one of your many impressive virtues.
This is what you want to be? This is all you have to contribute?
I can respect people of little intelligence who seek to be kind and decent. And even a person of vast intelligence who seeks to be as vicious as they can be to oppose those who disagree with them is worthy of great disdain. But to combine such a depth of ignorance with such a depth of ill-will and belligerence, now that, that is an achievement worthy of the most profound and abiding contempt.
“The crux of your argument (besides insisting that you’re the acme of brilliance) is that if the number of guns were zero, the amount of gun violence would be zero”
No. Okay, focus now, and try really, really hard. I think you can do it. You must have a brain of some kind.
Ease of accessability of guns is one factor among many that contributes to rates of deadly violence of any kind. Reduce the salience of that one factor, just as would reducing the salience of any other, and, all other factors held constant, you reduce the rate of deadly violence by any means. Are you at the very least capable of understanding what my argument is at this point? Or, after all of this effort, can you not even make it that far?
In all honesty, I don’t remember the last time I’ve engaged in any exchange with any human being so profoundly incapable of rational human thought.
The conclusion in my syllogism, and the premise you think you discredited, hold if there is any murder-with-gun rate at all, even if less than murder-without-gun. Figure it out for yourself.
you mentioned that in some countries in which there is substantial access to guns (eg, one in four households), murder by means other than guns can be as high as 8X the rate of that by guns, and, therefore, guns are not the predominant means of committing murder. Your conclusion would only hold if there is one other specific method that is more commonly used than guns, not if all other methods combined are more commonly used than guns!
For instance, you said, “First of all, Premise #1 is directly contradicted by the numbers above.”
No, it isn’t. In all of my points, I included a phrase similar to: “holding all other factors constant.” In the real world, all other factors aren’t held constant. That’s why I argued the proof of premise one by logically isolating the variables, rather than relying on empirical data in which the variables cannot be isolated. But, despite your constant insistance to the contrary, “the data above,” taken in its entirety rather than by selecting jus those data points that support your position, does indeed support the premise as stated.
You also said, “Point 2) holds a fallacy – that the will to go to Europe is supported by ease of obtaining plane tickets. But it’s a false analogy. After all, you could sell plane tickets to the seventh circle of hell for a penny, and their ease of acquisition would not correlate with more people going.”
Unbelievable. I must have repeated at least two dozen times in this “discussion” that the frequency of will to commit an act is not the only variable determining the frequency it is committed, but that availability of more or less convenient means to commit it interacts with will to determine frequency of commission. And how do you refute this? By invoking an example in which there is no will!!! Since no one wants to go to the seventh circle of hell, it doesn’t matter how convenient it is to get there. So you refute the assertion that will to commit an act is only a necessary, but not sufficient cause of its commission by pointing out that if will is absent, the act won’t occur. Right, genius. That’s because it is a necessary (though not sufficient) cause!!!
Come on, now, Yokel. This is the tenth or twentieth time where I’ve had to point out a complete logical fallacy on which you’ve depended, and you haven’t admitted to one yet. So which is it? Are you a liar (who knows that these are fallacies but won’t admit it), or an idiot (who is incapable of recognizing that these are fallacies)?
it’s remarkable that both the correlation is as strong as it is, and that a single country forms the extreme for both variables that are being correlated.
though they try to manipulate the statistics to tell a story other than what they tell, they can’t. Do you see all of those “n/a” entries in the right hand column? For developed nations, that keep very good statistics, they indicate zero or near-zero households with guns, generally due to outright gun bans. When you include that data, rather than conveniently exclude it, the correlation is staggering. Also, “households with guns” underestimates the international differences of guns in circulation and ease of access, for three reasons: 1) it does not measure the average number of guns per household, 2) it does not measure the average number of guns no longer in the possession of the person to whom it’s registered, and 3) it does not measure the legal ease or difficulty of access, ie, the degree of regulation imposed on the purchase of a gun.
on the few occasions when you actually address an argument, you first alter it completely in order to make it something that you can address, and then ignore the response that points out precisely how you altered it. But even more telling is that you rarely address the aguments at all: Rather, you look for some detail that you can try to catch me on, believing, erroneously, that if you can successfully challenge a marginal detail (something you have not yet done), then you have defeated the argument. But I prefer to focus on the essence of the matter. The data and details are only minor supports. The irrefutability of the argument itself is the coup de grace.
