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@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper Fewer gun deaths usually also means fewer deaths in general. It doesn't have to, but it does.

Obviously higher birth rate also causes more deaths :) But having a gun allows for more opportunities to intimidate and hurt people with it, opportunities that are often not available to people who's best available weapon is a kitchen knife.

It also allows for some opportunities that aren't really possible with blunt force objects and blades, such as deadly accidents and mass killings. There's very few multiple death stabbings and almost no baseball bat suicides.

And I have yet to hear a good argument for risks related to harder access to guns that isn't based on there being very easy access to guns.

Poland has 40 million people and the number of mass shootings that can be counted on one hand within the living history. The same is true for the great majority of countries. US is a special case for many reasons - lack of social safety net is a big factor in violence in general, so is the mass incarceration - but you could only makes things better if you make sure a crazy person can't easily purchase an automatic rifle.

@pies @zack @MelodyCooper

The data suggests otherwise from what ive seen. But if ghats the case you want to make then make it. Dont provid unrelated data that doesnt say that.

@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper US has an incredibly high murder rate for its level of income. Source is mentioned.

@pies @freemo @MelodyCooper Switzerland has a very lower murder rate when compared to the UK for example, despite the UK going much further with general weapons bans that include kitchen knives. Maybe this is more complicated than you want it to be.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo I know Switzerland is a favourite example, the second one being Canada, but maybe actually read up on Switzerland before you do it. Certainly not a "get an AR at the grocery store" kind of country.

@freemo @pies @MelodyCooper huh, if only I used a point of comparison to make my example actually communicate something specific. I just compared a relatively lax country to a tightly buttoned down one. Try addressing the point, please.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo What you gave is the only example you can think of. There are no other countries like that. There are a few where hunting is popular and that makes of a significant number of guns that don't generally cause the murder rate to skyrocket. The rest has restrictive gun laws and high murder rates or a lot of guns and murders.

Why did you choose Switzerland in particular? Is it its similarity to the US? Do you think US should be required to have a purchase licence for any modern firearm!? Should there be a puchase licence requirement for ammo? What are you trying to say, exactly?

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo ok, too many typos and no edit functionality on my app or server :) But I think you get my point. I give a list of twenty countries where restrictive gun laws work. You only look at the one where there relatively lax - still much stricter than in the US, mind you. You're not looking for evidence.

@freemo @MelodyCooper @pies I bet residual lead levels in the water gives a stronger correlation with murder rate than the gun regulations.

@zack @MelodyCooper @pies

Again you dont use corelation if your doing honest science on this or any topic like it...

@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper None of us here are doing any science. And lack of control over sales and ownership of firearms is certainly not the only problem that contributes an abnormally high murder rate in the US.

But your insistence that the fact that anyone can buy an automatic weapon in your country has no bearing on murder rate being extremely high indicates to me that you don't really want to learn. You just want to preach.

And that's fine.

@pies @freemo @MelodyCooper You clearly aren’t familiar with gun laws in the US if you think anyone can get full auto here. What a shock, another anti gun person who doesn’t even know what they’re arguing against.

@zack @MelodyCooper @pies

Obviously what zack said. The sale of new auto weapons have been illegal in the usa for a very long time. You can only get access to very old antique autoweapons and there are very few of them at all.

It does discredit you when you say stuff like that.

@MelodyCooper @pies @freemo I could easily point to the shooting in France at that eagles of death metal concert, where lots of weapons got through in a stricter setting than the US. There will always be ways around the issue including home made weapons which are getting more robust every year that completely dodge the question of regulation to begin with.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo And yet, US has hundreds of mass shootings a year, and France decidedly does not, go figure.

@freemo @pies @MelodyCooper If we’re shifting goalposts now to mass shootings, the US doesn’t have the worst per capita death rate related to that. Also, most of those mass shootings in that statistic are gang related, which also confounds your clearly well formed opinion even if you wanted to say that study was outdated. You clearly just want to preach, which is fine I guess.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo I'm not, @freemo had mentioned it.

Anyway, what about tha murder rate? Is it the lack of old architecture? Maybe it's the freedom? I'm sure there must be reasons other than very easy and uncontrolled access to something that's specifically designed to kill people.

