Tag: Quora

Quora question: “Why is the United States so messed up right now in 2021?”

Kevin1 Comment

My answer:

100+ years of “public education” has produced the electorate we have today. Too many people can’t reason, have no coherent philosophy, have no knowledge of actual history (only “social justice” history), have been taught that Western Civilization is the root of all evil in the world, etc.

It started in the very early 1900’s, driven by the wealthy industrialists to set up a system that would produce a two-tiered output – the actually educated sons & daughters of the elite who would be managers, and the people who would be working in their factories and buying the resultant products. All the “Progressives” were in favor of it. They wanted obedient, unquestioning workers who could read, write, and do math, but not think for themselves.

Shortly afterward the “Progressives” suborned the system to create ever-greater numbers of “Social Justice Warriors,” culminating in what we have today. After more than five generations the population consists of essentially four groups – those that despite being in the public system still managed to get an education, those who were privately educated, those who the education system didn’t radicalize but instead made numb, and the radicals. (Note: a lot of the radicalized went back into the education system as teachers and administrators in a positive feedback loop.)

The private system has always been oriented towards the elites. The majority of the nation, I think, are the numb. Those who educated themselves are a minority and the radicals are too, but they – being radical – have influence far beyond their mere numbers.

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” – H.G. Wells, 1920

—

“Give me a child for his first seven years and I’ll give you the man.” – Quote attributed to the Jesuits

—

“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” – Aristotle

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“A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) has footnotes explaining what words like ‘arraigned,’ ‘curried’ and ‘exculpate’ meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today’s expensively under-educated generation.

“There is really nothing very mysterious about why our public schools are failures. When you select the poorest quality college students to be public school teachers, give them iron-clad tenure, a captive audience, and pay them according to seniority rather than performance, why should the results be surprising?

“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.

“In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.” – Thomas Sowell

—

“It is only from a special point of view that ‘education’ is a failure. As to its own purposes, it is an unqualified success. One of its purposes is to serve as a massive tax-supported jobs program for legions of not especially able or talented people. As social programs go, it’s a good one. The pay isn’t high, but the risk is low, the standards are lenient, entry is easy, and job security is pretty good…in fact, the system is perfect, except for one little detail. We must find a way to get the children out of it.”—Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian.

More Quora Content

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I posted a link to this story of a 70 year old man defending his wife from an attacker who broke through the front door of their home.  He retrieved a firearm and shot the attacker several times.  I received a comment on the piece, to which I responded.  Here’s the thread so far:

Peter Collins: When are you going to post all of the stories of people shooting their kids, or their wives or husbands, or themselves.

You are 9 times more likely to be killed with a gun you own than to kill an intruder or mugger or other criminal.

So, this man killed an intruder – that means nine other gun owners were killed by their own guns.

The odds are against you, 9 to 1. Only a fool bets that longshot with his life.

KB: I don’t have to. ABCNNBCBS and all the other major news outlets already take care of that. What they DON’T typically report are successful defensive gun uses, leading to the illusion that they seldom happen. Even the CDC recently admitted, however, that they happen far more often than most people think.

That news was also not carried by the media beyond a very brief mention.

Now as to your 9:1 ratio assertion, do you have a citation for that, or do you “just know it’s true”? Because the last time I heard something like that, it was 43:1 from a thoroughly discredited “study” performed by a Dr. Arthur Kellerman many years ago.

PC: The media don’t cover so-called ‘defensive gun uses’ very much because they are relatively rare events. The only study, and it is on-going, of this, using actual evidence and verifying the events, finds that guns are used about 2000 times per year in the US to prevent, stop, or mitigate a violent crime. The group doing the study is not a gun-control group, and their definition of ‘defensive gun use’ is broader than I think is justified, but they follow a data-based approach and they are willing to do the hard work to find an accurate figure. If guns were used regularly to prevent or stop crimes, it would be all over the news – when it does happen, the “good guy with a gun” scenario gets huge coverage.

The figure you question came from the Miller study, a peer-reviewed and unassailable study published in one of the trauma journals.

The Kellerman study, far from being “thoroughly discredited,” is a model of excellent methodology combined with careful use of data. I am aware of no serious critique of the study from any qualified source. The conclusions from that study, though, do not really bear on the question at hand. Kellerman was studying intentional homicide only, and that doesn’t provide an answer to the question of whether gun ownership generally confers more or less safety than risk. If the results of a perfectly good study are applied to aquestion that the study did not ask, it is not likely to provide valid or valuable information.

KB: “The only study, and it is on-going, of this , using actual evidence and verifying the events, finds that guns are used about 2000 times per year in the US to prevent, stop, or mitigate a violent crime.” Which study is this? I noticed you didn’t provide a citation.

How about this one? Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control that states:

“Defensive uses of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, [my emphasis – ed.] although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, some scholars point to radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey [my emphasis – ed.] (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use. [Again, my emphasis.]

“A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gunwielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.” [Emphasis, well, you know.]

