Guns and 2nd Amendment continued: open carry backlash?

[Free Northman Reborn]

Just now, Dr. Pepper said:

And I guess in your logic brain, those health statistics are still irrelevant even when you start bringing in nicotine, junk food, and sedentary behavior into your lifestyle, hmm?  Like in the same way those statistics are logically irrelevant when you bring guns into your home because your own special reasons?

 

I don't know what point you just tried to make.

[Free Northman Reborn]

3 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

 (e.g. FNR's assertion that post-industrial Western societies are living "in bubbles of assumed safety, that are artificial and unsustainable", or analogies likening people to being prey, e.g. "zebra 'herd mentality'")?

Wow. That's a pretty neat turn of phrase. Did I actually use it exactly like that? Nice work, Free Northman. And spot on.

[Dr. Pepper]

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I don't know what point you just tried to make.

You claim that heart disease statistics aren't as relevant to people with healthy lifestyles.  Sure, I mostly agree.  They become relevant, however, when introducing unhealthy habits that contribute to heart disease.  

Kinda like how those gun statistics should be relevant when guns are introduced into the home despite your claims that they don't count for the group in which you want them to count.  

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Do you guys (and gals) realize you're arguing with a guy who thinks he needs a gun with him at all times because he might get punched in the face and that could kill him?

Don't expect strong, logical arguments.

[Free Northman Reborn]

9 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Dude, seriously, what the hell?

Surely you're not suggesting that policy discussions should only take into account how said policies impact suburban, middle class, middle-aged, college educated, rural families are you?  Or is that precisely what you're suggesting?

Should we not care how "inner-city ghetto dwellers and trailer park inhabitants" are affected by any particular policy, especially when said policy leads to a likely increase in injury and death to those very inner-city ghetto dwellers and trailer park inhabitants?

I'm addressing the claim that the individual decision to own a firearm is irrational. This is a different issue from the public policy debate.

[Free Northman Reborn]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Do you guys (and gals) realize you're arguing with a guy who thinks he needs a gun with him at all times because he might get punched in the face and that could kill him?

Don't expect strong, logical arguments.

Tywin. seriously.

I don't normally play the man, but you are like a yapping dog that pops up wherever I go recently, thinking that I engage in the firearm debate with the sole purpose of convincing you of my argument. The other day you came barking at my heels on the hiking/backpacking thread, as if it was some triumphant continuation of "our" debate.

Seriously, dude.

I really don't mind that you have a different opinion to me. Truly. But this debate has been ongoing long before you joined the bandwagon, so maybe just take a step back and realize that you are not the brave lone representative of the anti-gun movement on this thread. Far from it. When I post my opinion, it is really not in response to some point you made two or three threads ago, believe it or not. So try to take this thing a bit less personally. I am not in some kind of duel with you, despite what you may imagine.

 

[Dr. Pepper]

15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Do you guys (and gals) realize you're arguing with a guy who thinks he needs a gun with him at all times because he might get punched in the face and that could kill him?

Don't expect strong, logical arguments.

I think sometimes I just get homesick.  I grew up a complete gun idiot in a family full of gun idiots.  There's a high incidence of paranoid psychosis in that group, with all of them believing with certainty that they will be attacked and die at any moment or delusions of grandeur where they think there gun will be competitive against a tank.  I thankfully have had 15+ years to recover from that culture, but sometimes I almost miss those blubbering and dangerous idiots, especially now that I'm blissfully estranged from them.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Tywin. seriously.

I don't normally play the man, but you are like a yapping dog that pops up wherever I go recently, thinking that I engage in the firearm debate with the sole purpose of convincing you of my argument. The other day you came barking at my heels on the hiking/backpacking thread, as if it was some triumphant continuation of "our" debate.

Seriously, dude.

I really don't mind that you have a different opinion to me. Truly. But this debate has been ongoing long before you joined the bandwagon, so maybe just take a step back and realize that you are not the brave lone representative of the anti-gun movement on this thread. Far from it. When I post my opinion, it is really not in response to some point you made two or three threads ago, believe it or not. So try to take this thing a bit less personally. I am not in some kind of duel with you, despite what you may imagine.

 

Yeah, no. I got on your case in the hiking thread because your first and only contribution was "do you guys take a gun with you when you go hiking?" If you had gone in there talking about hiking and in the course of that mentioned that you normally take a firearm with you and asked if others did too I would have either ignored you or mentioned that I take a hunting rifle on some hikes because there are legitimate dangers.

But now you've made me very sad. Here I was, thinking I was the brave lone representative of the anti-gun movement, and now you dashed that for me.

