Seems pretty clear to me, want to place limits on it, get support for a new amendment.

@freemo right on. And before someone posts the "well regulated militia" argument, the militia at that time was the able-bodied male population. The 2a is definitely about the general public being armed and trained to repel either invasion or tyranny.

If the Federal government wanted to take the 2a seriously, they should be expanding the Civilian Marksmanship Program and offering free rifle lessons in high school.

@mike805 @freemo even if that were the case (it's isn't), you still have them "well-regulated" bit. Also, if the first part is to be taken for sacred, by your interpretation then only white men should have the right to bear arms?

The reification of an old document is a choice. One that is killing our children. Guns are the number one cause of death for children in America! Our life expectancy is way lower than all other advanced countries. Choosing this mortality for an interpretation of an old text is the definition of a death cult. One that is imposed on a majority of Americans who do not want it.

@lmrocha @freemo then change it The Founders put in a procedure to change the Constitution. If a strong majority really does oppose the public ownership of guns, then you should have no trouble getting an amendment passed, right? A previous generation of progressive activists actually managed to get a ban on alcohol passed as an amendment, so it's not impossible.

I don't agree with you, but campaigning for an amendment would be the honest approach.

@mike805 @freemo if we had a democracy that would work, but we have an oligarchy where the lobby of the gun manufacturers out votes the people. Just see what the supreme court did recently to my state of New York. Our democratically enacted gun controls were wiped.

And if you don't believe we are in an oligarchy, see the news about Clarence Thomas. That is why I take issue with this reification of the founding fathers. That is all a smoke screen to face that there is no democracy on this issue. It's the rule of the lobby, which I very much doubt the founding fathers intended. Indeed, a century later Lincoln called the death penalty for profiteers, which is what the gun manufacturers who profit from there daily assassination of American children are.

@mike805 @freemo you have changed the interpretation of only the bits you like: guns for all, when it was meant for well regulated militia of white men. There was no need for amendments to change that interpretation. But if we want to set the limits clearly specified by the "well regulated" bit (the point @freemo was commenting with meme, incorrectly in my view) then we need an amendment. Isn't that convenient? Of course it is all a matter of interpretation, which depends on the supreme court, which depends on money---or a president with the balls to pack it.

The only hope it's that this conservative overreach (as in Tennessee and recent supreme court rulings) will result in a youth backlash that has not been seen since 1969.

@lmrocha

Nah, the amendment says nothing of white men, and the foubding fathers made no hijts that is what they intended... well regulated militia is very obviously an exemplary clause not a qualifying clause

@mike805

@freemo @mike805 This is a case of manufacturers who profiteer from the murder of the citizenry, convincing a minority that wanting to keep their toys has a higher, almost divine reason and it's worth assassinating children for. Again, the number one cause of death for children in the USA is guns. That does not happen in countries not at war. You are siding with the profiteers, not the people, and certainly not the children who are scared and tired of fearing for their lives daily in schools and at home.

@lmrocha

Yea thats complete nonsense... the data is quite clear.. at best banning guns does nothing to help improve the violent, rape, and homicide rates... though at best it significantly reduces it (and the data leans towards the latter)

The number one death for children means nothing if you dont compare it to the number of children's lives saved by guns as well, or correct for kids killed in gun free zones.

Again this is like the anti-vaxxers argument "If you ban vaccines we will significantly reduce the deaths caused by vaccines"... while true its an intellectually dishonest argument.

@mike805

@freemo @mike805 that is just false. It is completely false. All data shows, quite clearly, over and over again, that greater gun control leads to fewer deaths. Why do you think the gun lobby made it illegal for the NIH to study the effect of guns on public health? If the data were what you say, they'd be the first to want to study the phenomenon. Instead they successfully lobbied to forbid such studies---speaking of "hardcore libertarians."

@lmrocha

Nope, though I do understand why people who arent experts in data science can easily get mislead by the manipulation to try to sell that narrative... Sadly you will never see the data presented with good intellectually honest analysis (using granger causality rather than simple correlation whcih we all know is invalid when you cant control confounding variables)

@mike805

@freemo @lmrocha @mike805 i ran the numbers once on public data. the pearson R correlation for murders per 100k firearms was weak to none.

the united states is just a horrifyingly volatile country in general. if you look at death statistics completely unrelated to weaponry--more of our firemen die than other countries of equivalent capability.

@lmrocha

I find it curious that you say you understand the literature and those post studies that, while technically true, have been explained exactly why they are intellectually dishonest and rejected as an argument against guns by experts looking at this fairly.. i also explained to you the type of analysis that is good-faith which is suprisingly lacking from your link... I think this goes to show either you dont understand the science well enough to interprit it, or you are just so biased at this point as to provide intellectually dishonest arguments in the hopes no one will notice the holes.

@icedquinn @mike805

@freemo @icedquinn @mike805 what experts? I sent papers with randomized control trials, what is better than that?

@lmrocha

I explained in a great deal of detail exactly why its invalid (unlike with granger causality it is very hard to rule out or normalize for confounding properties).. randomized fail when you are trying to decipher large graphical models betause you dont have independent propabilities dominating the graph. We use granger causality for this sort of stuff for very good reason.

@icedquinn @mike805

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@freemo @icedquinn @mike805 I did not see your great detail explanation. Randomized control trials, and their pseudo variants, are hard for network causality, but excellent for the number of variables in these studies. Without them there were be no pharmaceutical approvals. The A/B testing on which tech and consumer services depend, similarity. Granger causality is a very nice measure, but it is still a correlational predictive measure that does not do well beyond pairwise interactions, etc. But if you have a peer-reviewed paper with granger causality analysis of the gun/mortality/violence situation, by all means send it.

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@lmrocha

Conducting and designing experiments for statistical analysis is my job. Not saying this for any reason than it is important to note that the kind of study useful for one sort of analysis isnt useful for another.

Yes controlled randomized studies are great for medication, horrible for judging nations. So while, yes it is the best study approach for vaccines, or medication, or biomarkers, it has no place in a gun debate. This should be obvious why, in a drug trial you can and do control all (hopefully) relevant variables, when talking about nations and gun control you cant.

There are a few peer-reviewed papers on granger causality and gun control, but sadly none that I like (even the ones that support my stance I dont feel were conducted well). I can of course do the analysis directly with you, or talk about the literature and its faults (I did this in an earlier thread briefly)... but rather than providing copy pasta of a bunch of flawed studies I'd rather just admit the fact that the body of research on this is of poor quality and encourage better research. Until that happens (because there is certainly a need for proper studies) we will have to rely on directly studying this ourselves.

Want to go over some of the public datasets, which wouldnt fall under peer-review, of this data and do a casual analysis let me know, I'd be happy to post the charts and do a deep dive with you.

@icedquinn @mike805

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