Here is the basic structure of the underlying syllogism. Premise #1: If you make the means (in general terms) to commit an act more easily accessible, then, holding will to commit the act constant, the act will be committed more frequently. Premise #2: The easy accessibility of guns in the United States makes the means to commit acts of deadly violence more easily accessible. Conclusion: The easy accessibility of guns in the United States, all other variables held constant, increases the rate of the commission of acts of deadly violence.
The syllogism itself is irrefutable. All that remains is to support or refute the premises.
1) Guns clearly are more easily accessible in the United States than in any other developed country (by varying degrees, as you point out).
2) The economics demand curve is a well-established theoretical and empirical illustration of the fact that if you make something more easily available, it’s “consumption” (in this case, commission of an act) will increase. As price goes down (more easily accessible), consumption goes up (more often done). I used the analogy of wanting to take a trip to Europe, and having plane tickets to Europe made more or less easily accessible: Clearly, despite the fact that there are less convenient alternative means of travel, having plane tickets made more easily accessible make a person more likely to take the trip, even if their desire to take the trip is held constant. Such analogies can be mobilized endlessly: It is completely clear that making the means to an act more easily accessible increases the rate at which the act occurs. Premise #1 supported.
3) While there are alternative means to commit acts of deadly violence, few are as convenient to utilize as guns, a fact demonstrated by the fact that, when guns are available, they are the predominant means used for deadly violence. Other means require either more knowledge, more courage, more ability, more strength, more planning, or any number of inferiorities which have made guns the pre-eminent tool of deadly violence in the modern world. The fact that guns, when available, are the tool of preference in committing acts of deadly violence is proof positive that they increase the convenience of committing such acts (otherwise, means that were more convenient to use would be more commonly used), and thus their availability significantly increases access to the means (in general) of committing acts of deadly violence. Since this is the assertion upon whose refutation your entire argument rests, I will return to it later if I have time. But, regardless, my above argument is completely sufficient. It only remains, if necessary, to explain more thoroughly why it is completely sufficient (given your difficulty following logical argumentation). Premise #2 supported; conclusion follows inevitably.
That really is all it takes to win this argument. Everything else, though it all supports my position anyway, is peripheral. Two simple premises, both of which are abundantly supported, lead to an inevitable conclusion. It’s that simple.
As I demonstrated above, the only way to win the (amazingly absurd) argument that relative ease of accessibility of guns does not contribute to higher rates of deadly violence is to win the argument that relative ease of accessibility of guns does not increase the convenience of committing acts of deadly violence. Yet, if guns did not increase the convenience of committing acts of deadly violence, then they would never be purchase nor sought for that purpose. Yet we know that guns are purchased and sought for the purpose of committing acts of deadly violence. Therefore we know that they do increase the convenience of committing such acts. AND THEREFORE it is irrefutably true that greater ease of access to guns, all other factors held constant, do indeed increase the rate of deadly violence.
Again, it’s just that simple.
it’s SO simple that any child could understand it: It’s easier to do something when a particular tool makes it easier to do than it would be to do in the absence of that tool, and people will do something they wish to do more often if it is made easier to do. People will retrieve the kite caught in a tree more often if they have a ladder available. It’s just not a very difficult concept.
And yet, thousands of words, and dozens of irrefutable arguments later, it’s a concept you are deeply committed not only to refuting, but to dismissing out-of-hand. That is the beauty and horror of the world in which we live, that so many humans are so deeply committed to so many irrational beliefs that if you hold the simplest and most compelling of proofs before them, they still find a way to convince themselves of what is so plainly false. Such is the breadth and depth of human folly.
that you are a stupid person, by I do think that you are clinging to a stupid argument. You have done amazing contortions not to notice how thoroughly it has been dismantled at every turn, and you have gotten angrier and angrier at me for continuing to point it out to you. If you need to hate me, be my guest. It just isn’t worth the effort to return the favor.
I sincerely hope you have a good day, and a good life, and that you are graced with abundant happiness and fulfilment in everything you do.
The Constitution: (1) the topic of the discussion is whether more stringent gun regulation would be a good thing, and the recent Supreme Court decision defining the second amendment as providing a private right to own weapons also explicitly held that gun regulations are not unconstitutional. So, no, we do not have to change the Constitution to increase gun regulations, and, even if we did, the ability to change the Constitution is a part of the Constitution itself, and is not a recourse that should be considered an affront to the spirit of the Constitition or the welfare of the nation.
