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Trahison Des Clercs

Guns don't kill people!

Rating: 3 votes, 5.00 average.
7 Comments
by
Reiver
, Jul 19 2012 at 01:35 AM (207 Views)
Britain some time ago did the unthinkable: they banned handguns. The gun fiends took offence, the London riots being the latest phenomenon that apparently we can blame on the ban. "They'd show some respect and folk could protect their streets" was a standard corruption of the belief that gun ownership would naturally generate substantial deterrence effects.

But how will they take the most recent British data and spin a story? The homicide rate is down to a 30 year low. Police recorded 550 murders in 2011-2012. Golly, that won't fit well in the gun fiend rant!

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Comments

  1. Jallen289's Avatar
    Any citations?
  2. Jallen289's Avatar
    Did you that the US is also at a 30 year low, every single year since 1991? Between 1991 and 2006 over 70 million new guns added to the legal arsenal yet crime rates have consistently fallen in every aspect.
  3. Reiver's Avatar
    And that would be an exercise into spurious relationship. There actually hasn't been any significant analysis into Britain's handgun ban. There was simply insufficient handgun ownership to enable any testing of structural breaks in data. That didn't stop, however, gun fiends using British data bogusly to feed their ideological ranting.

    And the US? Easy to find studies that link gun ownership and crime rates. Gius (2009, The effect of gun ownership rates on homicide rates: a state-level analysis, Applied Economics Letters, Vol. 16, pp 1687-1690), for example, finds that "gun ownership rates have a statistically significant and positive effect on the homicide rates" (confirming results from numerous sources such as Cook, Ludwig and Duggan)
  4. Jallen289's Avatar
    Your source's paper is full of "estimates." Did you read any of it? Probably not. It also has conflicting sides all the way through.

    On the contrary, I can give you some info on Australia and England. Both countries have banned personal gun ownership. Both countries have seen a rise in crime.

    For instance, Australia, 1997-1999, murder rose 6.5% and attempted murder rose 12.5%. Assaults, kidnappings, and armed robberies increased as well.

    England ranks second in industrialized nations in the world, in violent crimes. Between April and September of 2000 London's crime rate rose 32%.

    Switzerland has the highest gun ownership per capita and avoided both world wars and have substantially lower crime rates than many other industrialized nations including England, Canada..etc.
  5. Reiver's Avatar
    Its an empirical study. Econometric approaches are necessary to ensure gun effects are isolated and spurious conclusion is avoided. And you've responded with ridiculous spurious relationship, proving only that you are unaware of the empirical process and how it can be applied to this topic. Think more before you comment!
    Updated Jul 19 2012 at 01:07 PM by Reiver
  6. Jallen289's Avatar
    I wish I could publish the things you say nationwide. You're a great talker, but you need a teleprompter. I've given you statistics and facts on multiple threads and all you can do "spurious relationship".
  7. Reiver's Avatar
    No, you made the exact error that the blog entry was highlighting. That you don't realise the need for empirical analysis is fair enough. We can't expect folk to understand econometrics. However, there is no excuse for giving spurious relationship when being told to avoid spurious relationship. That is just crass