Re: Re: knife ban going to work?

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Fri, 26 May 2006, Brian Loe wrote:

> On 5/26/06, Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com> wrote:
> > > It has nothing to do with what they were murdered with, but that they
> > > were murdered for gang related business. Remove that from the
> > > statistics and our murder rate is probably going to be
> > > normal...regardless of weapon used.
> >
> > The trouble with removing "gang-related" murders from the statistics, is
> > that you've chosen a bunch of murders to disregard, and I don't really see
> > how you can decide to leave them out. Did you think that gangs are a
> > purely US phenomenon?
>
> Technically you CAN'T remove them, the data isn't stored that way.
> However, one can propose that if drugs were legal, and gangs weren't
> fighting over them, the would do less killing. These are business
> killings. Its like including military kills in a murder rate, in my
> book.

You have an odd book. In everyone else's book, business killings are still 
murder. If drugs were legal, then it would still be a business, and there 
would still be business killings.
 
> Further, you have the relationship between environment and violent
> crime. You're not going to try and say your slums match ours are you?
> Point is still, gun ownership is not related to murder rate.
 
I'm willing to believe that the slums in the "richest country in the 
world" are worse than ours, although you might not have seen parts of 
Glasgow, Birmingham and London.

> > > The UK - you keep happily dismissing - has the same number of
> > > homicides with guns in 00/01 as it had in 1998. THAT gives evidence
> > > that the murder rate isn't tied to gun ownership, does it not?
> >
> > I don't see how you deduce that.
>
> I deduce that from seeing the number of homicides for the UK and Wales
> dip from 95 levels and then start to climb back up again (it might not
> have topped off yet!).

So, we have a static murder rate, and a static gun ownership rate, and 
you're deducing something from that. Well, you can't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicollinearity

> > What it says, is that we have a static
> > murder rate.
>
> No, its not static and its totally unaffected by the gun ban.
>
> > And it's good that the US murder rate is falling, and I hope
> > that it gets down to UK levels.
>
> Yeah, it is good, and its happening without a gun ban!
>
> What are you missing here - gun ownership is not related to murder
> rates. At best, the ability of an individual to defend oneself with
> the most appropriate tool may reduce violent crime.

What you're missing here is that it isn't people that kill people, it's 
people plus weapons that kill people, and a gun is probably the easiest 
weapon for that purpose. And that, of course, is why you want to own a 
gun.

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