The LOWEST estimate of defensive gun use from a credible source that I’ve EVER seen was from the National Crime Victimization Survey at 80,000 DGU’s per year, 28,000 fewer than noted in the excerpt above. That’s still over 32 times your estimate. That’s on average 219 per day. What is a defensive gun use? Any time a person defends himself or someone else by so much as THREATENING to use a firearm to stop an attack. No shots need be fired, and in the overwhelming majority of these cases, none are. No blood, no news story. But tell the people who defended themselves that they didn’t need a gun. Go ahead, I’ll wait. But The Other Side™ seems to believe that if the defender did not shoot, or more accurately, kill the offender, then it doesn’t count.

Also, I noticed that you still haven’t cited your source for the 9:1 ratio from your first comment. Got a link to that “unassailable” Miller study? I think you misunderstand what “peer reviewed” actually means.

Oh, and Kellerman? He revised his own estimate down to 2.7 times more likely. Basically debunking himself.

PC: Your “study” is a piece of paid-for propaganda that relies on nothing that anyone could conceivably call evidence.

And your slur on Kellerman? No, he revised the application of his conclusion to a different set of circumstances.

If you actually read the study, rather than the claims made by gun fundy websites, you would know that.

And when you claim the number to be between 80,000 and 3 million, you lose all credibility. If you cannot even narrow it down within 2 orders of magnitude, your numbers are clearly phony.

KB: I really enjoy these discussions. So a piece produced by the National Academies of Science is “a piece of paid-for propaganda” because you say so. Interesting. But your uncited, “peer-reviewed” “Miller study” isn’t, because reasons. Kellerman’s 43:1 conclusion is gospel, but when he revised it to 2.1:1 it’s because he used a different set of circumstances – DUE TO THE FACT THAT HIS ORIGINAL CIRCUMSTANCES WERE LAUGHABLE. He’s already been proven unreliable. Why should I trust his revised numbers?

You object to the fact that the estimates between 80,000 and 3 million defensive gun uses means they’re not credible, but ignore the fact that the absolute low end, from United States Bureau of Justice surveys that DO NOT ASK EXPLICITLY ABOUT DEFENSIVE GUN USE still represent almost 220 defensive gun uses a DAY. You simply dismiss these as superfluous.

If you’d actually read the literature — all of it, not just the stuff you agree with — you would conclude that defensive gun usage is real, it’s effective, and it’s far more common than the general public is led to believe.

And that’s why I post these stories. The New York Times certainly won’t.

At this point I expect one or more of three things in descending order of likelihood:

1) He’ll respond with more mouth-frothing
2) He’ll report me for violating the “Be nice, be respectful” Quora policy
3) He’ll go away

4) He’ll delete his thread.
That didn’t take long:

Kellerman revised the conclusion when the model for the study was revised – that’s akin to revising the number when you revise from mph to kph. If the ratio remained identical under different parameters, that would be questionable. Sorry you don’t understand how statistics work.

Your claim that the “absolute low end” is 70,000 ignores so many studies that show much, much lower numbers. I specifically cited the on-going GVA study which showed around 2000 verifiable cases per year. That’s lower than you claim is the “absolute low end.” Now, what did you say about only reading studies that support your position?

Here’s a challenge – you provide evidence of 110 defensive gun uses, in the USA, on any day in the last 10 years. That’s half what you claim is the ”low end,” so it shouldn’t be hard at all for you to prove. Not a survey, not some poll – actual evidence. I’ll accept if you provide the date, the time, the place, and the name of the victim or the person who used the gun.

So, how about it? Can you prove half your claimed l ”low end,” for any day in the last 10 years?

Oh, we’re still playing? OK. What was Kellerman’s initial model, and what were the objections to it? What was the revised model? I’m quite aware of how statistics work. I’m an engineer by trade.
The “absolute low end” is 80,000 by a survey that doesn’t specifically ask about defensive gun usage. You keep skipping right over that. Don’t you trust your government?

Your “GVA study” again is without a link to the source. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, the “verifiable cases” were media reports of defensive gun uses. Which kind of makes my point – the media doesn’t report on DGUs unless someone is shot or killed. And — if they’re covered at all — most of these reports end up on page B7 of the local fishwrap, not on the national nightly news.

Can I cite 110 defensive gun uses in a day? How am I to do this if the media doesn’t report them? If the people who stopped a crime in progress without firing a shot didn’t report it to the police? For example, the woman at the highway rest stop who confronted a man holding a coil of rope and convinced him that she was not going to be his next victim by showing him her pistol? Tell her she didn’t need it, and she was far more likely to have it used on her than to use it to protect her life. Tell that to the people standing outside a store in Minneapolis armed with rifles protecting it from rioters. It wasn’t looted or burned. Is that one DGU or twelve?

How many defensive gun uses is so low that it makes it OK to disarm the victims? Tell that 70 year old man that it would have been better to have let the attacker beat his wife to death rather than use a gun to defend her, or he could have tried to stop the man and there would be two old people dead or in the hospital. Tell him that the presence of that gun in his house made it 43 times more likely that he or his wife would be killed — not shot to death with his own weapon, but killed by any means — which is what Kellerman’s initial model did.

It’s been fun playing with you, but I think we’re done now.

It’s still going. And going.

When and How Did I Turn Right Wing?