@freemo @MelodyCooper @pies The point was that there will always be a way to get past regulations. That it can happen in tightly regulated places too, so picking out one of the rare instances where a shooter could actually afford a full auto is disingenuous at best. Not to mention you ignored the most common form of mass shooting: gang conflicts - often perpetrated with guns that weren’t legally acquired in the first place. And it’s all meaningless anyways since everyone is at most a $2500 mini-cnc machine away from having basically any gun they want these days. Bullets might be the harder part of that equation actually, but they’re also pretty easy to make, I’m pretty sure I know someone who’s made both.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo And you go on and on about things that aren't US-specific. What is different about the US that causes you guys to murder each other much more frequently than in, say, Spain or UK?

@MelodyCooper @freemo @pies Our gang violence is pretty substantial here, probably more so than most developed countries. Just because you want to ignore this doesn’t make it untrue. Please stop changing topics.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo CDC estimates that gang violence was responsible for 10% of overall homicides in 2020. So I think you need another excuse.

@freemo @pies @MelodyCooper I think you need to consider that even if you took away all gun violence the murder rate in the US would still be high, many times higher than most developed countries - guns are clearly very far from the main problem here. I’m trying really hard to be good faith and polite here, but I haven’t seen any sign of that from you whatsoever. I could point to any number of stats, but because any single one of them doesn’t account for the entire discrepancy it won’t matter to you, you’ll just jump to an entirely different subject or ignore it.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo Where are those stats then? You claim the reasons are different, and you keep moving the goalpost on that (so it's not gang violence after all?)

I'm curious to know what particular piece of data makes you so sure it's not the easy access to guns that's causing all those extra murders to happen.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo And no, I'm not skipping around, or moving the goalpost. I'm talking about the reasons for US having so many more murders than any other rich country.

I do appreciate that US has many structural problems that may cause people to turn to violence, from prolific lack of access to basic necessities of life like health care and housing, to an incredibly harmful mass incarceration system you've built, to a lack of support for getting out of poverty that plagues vast swaths of US. I get that. And that's quite unusual for a rich country and I'm sure contributes to the problem. And if you had like 50% or even 100% more murders, I could buy that argument. But the disparity is much, much larger.

@MelodyCooper @freemo @pies Did you seriously think the entire difference was just in guns?

@pies

I havent seen any valid data on the topic from either of you....

@zack @MelodyCooper

@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper Which one are you questioning? Murder rates, number of gang-related homicides, Swiss gun laws?

@pies @zack @MelodyCooper

I didnt say i was questioning anything... but you two are both disagreeing with eachother and neither of you have provided any sort of high quality data to make either case.

So im just pointing out its kinda odd for you to complain he isnt providing data when you really havent done that yourself either.

@pies @zack @MelodyCooper

No it is specifically.invalid and commented multiple times in the thread why every time you attempted to share invalid data

@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper Yeah, this kind of goes as expected :) Gun nuts ask for data, then they don't like the data, they have no data, and they keep believing. Well, I hope more people come to their senses, their democratic voice gets heard, and you fix your glaring problem so that gun nuts around here don't point to US and claim you're doing great despite the guns.

@pies @zack @MelodyCooper

Sorry but you dont win science debates by seeing who can post the most intellectually dishonest links to data... not how honest scientific inquery works. The fact you think it does shows you are probably the only "nut" here. The fact you felt the need to make personally attacks to everyone who disagrees with you really proves it though

@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper Sure, that's the reason you haven't provided any data. That's the reason our conversation led nowhere. Well, good luck with your safety guns.

@pies

What assertion have I made havent provided data for? I have posted the data for pretty much all my assertions in the past, at least if/when someone brought it up.

@zack @MelodyCooper

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@pies

I sure have, probably 50 times over the years, and several times this month alone (as its been a significant topic)... I've addressed both why the data and science we have is lacking (on either side of the discussion).. why its bad approach to analysis and Data for whats out there, and likewise provided data nad charts from the data we have access to...

So yes I've shared the data to that, quite often and recently.. I guess what you meant to say is you never saw or asked me for data and now are upset because I called **you** out for not having data so now your diverting the spotlight and trying to make it sound like I refuse to provide data when I actually did? Umm ok, not a good look, but ok. But yea if you want to download the data with me and do the analysis I'll be happy to go through it with you step by step. Its on my timeline but we can process the data together if you'd like as well.

