Re: POLITICS Gun Control (was )

[Guest guest]

,

> > Chomsky obviously doesn't have his facts straight regarding gun

> > control. showed excessive restraint of " paranoia " and

> > " conspiracy theory " for not pointing out the hard evidence that Gun

> > Control Act of 1968 was modeled on the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

> > Chomsky showed excessive naivete in suggesting that gun control is in

> > the public interest, when it makes people less safe and when it was

> > seen by Adolf Hitler as a primary means of establishing tyrrany over a

> > populace.

> Although I'm a proponent of the right to keep and bear arms, it's a

> little bit excessive to simply state it as a matter of faith that gun

> control makes people less safe. The reality is that the question is

> extremely complex and probably can't be answered satisfactorily. And

> citing an attitude of Hitler's simply doesn't pass the smell test when

> it comes to logical rigor.

This paragraph was not a logical argument in favor of gun liberties,

but a reference to the ongoing discussion about paranoia and

conspiracy theorizing versus naivete. I was remarking that for

all his apparent paranoia failed to capitalize on the fact that there

is good evidence the origin of American gun control is Nazi gun

control.

>> presented. I did offer data showing that the rate of gun crime went

>> up dramatically in England after the banning of handguns, which is,

>> quite clearly, not an opinion.

> Of all people, you should know that correlation does not equal

> causation.

It's really a matter of uncontrolled intervention. It would have been

higher-quality data had it compared the rate of increase before and

after the ban on handguns and even better if it compared the change in

rate to the change in rate for other cities in the same time period,

but looking at the effect of gun control legislation on violent crime

rates is going to be the best data we can get.

That said, it appears that the last time I looked into this issue,

arguments contrary to the more guns less crime hypothesis were less

easy to find, and here is one:

http://timlambert.org/2003/04/0426/

So I'll reserve my judgment till I get a chance to read more.

Chris

Chris

[Guest guest]

Chris-

> > > Chomsky obviously doesn't have his facts straight regarding gun

> > > control. showed excessive restraint of " paranoia " and

> > > " conspiracy theory " for not pointing out the hard evidence that

> Gun

> > > Control Act of 1968 was modeled on the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

> > > Chomsky showed excessive naivete in suggesting that gun control

> is in

> > > the public interest, when it makes people less safe and when it

> was

> > > seen by Adolf Hitler as a primary means of establishing tyrrany

> over a

> > > populace.

>

> > Although I'm a proponent of the right to keep and bear arms, it's a

> > little bit excessive to simply state it as a matter of faith that

> gun

> > control makes people less safe. The reality is that the question is

> > extremely complex and probably can't be answered satisfactorily. And

> > citing an attitude of Hitler's simply doesn't pass the smell test

> when

> > it comes to logical rigor.

>

> This paragraph was not a logical argument in favor of gun liberties,

> but a reference to the ongoing discussion about paranoia and

> conspiracy theorizing versus naivete. I was remarking that for

> all his apparent paranoia failed to capitalize on the fact that there

> is good evidence the origin of American gun control is Nazi gun

> control.

I'l grant you the part about , certainly, but saying that Chomsky

showed naivete for " suggesting that gun control is in the public

interest, when it makes people less safe " is clearly an assertion of

fact, and it was specifically the unsupported nature of your assertion

that I was criticizing. Nor had you, to my knowledge, even attempted

to support that assertion elsewhere; if you had, I would have disputed

your attempt in situ.

> > Of all people, you should know that correlation does not equal

> > causation.

>

> It's really a matter of uncontrolled intervention. It would have been

> higher-quality data had it compared the rate of increase before and

> after the ban on handguns and even better if it compared the change in

> rate to the change in rate for other cities in the same time period,

> but looking at the effect of gun control legislation on violent crime

> rates is going to be the best data we can get.

Well, no, no matter how good and persuasive the data might be, it

could still only be correlative, and thus the question could not ever

be considered factually resolved -- at least not in any kind of even

remotely scientific and rigorous sense. I think it's probably true

that, at least in some circumstances, civilian gun ownership results

in meaningful increases in public safety, but there's no way to prove

it, and as I said in another post, it's a losing strategy to argue on

those grounds anyway.

-

[Guest guest]

,

>> I did not say " I have presented a fact, now accept my argument and bow

>> down before me, " but simply " this issue is a matter of fact, not

>> opinion. " That is different than saying all the facts are in, or that

>> they have all been presented here.

>

> You could definitely argue that the question of whether gun control

> increases or decreases public safety is factual, but my counter-

> argument would be that the question is far too coarse to be a true

> matter of fact. Control of what types of guns? What types of control?

> Where? When? How strict? And so on.

Well yes these are all important questions, but they do not make my

statement an opinion. My statement could be false or insufficiently

supported by evidence or insuffuciently nuanced, but it is only an

opinion in the sense that it is an opinion of what the facts are, but

to call it an opinion primarily obscures the fact that it is a matter

of fact and not opinion and can be fleshed out, debated, supported

with evidence, etc in order to arrive at an objective conclusion.

