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Sir Tonk posted:That isn't a gun, it's an assault pistol. Can you define assault pistol in a meaningful way that is technically distinct?
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Aug 27, 2015 02:55
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VagueRant posted:Serious question: given how hard it is to categorise firearms (re: "assault weapons") - would it actually be feasible to do it on a gun-by-gun basis? Have some group vote on what is acceptable and what is not? Well, in a sense it can be relatively easy; firearms can be categorized by their action- how they chamber and fire bullets by cartridge-the kind of bullets that they fire and then after those two primary means into minutiae of barrel length and rifling and other less essential features. Under this technical set of definitions, for example, the US military defines an assault rifle as being a select-fire (it can fire single shots, and bursts or full-auto) rifle chambered in an intermediate (medium-sized) cartridge. In the sense of defining an "Assault weapon" things become murky because here you have a tautology- any weapon used to assault someone is an 'assault weapon' and multiple politicians have conjured up multiple definitions of varying technical and aesthetic features that often have no relation to how the firearm operates or its use in crime. For example, the well-known Desert Eagle is often defined as an 'assault weapon' by name (or due to its weight) and banned. The common 1911 design is not generally considered an assault weapon under most legislation. This is despite the fact that the Desert Eagle is about a foot long (there is a reason they always gave one to Arnie) weighs 4 pounds unloaded, costs about 2 grand, and was made for hunting big game. The 1911 on the other hand, was literally designed for the US army to go fight wars with. You can also turn a not-assault-weapon into an assault weapon by changing accessories, and not altering the fundamental features of the firearm.  In many states the synthetic stock (the part you hold and put up against your shoulder) and a larger magazine would classify the lower rifle as an 'assault weapon' even though they are functionally the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yATeti5GmI8 There is no combination of action and cartridge capable of taking North American game (deer, elk, boar, rabbit, squirrel) that is not also able to be used in taking a human's life.
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Aug 27, 2015 13:54
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Those magazines aren't fixed.
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Aug 27, 2015 14:11
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katlington posted:These are all horrible ways to classify guns when you're worried about murders and spree killings. Maybe you should be thinking about how to classify murderers and spree killers and work from that angle, as no murder or spree killing happens without a person involved.
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Aug 27, 2015 14:15
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katlington posted:Maybe you should go make a thread about it if you want to, as I don't care about that? Well how do you propose classifying firearms if not by their inherent features? CommieGIR posted:We fought World War 2 with rifles that had fixed magazines. So what? Some of the weapons had fixed magazines, yes.  Some, like the BAR, didn't.  Or the M3.  Or the Thompson.  Or the M1. So what?
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Aug 27, 2015 15:13
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Why not do both. There isn't infinite resources to pursue both policies, so asking to take dollars from something effective (like universal healthcare, narrowing the economic gaps, reforming the education or justice system, etc) and spending it on something with the same effective rate as homeopathy (gun bans!) is not very smart. Popular Thug Drink posted:how is this a methodological flaw? do gang members who know each other kill each other more meaningfully than cousins or classmates? smells like cherrypicking The flaws in methodology for the 93 Kellermann study are super deep, actually. Arthur Kellerman is a pediatrician and outspoken gun control advocate who has been known for producing hilariously biased studies that instead of random nationwide sampling elects to study data from very specific areas which exhibit outlying trends in order to support his foregone conclusion that guns are bad. The first time he produced a study like those in the 93 paper was in 1986 when claimed that gun ownership made you 43 times more likely to be killed than to use a gun in self-defense. He produced this statistic by selecting a county with the lowest rates of self-defense but highest rates of suicide he could find- King County, WA- and then produced a ratio of firearm self-defense vs gun deaths (the vast majority being suicide.) He got called on his terrible methodology by criminologists in the same medical journal he originally published in and produced another in response, halving his original claim to "22 times more likely." When that was criticized he switched up methodology and produced the '93 study. If you read the full text of the '93 study (cited in so many articles and threads) instead of just the summary you can see where the problems begin to arise. Instead of a nationwide randomized sample he kept using King County but also cherry-picked two other oddly specific areas as well- Shelby County, Tennessee and Cuyahoga County, Ohio. This led to a massive (and probably intentional) overrepresentation of African-Americans and those living below the poverty line; that means the study is comprised mostly of the poorest and most oppressed people in some of the most unusually violent cities like Memphis and Cleveland in order to produce a very specific result. Narrowing the data further to ensure a favorable result, it also only looked at homicides that occurred inside the home of the victim (which were only 23.9% of the total homicides in the case study area.) Diving into the body of the work you can also see it failed to find more than a very casual correlation between gun ownership and risk of death, with many other many things presenting a much higher odds-risk ratio than the 1.6 they found for "guns in the home." Table 3 shows far higher correlation between homicide and things like living alone (3.4,) living in a household where ANY member has ANY sort of arrest history (4.2,) renting a home instead of owning (5.9,) drug use (9,) alcohol consumption (as high as 20,) and many other common things. The fact that they only concentrate on gun ownership in the conclusion as "significant" while failing to frame it against their other findings goes to show you this was a study meant not to objectively identify risks but work towards a predetermined and leading conclusion. Many other problems and biases that have been pointed out by in