@zack @MelodyCooper

@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper Still the same :D No, I'm not changing the subject, I'm literally answering your question. And sure, let's say I also provided my data and sources elsewhere, so we can be done.

@pies @zack @MelodyCooper

Lol no my dats was actually provided and you only asked for it once **you** were called out for not providing any.. sorry buddy but doesnt work that way. Youve provided no data, you dont get to act superior by imagining you did and then calling out others who actually did provide data and pretending they didnt.

@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper Whatever I could provide you'll just say that I'm wrong and you don't have to provide any proof because you did before. What would be the point?

@freemo @zack @MelodyCooper But sure, here you go, a list of studies linking number of guns to homicide rates. hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearm

Let me guess, it doesn't prove causation, because it's a study.

@freemo @pies @MelodyCooper More like it isn’t conclusive science because there is no experiment to be done. But you could find a general direction with this kind of observational data, just be careful you might not like what other conclusions you could get with this kind of analysis.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo The other conclusion being that people started buying guns after all the knife shootings?

@MelodyCooper @freemo @pies Another conclusion, would be that maybe there’s more than one factor in this discussion. I know this might be a little sophisticated for a person like you, but there are a lot of differences between the US and Europe that extends past guns. Give that you weren’t aware that new SMGs aren’t legal to purchase in the US, you might also not be aware that different states have differing laws and general circumstances. For example, the Deep South has high rates of poverty - you can see large chunks of those states might not even have access to power. Is their rate of violent crime and murder due to guns or poverty? Yes, the United States are not totally uniform - which is important.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo So your conclusion is that both gun ownership and murder rates are both caused by poverty?

@MelodyCooper @freemo @pies I could point out that California has some of the higher murder rates in the country despite having lots of gun regulations and money. Would that make you less of a sanctimonious prick? It honestly feels like you’re either retarded or bad faith. You beg and plead for examples of what it could be other than guns, and when I give it to you you spew more stupid bullshit. Literally impossible to reason with you.

@zack @freemo @pies Just (reluctantly) jumping in here to say that the level of gun violence in the United States does have multiple factors affecting it, poverty being one. Hatred and irrational fears being another. The point is, when you have any of those factors in play and you add guns, it’s like adding a match to a powder keg. (The match being the gun). Why would you do that?

@MelodyCooper @zack @pies

I think everyone is in agreement that the violence in the usa is a multitude of factors of which any influence guns have is at best a small fraction. Of course i disagree that addi g guns is like adding a match, mutch the opposite its like untying peoples hands so they can act.

@freemo @MelodyCooper @zack No, I think guns play a major role in murder rate. They're not the only factor, obviously, but they're the big one.

@pies @MelodyCooper @zack

Then on that we agree, as I feel the evidence shows it strongly decreases the murder rate when having it present in a society with high murder rates. Though I suspect you think the opposite is true,

@freemo @MelodyCooper @zack I see no evidence that a lot of guns that people in US have lowers the murder rate there. Quite the opposite. You have a lot of guns and a lot of murders.

@pies @MelodyCooper @zack

Yes as i explained to you earlier why you were looking at the dats erroneously in the regard and how to correct it. Your incorrect approach of conflating correlation with causation from the start will usually lead to bad conclusions as it just did for you.

Woukd be happy to explore some valid analysis with you as I offered many times already. I suspect you arent arguing in good faith though.

@freemo @MelodyCooper @zack But causality does require correlation, doesn't it? And US demonstrably has a lot of guns and does not have a low murder rate. There is no reason to think a lot of guns lowers murder rates. There is a reason to think the opposite.

Just because you say something lots of times doesn’t make it reflective of reality. You’d make for a really shitty scientist. Why do Oregon and Utah have fewer murders per capita than California then? Both have more guns and fewer regulations on those guns - granted Oregon does have a measure that passed but hasn’t been implemented yet. Must be the guns dropping the murder rate, right? This is basically the same logic you’ve been using the entire time. Crime rate in general - including murder - in the US dropped around the time concealed carry started being allowed in more states. Maybe you don’t understand how data works, but your 2 variable bullshit won’t cut it.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo I guess Americans are just more hateful. Thank you for making that clear :)

@pies @freemo @MelodyCooper that’s a funny way to admit that you were talking out of your ass.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo So that's also not something you're saying? Feels like you guys just don't want to talk about why Americans murder each other so much. So it's not because you want to and not because you can. What is the reason for your murder rate again?

