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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/1 ... 24063.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Anyone see this. An anti-gunner has called me out on this on Facebook and I wanted a good come back. Any thoughts.

I wouldn't bother with any one or any thing on Huffington. They wouldn't post any information regarding the Colorado recall for days. I always counter the absurd argument that gun ownership leads to more murder by asking why the murder rates were so low when just about EVERY home in America had a firearm in our first and most of the second century of the country's existence.

So what is what I would say. The study describes a correlation not causal relationship. Someone will look and say it's because guns but you could just as easily postulate the gun are a response to the violence not the violence to the guns. Using a study like that in that manner is either ignorance or dishonesty.

philip964 wrote:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/1 ... 24063.html

Anyone see this. An anti-gunner has called me out on this on Facebook and I wanted a good come back. Any thoughts.

You can't get through to these type of people. They repeatedly deny hard cold facts and make up their own statistics. You might as well talk to the wall, you will get it to understand more than those anti-gunners ever will.

More stupidity by "researchers". The first thing you do when you come across this kind of shenanigans is check John Lott. He pretty much eviscerates the study.

Here's my take on it.

Look at the homicide rates by state.

States that have strict gun control laws:
California - 4.8
Illinois - 5.6
Massachusetts - 2.8

States that have "loose" gun control laws:
Florida - 5.2
Oklahoma - 5.5
Texas - 4.4

From these numbers it should be obvious that the gun control laws have little impact on the homicide rate. Oh wait, their study shows that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher firearm homicide rates. Ah, but according to John Lott, they never looked at gun ownership rates.

Using state level data the study claims a positive relationship between the percentage of suicides committed with guns (they call this the gun ownership rate rather than what it actually is) and the firearm homicide rate.

So a state with high suicide with gun rates is considered to be a high gun ownership state? That's called manipulating data to get the outcome you're looking for. Where's the data that shows that lower firearm ownership rates lead to lower overall suicide rates (not lower firearm suicide rates.) It stands to reason that lower firearm access will lead to lower firearm suicide rates, but does it lead to lower overall suicide rates? Apparently not.

Studies of suicide rates are ambiguous as to causes. This one shows that 54% of suicides are committed with a firearm. Do the researchers really want to say that we could eliminate 54% of all suicides by getting rid of guns? That's laughable. People don't commit suicide because they have a gun. They commit suicide because they are suicidal. The gun is just a handy instrument of death.

Let's look at suicide rates by state independent of firearm suicides for the same six states I arbitrarily picked earlier.
Callifornia - 10.5
Florida - 14.8
Illinois - 9.2
Massachusetts - 9.1
Oklahoma - 16.5
Texas - 11.5

So while Illinois has one of the lower suicide rates it has one of the highest homicide rates. A legitimate scholarly study would account for those kinds of anomalies.

It makes you wonder if the authors of this study first read this study which found, among other things:

The nine states that rank lowest in terms of gun prevalence are the very same nine that rank lowest for suicide rates. Similarly, the three states top-ranked for gun prevalence can be found among the four states ranking highest for suicide rates.

Aha! Perfect data to prove our preexisting theory!

One last comment. There's an elephant in this study that they never mention.

for each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of Black population, firearm homicide rate increased by 5.2%

Maybe, just maybe, gun homicides have a stronger correlation to crime rates than they do to gun ownership?

baldeagle wrote:More stupidity by "researchers". The first thing you do when you come across this kind of shenanigans is check John Lott. He pretty much eviscerates the study.

Here's my take on it.

Look at the homicide rates by state.

States that have strict gun control laws:
California - 4.8
Illinois - 5.6
Massachusetts - 2.8

States that have "loose" gun control laws:
Florida - 5.2
Oklahoma - 5.5
Texas - 4.4

From these numbers it should be obvious that the gun control laws have little impact on the homicide rate. Oh wait, their study shows that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher firearm homicide rates. Ah, but according to John Lott, they never looked at gun ownership rates.

Using state level data the study claims a positive relationship between the percentage of suicides committed with guns (they call this the gun ownership rate rather than what it actually is) and the firearm homicide rate.

So a state with high suicide with gun rates is considered to be a high gun ownership state? That's called manipulating data to get the outcome you're looking for. Where's the data that shows that lower firearm ownership rates lead to lower overall suicide rates (not lower firearm suicide rates.) It stands to reason that lower firearm access will lead to lower firearm suicide rates, but does it lead to lower overall suicide rates? Apparently not.

Studies of suicide rates are ambiguous as to causes. This one shows that 54% of suicides are committed with a firearm. Do the researchers really want to say that we could eliminate 54% of all suicides by getting rid of guns? That's laughable. People don't commit suicide because they have a gun. They commit suicide because they are suicidal. The gun is just a handy instrument of death.

