@snow Yes, but the number of overall murders and violent crimes will go down. So will be a good thing overall.

Let me try to use an analogy to help you realize why your logic is self-defeating. The following statement is technically true yet misleading for the same reason as your own:

"After people started receiving vaccines the number of vaccine related deaths increased!"

The reason it is deceiving is that despite being true it ignores the fact that it is cherry picked and that the real statistic we care about is overall death and not vaccine related. The number of deaths from vaccines will be far less than the number of people saved by vaccines, much like with guns.

@freemo @snow How are the numbers of overall murders and violent crimes going down when you allow for guns? Would you think that allowing for guns now in Utrecht will lead to murders and violent crimes going down?

Also, a faulty comparison between vaccines and guns, yes statistically vaccine related deaths went up when introduced, but every vaccine preventable death went down and has been going down since. Guns never have a positive impact as they are not designed to do so.

@ff0000

The actual statistics directly contradict your claims and support my own.

The way we data scientists analyze situations like this is very specific. We look at countries where guns are legal and there is a significant legal change banning guns, then we look at the overall homicide rate or violent crime rate and see if it spikes up or down. We do this across many countries and see if there is a trend.

We also do the converse where we look at relaxed restrictions.

The cause-effect here is very strong, we almost always with only a few exceptions see a huge spike in homicide rates and violent crime rates following a gun restriction law. This spike tends to last on average about a decade before falling back down to almost pre-ban levels but usually never fully recovering.

I provide two attached examples as reference, i can provide more from additional countries if youd like.

@snow

@freemo @snow When looking up your data, i get to this quote. (source: crimeresearch.org/2016/04/murd).

So, it seems to me, and correct me if i'm wrong. We are really only talking about countries that allowed for citizens to have firearms and were then at some point banned. This did not result in a lowering of homicides but after a peak it fell down to almost pre-ban levels. This still does not say that a ban doesn't help, it is just that after a ban it is still easy to keep / get a firearm.

@ff0000 @snow Can you show data for countries that always had firearm bands, then made them legal, and the effect that had on homicide and violent crime rates?

The fact is, yea we can speculate all we want to try to justify our personal biases but all the data suggests your bias is wrong and unless you have **better** data to support your opinion then its a weak argument.

@freemo @snow No i meant countries that never (in modern times) had legal firearms compared to countries that had them and then banned them.

The data might show that in didn't really decrease homicides, but it also doesn't say if those homicides were still by firearms or that they shifted to other means.

And maybe my bias is wrong if you look at the data, but i rather live in a country where it is very hard to get a weapon compared to the USA.

@ff0000

I lived int he USA most of my life. Never once in 30 years was I in a situation with a gun where I felt uneasy or threatened in any way.

If you dont want to live in a country with guns thats a personal choice. But to me it is just prejudice with no real justification of any kind mostly brought on from being isolated from guns and told they are bad all your life.

@snow

@freemo @snow That is your bias showing there, and assuming i was told certain things. I was raised gun agnostic, i just witness that the chances of something gun related happening here are so slim that there is not even a need to worry about it.

I don't say there is no access to guns, or that i can't make it myself, it is just that local society has no need for it, so there is no real market for it. Which then results in a lot less firearm related incidents.

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@ff0000

You were raised in a country where there is no right to carry guns, you were therefore not raised gun agnostic.

I on the other hand was raised in a home that never had guns, I never even handled a gun until I was in my late teens, and even then only once. But I was raised in a country where guns were legal and some people carried.

It is clear we both have biases, and just because I call out your biases doesnt mean I'm claiming I have none of my own, I do. But I also have a strict code of scientific rules as to how to test a hypothesis and determine if its true, which I've tried to apply to determining my own stance on this. Your view however appears to lack that level of scrutiny, which is fine, most people arent data scientists. But therein lies the problem in my eyes.

@snow

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It is just that you use some graphs to show that a ban on guns did not result in reducing of homicide. And from that you conclude that allowing for guns is actually a good thing as it keeps homicides down, or rather, a ban will not positively affect the amount of homicides. You then use vaccines as an analogy, which doesn't make any sense as you are disregarding then the use of a vaccine and the number of deaths it prevents.

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