@pies

anyone who spent any real time and is honest with themselves in America knows exactly why the american murder rate is so high... when you are there it feels like visiting an insane asylum, the mental health issues are huge there and pervasive.

@zack @MelodyCooper

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@freemo @pies @zack What?? Most domestic violence murders are committed with guns. How do more guns prevent that? Or stop corrupt police who shoot totally unarmed people? Are you saying if we OK Corral it and wives had guns and ALL citizens could shoot back at bad cops it would be a safer, better world? I mean, just following your More Guns are Better in a Gun Killing Environment logic. Where and when would the shooting end?

@freemo @pies @MelodyCooper Most of the stats anti fun people like to use miss a lot of the information, like for example: most stats you see on gun deaths are about homicide and not murder. They also don’t tell you how many of those homicides are courtesy of the police. Why do we want to rely more on the police again? Last I checked they rarely get to an emergency in a timely fashion, nor are they particularly helpful when they get there. Not to mention the power tripping.

@MelodyCooper @pies @zack

More guns dont stop all forms of violence.. the presence of guns are preventing coubtless rapes and violent acts many before they even start as a deterrant.

So yes while you eliminate guns all your doing is eliminating some home murders with guns, replacing it with murders by other means and then adding countless new rapes and murders on top.

It shouldnt be hard to see how a murder witb a gun simply gets replaces with a murder with a knife, 2 rapings, and a strangle.

@freemo @MelodyCooper @zack Is your claim that US has a significantly lower sexual assault rate as somepared to other rich countries?

@pies @MelodyCooper @zack

Thry do.. do i need to tell you a 10th time why correlation is not causation?

@freemo @MelodyCooper @zack It feels like you think US has the worst people in the world, and it's only the guns that make it just about bearable, except for some very worrying metrics.

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@freemo @zack @pies Actually, I am not in agreement that guns are a small fraction. The fact that other countries with worse poverty and just as much hatred have exponentially less gun violence is because they have fewer guns. It’s not to say violence would go away if we had no guns. But the level of violence WOULD diminish. Just like if you gave someone a rock to attack children in a classroom, they’d do less damage compared to someone with an AR15.

@MelodyCooper

You just changed what we were talking about.. your talking about "gun violence".. not the murder rate... Of **course** banning guns will make **gun** violence go down. We are talking about **all** violence, including acts of knife or other forms of violence that would have been deterred by a gun.

@zack @pies

@MelodyCooper @zack @pies

The old "Gun violence is lower in countries where guns are banned" (ignoring guns effect on non-gun violence) is basically the anti-vaxxer tactic of "If you make vaccines illegal we will see less vaccine deaths".. well yea, sure, of course you will, but you will also see non-vaccine related deaths skyrocket...

@freemo @MelodyCooper @zack I'm not talking about gun violence but murder rate.

@freemo @MelodyCooper @zack I really don't understand how someone can say with a straight face that guns lower murder rate while living in a country that has an enormous murder rate and loads of guns. Arguing that guns don't boost murder rate is very counterintuitive to me and not in line with the stuff I've read, but it's somewhat plausible. But if guns lower murder rate how many more guns do you need to get your murder rate to a normal level? You guys have more guns than people.

@freemo @MelodyCooper @pies Why keep talking when you’re clearly never going to change your mind. You clearly don’t know much, but have a strong opinion anyways. You can go run along with your rape whistle and hope the cops get there in time.

@zack @MelodyCooper @freemo Do I even have to say it? US ranks nr 14 in the world in reported rape, and the only rich country that's above it is Sweden. Guns don't stop sexual assault from happening. Guns do not make a country safer at all.

@pies @zack @MelodyCooper

How many times do people need to tell you correlation isnt causation before yiu get it?

@freemo @pies @MelodyCooper so you’re saying women shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves, thanks cool.

@pies @MelodyCooper @zack

Because correlation isnt causation. When you analyze the data using causation tests llike granger the pattern becomes clear, which is the correct way to analyze the data.

No simply injecting guns till you reach p doesnt worth, the relationship is clearly going to be nonlinear.

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