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Ace, on 16 December 2012 - 07:39 PM, said:

I have nothing to add to this. I just wanted to quote it to make sure everybody fucking knows it is true.

I'm pro gun and pro gun control and no those two things are not contradictory I think sane, good people should be allowed to own guns but there must be reasonable gun control in place to prevent criminals and crazy people from getting guns and yes gun control dose work it makes it harder for people to get guns when they shouldn't and the numbers of gun related crimes and deaths in the US compared to the rest of the world proves this. In my perfect world every gun owner would be forced under law to own a gun safe for proper storage and have to take a psychological test every year.

Edit: Also banning guns is stupid You'll just create a black market for them the same as alcohol during prohibition and drugs today because of the drug war. Having a black market is always a thousand times worse then legalization and proper regulation.

This post has been edited by RickAstley: 16 December 2012 - 10:14 PM

i went back to find the first moron who mentioned banning guns entirely as a solution and i couldn't find anyone who said that. all i found was falconboy being a moron.

Well, its like they say: guns don't kill people, crazy people kill people.

The US has an overall rate of violent crime of a mere 403.6 per 100,000, and a homicide rate of 4.8 (both from 2010; the latest rate is actually 4.2, so it has dropped even further). Canada has a homicide rate of a mere 1.9, but it has a violent crime rate of 951 per 100,000! Other countries are worse - the UK, for instance, has a violent crime rate of over 2,000 per 100,000!

For all the cries of gun control, it is worth remembering that spree killings happen all over the world, and yet somehow, magically, when it happens in the US, it is because we have legalized firearms (and not because, say, we have five times the population of most developed countries, and therefore freak events happen more often here than in a country a fifth our size). The worst spree killing ever happened in Norway of all places, and the fourth and fifth worth attacks on schools happened in the UK and Germany, respectively. Indeed, of the fifteen worst, only five happened in the US - with Germany, a country with a considerably smaller population, taking second place at three, while China, which is much larger than either, had only two.

Gun control really does nothing to prevent things like that. Gun control does somewhat lessen the "homicide by gun rate"... maybe. The problem is that there is no real correlation between gun control and homicide rate at all; the US has a higher homicide rate than a lot of other countries, but half the homicides committed in the US are committed by blacks, who make up a mere 13% of our population, while other countries simply don't have similar minority populations - the homicide rate committed by white Americans is somewhat higher than that of other developed countries, but not massively so.

Indeed (fun fact!) if you look at US cities by crime rate, which cities have the lowest homicide rates?

#1 is Lincoln, Nebraska, followed by El Paso, Texas, and Plano, Texas. All three of those cities have lower homicide rates than Canada does, and far, far higher rates of firearm posession. The worst cities are Newark NJ, Detroit MI, Baltimore ML, St. Louis MO, and good old New Orleans (which has a homicide rate of 72.8 per 100,000, more than 15 times the national average).

So uh, what can we determine from this?

Not a whole lot, beyond that high population density, poor people, and particularly poor black people lead to high crime rates, while gun ownership rates don't really seem to have much of an influence.

So really, gun control to prevent violence is kind of pointless, because while guns make killing people easier, it isn't clear that actually having guns makes people more violent. And the actual problem isn't people with guns, it is violent people. People who say guns are the cause are wrong.

Heck, if we killed every black person in the United States, we'd cut the homicide rate in half, which is probably a larger decrease than we'd see from gun control. I don't hear many people advocating THAT.

It is also interesting to note that the violent crime rate in the US has actually been declining quite rapidly in recent times, while the rate of violent crime in Europe has actually been going up. So despite all those guns we have, Americans are actually less criminally violent than Europeans and Australians are.

Yeah, sure, we aren't as nonviolent as the Japanese, but who is?

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Er, I know how to build guns. I have never done it, but I know how to. I know people who HAVE built guns. Its not actually terribly difficult to do. Indeed, the dangerous thing is people making homemade ammunition, for obvious reasons.

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There isn't really anywhere in the US where you need to hunt to survive. But it is true that some people need to shoot bears and other things. And really, hunting itself isn't a bad thing inherently.

This post has been edited by Titanium Dragon: 16 December 2012 - 11:14 PM

Kaxbe, on 16 December 2012 - 10:32 PM, said:

Fine.