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Another Quora question.  Lots of post inspiration over there.  Here’s my answer:

I’m 58 years old. That means that in 1974 I was 12. I vividly remember Watergate, and Nixon’s resignation. I also remember Jimmy Carter’s “American Malaise” period. I think Jimmy Carter is a nice man who was a lousy President. I turned 18 in 1980. I cast my first vote for President for Ronald Reagan. I watched as he, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II rapidly accelerated the downfall of the Soviet Union. It was literally inspiring.

Then George H.W. Bush won the office. He was not Ronald Reagan. He was Establishment Northeastern Country Club Republican. When he ran for reelection I voted for Perot in that one. Perot tried to warn us, and he was right.

Bill Clinton became President. Honestly, Bill (except for being a rapist) wasn’t that bad as President, but his wife gave me the heebie-jeebies. Dead people, cattle futures, sexual abuse, etc. etc. etc. and everything rolled off the pair of them like they were Scotchguarded.

It was about this time that I figured out that the Democrats were no longer “The Loyal Opposition,” they were The Other Side™ and they were out to WIN, no holds barred. And they cared not a whit about what the law said, they just had to find an accommodating judge. The Constitution? P’shaw, merely an outdated guidline. Appoint enough Judges to the Federal courts and especially the Supreme Court and you can make the law mean whatever you want. “Social Justice,” you see. Which is the opposite of actual justice.

Then Bush v. Gore cemented that for me. I watched the press conference where, as I noted at the time:

With the continuing legal maneuvers in the Florida election debacle, I have been forced to a conclusion that I may have been unconsciously fending off. The Democratic party thinks we’re stupid. Not “amiable uncle Joe” stupid, but DANGEROUSLY stupid.

Lead-by-the-hand-no-sharp-objects-don’t-put-that-in-your-mouth stupid.

And they don’t think that just Republicans and independents are stupid, no no! They think ANYBODY not in the Democratic power elite is, by definition, a drooling idiot. A muttering moron. Pinheads barely capable of dressing ourselves.

Take, for example, the position under which the Gore election machine petitioned for a recount – that only supporters of the Democratic candidate for President lacked the skills necessary to vote properly, and that through a manual recount those erroneously marked ballots could be “properly” counted in Mr. Gore’s favor. They did this in open court and on national television, and with a straight face.

So, it is with some regret that I can no longer hold that uncomfortable conclusion at bay:

They’re right. We are.

And I started seriously wondering how we got to that point.

I could go into vast (and hyperlinked) detail here, but I’ll instead just use one word:

Progressivism.

I’m not really a Conservative. Steven Den Beste (PBUH) said it best, and I’m in complete agreement with him. So I invite you to read his explanation. But I’m not a Progressive.

More Quora Tolerance

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I was asked to answer the question “Is it accurate to say that the left is intolerant of the right’s ideas while the right is intolerant of the left’s behaviors?“

One of the first answers I saw to the question was by a Scott MacDonald that went like this:

The left is intolerant of intolerance.

The right is intolerant of…

Religions that are not Christianity
Skin colors that are not white.
Political views that are not modern Republican
Sexuality that isn’t hetero
and so forth.

Put it to you this way.

If the left were tolerant, of the right’s intolerance we would be allowing them to walk all over actual minority groups who need protecting, not majority religious groups who want to act like persecuted minorities, just because after a few thousand years people are finally evolving past their ideas.

So I responded in kind:

The Left is intolerant of anyone who does not toe their (ever-changing) ideological line. If you oppose any part of their incoherent philosophy, you must be a:

Racist
Sexist
Gun-hugger
Bible-thumper
Cousin-lover
Homophobe
Islamophobe
Misogynist
Science-denier
Etc.

Oh, and “You want (X-group) to DIE!” (Where X is: old people, brown people, children, homosexuals, etc., etc., etc. depending on the outrage-of-the-day.)

THAT is the “Party of Tolerance and Inclusion.”

Why do I say “incoherent”? Well, consider this “logic” train:

Gender is a social construct, but “I am woman, hear me roar,” but anyone can be a woman, but no uterus – no opinion, but transwomen are women, but “I demand women’s rights!”, but men are women, but men are scum, but drag queens are beautiful, but appropriation is evil. – Matt Walsh.

Note that the people trying to end Freedom of Speech, who protest speakers, who bang drums and fire off air horns to drown out the words of people they don’t “tolerate,” are the Left, not the Right. The Right likes it when the Left runs their mouths. It exposes their hypocrisy and vacuity. And far too often it exposes the schisms between the various victim-groups that make up the Left.

So yes, I think it’s fair to say that the Right does not like the behavior of the Left, and the Left hates the ideas of the Right. Pundit Charles Krauthammer explained it in 2002 – “To understand the workings of American politics you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.“

You do not debate with evil. You do not compromise with evil. You do not tolerate evil. You destroy evil. It’s a religious crusade. They are the Chosen People who will drag us, kicking and screaming if necessary, into their Promised Land. As evangelists, it is not unusual for them to enter careers in education, journalism, and the entertainment media. How better for them to proselytize? And, of course, politics, because how else can they drag us into Utopia unless by force of government? After all, their ideas are so wonderful, they must be mandatory!

