What did this family not have that it needed?

[AvtomatKalashnikova]

Is funny you eliminate Russia from list of "advanced" nation for compare to America, when "advanced" America is hitch rides to space on primitive Russian rocket!

[klr]

Is funny you eliminate Russia from list of "advanced" nation for compare to America, when "advanced" America is hitch rides to space on primitive Russian rocket!

Touché

[Blind groper]

Russia is not a western nation. I made a condition for selection and stuck to it. The idea was to have nations with similar levels of development and similar cultures. Russia is significantly different in cultural terms from the list of 20. It is also very different in terms of individual wealth. A lot more poverty than the 20 nations selected. Since poverty also drives violence, that makes Russia non comparable to the 20 nations chosen.

However, all this nit picking about "Oh you should have chosen ultra violent nation X - it would have changed the results" does not alter the fact that, for advanced western nations, there is a strong correlation between level of gun ownership and murder rates.

More guns means more killings.

[AvtomatKalashnikova]

Russia is not a western nation. I made a condition for selection and stuck to it. The idea was to have nations with similar levels of development and similar cultures. Russia is significantly different in cultural terms from the list of 20. It is also very different in terms of individual wealth. A lot more poverty than the 20 nations selected. Since poverty also drives violence, that makes Russia non comparable to the 20 nations chosen.

However, all this nit picking about "Oh you should have chosen ultra violent nation X - it would have changed the results" does not alter the fact that, for advanced western nations, there is a strong correlation between level of gun ownership and murder rates.

More guns means more killings.

Russian is different culture? America is different culture from Europe "western" nations. Russian is have more poverty? America is have poverty too! Go to city of Detroit, then you tell me America is not have poverty!

Is look to me like you pick your nations like man who pick cherries, "this cherry is taste good for my beliefs! This cherry is show bitter possibility of incorrect conclusion, I throw in pile for compost!"

[Blind groper]

Avtomat

My thesis has been that in advanced western nations, high gun ownership correlates with a high murder rate. To test that, I selected from a gun ownership list, all the nations that could be classified as advanced western nations. Russia is not one of them. That is true politically, culturally and geographically. For example : Russia stretches all the way to just north of China, and the Aleutian Islands. It has a large portion of its population from geographical areas with strong non western cultures.

The selection was not cherry picking because I had no results to cherry pick from at the time. I picked 20 nations that were clearly advanced western nations from a list that only gave gun ownership. I then found the data for total murder rate, and for gun murder rate, and included that data for those 20 nations in a correlation calculation. Since I did not know before I began the calculation what the result would be, and since I did not change my list after calculating, it was not cherry picking. Those correlations, much as you might dislike them, are honest work, and not cherry picking.

Mind you, it would not be the first time someone accuses an honest researcher of cherry picking simply because that person did not like the results. In those cases, it is the accusation that is dishonest.

[AvtomatKalashnikova]

Avtomat

My thesis has been that in advanced western nations, high gun ownership correlates with a high murder rate. To test that, I selected from a gun ownership list, all the nations that could be classified as advanced western nations. Russia is not one of them. That is true politically, culturally and geographically. For example : Russia stretches all the way to just north of China, and the Aleutian Islands. It has a large portion of its population from geographical areas with strong non western cultures.

The selection was not cherry picking because I had no results to cherry pick from at the time. I picked 20 nations that were clearly advanced western nations from a list that only gave gun ownership. I then found the data for total murder rate, and for gun murder rate, and included that data for those 20 nations in a correlation calculation. Since I did not know before I began the calculation what the result would be, and since I did not change my list after calculating, it was not cherry picking. Those correlations, much as you might dislike them, are honest work, and not cherry picking.

Mind you, it would not be the first time someone accuses an honest researcher of cherry picking simply because that person did not like the results. In those cases, it is the accusation that is dishonest.

You are try to convince me that conclusion of yours is correct, or try to convince self?

[Blind groper]

You are try to convince me that conclusion of yours is correct, or try to convince self?

If you understand even simple statistics, you will understand what I am saying. You accused me of cherry picking data. I am telling you that was impossible, because cherry picking requires a person to select data according to results, and I did not.

I will admit that I had a very, very strong idea of what the result would be before I began the exercise, and because of that confidence, I did not even think of trying to cherry pick data.

Another way of doing this exercise would be by wealth. If you picked the 20 wealthiest nations on Earth (in terms of per capita income per year), and carried out the same correlation, you would get a very similar result. Please feel free to carry out that exercise. All the data needed is on the internet.

[Hermit]

More guns means more killings.

By corollary, fewer guns mean fewer killing, yes? That is not what happened in Australia in 1996 when several hundred thousand semiautomatic and pump action firearms were taken out of circulation in under 12 months.

[Seth]

Da, tovarisch. 7.62x39, 7.62x51, 5.56x45, 8x56R, 30-06, 30-30, .308, .338, .375H&H, 45-70, 458 WinMag, we're spoiled for choices. There's always .700 Nitro Express if attacked by rampaging, rabid elephants, though for home defense it might over-penetrate.