(2) I get “pissed” because you constantly try to attack me personally due to your inability to effectively attack my arguments. Yes, that does indeed piss me off. This is the Great Ploy of the right-wing-nut-jobs who post here (and, yes, I agree with the rest that the blog would be poorer without you, because your absence is like the weaker candidate refusing to debate: It removes the opportunity to place the two competing candidates or ideas side-by-side for comparison): The more you are defeated by logic, the more you despise the person who did so, and the more you resort to ad hominem attacks. It really is a complement you pay me by hating me most of all, because you are in effect admitting that you feel most threatened by my arguments.
guns are certainly just one factor in the matrix of violence in America, and probably not the most important factor. But our laws regarding gun ownership are nevertheless a very salient factor.
as a result of this frustrating and aggravating debate: The statistics comparing gun ownership to murder rates are not informative one way or the other. I agree with the conclusion of the site I linked to for that data: The statistics don’t tell us anything, neither that a relationship exists, nor that no relationship exists. It only tells us that whatever relationship does or does not exist, it cannot be discerned through the cloud of intervening variables, and that indeed, whether gun ownership does or does not affect homicide rates, there are certainly many other highly salient factors involved as well (a fact I have never once doubted, nor refuted).
But I return to the syllogism I posted above, that does not rely on this data, but that does come to an inevitable conclusion based on two simple premises, both of which I then amply supported. While the data to which I posted for the limited purpose of comparing homicide rates does not tell us that ease of access to guns increases homicide rates, logic combined with more basic and more irrefutable data do. It really all boils down to one very simple, and very well-supported, proposition: The rate at which the will to do something and the ease and convenience of available means to do it, both combine to determine the rate at which it is done (not to imply that no other factors are also involved, but that these two, taken on their own, are certainly involved).
Furthermore, the data we have been talking about neither measures accessibility to guns very precisely, nor does it measure deadly violence very precisely. I would be interested in seeing more targeted, better designed studies, if they exist.
That’s as close to a “You’re right” as I’m going to get. But when you spend a paragraph in each post blathering on about your awesomeness and your opponent’s lack thereof, it does get kind of hard to step back. Better luck next time.
Thank you for agreeing with my premise: The rate of gun ownership cannot be correlated with the rate of gun violence. Now if you’ll agree with my point: Attempting to create and expand government programs to reduce the number of guns in the hopes of reducing the number of violent gun attacks wastes precious time, energy, and resources that could be better-used on programs that actually do reduce the rate of violent gun attacks.
The statistics that I posted are silent on a point I had not intended to use them for, and upon which my argument never depended. I did not say what can and can’t be done with statistical analysis, only what was or wasn’t done with this particular data set. Nor did I imply that statistical analysis is the only way to arrive at a conclusion on the subject.
By other means, without relying on this data set at all, the conclusion that the ease of accessability of guns increases the rate of deadly violence remains absolutely inescapable. The syllogism I provided to demonstrate that is completely unaffected by the silence of the data set upon which the syllogism never relied. The premises, that making something for which a significant number of people have a will to do easier to do will inevitably increase the rate at which it is done; and that the easier the availability of guns, the easier it is to commit acts of deadly violence, combine to prove the conclusion that the easier the availability of guns, the higher the rate of deadly violence will be, all other factors held constant. What I said above is that the data set neither supports nor refutes this conclusion, but the support of the data set is not required to demonstrate its irrefutability.
As for my blathering about my awesomeness and your lack thereof, that started with your very virulent personal insults. Before that, I just wrote straight-forward arguments, with some emphasis on the merits of the relative arguments, but no ad hominems whatsoever. You were offended by who I am, which is, I suppose you could say, an “intellectual,” and responded to that persona with viciousness and bile. That’s really just a form of bigotry on your part, and not the justificable umbrage you want to pretend it is.
I don’t agree with your premise or your conclusion. I think our current gun-ownership regime is insanely dysfunctional, and poses an indisputable risk to the safety of all innocent people in (or near) this country. I don’t think it’s a close call, or that there are any arguments in contradiction to that conclusion that come close to shaking the obviousness of its accuracy.
If you want to argue in a meaningful way against the follow-up conclusion that we should increase gun regulation and decrease personal access to guns as a result of the increased danger they pose, the only ways to do so are to make one of the following arguments:
1) it is impossible at this point to reduce ease of access to guns without creating an increasing imbalance between the ease of access for criminals and the ease of access for law-abiding people, thus creating an intervening causal factor which would increase the danger to innocent people, or
2) the positive value to individuals and to society of ease of access to guns outweighs the costs in human lives and suffering that that ease of access produces.