My answer was collapsed for violating Quora’s “Be Nice, Be Respectful” policy. Mr. MacDonald’s is still up.

Let’s Try This Again

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First time in awhile where Blogger borked a post.  Let’s try this post again, originally titled “Democracy Worship Again.”  Retitled, “You know, we’re just not reaching that guy.”

From a comment thread at Quora:

James Briggs

Those who claim that America is a republic, not a democracy are opposed to democracy. The former Soviet Union was the kind of republic that the Federalists want.

Kevin Baker

And you base this on…?

James Briggs

The words we are not a democracy says it all. Those who deny American is a democracy do not want it to be a democracy.

Kevin Baker

This is known as circular reasoning. While I will grant that the words “we are not a democracy” mean exactly that, it’s quite a logical leap to the position that those who say it want a Soviet dictatorship. Care to elaborate?

James Briggs

Those who oppose democracy want a dictatorship. Those are the only two choices we have at this time.

Kevin Baker

Well, my time of taking you seriously has certainly come to a middle.

Democracy = 1 person/1 vote. 50%+1 of a population can vote for anything – the banishment of all left-handed redheads, for instance. Since left-handed redheads are a distinct minority, they have no recourse. They’ve been outvoted. Then there’s gang-rape. Should the victim acquiesce simply because they’re outvoted?

Here’s something I like to remind people of who extol the wondrous desirability of DEMOCRACY!!:

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to have for dinner.

A representative republic is 50,000 wolves and 40,000 sheep voting 50 wolves and 40 sheep into office to decide what to have for dinner.

A constitutional republic is a similar situation but with a constitution saying that lamb cannot be for dinner, with a Supreme Court of 5 wolves voting against 4 sheep to determine that mutton is not lamb.

Liberty is well-armed sheep protesting the vote.

So as for your assertion that there’s only a binary choice: 1=Democracy, 0=Dictatorship, I disagree wholly.

I thought we were finished, but he replied!

James Briggs

Your spurious examples have been used by those enemies of the truth from time immemorial. it is like the old canard that Hitler was elected. It is in the people’s interest to vote what is best for the people. They may be mistaken but it is better to be ruled by a fool who is on your side than by a genus who is your enemy. The fact is democracies always win in the real world. Germany was destroyed by the experts who rejected democracy and put Hitler in power. We have just seen the demise of the Soviet Union a republic that was not a democracy. Then Venezuela had the same results. Now we undemocratic Islamism take the stage and you have learned nothing.

Kevin Baker

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

HE REPLIED AGAIN.  (And upvoted my comment!)

James Briggs

Thank you but as you have been so nice I feel that I should add to my point. Those who make decisions fall into two groups those who know the answer and those who don’t. Statistics assumes that mistakes are random and cancel each other out while those who are right are all going vote in the same direction. Groups of people voting have been able to beat chess masters. I wish I could find a journal article on this issue but I was unable on short notice. Best wishes.

 

Yeah, I’m done with that particular wall of knowledge.

“The Whole Aim of Practical Politics…

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“…is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” – Henry Louis Mencken
We’ve got people hoarding hand sanitizer, toilet paper, beans, rice and pasta – and a lot of first-time gun buyers:
A Lot of People Are Finding Out You Can’t Just Buy a Gun Online – Omaha Outdoors

Pullquote:
The COVID19 outbreak might be bad for the stock market, but it’s certainly been a boon for very specific sectors of the economy. The gun industry, used to such boom/bust cycles, knows how to respond – but other sectors might not be so acclimated.
Here at Omaha Outdoors, we’ve been inundated with inquiries from out-of-state folks – many from California – asking if we can ship them a gun directly. The answer is, of course, no. Despite what politicians and many in popular media claim, you can’t buy a gun online and have it shipped to your house. Well, you could, if you were a federally licensed firearm dealer (or federally licensed curio and relic collector) and your home was your place of business. Other than that, no, you can’t buy a gun online and have it shipped, especially across state lines, to your home.
Unsurprisingly, a LOT of people believe what the media has been telling them – that it’s easier to buy a gun than a book, for example. Or that you can just mail-order them off the internet. But here’s the part that I found most interesting:
And my friends who work at other gun stores have seen a crazy surge in gun buying too, with one noting that their one-day sales total exceeded Black Friday by 25%, and that 75% of buyers were purchasing their first gun.
The Powers That Be keep trying to convince us that fewer and fewer people are owning more and more guns as an explanation for the skyrocketing number of background checks run monthly, but that is obviously not the case for those of us out here in the culture.
So if you think that now is a good time to get a gun to protect your precious toilet paper hoard, you might want to read this article.

“…demonstrable gibbering nonsense by circus clowns on stilts.”

KevinLeave a comment

Not my content, but I HAD to share.  In response to the question “Why is there so much dishonesty in the gun debate?”  The question linked to this piece about the comparative levels of violence between the US and UK and how the UK’s gun control laws made the UK “safer.” Ah, no.  Quoran Alfred Montestruc left this devastating reply echoing Chief Inspector Colin Greenwood.