This post has been edited by falconboy99: 18 December 2012 - 03:02 AM

I'll admit, I TLDR this thread, I'll assume it's filled with drama what with the topic, but I just wanted to post something I saw in another forum.

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Thing is, though, these people aren't in their right minds.

It is very convenient to blame the media for such things, but the truth is that they would do it either way; they're nuts, and they'd believe they were famous and awesome even with no justification at all.

http://en.wikipedia....mnatio_memoriae may sound like a good idea, but it doesn't really work in practice.

With actual terrorists, though, it is more effective. But these guys are just crazies.

I can't even remember the norweigan shooter's name, nor the guy with the high score.

This post has been edited by Titanium Dragon: 17 December 2012 - 12:16 AM

No country will ever be able to fully ban guns. They might ban them, but we all know people will still get them. The guns will just be harder to get and really expensive. On a side note titanium dragon, you really did your research, didnt you?

Well, TD. You've pretty much flipped this thread upside down, haven't you? It is nice to see someone using statistics.

Titanium Dragon, on 16 December 2012 - 11:10 PM, said:

The point was really that you can't compare making alcohol to building guns. There's reason why one was invented a few thousand years before the other.

Jerk, on 17 December 2012 - 12:57 AM, said:

Yet, just a few posts ago, I did it successfully. I'm not sure why you didn't understand the meaning of it, but I promise it made perfect sense.

Oh, no, I read that the first time. I went back and read it again in case there was anything I missed and it was still the same dumb "people will always find guns" talking point that gets regurgitated any time someone puts a round or two through a few crib maggots. I don't mind "Orwellian," but then I also don't give a shit about your right to own boomsticks nor do I share that inherent phobia of everything that happened in "1984." It's pretty useless as a strawman argument against government intervention.

I feel like you're making some assumptions here. For starters, I am undecided in regards to my feelings on gun control. So any arguing "in favor" of it that you see me doing, is simply because I'm curious.

Next, I am not one of those people who is obsessed with 1984 and think our country is constantly walking the fine edge of being free or oppressed. I even made a joke about it in the first post, with the sarcastic Socialist = Dictatorship implication. I do, however, believe it was an insightful book and some of the themes are at least worth considering, especially in the last decade, given things like 9/11, the TSA, and of course, everyone's favorite bird act.

Also, you say that like it isn't true. Yes, people will still get guns. It seems everyone here harvests a hefty hate boner for this EXTREMELY relevant point. Look, yes, some people feel that it is an omnipotent defense that completely undermines any logical attempt to be pro gun control. It isn't, and you're right to be annoyed by that. But the fact is, gun control is NOT some magic button that will instantly make every gun suddenly become fast food restaurants and all american car manufactures. It MIGHT have a positive impact on specific events, like the CT shooting (though, TD referenced some statistics that really make me wonder about the validity of this); however, all in all, guns are too important to be eradicated. Black market dealings will be massive... Maybe even comparable to say, prohibition? Again, this isn't some master point that changes EVVVEERRRYTHING. But it is something that is important enough to be considered, no matter how uninformed the people who preach it usually are.

It's not that you shouldn't ban guns because people will get them anyway.
It's because outlawing guns would stop ordinary people against bad people who disregard the ban on guns.

When you don't have a gun because it's illegal, you can't defend against a criminal or two with a revolver realistically. The criminals won't care that guns are illegal.

This post has been edited by falconboy99: 17 December 2012 - 02:40 AM

falconboy99, on 17 December 2012 - 02:39 AM, said:

You do realize that this just doesn't work in real life right? Very few people who carry guns are accurate enough with them under pressure to protect themselves, and any missed shot you make puts innocent bystanders at risk (or even a hit for that matter, depending on caliber and type of bullet). Furthermore, the time it takes you to draw the gun from your pocket/purse/safe is all the time the "bad person" needs to kill you first, and if they're armed and think you're going for a weapon, they will kill you. If they're not armed, then you're liable for at least manslaughter, since the majority of the states require an immediate threat to your life, and even if you are justified you will probably be proving your case in criminal court anyway. And shooting to wound is out of the question, because guns do way too much damage--the bullets crush soft tissue, rip through veins and arteries, shatter bone and even cause a ripple effect around the wound to cause even more bleeding. A shot to the foot with something as "weak" as a .38 special can kill.

