Gun control and genocide

Well Balbus, how's it going?

I'm curious as to why you chose to reply to my opinions/observations in the manner that you did rather than actually replying.
Granted my wording could have been more genteel, but my point is correct and I assume that absent any intelligent reply, You acted as you did.

In studying any phenomena you have to target specific variables and correct or account for other variables not being tested for. That is basic scientific method.
It is you who are attempting to simplify the issue by making specific conclusions; gun crime relative to gun control laws, based on unspecific data, much of which is not directly correlated to the variable being tested, gun laws and it's effect on gun related crime.
That is faulty logic of the type used by dishonest individuals who realize the actual facts do not support their position. If you do not understand that, well I suggest you take a refresher in the scientific method and logic/critical reasoning.

I'm sure you have heard or have read the phrase "accounting for all other factors" in your research into this and other topics, what do you think that phrase means?

For you to try and insinuate that I or others are simplifying the issue or misrepresenting the facts because we choose to focus solely on the variable being tested, while accounting for all others, just shows that you are not interested in intelligent discussion based on factual evidence, but rather just sounding off your personal opinions and political rhetoric.

You tend to be rather selective in the information you supply and consider, and when faced with hard statistics you dance around to make them fit your opinion.
Sorry that is not how it works if you want to resolve serious issues such as gun laws/control.

If you are not able to understand the proper methodology in researching such things and have to resort to applying force as a moderator, I see no further incentive to continue any discussions with you.
Just understand that I, as well as others here, see through your games, the same games you accuse the "opposition" of employing.
You're not fooling anyone here.

Personally I feel that calls into question the wisdom of having you be the moderator of the political forums. If you have a difference of opinion with another member, you can just pull the plug and silence them.
A political strategy in use since the beginning of time, and apparently at Hip Forums as well.

@ Meagain, I do apologize for going harsh on you, you just got caught in my whirlwind, so to speak, but I appreciate that you more often than not are very open minded and are not threatened in the least by the notion that you may be incorrect. I respect that.


@ the new kid above, thanks for recognizing my point.

 

That might not be on the topic at hand, but it does list some other information that might be interesting. Also, I am not clear why talking about the underlying issues of violent crime is not relevant to discussions of gun control laws. If the question is "are gun control laws effective at reducing incidence of violent crime," isn't a reasonable answer, "not as well as addressing the underlying issues of violent crime?"

 

because if the central focal point is the influence of gun laws on gun related crime, the other factors are secondary and need to be removed from the resulting conclusions. It does not mean that such factors are not important or also worthy of investigation, simply they are not the focal point of this particular topic, that's all.
It is simply the proper methodology for conducting research.

I really don't understand why that is so hard to comprehend.

The article you linked makes some interesting points, but it also flawed in some respects as pointed out in the comments.

Personally I feel the underlying problem with the majority of issues in the world today come down to education, available resources and opportunity, which is all the more reason to be very specific when researching and evaluating, because those causes can rightly be applied to most social problems.

 

Was there any correct research done on this topic? Which means that you can test the statistics and determine that the results actually apply to the whole population?

 

Yeah, there are tons of stats determining that reduced gun access reduces gun control. Duh. He's arguing that you can prove anything with statistic, which is also true, but it doesn't negate the obvious.

I don't support gun control either, I think there are social factors which are more important. But like the nazi's is a sensationalistic way to start a thread, and doesn't lead to any real debate.

Interestingly, stats also prove that that being proven wrong doesn't change peoples beliefs, but cements them.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/10/12/0956797610385953.abstract

 

What I wanted to say in my previous post is that there's always a ton of 'research' done on any political topic, but a lot of it is often faulty. Or people take the results of a correctly done research and try to use them everywhere, without taking into consideration that results only apply to a specific population.

 

I think your difficulty is that you are not seeing the answers we are giving you. The answer is, you are asking the wrong question. It is like treating a symptom. It is pretty silly to ask will this aspirin remove this man's headache, when we know his headache is caused by brain tumors. The answer is, sure maybe, but that doesn't matter because he has brain tumors. We need to ask how do we treat brain tumors. So in the debate of whether or not gun laws influence gun related crime, the answer is maybe, but it doesn't really matter because their are other, stronger correlations. If we address those issues, we don't need to ask about gun laws. We are giving answers to the question, they are just not what you want to hear. If you are really trying to conduct some sort of scientific investigation on this, then the answer is, well, what do the experiments and data show, because it no longer becomes a theoretical issue but an empirical one.

 

I see and fully comprehend the answers you are giving me, problem is you are answering a question that wasn't asked.
The problem isn't that I'm asking the wrong question, problem is you and others haven't answered the question asked.

I wholeheartedly agree with you concerning the underlying causes and relationships between poverty, education and crime, but to make the leap, as has been done, from that data set and then say "see, guns should be removed from the citizenry" is plain ludicrous, yet that is what you and balbus are attempting to do.

I'm not missing or disregarding anything at all, I'm just sticking to the specifics of the thread topic, gun control and it's relation to gun related crime.