Your link seems a prime example of extreme dishonesty.

The issue is NOT whether the UK has more violent crime than the USA – which is all the link harps about.

This is not a tennis match, or any sort of national contest.

The issue is whether gun control has any utility whatever in practical control of violent crime.

The author of your link assumes — and never checks his assumption— that gun control laws as applied in the UK reduced violent crime in the UK.

That is demonstrable gibbering nonsense by circus clowns on stilts.

Gun Control Laws and the effect of them on crime in England & Wales in the 20th Century by Alfred Montestruc on Alfred Montestruc’s gun rights Blog

Prior to 1920 in the UK gun laws were more lax in the UK than in the USA if gun control was of any utility one might expect that prior to 1920, violent crime rates in the UK were staggeringly higher than after gun laws were enacted.

The actual case is rather the reverse.

Murder rates per the British office of National Statistics data. No consistent downward trend after gun laws.

VAP is a British Police term that means literal physical violence till they changed the definition in 1998, which is when I stopped tracking. Not going down is it?

The latter graph on rape & indecent assault is included as I was accused by an individual of confusing the two. The latter graph shows the dramatic upward trend continuing into the 21st century. Rape and indecent assault rates show no benefit (reduction) due to gun control laws.

The late 20th century robbery spike is so huge it drowned out important nuances of what happened to robbery rates early in the 20th century.

By the numbers.

Sixteen thousand seven-hundred eighty-three percent rise in robbery rate 1901 to 1998!!

If I took it from the 1915 minimum to the 1995 peak, it was over 50,000% rise !!

So you seem to be claiming that gun control is somehow useful in control of violent crime?

I see you have the nerve, the unmitigated GALL, to talk about “dishonesty”, — just — WOW!

Unbelievable!!

I wish I’d written this.  “Gibbering nonsense by circus clowns on stilts” is something I’m going to have to remember.

Quora – a Target-Rich Environment

KevinLeave a comment

Here’s a short, pithy exchange from Quora.  The original answer is mine.

Original question: “How many ‘good guys with guns’ have saved the day against criminals in the US?”

The lowest estimate for defensive gun usage in the U.S. is approximately 108,000 per year – that’s (carry the one…) 295 times a day. The vast majority of these defensive gun uses involve no shots fired. As a result, no mention in the news. A few do make it, like these:

Man holds suspected burglar at gunpoint in east Tulsa

Citizen holds assault suspect at gunpoint at Wenatchee gas station

Deputies: Homeowner pulls gun on intruder with face he won’t forget

Couple holds home invasion suspect at gunpoint

NH Dad Pulls Gun on Intruder Until Police Arrive

Michael Hill
4h ago

You claim 295 times a day then as evidence for decades all over America give just FIVE cases.

How damned stupid do you think we are?

Self-Defense Gun Use is Rare, Study Finds…

Kevin Baker
Original Author · 3h ago

“How damned stupid do think we are?”

I gave five specific instanced in the past few weeks where NO SHOTS WERE FIRED, and the story still made the (local) news.

How stupid do you have to be to misrepresent that?

EDITED TO ADD: A Violence Policy Center paper? Really? An organization dedicated to the banning of all handguns is supposed to be nonpartisan? Pull my other leg.

Michael Hill
2h ago

Boring NRA propaganda.

Don’t cry. We won’t take your guns away.

Kevin Baker
Original Author · 1h ago

OK, I’ll see your 2015 VPC paper and raise you a 2013 Centers for Disease Control report. They’re a shill for the NRA, right? Who was President in 2013?

From Page 15 of Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence:

“Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.”
 
108,000/365 = 295.89 defensive gun uses PER DAY. Absolute minimum.

CDC propaganda? National Crime Victimization Survey propaganda? Or fact?

And you’re right, you won’t.

I’m curious as to whether or not he’ll respond.

UPDATE: He did!

Michael Hill
4m ago

Lies, lies lies in your article:

“According to the Congressional Research Service, public mass shootings “have claimed 547 lives and led to an additional 476 injured victims” since 1983 (Bjelopera et al., 2013, pp. 7-8). “

Real world with actual data for this year alone:

List of mass shootings in the United States in 2019 – Wikipedia

More lies in your article:

“with ESTIMATES of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower ESTIMATE of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.

So it is anything from 108,000 to 500,000 to 3,000,000. What kind of crazy figures are those? They are EXTRAPOLATIONS from a small number of responses.

The great stsistics LIE:

Fascinating new book that shows how easily we’re misled by statistics

Kevin Baker
Original Author · Just now

So the CDC – and by extension the National Crime Victimization survey are lying. But the Violence Policy Center isn’t. And Wikipedia is never wrong. Because you say so. Check.

(Wikipedia? Seriously? Well, you believe the VPC, so…)

UPDATE II: He came back for more.

Michael Hill
6h ago

A Government body lying? Who’d have believed it?

As to wikipedia your arm waving is a decade out of date as they have long ago proved what they say by giving references, etc.

So another failure.

Kevin Baker
Original Author · 3h ago

So the references Wikipedia uses are dependable, but the CDC and Justice Department aren’t because they’re government entities.