Depends on where home is and what needs to be penetrated.

[Seth]

Russia is not a western nation. I made a condition for selection and stuck to it. The idea was to have nations with similar levels of development and similar cultures. Russia is significantly different in cultural terms from the list of 20. It is also very different in terms of individual wealth. A lot more poverty than the 20 nations selected. Since poverty also drives violence, that makes Russia non comparable to the 20 nations chosen.

However, all this nit picking about "Oh you should have chosen ultra violent nation X - it would have changed the results" does not alter the fact that, for advanced western nations, there is a strong correlation between level of gun ownership and murder rates.

More guns means more killings.

Cherry picking horseshit.

You continue to blithely ignore the simple fact that in the US there are more guns than before, and yet the crime rate, including murder, continues to decline.

This one fact utterly destroys your "statistical" argument.

More guns, less crime.

[JimC]

More guns means more killings.

By corollary, fewer guns mean fewer killing, yes? That is not what happened in Australia in 1996 when several hundred thousand semiautomatic and pump action firearms were taken out of circulation in under 12 months.

However, BG made the reasonable point that only a relatively small number of the already low number of murders were done by gun, so the ban would have had little effect. In fact, it would be even more of a point, given that the number of murders committed by the types of guns that were banned (mainly semi-automatic rifles) was very low indeed, with the exception of massacres by lunatics. The number of criminals murdered by other criminals with hand-guns would not have changed - the ban had no effect on those...

[Seth]

Avtomat

My thesis has been that in advanced western nations, high gun ownership correlates with a high murder rate.

Therefore, if we begin with gun ownership rate of X and murder rate of Y, with an increase in X will come an increase in Y, without fail.

This is not the case in the US, where gun ownership continues to rise decade after decade whereas crime, including murder, continue to decline decade after decade.

Therefore, your thesis fails at its first test of math and logic. Correlation is not causation.

QED.

[Seth]

You are try to convince me that conclusion of yours is correct, or try to convince self?

If you understand even simple statistics, you will understand what I am saying. You accused me of cherry picking data. I am telling you that was impossible, because cherry picking requires a person to select data according to results, and I did not.

Of course you did, merely by deciding what criteria you would use to rank the selected data sets. It's called "bias" BG, and you have a very bad case of it.

I will admit that I had a very, very strong idea of what the result would be before I began the exercise, and because of that confidence, I did not even think of trying to cherry pick data.

I find that impossible to believe.

Another way of doing this exercise would be by wealth. If you picked the 20 wealthiest nations on Earth (in terms of per capita income per year), and carried out the same correlation, you would get a very similar result. Please feel free to carry out that exercise. All the data needed is on the internet.

How about you look at a single pertinent dataset: US gun ownership vs. US crime and murder rates.

Start whenever you like but make the overall interval at least 50 years. Determine the delta between start points and end points. Publish this figure along with your data sets.

What you will find is that as the number of guns in the US increases massively, the number of crimes, including murder, continue to decrease.

This may or may not mean that more guns caused the drop in crime, but what it absolutely disproves is your thesis that more guns equals more murders.

QED.

[AvtomatKalashnikova]

You are try to convince me that conclusion of yours is correct, or try to convince self?

If you understand even simple statistics, you will understand what I am saying. You accused me of cherry picking data. I am telling you that was impossible, because cherry picking requires a person to select data according to results, and I did not.

I will admit that I had a very, very strong idea of what the result would be before I began the exercise, and because of that confidence, I did not even think of trying to cherry pick data.

Another way of doing this exercise would be by wealth. If you picked the 20 wealthiest nations on Earth (in terms of per capita income per year), and carried out the same correlation, you would get a very similar result. Please feel free to carry out that exercise. All the data needed is on the internet.

You are pick cherry of what nations is include in "advanced western". If nation is have violent, excuse is found for discount violent nation, even if same excuse happen in America. You is act like Avtomat some infant born day before now, not see how you set criteria and pick nation to fit view of works...

[Seth]

More guns means more killings.

By corollary, fewer guns mean fewer killing, yes? That is not what happened in Australia in 1996 when several hundred thousand semiautomatic and pump action firearms were taken out of circulation in under 12 months.

However, BG made the reasonable point that only a relatively small number of the already low number of murders were done by gun, so the ban would have had little effect. In fact, it would be even more of a point, given that the number of murders committed by the types of guns that were banned (mainly semi-automatic rifles) was very low indeed, with the exception of massacres by lunatics. The number of criminals murdered by other criminals with hand-guns would not have changed - the ban had no effect on those...

Yup. And therefore the ban was useless, because anyone who really wants to perpetrate another Port Arthur can always find the weaponry required to do so, whether it's legal or not.

Australia is simply lucky that nobody's cared to try very hard. This may change as radical Islam fixes its eye on Australians as it did on the French. By the way, every weapon in the possession of the French terrorists was highly illegal and entirely banned in France and quite literally ever other Western European nation.

....and yet they still managed to obtain and use them....go figure.