Whereas true matters of opinion, like whether public safety should be

put before individual rights, or whether banana cream pie tastes good,

cannot.

> Conditions and circumstances will

> undoubtedly influence the effects of gun control, and thus there

> almost surely will be no single answer to the larger umbrella

> question. More to the point, though, since we only have

> epidemiological data, it's not actually possible to ANSWER the

> questions of fact and determine what the facts really ARE. In order to

> conclusively settle the question of whether gun control makes us safer

> or less safe, we'd have to launch a large number of rigorously

> controlled prospective studies, and that's obviously impossible. And

> even if we somehow were magically able to conduct such studies, we'd

> still only be able to measure certain limited types of safety, e.g.

> from violent crime.

I don't quite agree. Empirical science never definitively answers

anything, but only offers varying degrees of confidence that something

is true. The conclusions *always* involve inductive reasoning from

specific data to a general theory and thus *always* involve certain

degrees of uncertainty in the assumption that the specific data

carries implications for situations outside of those in which it was

obtained.

The key difference between retrospective and prospective studies is

not that the intention to investigate the hypothesis precedes the data

collection, but that the collection of the presumed " cause " data

precedes the collection of the presumed " effect " data. The analysis

*always* occurs retrospectively, because you need to wait for all the

data to begin.

All " historical experiments " in which we analyze what happens

naturally from one period of time to another and try to compare

natural cases to suitable natural controls are essentially prospective

studies, because all the data is recorded as it occurs and thus before

the effect data.

So it is essentially a prospective intervention study to look at two

cities with similar demographics, rates of gun ownership, gun laws,

etc, and examine the change in the change of violent crime morbidity

and mortality from before a change in law to after a change in law in

a city where the law was changed and compare it to the same change in

the other city where the law was not changed. And of course many

twists could be performed on top of this.

Studies of this type, or even better studies that do the same thing in

larger aggregates, would give us a certain degree of confidence that

our conclusions were correct. The more corroboration from other types

of data -- for example, surveys of defensive use of guns -- the more

confidence.

> Trying to definitively quantify the impact of

> civilian gun ownership on the development of repressive government

> would simply be a fool's errand. Again, you of all people should

> understand this, because you're so frequently forced to fight the

> correlation-causation fallacy in the domains of nutrition, health and

> medicine.

Why would you need to " definitively " quantify such an impact? Should

we only act on things that are " definitive " ?

Not simply repressive but genocidal governments have generally

instituted heavy restrictions on gun ownership prior to making their

major advances on the civilian population. One need not develop

definitive evidence that the restriction of gun ownership caused the

advance of repression or genocide; one merely need point out the

rather self-evident a priori reasoning that if you place a monopoly of

guns in the hands of a potentially repressive or genocidal agency then

it is much better equipped to carry out said repression or genocide

than if the civilian population has access to the same guns for

self-defense (based on the assumed premise that guns provide power for

offense or defense, which is in turn based on observable fact), and

that tyrants who have committed repression and genocide have described

gun control as a critical component of their ability to do so. This

is sufficient to argue that civilian gun ownership offers an insurance

policy against such a contingency.

> Bear in mind, I say all this as a proponent of the right to keep and

> bear arms. I think it's a vital civil liberty and, yes, an important

> deterrent, but allowing the debate to be framed around the question of

> safety is a tragic error. That's how all our civil liberties get

> chiseled away.

I agree it should not be framed entirely around safety.

Chris

[Guest guest]

>

> That said, it appears that the last time I looked into this issue,

> arguments contrary to the more guns less crime hypothesis were less

> easy to find, and here is one:

>

> http://timlambert.org/2003/04/0426/

>

> So I'll reserve my judgment till I get a chance to read more.

>

So, you had the AUDACITY to state that this was a fact, and now you

are admitting that you were wrong. As you would to many of the silly

logical conclusions that you draw over and over again. I really hope

that your science is more thorough than your politics.

>

[Guest guest]

Gene,

> So, you had the AUDACITY to state that this was a fact, and now you

> are admitting that you were wrong. As you would to many of the silly

> logical conclusions that you draw over and over again. I really hope

> that your science is more thorough than your politics.

I'm pretty sure that I stated it was a matter of fact rather than a

matter of opinion, not that I had provided a comprehensive case

conclusively supporting the truth of the assertion. I think that, if

that wasn't clear immediately, it became clear very soon after as I

explained my comments.

Chris

[Guest guest]

On Aug 18, 2008, at 5:54 AM, Masterjohn wrote:

> ,

>

> >> I did not say " I have presented a fact, now accept my argument

> and bow

> >> down before me, " but simply " this issue is a matter of fact, not

> >> opinion. " That is different than saying all the facts are in, or

> that

> >> they have all been presented here.

> >

> > You could definitely argue that the question of whether gun control

> > increases or decreases public safety is factual, but my counter-

> > argument would be that the question is far too coarse to be a true

> > matter of fact. Control of what types of guns? What types of

> control?

> > Where? When? How strict? And so on.