works by people like Kleck and Schaffer include: The correlation they found with handguns was nowhere near as strong as the one between rifles and shotguns, which is... strange, to say the least, as there should be no mechanism that encourages others to kill you just for owning a pistol rather than a shotgun. This begs the question- even though there's a casual correlation between guns in the home and slightly elevated homicide risks, are they actually related? How? They fail to prove causation or even show a correlation more important than living in an apartment, which means it's far from a conclusive finding. It relied on self-reporting to determine gun ownership, when Schaffer looked at the data that Kellerman finally provided 5 years after the fact he found a large discrepancy between the amount of gun ownership reported between the cases and controls that was seemingly not adjusted for. It doesn't prove you're more likely to die FROM a gun, as per the study's own data less than 50% of the murders were with a firearm (which is lower than the national average of ~66%.) It doesn't prove that self-defense is likely to increase your risk of death as the majority of those killed (56.2%) were unarmed and there was no evidence of resistance. Of the 43.8% who lived in a household with a gun and who died attempting to defend themselves only 5% actually used a firearm, which is the lowest recorded death rate of any means of defense amongst the victims who tried to fight back. That could actually suggest it's the most successful method, although I can't use the evidence provided just here to prove that as it's not a comprehensive self-defense study but a very narrow and specific mortality study. At the same time, however, that narrow scope fails to prove Kellerman's point either. Unlike his previous studies where he was comparing actual self-defense to gun deaths here he included justifiable homicide by police and private citizens defending themselves in the gun death figure, in order to pad it as much as possible. He also DID still include illegal activities like drug-dealing, as is evidenced by the data in Table 1. If you dig into it, the study reads more like "20 years ago some really poor people who lived in the shittiest places we could hand-pick were murdered at home by their friends and family. Some of those people owned a handgun, although far more lived alone or in apartments or drank" rather than "there is firm evidence using a gun in self-defense will get you killed everywhere in all situations." They were able to find weak correlation in a tailor-made case study, not causation in a full study of the US. On top of that, a crime studies from two decades ago (which the paper cites!) are incredibly outdated. Homicide rates have more than halved since then, and homicide amongst African-Americans (the primary group represented here) has dropped dramatically since '92. No matter what way you slice it it's not exactly convincing proof to use in an argument now, over two decades later. Any paper or study that cites him or in work in support of their conclusion does not exactly fill me with confidence; either they didn't examine the content of his work and they are incompetent or they are fully aware of his deficiencies as a researcher and used his work anyway because it supports their own predetermined conclusions. Forgive me for being incredulous.
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Aug 28, 2015 13:22
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Effectronica posted:The exact point where preparedness turns into paranoia in the gunfucker's mind is a fascinating thing. Keeping a round chambered is excessively reasonable, but I'm pretty sure trading in that Glock for a dart pistol loaded with cocktails of extremely painful and extremely deadly venoms would constitute an armchair diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. Well, yeah - a dart gun full of deadly venoms is just...cruel and ineffectual for personal defense. Thats an implement of torture you sicko. (Much like your posts.)
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Aug 29, 2015 18:33
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Elman posted:Can someone acknowledge the fact that American petty criminals have easy access to guns, Petty criminals in all countries have access to guns. They aren't some new-fangled high technology that needs to be forged in the fires of Mount Doom.
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Aug 29, 2015 21:44
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Tezzor posted:Petty criminals in all countries do not have guns at the same or similar rates as they do in the US 
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Aug 29, 2015 22:13
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Tezzor posted:I checked into these claims a few months ago and was shocked to discover that the source appears to be a couple of right wing websites which do not substantiate their claims or appear to understand the basics of statistical sampling I, too, looked into those claims. Here is a neat report from the United States Government Accountability Office. Lets see what it says! Report posted:In 2008, of the almost 30,000 firearms that the Mexican Attorney General’s office said were seized, only Here's a chart to help you.  When you look at some of the cartel seizures in Mexico (which has strong gun control schemes, by the way - its just as if not more difficult for a citizen to legally obtain say, a handgun as it is in Norway for example) you'll see full-auto squad machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades - these are not things you buy at Bob's Sporting Store in the States in the first place.  Courtesy of Guatemala, for example. I had more, but Imgur needs another eMachines in their server farm I guess.
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Aug 30, 2015 18:45
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Add in gays and other gender/sexual minorities and I think I can get onboard. Volcott posted:Gays need to do their part to even things out and start buying guns. I'm working as hard as I can at it. Give me time. (Also money.)
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Aug 31, 2015 02:38
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Who What Now posted:All gays need guns. Except you. You need a straightjacket. I've got two already, one in classic canvas and one in leather. This is why I need your money to help shore up my gun budget. Amazing how 'tolerant' people are for tame gays that conform to their heteronormative expectations.
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Aug 31, 2015 02:52
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 18:23 |
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Who What Now posted:Making a loooooooooot of assumptions here, buddy. Posting to yourself again? This is a forum, not your personal diary.
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Aug 31, 2015 03:00
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