Really, the best self defense option should you find yourself in the situation is to find a way to escape, do so with as little effort as possible, and call the police.

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Ignoring what I said above, quite a few gun owners would disagree with you. Most revolvers are double action, and they carry the benefit of never jamming and quick recovery from a bum round. An experienced shooter can fire off a few shots very quickly, barring extreme rounds like the .454 Casull or .500 Smith and Wesson Magnum. In fact, the biggest benefits of a semi-automatic over a revolver are quick reload and higher capacity, but the more popular personal defense guns generally don't have too many more rounds than a revolver and capacity is a non-issue outside of a firefight that a civilian just wouldn't get involved in.

You have a good point, Carcharocles. I didn't know that shooting to wound is close to impossible. I forgot that most people can't use guns, but couldn't that change? Besides, some people would know how to use a gun, and a criminal wouldn't be able to kill many people in a theater if a few of them had guns and knew how to use them.
I'd like some rephrasing since i'm not sure what you're talking about, quite a few gun owners would disagree with me on what?

This post has been edited by falconboy99: 17 December 2012 - 03:43 AM

falconboy99, on 17 December 2012 - 03:42 AM, said:

No gun is 100% accurate, and handguns are by far the least accurate. In the hands of a skilled shooter, an accurate gun--say, a Model 1911 handgun--would shoot a grouping of somewhere between 2 and six inches at 50 yards, while a gun more suitable for personal defense--say, a Kel-Tec P11--would shoot groupings twice that size and only seven yards. Keep in mind that training to shoot a gun is easy, but training to shoot accurately is very difficult and can take decades; the average person wouldn't devote that much effort. Factor in the low light levels of this theater, the fact that people would probably panic, the likelihood that you and the shooter would be moving and you're looking at a recipe for your own personal homicide charge.

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I think I misunderstood your comment on defending yourself against two "bad guys." Blame it on my crap sleep schedule. What I should've said was that if you are in a situation where somebody is threatening you with a gun, you're already past the point where your own gun would be useful, and trying to use it will probably get you killed. And you don't have to fight to defend yourself--anything you do to stay alive, including handing over your wallet, is self defense.

This post has been edited by Carcharocles: 17 December 2012 - 04:06 AM

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The point of gun control is that the number of criminals who can obtain guns is reduced. Yes, SOME dangerous individuals CAN get guns. That situation is better than ALL dangerous individuals WILL have guns.

Gun control ALSO includes the allocation of guns to the counter-criminal forces. Almost all gun rampages end because the criminal has been cornered by better armed police forces, and killed themselves rather than submit. Arming your entire population will INCREASE the number of gun rampages (although their severity will be reduced) and INCREASE the incidence of gun-related crimes and INCREASE the severity of those crimes.

I'm afraid that if even the smallest restrictions are placed on gun owners, it will allow further disregard of the Second Amendment later on, especially with the crazed gun control advocates around. Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile.

Meowth, on 17 December 2012 - 01:45 AM, said:

I think you're making some assumptions too, as though I want to rid the world entirely of guns. Not entirely accurate: I think you should be able to own a gun, I also think the "well-regulated" side of the second amendment should finally be enforced taking into one's entire living situation and one's ability to exercise that whole amendment responsibly. But if they DID decide to break down your door and take your guns, I wouldn't give a shit. Hell, it could probably kill or imprison so much of the Republican Party in Texas this state might be less of a fuckhole come next election. The situation right now regarding guns is just socially irresponsible, but that's nothing new.

Touche

Guns are not the problem, violent crime is. Banning guns does not reduce violent crime nor does it make it any harder, it simply changes the way it operates.
Punishing the majority because of the highly publicized minority is not the way to go. Nothing is truly evil, it is the person who is.


The best solution to any kind of crime is creating a healthy and well rounded society.
Keeping people well educated and creating a very open environment where people can easily help each other is very important.
Put up systems that decrease peoples need and desire to commit crime, this helps foster a safe community with good morals and ideals which have lower crimes rates.

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Right. We invented the bow about 60,000 years ago and alcohol about 15,000 years ago.

What? You thought the gun was the first projectile weapon?