>

> Well yes these are all important questions, but they do not make my

> statement an opinion. My statement could be false or insufficiently

> supported by evidence or insuffuciently nuanced, but it is only an

> opinion in the sense that it is an opinion of what the facts are, but

> to call it an opinion primarily obscures the fact that it is a matter

> of fact and not opinion and can be fleshed out, debated, supported

> with evidence, etc in order to arrive at an objective conclusion.

> Whereas true matters of opinion, like whether public safety should be

> put before individual rights, or whether banana cream pie tastes good,

> cannot.

>

>

It is an opinion because the facts aren't known. In the English

language, when in an argument we claim that something is a simple

fact, we make the assumption that it is not open to legitimate

dispute, not simply that we can dig up some evidence here and there

that supports us. That something is a matter of fact ultimately (and

the fact in this case may be far more nuanced than gun control makes

us safer, or less safe) doesn't mean that it is correct to say that

your overwhelmingly biased opinion is fact. That you are wrong here IS

a fact.

[Guest guest]

Chris-

> I'm pretty sure that I stated it was a matter of fact rather than a

> matter of opinion, not that I had provided a comprehensive case

> conclusively supporting the truth of the assertion. I think that, if

> that wasn't clear immediately, it became clear very soon after as I

> explained my comments.

No, you said (on several occasions IIRC) that it's a fact that gun

control reduces public safety, not that the notion that gun control

has some kind of effect or effects on public safety is a factual matter.

-

[Guest guest]

Gene,

> It is an opinion because the facts aren't known. In the English

> language, when in an argument we claim that something is a simple

> fact, we make the assumption that it is not open to legitimate

> dispute, not simply that we can dig up some evidence here and there

> that supports us. That something is a matter of fact ultimately (and

> the fact in this case may be far more nuanced than gun control makes

> us safer, or less safe) doesn't mean that it is correct to say that

> your overwhelmingly biased opinion is fact. That you are wrong here IS

> a fact.

You are the only person I ever seen on this lecturing people about the

proper use of the English language, and it is not only me whom you

lecture on the subject. I believe this is related to your

unconventional use of the English language and your insistence that

everyone else use it the way you do. For example, I think most, or at

least many, people believe that compassion is a disposition of one's

affections and is not attributable to political positions or that an

attribution of hatefulness presumes that one hates things or people,

whereas you use these very differently.

In any case, here I would agree with you that had I said " It is a

simple fact that gun control makes us safer " this would be equivalent

to " It is an indisputable fact... "

However, I used the word " fact " in response to your assertion that it

was an opinion. I think when people differentiate " fact " from

" opinion " they are often referring, as I was, to whether something is

an objective matter that can be settled by ascertaining what the facts

are or a subjective matter that depends on on a personal opinion.

I admit I may well have stated my position rather sloppily, but I

don't think I'm abusing the English language.

Chris

[Guest guest]

I think that it was absolutely clear in the context that you were not

saying that 'there is a fact, but what that is, isn't known', but that

you were saying that what you were saying was a fact. I can't believe

that you are denying this.

> Gene,

>

> > So, you had the AUDACITY to state that this was a fact, and now you

> > are admitting that you were wrong. As you would to many of the silly

> > logical conclusions that you draw over and over again. I really hope

> > that your science is more thorough than your politics.

>

> I'm pretty sure that I stated it was a matter of fact rather than a

> matter of opinion, not that I had provided a comprehensive case

> conclusively supporting the truth of the assertion. I think that, if

> that wasn't clear immediately, it became clear very soon after as I

> explained my comments.

>

> Chris

>

>

[Guest guest]

and Gene,

> I think that it was absolutely clear in the context that you were not

> saying that 'there is a fact, but what that is, isn't known', but that

> you were saying that what you were saying was a fact. I can't believe

> that you are denying this.

I did, at first, state that gun ownership makes us safer without

qualifying it in any way, but I quickly qualified it, and certainly

did so as soon as I began using the word " fact. "

This was my first statement:

=====

Chomsky obviously doesn't have his facts straight regarding gun

control. showed excessive restraint of " paranoia " and

" conspiracy theory " for not pointing out the hard evidence that Gun

Control Act of 1968 was modeled on the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

Chomsky showed excessive naivete in suggesting that gun control is in

the public interest, when it makes people less safe and when it was

seen by Adolf Hitler as a primary means of establishing tyrrany over a

populace.

=====

This paragraph was somewhat sloppily put together, but I was making a

reference to the previously mentioned dichotomy between unconfirmed

paranoia that sometimes appears on ' site and excessive naivete

and rejection of conspiracy on ZNet and in Chomsky's

writings/lectures. In this case, what I should have stated was that

the argument for the necessity of gun control for safety is very weak

and the argument for necessity of gun ownership to deter very real

efforts to establish military dictatorship and potentially genocidal

conditions is totally ignored by Chomsky.

In any case, regarding the word " fact. "

Gene wrote that I was stating an opinion:

======

I believe in gun control btw. You're stating an opinion, not a fact,

that allowing ownership of guns makes us safer. You're welcome to it.