I have addressed both of these arguments elsewhere and won’t get into them again here. They are, in fact, reasonable, if not convincing (the former accepts an admittedly sub-optimal condition rather than facing the challenge of producing an attainable optimal one, and the latter undervalues the costs in human suffering produced by our current gun regime and overvalues the benefits that are obtained in return). But these arguments were not what you presented. Instead, you argued a position that truly is untenable and irrational, as my syllogism demonstrates. That’s not me saying that I’m superior; that’s me saying that some things are simply irrefutable, and that anyone who follows the argument as to why they are irrefutable will recognize that they are irrefutable.
Simply because a source you cited doesn’t, in the end, support your point, doesn’t mean you can make it disappear and pretend it never happened. It did, and the fact that you admitted it into the argument cannot change that. You can’t unring a bell.
Your entire “syllogism” rests on the denial of that old adage there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Essentially, you’re arguing that only when cavemen smelted copper did they cease to be naked sabertooth snacks. But I already gave an example at the very beginning of a more modern issue.
My local Pizza/Wing joint has more of a 130-minute guarantee than a 30-minute one. Does that mean I can no longer have wings, now that that particular method of obtaining them is not accessible? Of course not. Even ignoring the other wing-producing businesses, I can make my own, with my own human ingenuity, in many ways – you can deep-fry them, pan-fry them, bake them, broil them, grill them, hell, I’m sure you could find a way to cook them on a Foreman grill.
Your goal is to somehow prove that with fewer guns, there will be less violence. My point is that only less violence will breed less violence, regardless of the tools used to commit it.
And, in the end, a gun is just a tool, not an end, to committing violence, just like a smelted metal knife is a tool for killing and skinning large cats, and just like a telephone is a tool for obtaining hot wings.
What you set out to prove, you did not prove, through your obstinacy in insisting that your syllogism that begged numerous questions and was so narrow as to be invisible was The Only Solution Imaginable. You’ve faced counter examples, and had numbers you yourself inserted into the conversation used to prove that your point was not proven by facts.
You criticized my “plane to hell” example, because no one would possibly want to go to hell, therefore it’s pointless. But apply it to the situation: Why would anyone want to kill someone? Once they’ve crossed that line, do you think it matters to them whether they take a plane or a train or a horse-and-wagon?
1) I cited the source to verify my approximation of the relative rate of deadly violence in America in comparison to other developed countries, not to shore up any other argument.
2) I’m not unringing any bell. Data that is silent is silent. It is not evidence for or against any position. Failing to find a statistical correlation between one operationalization of two embedded variables is not evidence that no correlation between the underlying variables exists, but rather a lack of evidence that such a correlation does exist. You don’t like me to use the word “science,” but that is a fundamental scientific principle: Evidence involves disproving the null hypothesis, not failing to prove the actual hypothesis. The data is silent. It does not indicate anything, one way or the other. That is true because the variables have not been isolated, so failing to find correlation, which is very different from finding no correlation, only means that you have found no information of any kind.
I’m not going to go around in the same meaningless cicles with you regarding your other points. I’ve addressed them all already, debunked every one, and you only repeat them, rather than deal with the fact that they have been refuted.
You have done absolutely nothing to refute the syllogism. You have only tried to obscure it by blowing a hundred different kinds of smoke. The fact remains, if you increase the ease of doing something for which the will exists, the frequency with which it will be done will increase. You repeat all sorts of empty assertions and obfuscating noise to try to disguise the certain veracity of the preceding statement. But you have not touched it in any meaningful way. You repeat that a gun is just a tool, but do not explain away my analogies in which tools do indeed increase the frequency of actions which are made easier by virtue of their accessability. You tap dance around the point, rather than address it, because it can’t be refuted. And you can’t accept the fact that you can’t refute it.
I can give you a thousand examples of how any action for which there is a significant number of people with the will to do it will be done with greater frequency if the means for doing it are made more convenient and accessible, and you have not given me a single legitimate example to the contrary, nor have you resonded to my debunking of your false examples.
The only type of phenomenon that might follow a contrary logic is when the action that people have a will to do is gratifying because it is challenging, and so increasing the ease with which it can be done might not increase the frequency with which it is done. I doubt, though, that all or most deadly violence is committed because of the entertainment value of the challenge. In other words, the easier it is made to do, the more frequently it will be done.