[TerraPrime]

[mod hat]

Chill the fuck out, people.

Thanks.

[/mod hat]

[baxus]

12 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Just like the average heart attack statistic for the entire population does not apply to someone who is fit, doesn't smoke, and leads a healthy lifestyle, so too the risks associated with owning a firearm will vary widely based on unique factors such as socio economic status, educational levels, stability of the family environment, mental health and firearm training.

People living healthy lifestyles still get heart attacks and other health issues.

It's not a simple "run this far this often and eat this and you're in the clear", you know?

Sure, ON AVERAGE they are less likely to develop a heart problem but they're not immune.

Just like people who don't own guns are not immune to getting shot, but are less likely ON AVERAGE to get shot.

I don't see how that would be difficult to understand. Except, of course, if it doesn't go your way in an argument and you don't want to admit you're wrong.  

[BloodRider]

20 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

The study by Branas et al.¹ contains errors in design and execution that make it difficult to determine the meaning of their findings.

Their study assessed risk for being assaulted and then shot, a compound outcome event whose second element (being shot) is not inevitable given the first (being assaulted). Persons who were assaulted but not shot are not studied. We do not know whether any association between firearm possession and their outcome measure applies to assault, to being shot given an assault, or both.

The study does not control for time and place. The authors invoke stray bullets to argue that residents of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, are at equal risk for being shot, no matter where they are and what they are doing. This ignores the fact that violence is not randomly distributed and is unfair to Philadelphia.

The control group is inappropriate, as was probably guaranteed by its selection from all adult Philadelphians. There were large differences between case participants and control participants in prior criminal history and alcohol or drug involvement, all of which influence gun-carrying behavior and risk for violent victimization. Personal and geographic differences compounded one another: 83% of shootings occurred outdoors, yet while those shootings were occuring, 91% of control participants, arguably at lower risk already for personal reasons, were indoors. A list could easily be made of likely differences between case participants and control participants that were not addressed.

The problems with geography and control selection are not insurmountable. A classic study of alcohol use among adult pedestrian fatalities in Manhattan enrolled the first 4 pedestrians reaching the site where the fatality occurred “on a subsequent date, but on the same day of the week and at a time as close as possible to the exact time of day of the accident [italics retained]”^2(p657) as control participants for each case participant.

Branas et al. have omitted critical detail from their results. Assaults can be independent of any prior relationship between perpetrator and victim—a would-be robber spies a prospect emerging from a bar—or can occur in the context of, and perhaps because of, some prior relationship. The association between gun possession and risk of being assaulted or shot may differ greatly between these 2 types of encounters. Attacks by strangers are common, accounting for 50.5% of robberies and aggravated assaults reported by males and 34.7% of those reported by females.³ The authors should present separate results for assaults independent of and related to prior personal involvement between victims and shooters.

This rebuttal is clearly written by someone who does not understand epidemiology, and it contains outright falsehoods.  

Paragraph 2:  The study did not purport to measure "Persons who were assaulted but not shot".  So this whole paragraph is a red herring.  It these guys think that is something worth studying, then perhaps they should design a study to do that.  Asking the to claim something post completion that the study didn't research is called "hypothesis hunting", it's unethical, and leads to bad science.

Paragraph 3: This is a flat out falsehood.  While it may not be deliberate, it still is a fat whopper.  It says right there in the methods section " We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables. "  You may not like how that was done, but to claim that it was not done is a flat out lie.

Paragraph 4 & 5: It advocates for NOT double blinding, and pre-seeding both the control and test subjects, which is pure T bullshit, and again - terrible study design.  See also Para 2, and accounting for confounding variables, and Para 1 and adjusting the hypothesis post study.

Paragraph 6: See previous paragraphs.  Plus, why are those results critical?  Because they say so - because I doubt they have studied it.  And that's a pretty loaded word "omitted", hell of an accusation, especially when the rest of the critique is trying to get them to change their hypothesis after the study is complete, or not follow the methods outlined in the protocol.

If you think the results are bogus, you repeat the study, or you develop a new study to test what you think are the confounding variables.  While there certainly is room for criticizing a study done poorly, none of the items the mentioned show that the study was done poorly.  The critique instead reflects that the study didn't test for the things they would like to see tested for (or more probably it didn't get the results they liked), but so what?  You don't get to say Edmund Hillary didn't climb Everest, because K2 is the only real test of a mountaineer.  You don't get to say you don't have brain cancer because you passed the diabetes blood sugar test.