May I suggest that you enroll in the same refresher course in the scientific method and how to conduct and interpret research that balbus should take.

 

I you want to start going on the theoretical underpinnings of the scientific method, we sure can go about that. Working on my Ph.D with a focus on the philosophy of science at the moment. I am always happy to hear what you might be able to teach me. Are you a Quinian, Bayesian, or heavens forbid, a Kuhnian?

If we look at the person with the brain tumor, we can ask, will aspirin alleviate the headache? Well that will probably depend on things like the genetic make up of the person, the stage of the tumor, the other medicines they are taking, their age etc. So the answer of course is, well it depends, maybe, maybe not, hard saying given what we know. In this instance, we would run studies that categorize individuals in the group in order to isolate the variables, run meta-analyses, and determine the exact metabolic and physical mechanisms that the tumor is enacting in order to determine what effect that has on the headache.

Now if the case of gun control laws. Will gun control laws reduce the number of gun related deaths? Well that depends on the state involved, the percentage of college graduates, poverty rates, other laws that are currently in effect, the severity of the laws in question, how long those laws have been in place, who will enforce those laws, the economic outlook for the location, etc. Now in order to answer your question, we would have to run studies that try to isolate all of those variables by looking locations that are identical in all those ways except for gun control laws. To my knowledge those identical locations do not exist. We cannot isolate the variable, making this non-scientific. If you happen to have data that conforms to this, I would be very happy to see it as would a lot of researchers on the topic. It would answer a lot of questions. Without this data, again, the answer to the question will gun control laws lower the incidence of gun related deaths is maybe, maybe not, hard to say given what we know. We have been put in a place where we cannot scientifically answer your question.

 

Cool, always glad to hear someone pursuing an advanced education.:2thumbsup:

As too your question of "what are you", I decline to answer, not because I don't know your references, but rather because in answering you would then automatically pidgeon-hole me into some arbitrary classification of your own construct regarding my education, knowledge and general intelligence that would then color any further communications you read from me.
I prefer to be considered without all your preconceptions, thank you very much.

Now we can massage this issue in myriad ways and come up with countless cause and effect scenarios to support just about anybody's position, as has been done in these forums ad-nauseum since the site's inception.

In the interested of not getting myself sanctioned further and maintaining a pleasant demeanor towards you, you seem like a person with much to contribute to the forum, I will bow out of this discussion with the following;

I purchased my first firearm around 1983, around the time when the issues surrounding gun laws really heated up.
During the past 30 years since I personally became aware of the issue and began following it, time and again it has been born out in real day to day life that in areas with strict laws curtailing or denying personal firearm ownership, the violent crime rate increased considerably.
In areas with less restrictive laws or areas that encouraged personal firearm ownership violent crime rates dropped considerably.

That has held true over time, across all types of socio-economic strata, across all aggregate educational levels, pretty much any other variable you want to throw at it, the same underlying phenomena occurs.

This has become so obvious and consistant that it should no longer even be a debatable issue, but rather and more importantly, as you suggest, the underlying social issues that "force" individuals into criminal scenarios be addressed instead of committing so many resources into one of the myriad symptoms of the underlying disease.

Have a nice day :sunny:

 

Gas 1

It wasn’t your political views that were objectionable but your constant sniping about other people’s ‘intelligence’ it didn’t seem about defending your argument but about claiming that anyone that didn’t agree with you was too stupid or moronic to understand it.

See what I mean. You fall at the first hurdle. Your only assumption is that the actions against you were based on another’s lack of intelligence.
You then go on to say I’m not interested in intelligent discussion because I don’t see things the way you do and imply that I’d so dumb that I can’t understand proper methodology the way you do.

 

Gas 2

But is that taking place? Anyone can claim it - but is the correction being correctly applied or just being applied in the way the corrector sees as correct.

Far too much ‘data’ in human interaction and society is open to myriad interpretations.

Due to the nature of guns within US society there is a mountain of data and statistics all open to differing interpretations.

You seem to be claiming that godlike you know absolutely everything and have correctly accounted for absolutely everything.

First I’d ask where I’ve said this?
I’ve argued that attitudes toward guns in the US seem to be a symptom of a wider mentality and set of attitudes. It seems to me that it is because of those that data is seen by them in the way it is.

What ‘facts’?
And is it ‘fact’ uncontested and solid or is it an interpretation that is presumed by the observer to be ‘fact’? And is the interpretation as to the meaning of the fact uncontested?

Again it seems to me presumptuous to claim that ‘all other factors’ have been correctly and un-contentiously been taken into account.
How can anyone be sure they know all possible factors? Most scientist talk of ‘known factors’ and/or admit theirs is a view of the factors (‘as we understand the factors to be’).

I think that people that claim total certainty are possibly closed minded and unquestioning of their beliefs.

Can you give an example please?

 

Yeah,thats my one critisism of this site; smartarses getting off by trying to seem superior. I'm not saying the Mods should hurry to intervien-they should'nt have to-it should be us members that counter it , whether or not we agree with acceptable points the 'perpetrators' making.