Thing is, people are perfectly capable of killing people without guns. Indeed, the #1 school massacre of all time involved a guy setting off bombs, and the #1 terrorist attack used boxcutters and planes (not even planes with bombs - just planes). People get knifed all the time, and getting knifed to death actually is more common than homicide by gun in some states, and in Wyoming, a state where over a quarter of the adult population owns a gun, you're as likely to get stabbed as shot (well, in some years anyway).

Fun and messed up fact: The place with the smallest number of registered firearms in the US (Washington DC) has amongst the highest homicide by gun rates in the country (it is in the top 10).

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I'm going to go ahead and tell you that no one actually protects themselves with guns. Accidental deaths by guns are far, far more common than people actually using guns to defend themselves in this country - the only group for which gun use in self defense or the defense of others outstrips the rate of accidental gun death is police officers. Almost no one actually gets shot in self defense, because most of the time, deaths by gunshot occur in such a manner that there's no real possibility of a firefight - someone gets angry and shoots you before you realize what is happening, or they are robbing you and panic. Think about it - even if you happen to carry your gun with you (which you aren't always going to be doing), in most situations which involve someone with a gun, you aren't going to have time to draw your own gun to deal with them, and chances are you're going to be in a much worse state of mind than whoever IS using the gun to shoot up the place.

You're actually more likely to die (and considerably more likely to be injured - indeed, your odds of being so injured rise by more than a third) by gunshot wound if you own a gun than if you don't thanks to the risk of accidentally shooting yourself. Not to mention that guns are a popular way to commit suicide, and considerably more reliable than other suicide methods.

The myth of guns being useful for self defense is as widespread as the myth that gun ownership rates correlates with homicide rates.

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I will note that even when you shoot to kill, you're actually reasonably unlikely to actually kill them. People are pretty stupid about gunshot wounds - you're actually more likely than not to survive being shot. Indeed, according to various sources, you have about a 2 in 3 to a 4 in 5 (so between a 66% and an 80%) chance of SURVIVING being shot by someone else.

Yeah, gunshot wounds CAN kill you... but quite often, they don't. Heck, according to http://www.shootingv...wounds_and_you/, roughly 60% of people survived -being shot in the head-.

People have this vision of guns being death spewing machines, but in reality they just are hole punchers. Sometimes you bleed out or get hit in a major organ and die quickly. Most of the time you survive.

It is true, however, that shooting to wound is pretty much impossible, and also essentially futile. If you don't aim for the head, they're more likely to live, but that's just about the only rule. And most of the time, people -don't- aim for the head, but the torso, because its actually really easy to miss with a headshot.

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Gun rampages essentially NEVER are ended by civilians, and when they are, the civilians are actually almost certainly unarmed and typically tackle the shooter and subdue them via wrestling or improvised weapons. Funny how that works.

This post has been edited by Titanium Dragon: 17 December 2012 - 08:02 AM

Fuck.

TD always impresses me with his statistics and original views.
You gotta remember there's statistics for both sides of the matter though.

Here's two things I'd like to share.
I started reading up on gun laws in Australia yesterday. Apparently aus was very liberal with gun ownership up to 1996, and for just over a decade before that, several gunfights and shootings took place that changed public opinion on the matter. A specially brutal one finally pushed government to introduce and enforce hard rules. All guns must be registered, a "genuine reason" given, yadda yadda yadda. In the 16 years since the introduction of those laws, there has been only 1 of these shootings. The gunman was acquitted of crimes related to the shootings due to mental impairment and remains under psychiatric care.
I'd say that this is strong evidence that gun control does reduce "massacre" incidents.

The second thing is from the book Freakonomics by Lewitt and Dubner. One of the chapters deals with gun control, and shows a comprehensive study on the relationships between violent crime rate and factors such as poverty, social disparity and gun ownership rate. It stunningly concludes that there is no correlation between cities with high poverty and violent crimes, as would be expected, and neither is there one for regions with great disparity and violent crime. The only factor that did correlate with violent crimes in that study was gun ownership. But it isn't a liner correlation (i.e. the more guns, the more crime). It seemed that gun ownership had no impact at all until a certain threshold of guns per person was met, and once above the threshold violent crimes surged.

This again contradicts TD's statistics. In a world so full of studies and research, it can be very hard to know which ones are right and when...