======

I responded:

======

It is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. It is true

that I have not offered a comprehensive list of facts supporting the

statement, but whether gun control makes society safer or less

dangerous is a matter of fact and can be measured and data can be

presented. I did offer data showing that the rate of gun crime went

up dramatically in England after the banning of handguns, which is,

quite clearly, not an opinion.

=====

I think it is abundantly clear that as soon as I used the word " fact "

I was using it to mean that I was speaking of whether the question was

a *matter of fact* versus a *matter of opinion* and that I was not

claiming that all the facts have been presented.

In fact, from the quote above, I explicitly stated both of those

qualifications the first time I used the word " fact. "

Chris

[Guest guest]

On Aug 18, 2008, at 7:40 AM, Masterjohn wrote:

> Gene,

>

> > It is an opinion because the facts aren't known. In the English

> > language, when in an argument we claim that something is a simple

> > fact, we make the assumption that it is not open to legitimate

> > dispute, not simply that we can dig up some evidence here and there

> > that supports us. That something is a matter of fact ultimately (and

> > the fact in this case may be far more nuanced than gun control makes

> > us safer, or less safe) doesn't mean that it is correct to say that

> > your overwhelmingly biased opinion is fact. That you are wrong

> here IS

> > a fact.

>

> You are the only person I ever seen on this lecturing people about the

> proper use of the English language,

>

Meaning that what I say above is incorrect?

> and it is not only me whom you

> lecture on the subject. I believe this is related to your

> unconventional use of the English language and your insistence that

> everyone else use it the way you do.

>

Hilarious.

> For example, I think most, or at

> least many, people believe that compassion is a disposition of one's

> affections and is not attributable to political positions or that an

> attribution of hatefulness presumes that one hates things or people,

> whereas you use these very differently.

>

I've said that compassion is NOT a disposition of one's affections? I

don't even know what you're babbling about. Please don't spend the

next hour digging up archive quotes that you'll paraphrase out of

context.

I believe that I said that a statement, or article, etc can be hateful

even if the author doesn't actually hate individual people, and I

argued the case. I don't believe that I ever said (please quote me)

that someone can say something hateful but not hate anything at all.

>

>

> In any case, here I would agree with you that had I said " It is a

> simple fact that gun control makes us safer " this would be equivalent

> to " It is an indisputable fact... "

>

> However, I used the word " fact " in response to your assertion that it

> was an opinion. I think when people differentiate " fact " from

> " opinion " they are often referring, as I was, to whether something is

> an objective matter that can be settled by ascertaining what the facts

> are or a subjective matter that depends on on a personal opinion.

>

No, - as says earlier, you absolutely, in the context, were

insisting that gun control making us safer was a fact - that YOUR

opinion on the matter was the fact of the matter. If you don't agree

that, in cases where there might be a fact of the matter, but that it

isn't known, someone is therefore expressing an OPINION on it, and you

insist that this is an unconventional use of the language, I just have

to laugh.

>

>

> I admit I may well have stated my position rather sloppily, but I

> don't think I'm abusing the English language.

>

I think that you abuse logic and the English language repeatedly and

shamelessly.

>

>

> Chris

>

>

[Guest guest]

No. not clear at all. Nice try, though.

> and Gene,

>

> > I think that it was absolutely clear in the context that you were

> not

> > saying that 'there is a fact, but what that is, isn't known', but

> that

> > you were saying that what you were saying was a fact. I can't

> believe

> > that you are denying this.

>

> I did, at first, state that gun ownership makes us safer without

> qualifying it in any way, but I quickly qualified it, and certainly

> did so as soon as I began using the word " fact. "

>

> This was my first statement:

>

> =====

> Chomsky obviously doesn't have his facts straight regarding gun

> control. showed excessive restraint of " paranoia " and

> " conspiracy theory " for not pointing out the hard evidence that Gun

> Control Act of 1968 was modeled on the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

> Chomsky showed excessive naivete in suggesting that gun control is in

> the public interest, when it makes people less safe and when it was

> seen by Adolf Hitler as a primary means of establishing tyrrany over a

> populace.

> =====

>

> This paragraph was somewhat sloppily put together, but I was making a

> reference to the previously mentioned dichotomy between unconfirmed

> paranoia that sometimes appears on ' site and excessive naivete

> and rejection of conspiracy on ZNet and in Chomsky's

> writings/lectures. In this case, what I should have stated was that

> the argument for the necessity of gun control for safety is very weak

> and the argument for necessity of gun ownership to deter very real

> efforts to establish military dictatorship and potentially genocidal

> conditions is totally ignored by Chomsky.

>

> In any case, regarding the word " fact. "

>

> Gene wrote that I was stating an opinion:

>

> ======

> I believe in gun control btw. You're stating an opinion, not a fact,

> that allowing ownership of guns makes us safer. You're welcome to it.