What happens when Wikipedia cites government entities?

But hey, let’s use the all-knowing oracle that is Wikipedia – Defensive gun use – Wikipedia

Excerpt – “Estimates over the number of defensive gun uses vary wildly, depending on the study’s definition of a defensive gun use, survey design, country, population, criteria, time-period studied, and other factors. Low-end estimates are in the range of 55,000 to 80,000 incidents per year, while high end estimates reach 4.7 million per year. ”

So let’s take that absolute lowest estimate, 55,000 defensive gun uses per year as our basis. That’s 150 per day. Are you going to tell me that’s false too?

“The Number of Guns” – or “Why isn’t America Like Europe?”

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In the aftermath of more rampage shootings, Quora has become, unsurprisingly, a hotbed of gun control questions, such as:

Why are guns still legal?

Why does America allow the general public to keep guns?

What would it take for there to be a genuine shift/change in America’s views on, and relationships with guns?

Why do so many Americans conflate “gun control” with “gun bans”?

Why do we allow politicians to dance around gun-control legislation? Would it bother you if assault weapons were illegal in civilian hands?

As someone who is pro-gun, are you able to understand the reasons for banning guns?

Et cetera,et cetera, et cetera.

Then there are questions like these:

Research suggests that reducing the number of guns can save lives.  How can we convince gun rights advocates that this is the case?

Are there any gun enthusiasts who see the logic that the number of guns in circulation needs to be reduced drastically to reduce the killing of civilians?

Why isn’t there a prohibition on the number of guns a person can own?

Do you support the gun ban and confiscation proposed here as the best way to immediately reduce the number of guns in the US?

 Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

You see, The Other Side™ has determined that the number of guns in private hands is The Problem®, and all we have to do is reduce it to prevent all these “gun deaths.”   Only we gun-loving troglodytes can’t or won’t see that and willingly surrender our evil death machines for the betterment of society.

One of the best expressions of the difficulty with “reducing the number of guns” in private hands I’ve ever seen came from the 1982 meta-study of gun control legislation commissioned by the Carter Administration in 1978.  It was published under the title Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime and Violence in America.  Remember, this was more than 25 years ago.  From the books conclusion, all bold emphasis mine:

The progressive’s indictment of American firearms policy is well known and is one that both the senior authors of this study once shared. This indictment includes the following particulars: (1) Guns are involved in an astonishing number of crimes in this country. (2) In other countries with stricter firearms laws and fewer guns in private hands, gun crime is rare. (3) Most of the firearms involved in crime are cheap Saturday Night Specials, for which no legitimate use or need exists. (4) Many families acquire such a gun because they feel the need to protect themselves; eventually they end up shooting one another. (5) If there were fewer guns around, there would obviously be less crime. (6) Most of the public also believes this and has favored stricter gun control laws for as long as anyone has asked the question. (7) Only the gun lobby prevents us from embarking on the road to a safer and more civilized society.

The more deeply we have explored the empirical implications of this indictment, the less plausible it has become. We wonder, first, given the number of firearms presently available in the United States, whether the time to “do something” about them has not long since passed. If we take the highest plausible value for the total number of gun incidents in any given year – 1,000,000 – and the lowest plausible value for the total number of firearms now in private hands – 100,000,000 – we see rather quickly that the guns now owned exceed the annual incident count by a factor of at least 100. This means that the existing stock is adequate to supply all conceivable criminal purposes for at least the entire next century, even if the worldwide manufacture of new guns were halted today and if each presently owned firearm were used criminally once and only once. Short of an outright house-to-house search and seizure mission, just how are we going to achieve some significant reduction in the number of firearms available? (pp. 319-20)

—

One could, of course, take things to the logically extreme case: an immediate and strictly enforced ban on both the ownership and manufacture of all firearms of every sort. Let us even assume perfect compliance with this law — that we actually rounded up and disposed of all 120 million guns now in circulation [Remember, this was 1982. – Ed.] that every legitimate manufacturing establishment was permanently shut down, and that all sources of imported firearms were permanently closed off.  What we would then have is the firearms equivalent of Prohibition, with (one strongly suspects) much the same consequences. A black market in guns, run by organized crime (much to their profit, no doubt), would spring up to service the now-illegal demand. It is, after all, not much more difficult to manufacture a serviceable firearm in one’s basement than to brew up a batch of home-made gin. Afghanistani tribesmen, using wood fires and metal-working equipment that is much inferior to what can be ordered through a Sears catalog, hand-craft rifles that fire the Russian AK-47 cartridge. Do we anticipate a lesser ability from American do-it-yourselfers or the Mafia? (p. 321)

—

Even if we were somehow able to remove all firearms from civilian possession, it is not at all clear that a substantial reduction in interpersonal violence would follow. Certainly, the violence that results from hard-core and predatory criminality would not abate very much. Even the most ardent proponents of stricter gun laws no longer expect such laws to solve the hard-core crime problem, or even to make much of a dent in it. There is also reason to doubt whether the “soft-core” violence, the so-called crimes of passion, would decline by very much. Stated simply, these crimes occur because some people have come to hate others, and they will continue to occur in one form or another as long as hatred persists. It is possible, to be sure, that many of these incidents would involve different consequences if no firearms were available, but it is also possible that the consequences would be exactly the same. The existing empirical literature provides no firm basis [my emphasis] for choosing one of these possibilities over the other. Restating the point, if we could solve the problem of interpersonal hatred, it may not matter very much what we did about guns, and unless we solve the problem of interpersonal hatred, it may not matter much what we do about guns. There are simply too many other objects that can serve the purpose of inflicting harm on another human being. (pp. 321-22)