Likewise, you don't get to change the way millions of epidemiology studies were done just because fearful gun nuts don't like the results.  If the intent of this was to suggest a better way to do the study in the future, then OK, I can see the critique as having some validity.  If the idea is to say that the conclusion is incorrect because of these "flaws", then this paper is the equivalent of a paper by a creationist criticizing radiometric dating.  Or a cigarette manufacturer criticizing a lung cancer study.

EDIT: After doing some more research, I see now what the second paper's author considers flaws.  He totaly is not saying that the conclusions of the first study are invalid, as FNR wants you to believe.  He is very much saying that he thinks the study could be designed better to show more actionable results.  Which is explains why I was so confused by this paper.  I could not wrap my head around why he wanted the study to state thing it did not test for.  He is saying, in effect, I wish they had tested for these things.

Tl; DR Once again FNR does not understand science or guns in society.

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

3 hours ago, BloodRider said:

This rebuttal is clearly written by someone who does not understand epidemiology, and it contains outright falsehoods.  

Paragraph 2:  The study did not purport to measure "Persons who were assaulted but not shot".  So this whole paragraph is a red herring.  It these guys think that is something worth studying, then perhaps they should design a study to do that.  Asking the to claim something post completion that the study didn't research is called "hypothesis hunting", it's unethical, and leads to bad science.

Paragraph 3: This is a flat out falsehood.  While it may not be deliberate, it still is a fat whopper.  It says right there in the methods section " We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables. "  You may not like how that was done, but to claim that it was not done is a flat out lie.

Paragraph 4 & 5: It advocates for NOT double blinding, and pre-seeding both the control and test subjects, which is pure T bullshit, and again - terrible study design.  See also Para 2, and accounting for confounding variables, and Para 1 and adjusting the hypothesis post study.

Paragraph 6: See previous paragraphs.  Plus, why are those results critical?  Because they say so - because I doubt they have studied it.  And that's a pretty loaded word "omitted", hell of an accusation, especially when the rest of the critique is trying to get them to change their hypothesis after the study is complete, or not follow the methods outlined in the protocol.

If you think the results are bogus, you repeat the study, or you develop a new study to test what you think are the confounding variables.  While there certainly is room for criticizing a study done poorly, none of the items the mentioned show that the study was done poorly.  The critique instead reflects that the study didn't test for the things they would like to see tested for (or more probably it didn't get the results they liked), but so what?  You don't get to say Edmund Hillary didn't climb Everest, because K2 is the only real test of a mountaineer.  You don't get to say you don't have brain cancer because you passed the diabetes blood sugar test.

Likewise, you don't get to change the way millions of epidemiology studies were done just because fearful gun nuts don't like the results.  If the intent of this was to suggest a better way to do the study in the future, then OK, I can see the critique as having some validity.  If the idea is to say that the conclusion is incorrect because of these "flaws", then this paper is the equivalent of a paper by a creationist criticizing radiometric dating.  Or a cigarette manufacturer criticizing a lung cancer study.

EDIT: After doing some more research, I see now what the second paper's author considers flaws.  He totaly is not saying that the conclusions of the first study are invalid, as FNR wants you to believe.  He is very much saying that he thinks the study could be designed better to show more actionable results.  Which is explains why I was so confused by this paper.  I could not wrap my head around why he wanted the study to state thing it did not test for.  He is saying, in effect, I wish they had tested for these things.

Tl; DR Once again FNR does not understand science or guns in society.

 

Five more minutes of Googling brought me to this rebuttal of the infamous "Philadelphia gun study". I will quote a few pertinent paragraphs so as not to bore those who are not really interested in this level of detail on one obscure study:

http://www.guns.com/2015/06/29/the-link-between-gun-possession-and-gun-assault/

"A key flaw in this study, though, is in the group of participants called the case group—namely, those who had been shot.  The following was found:

…. compared with control participants, shooting case participants were significantly more often Hispanic, more frequently working in high-risk occupations, less educated, and had a greater frequency of prior arrest.  At the time of shooting, case participants were also significantly more often involved with alcohol and drugs, outdoors, and closer to areas where more Blacks, Hispanics, and unemployed individuals resided.  Case participants were also more likely to be located in areas with less income and more illicit drug trafficking.

The racial disparities there are a complex issue, as are matters of employment and education, but questions of criminal association and activity aren’t hard to understand.  If you commit crimes or hang out with those who do, you’re more likely to suffer a crime committed against you.