You can blow all the smoke you want, but the light of that simple truth will shine straight through it each and every time.
in your arguments:
“My local Pizza/Wing joint has more of a 130-minute guarantee than a 30-minute one. Does that mean I can no longer have wings, now that that particular method of obtaining them is not accessible? Of course not. Even ignoring the other wing-producing businesses, I can make my own, with my own human ingenuity, in many ways – you can deep-fry them, pan-fry them, bake them, broil them, grill them, hell, I’m sure you could find a way to cook them on a Foreman grill.”
1) you employ the false dichotomy of either obtaining or not obtaining wings, not the subtle issue of the rate at which a population of people obtain wings. Some people will face a more difficult challenge to get what they want, and some won’t. It depends on how badly they wanted the wings, how much time they have, and how much easier or harder the changed circumstances have made obtaining the wings. Putting a pizza parlor a block from my neighborhood might not increase the consumption of pizza in my neighborhood if it was already very easy to get pizza beforehand, but it would probably increase the consumption of pizza in my neighborhood if the nearest other parlor were 30 miles away and none offered delivery service to my neighborhood. That’s why I used the word “significant” to qualify “increase in convenience.”
“You criticized my “plane to hell” example, because no one would possibly want to go to hell, therefore it’s pointless. But apply it to the situation: Why would anyone want to kill someone?”
Okay, now that really is just plain stupid. I criticized your “plane to hell” because it only works if no one wants to do it, and we are talking about rates of deadly violence because clearly there are people who do want to do it.
This is ridiculous. You really are an idiot. Why am I still responding to you?
I argued that if A (will to commit deadly violence) and B (increased convenience of committing deadly violence), then C (increased frequency of deadly violence). You respond, “No! Because if not A (plane to hell, for which there is no will) and B (increased convenience), then no C (no increased frequency). Your counterargument assumes the lack of one of the factors that my argument has always insisted must be present, and clearly is present in regards to the phenomenon we are discussing. Pointing out that its absence results in a different outcome is irrelevant, for reasons any high school algebra student could explain to you.
Why do people want wings. Because they’re awesome.
Why do people commit violent crimes? That’s the question.
“Why do people commit violent crimes? That’s the question”
No, that’s a question.
The question is how to reduce the rate of violent crime.
And the question to answer to do that is: what strategies are reasonably likely to reduce the rate of violent crime?
And one answer is: Make it harder to do.
and I don’t feel strongly about gun control (though I generally support it).
But I have to say I think Yokel has the stronger argument above. Any time you’re discussing a complex and contentious issue, and you start saying, “It’s obvious even to a child…” it’s usually because you’re trying to trick someone. At least that’s how Republicans always use it (“Even a child knows that if you tax something, you get less of it, so we should be taxing poor people!”)
Just in case either of you were wondering how effective you are in this infinite debate.
I have no idea what is motivating this interjection, but, other than your stylistic concerns, you are way, way off. I have very systematically pointed out at least a dozen logical fallacies on which Yokel has relied, and have presented and defended one very simple and compelling argument in its place. Some things are (or should be) obvious even to a child.
If there are a significant number of people with the will to do something, and you significantly increase the convenience of doing it, then the frequency with which it is done will increase. In what way are Yokel’s counter-arguments, such as “it’s wrong b/c if there is no will to do it then increasing the convenience of doing it won’t increase the zero frequency with which it is done,” stronger?
I’m not trying to trick anyone: If there is a significant distribution of people with some degree of will to do some act that has some degree of difficulty to be done, and you decrease the difficulty of doing it, the frequency with which it will be done will increase. That’s Econ 101, and it really is very obviously accurate. It’s not a complex proposition, and I haven’t heard a single legitimate argument against it either from you or Yokel.
Econ 101 is almost always used to justify something stupid.
Once again, I agree with Steve Harvey almost all the time, but here you’re resorting to calling your opponent an idiot and such, and it’s honestly just not that convincing. You’re a smart guy, but IMHO you’re using dumb arguments.
And who the fuck am I? Nobody. So it doesn’t really matter. I just thought after 30 back-and-forths we’d either all have to decide to ignore it, or maybe eventually comment on it.
Almost everything I write is informed, in part, by microeconomic reasoning, because, after having studied every or nearly every form of social analysis yet invented, it impressed me as the most powerful analytical tool we have at our disposal. So, if your statement is correct, you should disagree with almost everything I post, because almost all of it is implicitly justified to some extent by Econ 101.