Let's look at suicide rates by state independent of firearm suicides for the same six states I arbitrarily picked earlier.
Callifornia - 10.5
Florida - 14.8
Illinois - 9.2
Massachusetts - 9.1
Oklahoma - 16.5
Texas - 11.5

So while Illinois has one of the lower suicide rates it has one of the highest homicide rates. A legitimate scholarly study would account for those kinds of anomalies.

It makes you wonder if the authors of this study first read this study which found, among other things:

The nine states that rank lowest in terms of gun prevalence are the very same nine that rank lowest for suicide rates. Similarly, the three states top-ranked for gun prevalence can be found among the four states ranking highest for suicide rates.

Aha! Perfect data to prove our preexisting theory!

One last comment. There's an elephant in this study that they never mention.

for each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of Black population, firearm homicide rate increased by 5.2%

Maybe, just maybe, gun homicides have a stronger correlation to crime rates than they do to gun ownership?

Thank you for your help. I used this for my reply.

philip964 wrote:

baldeagle wrote:More stupidity by "researchers". The first thing you do when you come across this kind of shenanigans is check John Lott. He pretty much eviscerates the study.

Here's my take on it.

Look at the homicide rates by state.

States that have strict gun control laws:
California - 4.8
Illinois - 5.6
Massachusetts - 2.8

States that have "loose" gun control laws:
Florida - 5.2
Oklahoma - 5.5
Texas - 4.4

From these numbers it should be obvious that the gun control laws have little impact on the homicide rate. Oh wait, their study shows that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher firearm homicide rates. Ah, but according to John Lott, they never looked at gun ownership rates.

Using state level data the study claims a positive relationship between the percentage of suicides committed with guns (they call this the gun ownership rate rather than what it actually is) and the firearm homicide rate.

So a state with high suicide with gun rates is considered to be a high gun ownership state? That's called manipulating data to get the outcome you're looking for. Where's the data that shows that lower firearm ownership rates lead to lower overall suicide rates (not lower firearm suicide rates.) It stands to reason that lower firearm access will lead to lower firearm suicide rates, but does it lead to lower overall suicide rates? Apparently not.

Studies of suicide rates are ambiguous as to causes. This one shows that 54% of suicides are committed with a firearm. Do the researchers really want to say that we could eliminate 54% of all suicides by getting rid of guns? That's laughable. People don't commit suicide because they have a gun. They commit suicide because they are suicidal. The gun is just a handy instrument of death.

Let's look at suicide rates by state independent of firearm suicides for the same six states I arbitrarily picked earlier.
Callifornia - 10.5
Florida - 14.8
Illinois - 9.2
Massachusetts - 9.1
Oklahoma - 16.5
Texas - 11.5

So while Illinois has one of the lower suicide rates it has one of the highest homicide rates. A legitimate scholarly study would account for those kinds of anomalies.

It makes you wonder if the authors of this study first read this study which found, among other things:

The nine states that rank lowest in terms of gun prevalence are the very same nine that rank lowest for suicide rates. Similarly, the three states top-ranked for gun prevalence can be found among the four states ranking highest for suicide rates.

Aha! Perfect data to prove our preexisting theory!

One last comment. There's an elephant in this study that they never mention.

for each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of Black population, firearm homicide rate increased by 5.2%

Maybe, just maybe, gun homicides have a stronger correlation to crime rates than they do to gun ownership?

Thank you for your help. I used this for my reply.

Knowing Huffington some Moderator will delete you post anyway.

philip964 wrote:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/1 ... 24063.html

Anyone see this. An anti-gunner has called me out on this on Facebook and I wanted a good come back. Any thoughts.

Don't waste your time. Go do something more productive like discuss Kantian epistemology with a brick wall.

I don't necessarily think it is a waste of time to respond. Who knows, you may plant a seed. The chances are low, but the cost is low as well.

I would point the person to another study conducted by Harvard Law that contradicts this one. The study is called, "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide". The study basically debunks any direct relation between the two. Now of course, the study that's in the story listed by the OP links gun ownership with "gun-related" homicides. Not exactly the same thing, but I would argue that the comparison itself is a moot point. It's the only way they can insinuate a link because if you compare gun ownership with all homicide rates, then the link disappears.

At any rate, this link should be shown to every anti. It was posted by another forum user in another topic. I would just post the topic...but not sure how to do that.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/org ... online.pdf

And a story about the study....

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... _3Fw_3D369

Original props to Bdickens.

philip964 wrote:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/1 ... 24063.html

Anyone see this. An anti-gunner has called me out on this on Facebook and I wanted a good come back. Any thoughts.

Homicide rate is higher in California than in Texas? Why?

Thought I just saw a news article today where the FBI declared Chicago as the "muder capital" of the US?????