> ======

>

> I responded:

>

> ======

> It is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. It is true

> that I have not offered a comprehensive list of facts supporting the

> statement, but whether gun control makes society safer or less

> dangerous is a matter of fact and can be measured and data can be

> presented. I did offer data showing that the rate of gun crime went

> up dramatically in England after the banning of handguns, which is,

> quite clearly, not an opinion.

> =====

>

> I think it is abundantly clear that as soon as I used the word " fact "

> I was using it to mean that I was speaking of whether the question was

> a *matter of fact* versus a *matter of opinion* and that I was not

> claiming that all the facts have been presented.

>

> In fact, from the quote above, I explicitly stated both of those

> qualifications the first time I used the word " fact. "

>

> Chris

>

>

[Guest guest]

Chris-

> Well yes these are all important questions, but they do not make my

> statement an opinion. My statement could be false or insufficiently

> supported by evidence or insuffuciently nuanced, but it is only an

> opinion in the sense that it is an opinion of what the facts are, but

> to call it an opinion primarily obscures the fact that it is a matter

> of fact and not opinion and can be fleshed out, debated, supported

> with evidence, etc in order to arrive at an objective conclusion.

> Whereas true matters of opinion, like whether public safety should be

> put before individual rights, or whether banana cream pie tastes good,

> cannot.

The problem is that certain factual matters simply can't be discussed

except in terms of opinion, either because sufficient evidence hasn't

been developed or because it's fundamentally not possible to develop

such evidence at all.

More generally, in any reasonable colloquial usage, conjecturing about

unavailable facts would, I think, be understood as opinion regardless

of the philosophical nature of the underlying matter being discussed.

IOW, you could divide opinion into opinions of taste, such as

preference in desserts or governmental systems, and opinions of

conjecture, which concern themselves with factual matters that have

not been settled conclusively.

> I don't quite agree. Empirical science never definitively answers

> anything, but only offers varying degrees of confidence that something

> is true. The conclusions *always* involve inductive reasoning from

> specific data to a general theory and thus *always* involve certain

> degrees of uncertainty in the assumption that the specific data

> carries implications for situations outside of those in which it was

> obtained.

Yes, of course this is true, but I think it only serves to illustrate

the difficulty in having a rigorous conversation without first

agreeing on rigorously defined semantics. That said, while fine

distinctions tend to require rigorous definitions, broad definitions

are more widely and consensually understood, and I think your usages

should clearly be understood as opinion.

> The key difference between retrospective and prospective studies is

> not that the intention to investigate the hypothesis precedes the data

> collection, but that the collection of the presumed " cause " data

> precedes the collection of the presumed " effect " data. The analysis

> *always* occurs retrospectively, because you need to wait for all the

> data to begin.

>

> All " historical experiments " in which we analyze what happens

> naturally from one period of time to another and try to compare

> natural cases to suitable natural controls are essentially prospective

> studies, because all the data is recorded as it occurs and thus before

> the effect data.

>

> So it is essentially a prospective intervention study to look at two

> cities with similar demographics, rates of gun ownership, gun laws,

> etc, and examine the change in the change of violent crime morbidity

> and mortality from before a change in law to after a change in law in

> a city where the law was changed and compare it to the same change in

> the other city where the law was not changed. And of course many

> twists could be performed on top of this.

No, this simply isn't true at all. The fundamental difference between

retrospective and prospective studies is that prospective studies are

designed to control for independent variables. Now, granted, the

design can easily be faulty and can certainly reflect the biases and

the unexamined assumptions of the designers, but the raison d'etre of

prospective studies is to eliminate confounding factors through

careful design.

My point about gun control studies is that there are far too many

variables, and human nature and the nature of society are far too

complex, for anyone to understand them well enough to design truly

rigorous prospective studies and actually control for all independent

variables, and that even if somehow people did acquire enough

knowledge to do so, it would be practically, financially and ethically

impossible to perform the vast set of experiments required to draw any

solid conclusions about gun control.

> > Trying to definitively quantify the impact of

> > civilian gun ownership on the development of repressive government

> > would simply be a fool's errand. Again, you of all people should

> > understand this, because you're so frequently forced to fight the

> > correlation-causation fallacy in the domains of nutrition, health

> and

> > medicine.

>

> Why would you need to " definitively " quantify such an impact? Should

> we only act on things that are " definitive " ?

I shouldn't have included the word " definitively " ; it was unnecessary.

> Not simply repressive but genocidal governments have generally

> instituted heavy restrictions on gun ownership prior to making their

> major advances on the civilian population. One need not develop

> definitive evidence that the restriction of gun ownership caused the

> advance of repression or genocide; one merely need point out the

> rather self-evident a priori reasoning that if you place a monopoly of

> guns in the hands of a potentially repressive or genocidal agency then

> it is much better equipped to carry out said repression or genocide

> than if the civilian population has access to the same guns for

> self-defense (based on the assumed premise that guns provide power for

> offense or defense, which is in turn based on observable fact), and

> that tyrants who have committed repression and genocide have described

> gun control as a critical component of their ability to do so. This

> is sufficient to argue that civilian gun ownership offers an insurance

> policy against such a contingency.