Here’s what I honestly think: Several of the above arguments are probably the very best samples of rational argumentation I have ever employed on this site. I’m dead serious (that’s the main reason I kept going, by the way: I could feel the process, as aggravating as it was, honing the arguments). Other than being drawn a little off-track for awhile responding to the misuse of the data I had linked to, these arguments are almost all air-tight. And Yokel’s aren’t only full of holes; they’re almost nothing but holes.
So how is it that someone who (silently) agrees with me all the time jumps in now to tell me that the arguments I consider to be the best I’ve ever made on this site are particularly bad? I had my thoughts on that, especially given your tendency on the few occasions when you’ve remarked on my posts, but paused before sharing them to read your other response, and will have to accept you at your word.
I’ll just say, as a general rule, that when you can represent your arguments in algebraic form and verify the soundness of the reason employed, and can then examine the independent variables you relied on and substantially support the validity of each of those, that is, almost by definition, a really good argument. And that’s exactly what I did on several occasions here.
There is ideology, and there is reason. The conclusion, in isolation, that making the preferred instrument of inflicting deadly violence more easily accessible (an instrument which makes the commission of the act easier to do and easier to do spontaneously) in a population with a substantial number of people with the will, in given moments or circumstances, to commit acts of deadly violence, then the frequency with which the commission of acts of deadly violence occur will increase, is an absolutely sound one. It’s Econ 101 because some of Econ 101 is simply sound logical argumentation. And, unlike some propositions from Econ 101, it doesn’t depend on an oversimplified conceptualization of human’s as purely rational decision makers, but rather, to some extent, on the reasoned analysis of what does and does not facilitate irrational decision-making.
It is especially true when one recognizes the quantity of deadly violence that is inflicted in the heat of passion, because then the (weak) counter argument (that Yokel tried to implicitly make) that anyone who is irrational enough to plan a murder is irrational enough to carry out his plans regardless of what tools are available is not at all relevant: Most murders aren’t planned. I’d rather face someone in a murderous rage armed with a kitchen knife than with a gun, because I have a far better chance of evading mortal injury against someone (an average person) coming at me with a kitchen knife (from whom I will often be able to keep enough distance to prevent him from employing his weapon, for instance) than against someone coming at me with a gun.
There are people who (dis)agree with me much of the time for ideological reasons (ie, I say what they already (dis)believe), and there are those who (dis)agree with me much of the time because they are (un)persuaded by sound reasoning (which I almost always succeed in employing, and succeeded in employing in almost all of my argumentation on this thread). And then there are those who chime in, on one side or the other, because, for whatever reason, they have taken a personal liking or disliking to me. That pretty much sums up all of the permutations.
The quality of an argument is to some extent objectively verifiable. I have a lot of experience with logical argumentation, and I can step back and say with almost absolute confidence: The arguments I made in this thread, with the exception of any arguments I might have made based on the data set, are all perfectly sound arguments, with the one caveat that I should have qualified words lke “irrefutable,” since, by some really tortured argumentation, there are ways of “refuting” it, but not ways of effectively refuting it.
I’ve experienced on Pols, because, frankly, in all my time posting here, including two years ago, I have very rarely encountered weaker and more fallacy-laden arguments than those that Yokel has mobilized on this thread. And I have very rarely had a simpler, more fundamentally well-established and clearly supported argument with which to respond. That, in such an extreme example, you interject to announce that the argument “If A and B then C is wrong, b/c if not A and B then not C” is stronger than the argument “if you increase either will to do something or convenience of means to do it, the frequency in which it is done increases” is … strange, to say the least.
I’m just saying, your arguments are weaker than his. I understand that sucks. But you’re not making nearly as strong an argument as you think you are. And I say this as someone who WANTS to agree with you.
Honestly, I’m not trying to fuck you over. But I think you could do this better.
repeat that I am not only a person making the arguments, but also a person who knows how to critically evaluate the quality of arguments in general, and when you say “you’re not making nearly as strong an argument as you think you are,” I can ony respond by saying: you’re mistaken. I am making an argument exactly as strong as I have claimed it to be; a mathematically precise argument, in fact, which then boils down to the premises, which I amply supported. It really doesn’t get any stronger. And Yokel countered with absolute nonsense, not making a single coherent point (as far as I can recall at the moment, and I am running through his arguments in my head). Again, your assessment is bizarre and disheartening. My initial supposition that it was offered for the particular purpose of being disheartening may or may not be correct, but that is certainly its effect.
by not having let Yokel get under my skin, which was clearly one of his primary objectives from the get-go. That’s something I really do have to work on.
cultural reasons. It’s not at all complex or contentious in places that have not developed a cultural motivation for making it so.