This post has been edited by Migrant: 17 December 2012 - 01:21 PM

Titanium Dragon, on 17 December 2012 - 07:51 AM, said:

It wasn't about projectile weapons in general either, it was about the efficiency increase in killing through the creation of a single invention. Bombs and box-cutters are pretty efficient too but both of your examples required special scenarios. The box cutter would just been another blade if it hadn't been in a cockpit; plus, that "#1 school massacre" basically occurred before anyone had the information resources to track that he was collecting supplies. You're pretty ignorant when it's convenient for you.

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Except it isn't; indeed, it is evidence for the uselessness of it. The population of Australia is 20 million. The population of the US is 300 million. Thus, you would expect school shootings to occur roughly 1/15th as often in Australia as in the US.

There have been 12 school shootings in the United States since 1996; there has been 1 school shooting in Australia since 1996.

This supports the null hypothesis that the law has done exactly nothing to reduce school massacre incidents. Note that with such a small sample size, even if 0 school massacres had occurred during that time, or even if the US had way more than it did (even if you count every single spree killing (or attempted spree killing) in the US in the intervening time period), it STILL wouldn't have falsified the null hypothesis that the rates were identical.

You have to remember that these incidents are quite infrequent, and when you deal with low frequency events, to get any sort of good statistical data you need a lot of it. You'd need about a hundred years of data to draw any sort of conclusion.

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Unfortunately, Freakonomics analysis is deeply flawed for the simple reason that the US has a higher homicide rate (including non-gun homicide rate) than the rest of the developed world, and we also have by far the highest gun ownership rates. Or to put it simply, their argument is nonsensical and not statistically sound, because they are drawing a conclusion from a single data point.

Here's a fun exercise for you:

Graph the % African American population vs number of homicides per 100,000 by state. You'll find a very strong correlation (R-squared over over 0.61, or 0.50 if you don't include washington DC). This is to be expected, as African Americans commit about 50% of the homicides in the US.

Now graph the % gun ownership vs number of homicides per 100,000 by state. You'll find that they NEGATIVELY correlate, but the R-squared value is only 0.11, which means that the association is very likely spurious. This is skewed quite heavily by Washington DC, which I included in my charts as well; removing it gives a very, very slightly negative correlation (that is to say, higher gun ownership = lower homicide rate) but the R-squared drops to 0.0021, which means that in the US, there is no correlation between gun ownership rates and homicide rate (note that I used the homicide rates from 2001 for this graph because the gun ownership data I found was from 2001: Gun Ownership by State (washingtonpost.com) ).

Or to put it simply, repeating the calculations yourself (which you should -always- do before you trust them) shows that Freakonomics was engaging in some very, very dubious methodology, very probably exactly the methodology I stated above - namely, looking at the developed world and graphing the US with it, when the US is an obvious outlier.

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Bombings are hardly a thing of the past, and indeed it is probably easier to build bombs today than it was back then. Remember the Oklahoma City Bombing? The Unabomber, who they only caught because his brother turned him in after seeing his handwriting, completely independent of the FBI investigation?

This post has been edited by Titanium Dragon: 17 December 2012 - 10:24 PM

Titanium Dragon, on 17 December 2012 - 09:52 PM, said:

I never said bombings were a thing of the past but you're still ignoring the point about guns making murder more efficient, especially casual murder if you want to get more specific. Those examples are pretty dated too and fly pretty far beneath the standards of information coordination tactics that arose from the efforts to catch the people and prevent their efforts. Sure, you can still build bombs and guns, but you'd have to be pretty dense to think brewing alcohol is more difficult than constructing a working gun or its ammunition.

If anything, I would only advocate taking away all guns just so that Tea Party members would be provoked to fight back and the FBI would have sufficient reason to shoot them on-sight because that would be pretty fucking hilarious.

This post has been edited by Jerk: 17 December 2012 - 10:27 PM

how come no one is mentioning how America has a distinct gun culture that glorifies gun ownership

Kaxbe, on 17 December 2012 - 10:36 PM, said:

Because that's dumb

how is it dumb?

Guns are like cigarettes. They make you look cool and, if you believe Kurt Cobain, they also taste and smell great.

Except, from what I recall, the Freakonomics study only included american cities. One thing that might also skewer the data is including high and low density areas in one study. It was a long time ago that I read that chapter and I'd have to go back to remember the details. But relly, I don't own the book anymore and can't be bothered going back to it.