Not necessarily. The early development of repressive government may,

for example, significantly predate the curtailing of gun ownership

phase, and attempting to fight said development by opposing

restrictions on gun ownership may tend to be too little too late.

That's just one of many hypotheses one might draw from the available

data, such as it is.

> > Bear in mind, I say all this as a proponent of the right to keep and

> > bear arms. I think it's a vital civil liberty and, yes, an important

> > deterrent, but allowing the debate to be framed around the

> question of

> > safety is a tragic error. That's how all our civil liberties get

> > chiseled away.

>

> I agree it should not be framed entirely around safety.

To frame it around safety at all is to concede that the question of

whether people should be allowed to own guns depends on whether gun

ownership can be proven to be " safe " . Since the definition of " safe "

is malleable, since true proof is impossible in any event, and since

safety is an emotional hot-button issue that can easily be used to

manipulate people, it's a born loser. The issue should be framed

around rights and freedom. That's not to say the whole safety issue

can just be ignored, but then again, you don't see people trying to

ban the car on safety grounds, do you.

-

[Guest guest]

Chris-

I don't have time at the moment to dig through all the messages that

have been posted on the subject (as soon as an interminable syncing

operation is done, I've gotta blow this joint) but while you're

correct about the passage you cite here, I'm pretty sure you used the

term 'fact' to indicate that it's been factually determined that gun

control reduces safety elsewhere.

-

> ======

> It is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. It is true

> that I have not offered a comprehensive list of facts supporting the

> statement, but whether gun control makes society safer or less

> dangerous is a matter of fact and can be measured and data can be

> presented. I did offer data showing that the rate of gun crime went

> up dramatically in England after the banning of handguns, which is,

> quite clearly, not an opinion.

> =====

>

> I think it is abundantly clear that as soon as I used the word " fact "

> I was using it to mean that I was speaking of whether the question was

> a *matter of fact* versus a *matter of opinion* and that I was not

> claiming that all the facts have been presented.

>

> In fact, from the quote above, I explicitly stated both of those

> qualifications the first time I used the word " fact. "

[Guest guest]

and Gene,

>> To a degree it's a matter of semantics, as my understanding is that

>> even before the 1997 ban, handgun ownership was EXTREMELY restricted

>> (demonstrated by the stats in my post of earlier this morning) but on

>> balance, I think it's fair to say was more correct than Chomsky

>> even though the 1997 ban wasn't entirely a complete one itself.

> From what you say above, I'd say that Chomsky was more correct. The

> point of dispute seemed to be whether the 1997 ban caused a dramatic

> rise in violent crime. If it was only a minor change, then how can one

> correlate the 2? But maybe I misunderstand you.

According to Wikipedia (with all the baggage that wretched opening

phrase carries with it :-P), there were two 1997 bans, first banning

all handguns larger than .22 calibre, and then banning all cartridge

ammunition handguns. The exceptions are mostly historic relics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_(Amendment)_(No._2)_Act_1997

The major dispute between and Chomsky was not the effect of the

ban, but whether there was a ban. Chomsky did not seem to be aware of

the 1997 law change, and said that guns were always banned in England.

So, I think was pretty clearly right and Chomsky wrong.

The other disputed issue was where US ranked gun crime, and was

stating that Chomsky was right that US was #1 three years before the

interview, but was no longer right (I think the interview was in

2001). I didn't look up those figures.

Chris

[Guest guest]

Gene,

> Right - my only point was that (as I understood it) the central disagreement

> was over the issue of gun control and whether it works. If the change in

> 1997 was minimal, then it can't be pointed to as causative of the rise in

> crime. I think that this is purely a logical point. I haven't been arguing

> the point of whether we should have gun control (beyond simply citing my own

> opinion) at all, and certainly wasn't trying to change your mind on the

> issue.

You'd have to look at a) real rates of ownership and carry rates and

illegal activity. The Wiki article noted that certificate

ownership would persist for five years even if the person had gotten

rid of their weapon. So the question arises of how many people

carrying eventually-to-be-defunct permits retained their weapons. And

then the other point is how the ban affected the black market, if at

all.

If it would increase gun crime, one would think that would be from a

decrease in carry rates and an increase in black market gun sales to

criminals. The basic theory would be that private citizens carrying

concealed weapons in public would act as a deterrent for public gun

crime and that home ownership of guns would act as a deterrent to

house crime. It would be unreasonble to think that home ownership

would deter street crime obvious. So, come to think of it, I wonder

what the rate of carry permits was and whether the right to carry was

affected by the 1997 law.

Chris

[Guest guest]

,

> More generally, in any reasonable colloquial usage, conjecturing about

> unavailable facts would, I think, be understood as opinion regardless

> of the philosophical nature of the underlying matter being discussed.

> IOW, you could divide opinion into opinions of taste, such as

> preference in desserts or governmental systems, and opinions of

> conjecture, which concern themselves with factual matters that have

> not been settled conclusively.

I suppose that is legitimate as a colloquialism if the belief is pure

conjecture or mostly conjecture.