Another point, related to the above, is the subject of whether the victim had the chance to resist the attack.  The authors state that in 2-sided situations—in other words, situations in which both parties knew each other and came knowingly to the fight—the participants’ chances of getting shot increased.  In other news, water is wet on a warm day.  I’ve discussed the concept of a fair fight elsewhere, but for today’s purpose it seems obvious to me that the less we attend a gunfight, the less shot we get.

One last admission, found near the end of the study, I find interesting.  The authors state that they did not control for any “prior or regular training with guns. . . .”  Indeed.  There are many possible responses to this admission, but the most pointed is to wonder if the authors believe the study of epidemiology can be done well without any training or practice.  Using a gun is a skill.  As Jeff Cooper told us, you’re no more armed because you own a gun than you’re a musician if you merely own a guitar."

 

I think the above speaks for itself, and says pretty much exactly what I was saying upthread. Coincidentally, but not at all surprisingly.

 

[BloodRider]

23 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

 

 

Again with the objection to randomizing the controls and test groups.  And with the ignoring the well understood ability to control for such factors.  Do you even science bro?

[BloodRider]

19 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Five more minutes of Googling brought me to this rebuttal of the infamous "Philadelphia gun study". I will quote a few pertinent paragraphs so as not to bore those who are not really interested in this level of detail on one obscure study:

http://www.guns.com/2015/06/29/the-link-between-gun-possession-and-gun-assault/

I think the above speaks for itself, and says pretty much exactly what I was saying upthread. Coincidentally, but not at all surprisingly.

 

So last night I followed up on this link.  Lo and behold, it leads back to the first critique you posted.  So basically FNR is neither reading these critiques, he likely doesn't even understand them, and is just regurgitating a Google search.

[JonSnow4President]

So, I haven't followed it at all, but my basic understanding of the study is that gun owners are more likely to be victims of gun crime.  And I say "duh" to that, because of the groups of people that either 1) own guns for their own use in violence (gang violence), or 2) own guns as a way to feel safer about the bad areas they live in.  

I don't think there is anything about someone who owns hunting/sporting guns, or the paranoid types that live in the middle of an upper middle class suburb and think they need a pistol/civilian variant of an assault rifle to defend themselves that makes them more likely to be the victim of gun violence.  

Now is any of this really an argument for or against additional gun control targeting all guns?  I don't see the link. An argument for educational programs/other indirect gun control in communities at higher risk for gun violence?  I could understand that.  

[Free Northman Reborn]

4 hours ago, JonSnow4President said:

So, I haven't followed it at all, but my basic understanding of the study is that gun owners are more likely to be victims of gun crime.  And I say "duh" to that, because of the groups of people that either 1) own guns for their own use in violence (gang violence), or 2) own guns as a way to feel safer about the bad areas they live in.  

I don't think there is anything about someone who owns hunting/sporting guns, or the paranoid types that live in the middle of an upper middle class suburb and think they need a pistol/civilian variant of an assault rifle to defend themselves that makes them more likely to be the victim of gun violence.  

Now is any of this really an argument for or against additional gun control targeting all guns?  I don't see the link. An argument for educational programs/other indirect gun control in communities at higher risk for gun violence?  I could understand that.  

Well exactly.

That is the point I am making.

Bloodrider handwaves it away in worship of the phrase: "We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables."

So does that mean that if the 100 people in their survey were all without proper training in firearms handling and situational awareness, that they then went and also tested 100 additional gun owners, who were also assaulted, but who HAD undergone proper training in firearms handling and situational awareness? Of course not.

Hence, the results from one study from Philadelphia of all places, cannot possibly be applied generally across America.

[Swordfish]

On 2/26/2016 at 1:46 PM, Tywin et al. said:

Crazy to think there were two mass shootings this week and I don't recall anyone talking about it. The new normal indeed.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-kansas-shooting-idUSKCN0VZ15K

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/21/us/michigan-kalamazoo-county-shooting-spree/

There are mass shootings EVERY week in our inner cities.

And no one talks about those either.

[Crixus]

And then you have this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12189432/Pro-gun-activist-shot-by-her-own-son-after-boasting-of-firearm-training-on-social-media.html

[Crixus]

Or this: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pittsburgh-shooting-at-least-five-dead-and-several-injured-with-suspects-still-at-large-in-a6922381.html 

 

Hanging out at a cookout, shot and killed.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 hours ago, Swordfish said:

There are mass shootings EVERY week in our inner cities.

And no one talks about those either.

That's funny, just a few months ago you strongly disagreed with the idea that we're averaging one mass shooting per week in the U.S. Yet here you are, saying we're averaging multiple inner city mass shootings each week. And that doesn't include all of the other mass shootings. I see you're putting your Masters Degree in hypocrisy to good use.