During the intervening 25 years the media has tried to convince us that there are fewer and fewer people owning more and more guns, as the total number of guns purchased by individual citizens has skyrocketed.  I’ve addressed that previously.  But in the early 80’s the estimated number of guns in private hands (and it’s just an estimate – without universal registration, no one knows) was ~120 million.

I’ve seen a reasonable argument that today it’s more like 500 million.  The minimum number is on par with the present U.S. population – one gun for every man, woman and child in the country.

So I have to concur with authors Wright and Rossi, the “time to do something” about the “number of guns” has long since passed.  The horses are out of the barn, pandora’s box has been opened.

The UK managed to (mostly) disarm its citizens by a slow, incremental process that began in 1920.  First a permit required to purchase a handgun – a simple matter of going to a post office and paying a fee.  Then, slowly over the decades, ramping up the restrictions on purchase and possession until only the wealthy and dedicated would jump through the hoops necessary to (legally) possess a firearm.

Each additional rule or regulation was supposed to make the British citizen safer, but never did.  Oh, for certain the number of killings with firearms was reduced, but murder rates there have continued to climb, decade on decade, while overall violent crime there has skyrocketed since the 1950’s.  Sure, you’re not likely to get shot there.  You never were. But after all that “gun control” you’re more likely to get shot than you were in 1919 when there was no gun control.  And you’re a helluva lot more likely to get stabbed or beaten.

The Other Side™ has, since the 1930’s attempted to implement such laws here, but were stifled by the Second Amendment protection of the right to arms.  They were able to get the 1934 Gun Control act by passing it as, not gun control, but a revenue enhancing measure.  In 1968 they took advantage of high-profile assassinations of public figures to enact sales restrictions and import bans.  And they spent decades trying to convince the public (and federal judges) that the Second Amendment didn’t mean what it said.

And they were pretty successful at that.  Until the Supreme Court heard D.C. v Heller in 2008.  Even then the call to repeal the 2nd Amendment and get rid of all guns was still being repeated.  Daily Kos for example put out an op-ed in 2012 that detailed the path to a gun-free future. It was basically,

  1. National Registry
  2. Confiscation
  3. “Then we can do what we will.”

But regardless of whether or not there’s a legal protection to the right to keep and bear arms, the thing that no one but us gun owners seem to understand is the American attitude towards guns.

Steven Den Beste (PBUH) wrote an interesting piece many years ago entitled “A Non-European Country.”  It had nothing to do with gun ownership, and everything to do with philosophy.  He said, of the people who come here to be Americans:

It’s true that America is more like Europe than anywhere else on the planet, but it would perhaps be more accurate to say that the US is less unlike Europe than anywhere else on the planet.

Someone pointed out a critical difference: European “nations” are based on ethnicity, language or geography. The American nation is based on an idea, and those who voluntarily came here to join the American experiment were dedicated to that idea. They came from every possible geographic location, speaking every possible language, deriving from every possible ethnicity, but most of them think of themselves as Americans anyway, because that idea is more important than ethnicity or language or geographical origin. That idea was more important to them than the things which tried to bind them to their original nation, and in order to become part of that idea they left their geographical origin. Most of them learned a new language. They mixed with people of a wide variety of ethnicities, and a lot of them cross-married. And yet we consider ourselves one people, because we share that idea. It is the only thing which binds us together, but it binds us as strongly as any nation.

Indeed, it seems to bind us much more strongly than most nations. If I were to move to the UK, and became a citizen there, I would forever be thought of by the British as being “American”. Even if I lived there fifty years, I would never be viewed as British. But Brits who come here and naturalize are thought of as American by those of us who were born here. They embrace that idea, and that’s all that matters. If they do, they’re one of us. And so are the Persians who naturalize, and the Chinese, and the Bengalis, and the Estonians, and the Russians. (I know that because I’ve worked with all of those, all naturalized, and all of them as American as I am.)

You’re French if you’re born in France, of French parents. You’re English if you’re born to English parents (and Welsh if your parents were Welsh). But you’re American if you think you’re American, and are willing to give up what you used to be in order to be one of us. That’s all it takes. But that’s a lot, because “thinking you’re American” requires you to comprehend that idea we all share. But even the French can do it, and a lot of them have.

That is a difference so profound as to render all similarities between Europe and the US unimportant by comparison. But it is a difference that most Europeans are blind to, and it is that difference which causes America’s attitudes and actions to be mystifying to Europeans. It is not just that they don’t understand that idea; most of them don’t even realize it exists, because Europeans have no equivalent, and some who have an inkling of it dismiss it contemptuously.