[snip]

>> So it is essentially a prospective intervention study to look at two

>> cities with similar demographics, rates of gun ownership, gun laws,

>> etc, and examine the change in the change of violent crime morbidity

>> and mortality from before a change in law to after a change in law in

>> a city where the law was changed and compare it to the same change in

>> the other city where the law was not changed. And of course many

>> twists could be performed on top of this.

> No, this simply isn't true at all. The fundamental difference between

> retrospective and prospective studies is that prospective studies are

> designed to control for independent variables.

Well these are the terms as I understand them.

An " independent variable " is a causal factor. A " dependent variable "

is a caused factor, or an effect, because it is dependent on (that is,

caused by) the independent variable.

All (good) studies seek in some way to control for " confounding

variables, " which are other factors that could contribute to the

effect besides the independent variable you are looking at.

One of the most important parts of controlling for these variables in

an experiment is a control group, which makes the study a " controlled "

study.

An extra tool is to randomly distribute people (or whatever unit the

effect is expected to be observed on) into the control and

intervention groups, thus hedging against selection bias and

furthering the cause of controlling for all variables. Such a study

would be a " randomized, controlled " study.

A " prospective " study is one that looks forward, whereas a

" retrospective " study is one that looks backward. More precisely, in

a prospective study, the cause data is gathered before the effect

data. This hedges against recall bias and demonstrates that the

presumed cause occurs before the presumed effect, which is not

sufficient to, but nevertheless necessary to, show causality.

All intervention studies are inherently prospective, but

epidemiological studies can also be prospective. For example the

Framingham study was prospective because they took cholesterol (and

other) measurements and then waited to see who had a heart attack

rather than observing who had heart attacks and then measuring their

cholesterol.

> Now, granted, the

> design can easily be faulty and can certainly reflect the biases and

> the unexamined assumptions of the designers, but the raison d'etre of

> prospective studies is to eliminate confounding factors through

> careful design.

Yes it assists in controlling for variables, but it is not defined by

control of variables. It is defined by the timeline between

collection of cause presumed data and collection of presumed effect

data.

> My point about gun control studies is that there are far too many

> variables, and human nature and the nature of society are far too

> complex, for anyone to understand them well enough to design truly

> rigorous prospective studies and actually control for all independent

> variables, and that even if somehow people did acquire enough

> knowledge to do so, it would be practically, financially and ethically

> impossible to perform the vast set of experiments required to draw any

> solid conclusions about gun control.

Well it would not be unethical because as it stands there are two

schools of thought, one that it is beneficial and one that it is

harmful. So it would be highly ethical, indeed an ethical imperative,

to attempt to discover which is true, if one assumes that it is not an

ethical violation to deprive people of the liberty to own guns without

respect to safety.

It is true that there is an enormous complexity of variables, but I

think that is kind of missing the point. That is always true. It

would be a mark of enormous arrogance for a scientist to believe that

she or he could know the multitude of variables affecting any given

thing she is trying to study.

The point of having a control group is, in large part, to control for

the multitude of variables one does not understand. And that is the

raison d'etre for randomization. And that is the point of

intervention, because it allows you to compare before to after the

intervention, and allows you to compare the change to a control in

which the intervention was not made.

In the case of gun control, a change of law is an intervention. It

can qualify as prospective, because the data you want to look at is

collected regularly before the intevention as well as after for

reasons completely independent of the study. It is not perfect data,

because one cannot randomize cities to gun control or no gun control.

You have a chance of selection bias. But it is still good data,

because there are thousands of cities in any given year that have not

changed the gun laws, and there are enough cities where the laws have

changed to both more liberal and more restrictive positions that one

increase the sample size.

If you get a consistent effect, where there is consistently a change

in the rate of change of the violent crime morbidity and mortality

statistics in the same direction after certain types of interventions,

that is imperfect but very good evidence for making a case that gun

control has one or the other effect.

>> Not simply repressive but genocidal governments have generally

>> instituted heavy restrictions on gun ownership prior to making their

>> major advances on the civilian population. One need not develop

>> definitive evidence that the restriction of gun ownership caused the

>> advance of repression or genocide; one merely need point out the

>> rather self-evident a priori reasoning that if you place a monopoly of

>> guns in the hands of a potentially repressive or genocidal agency then

>> it is much better equipped to carry out said repression or genocide

>> than if the civilian population has access to the same guns for

>> self-defense (based on the assumed premise that guns provide power for

>> offense or defense, which is in turn based on observable fact), and

>> that tyrants who have committed repression and genocide have described

>> gun control as a critical component of their ability to do so. This

>> is sufficient to argue that civilian gun ownership offers an insurance

>> policy against such a contingency.

> Not necessarily. The early development of repressive government may,

> for example, significantly predate the curtailing of gun ownership

> phase, and attempting to fight said development by opposing

> restrictions on gun ownership may tend to be too little too late.

> That's just one of many hypotheses one might draw from the available

> data, such as it is.