It is that idea that explains why we think being called “cowboys” is a compliment, even when Europeans think it’s an epithet. It is that idea that explains why we don’t care what Europeans think of us, and why European disapproval of our actions has had no effect on us. It is that idea which explains why, in fact, we’re willing to do what we think is right even if the entire rest of the world disapproves.

Our supposed “betters” have pushed for decades to make Americans more European in philosophy.  America has been balkanized by public schools and media over the last century or so to the point today where we are pretty much two nations at each others throats, but the ones who embrace, even slightly, the idea of America understand this – that you as an individual have intrinsic worth.  That you are not a cog in a vast machine.  That you are responsible for yourself, and that what you work to earn belongs to you.  And that you consent to be governed, not ruled.

After the Dunblaine massacre in Scotland, the UK immediately considered the banning of handguns.  At first, only large-caliber handguns were banned, but what was the result of that? 

The resulting Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 banned all handguns over .22 calibre with effect from 1 October 1997. A hand-in exercise took place between 1 July and 30 September 1997 which resulted in 110,382 of these larger calibre handguns being surrendered in England and Wales, while 24,620 smaller calibre handguns were handed in voluntarily in anticipation of further legislation.

 Here we just had two mass shootings, both using semi-automatic weapons.  Another “assault weapons ban” is in the political news.  What do Americans do?  Well my friend the gun-shop counter guy, affectionately known as Merchant O’Death® wrote me after a long, long Saturday at the shop.

Yeah, we go buy what we think the .gov is going to tell us we can’t have anymore.  Barack Obama was the best gun salesman the U.S. has ever seen, and the gun industry misses him badly.

That Daily Kos piece?  The author wrote on the topic of the National Registry:

“We need to know where the guns are, and who has them. Canada has a national firearms registry. We need to copy their model. We need a law demanding all firearms be registered to a national database.

Except Canada only has a national registry for handguns dating back into the 1920’s like England.  They tried long gun registration.  It failed.  Spectacularly.  They estimated that there were about 8 million long guns in private hands.  Legislators were told that the registry would cost something like $119 million to implement, with $117 million of the cost covered by registration fees – so for $2 million, they’d be able to register all 8 million guns, and it would go quickly.

The law passed in 1995, with licensing starting in 1998 and all long guns were to be registered by January 1, 2003.  By 2000, it was obviously not going according to theory.  Registrations were backlogged and riddled with errors, and costs were WAY over estimates.  An audit in December of 2002 showed that costs were going to exceed $1 billion by 2005, with an income from registration fees of only $145 million – $28 million OVER estimates for well under the number of guns estimated.

That was due to lack of compliance.  By January 1, 2003, only about 65% of the estimated 8 million firearms were registered, and there was no reason to believe that the other 35% were going to be.

Finally in 2012 Canada scrapped its long-gun registry, after dumping an estimated $2 billion into it.  It solved no crimes, it apparently prevented no crimes, and it took vast quantities of money and manpower away from law enforcement with its implementation.

New Zealand considered it too.  They gave up on the idea 2004.  So when a whack-job shot a bunch of people there recently and they said “Mr. and Mrs. Kiwi, turn them all in,” compliance has apparently been in the single digits.  You see, they don’t know exactly who owns exactly what.

So, one nation with the population of Louisiana (and nowhere near as many guns) and another with a population slightly smaller than California (and nowhere as many guns) couldn’t get their populations to register their guns.  Of course, Canadians are well known for their extreme orneryness.

 You see, everything hinges on registration.  Another question asked at Quora was “Doesn’t the registration of machine guns prove that gun control works?”  Sure.  If you can get people to comply.  It’s almost tautology to say “If there were no guns there would be no gun crime.”  It’s like saying “If there were no cars, there’d be no car crashes.”

But there are guns.  And they’re not going to go away.  And Americans aren’t going to register them so they can be, eventually, confiscated.  Because, as Tamara Keel put it,

“Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night, I didn’t. So piss off.”

Hey gun-grabbers:  Piss off.

Tough History Coming – Part Whatever

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Recent question over at Quora: “What’s pretty much over but society hasn’t quite given up on it yet?”

My answer:

As much as I hate to say it, America. The idea of America. That we’re a representative Republic that practices Rule of Law and protects the rights of individuals.

It becomes more apparent each day that the nation has descended into oligarchy, and that there’s (at least) a two-tiered “justice” system – one for the politically powerful and one for the rest of us. And that the politically powerful don’t care if we know it anymore.

Our “Representatives” think themselves our rulers, our police forces are increasingly militarized and have the mindset to go with it. As one writer put it, “The military protects the state, the police protect the people. When the military become the police, the people become the enemies of the state.”

We’ve got one political side convinced that the other isn’t just wrong, misguided or ignorant, but EVIL. Since you don’t debate with evil, you don’t compromise with evil, you don’t tolerate evil, you destroy evil, that has been their goal since the 1960’s.

When the other side finally understands this is when we give up. An acquaintance recently observed:

A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch. And the settings are Vote or Shoot Fucking Everybody. And believe me, you really don’t want that switch to get flipped, because Civil War 2.0 would make Bosnia look like a trip to Disneyworld.