If the alternative is between it may be insurance and it may be

insufficient, then the net argument is in favor of preserving civilian

gun ownership. It's kind of implicit in insurance that it could prove

useless -- more commonly because it isn't needed, and more rarely

because the capacity of the insurance fails (as could theoretically

happen with the FDIC now).

>> > Bear in mind, I say all this as a proponent of the right to keep and

>> > bear arms. I think it's a vital civil liberty and, yes, an important

>> > deterrent, but allowing the debate to be framed around the

>> question of

>> > safety is a tragic error. That's how all our civil liberties get

>> > chiseled away.

>>

>> I agree it should not be framed entirely around safety.

> To frame it around safety at all is to concede that the question of

> whether people should be allowed to own guns depends on whether gun

> ownership can be proven to be " safe " . Since the definition of " safe "

> is malleable, since true proof is impossible in any event, and since

> safety is an emotional hot-button issue that can easily be used to

> manipulate people, it's a born loser. The issue should be framed

> around rights and freedom. That's not to say the whole safety issue

> can just be ignored, but then again, you don't see people trying to

> ban the car on safety grounds, do you.

Sure -- the Alliance for a Paving Moratorium. But they are so quiet I

don't know if they still exist.

But anyway, you see people trying to ban guns and raw milk on that

basis, and in the case of raw milk, while individual rights should be

the bottom line, a great deal of the argument has to be about

disproving the concept that it is inherently unsafe, and making the

point that one can argue from the available evidence that it might be

*more* safe.

So I think the bottom line on gun control should be individual rights,

but if there is good data it makes societies safer, the case needs to

be made. (If the data isn't good, it should of course be avoided for

embarassment!) Arguing that it makes people safer, if indeed that is

true, does not necessarily concede that were that not true, guns

should be banned.

Chris

[Guest guest]

-------------- Original message ----------------------

From: " Masterjohn " <chrismasterjohn@...>

> ,

>

> > More generally, in any reasonable colloquial usage, conjecturing about

> > unavailable facts would, I think, be understood as opinion regardless

> > of the philosophical nature of the underlying matter being discussed.

> > IOW, you could divide opinion into opinions of taste, such as

> > preference in desserts or governmental systems, and opinions of

> > conjecture, which concern themselves with factual matters that have

> > not been settled conclusively.

>

> I suppose that is legitimate as a colloquialism if the belief is pure

> conjecture or mostly conjecture.

>

If the facts are unknown, in general, or just to you, then you are expressing an

opinion. the following is rather absurd:

- my opinion is that x is y

Gene - actually, chris - the facts are (presents evidence), x is z

- Oh, sorry - you're right. Actually, then, I wasn't expressing an

opinion. I was expressing a fact.

why you can't just admit that you were wrong is beyond me.

[Guest guest]

Gene,

> If the facts are unknown, in general, or just to you, then you are

> expressing an opinion. the following is rather absurd:

> - my opinion is that x is y

> Gene - actually, chris - the facts are (presents evidence), x is z

> - Oh, sorry - you're right. Actually, then, I wasn't expressing an

> opinion. I was expressing a fact.

Sure that is absurd but it doesn't reflect the history of our

discussion. I made an assertion, you called it an opinion, and I

responded that it was a matter of fact rather than opinion, even

though we hadn't discussed all the relevant factual data.

> why you can't just admit that you were wrong is beyond me.

Well it has only now come up that my perception of the word " opinion "

is wrong. I'm not quite convinced that is true, but it is very

possible my usage is out of step with the general usage, and at a

minimum it appears I misinterpreted your usage, for which I apologize.

It still seems to me, however, that it would be more appropriate to

call an assertion of fact an assertion rather than an opinion. Had

you written that I did not have sufficient evidence to back up my

assertion, I would have understood what you meant, and would have

engaged you in a more meaningful discussion about what the facts

actually are.

Chris

[Guest guest]

I just can't take it anymore. You win.

> Gene,

>

> > If the facts are unknown, in general, or just to you, then you are

> > expressing an opinion. the following is rather absurd:

> > - my opinion is that x is y

> > Gene - actually, chris - the facts are (presents evidence), x is z

> > - Oh, sorry - you're right. Actually, then, I wasn't

> expressing an

> > opinion. I was expressing a fact.

>

> Sure that is absurd but it doesn't reflect the history of our

> discussion. I made an assertion, you called it an opinion, and I

> responded that it was a matter of fact rather than opinion, even

> though we hadn't discussed all the relevant factual data.

>

> > why you can't just admit that you were wrong is beyond me.

>

> Well it has only now come up that my perception of the word " opinion "

> is wrong. I'm not quite convinced that is true, but it is very

> possible my usage is out of step with the general usage, and at a

> minimum it appears I misinterpreted your usage, for which I apologize.

>

> It still seems to me, however, that it would be more appropriate to

> call an assertion of fact an assertion rather than an opinion. Had

> you written that I did not have sufficient evidence to back up my

> assertion, I would have understood what you meant, and would have

> engaged you in a more meaningful discussion about what the facts

> actually are.

>

> Chris

>

>