As for the Australia gun laws example, TD, you are missing the point. It does show one thing. It compares Australia before gun control was introduced (several massacres within 12 years) to Australia after gun control was introduced (1 massacre event, where only 2 people were killed, in 16 years). If anything, the population has increased quite a bit in the last 28 years! At no point was Australia compared to the US.

And sure, it's not a lot of data, but it is perhaps some of the best timescale data we have on the subject, so it can't be neglected.

This post has been edited by Migrant: 18 December 2012 - 02:27 AM

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The problem is that, again, these are low frequency events. There were four between 1987 and 1996, but there were 0 in the 10 year span of 1977 to 1986. Given that the gun laws didn't suddenly change in 1987...

Well, it just goes to show why this sort of nonsense is exactly that - nonsense. The gun law accomplished nothing of value from a statistical standpoint.

This post has been edited by Titanium Dragon: 18 December 2012 - 04:27 AM

I'd have to remember my poisson distribution and binomial confidence interval rules to see how much it actually means.

It sure isn't very accurate data, but it is SOME data, and it can't be completelly neglected. Unless you can come up with before / after situations on a longer timescale or with higher incidence, or comparisson between very similar populations, this is still one of the best pieces of data we have.

Migrant, on 18 December 2012 - 04:42 AM, said:

With such a small sample size, it has no statistical significance.

Indeed, one could instead point towards cities in the US which have established gun bans (New York City, Washington DC) and instead look at the effectiveness of said bans... and then realize that they have seen no unusually large decreases compared to other cities which haven't established said bans (note that virtually ALL cities in the US have seen a decline in violent crime since the 1980s, as has the whole country really).

Kaxbe, on 17 December 2012 - 11:06 PM, said:

Because the original purpose of this thread was to discuss whether or not the reader supported gun control laws. And it has become people using statistics to show whether or not they work.

I don't know why anyone would bother inserting a comment about how "murica likes dem boom sticks." It isn't like we needed a reminder the land of the free is filled with a bunch of Dallas Cowboy fans.

But, if you want an even better answer as to why nobody has mentioned it yet, then that would be because we're discussing whether or not gun control laws are good/bad, and not if the Cowboy's will let it happen.

This post has been edited by Meowth: 18 December 2012 - 08:45 PM

So if we assume that gun control in Australia had no effect on the number of massacres per year. Meaning the average probability of massacres from 80 to 96 was the same as from 96 to 2012.
Considering each shooting is a discrete, independent event and that any number of them could happen at any time, we have the basis for a Poisson distribution.

So we take 4 shootings in a 16 year interval (to be fair). This is our lambda (expected number of occurrences). If x is our actual number of occurrences, then the probability of x is equal to [(lambda^x)*(e^-lambda)]/x!

So the probability of having 1 or fewer shootings in the time interval should be calculated as

[(4^0)*(e^-4)]/0! + [(4^1)*(e^-1)]/1!
0.01831563888 + 0.07326255555
0.09157819444
=~0.091

Which means there's only a 9.1% chance that the averages are the same.

Advantages of using the Poisson is that we needn't worry much about sample size. Each event could happen at ay moment irrelevant of another even occurring at the same time or not. So our theoretical sample size could be 16 * 356 days, or that amount times 24 hours or that amount times 60 minutes, etc, since theoretically you could have two shootings taking place only a few minutes from one another.

Limitations to this calculation:

• Time scales were chosen arbitrarily (high rate / low rate)
  
• doesn't take into account population, demographical and cultural changes in the time slots studied.

So yeah, this shows the Australian example really DOESN'T have much statistical significance. 9% is low but it's not usually low enough. We can say there's only a 9% probability that the same average shootings per year applies nowadays as did back in the 80s, but that's about it.
It'd be nice to run this test on any data you might find on american cities that have established gun bans, TD.

It'd also be fun to draw confidence intervals for the data, but I'll leave that for another time.

This post has been edited by Migrant: 19 December 2012 - 04:02 AM

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The actual issue in American cities that have established gun bans is that the control cities (i.e. those which did not establish gun bans) also saw a decline in the homicide rate at the same time as the cities which did establish gun bans (or to be more accurate, higher levels of gun restrictions).

For example:

District of Columbia Crime Rates 1960 - 2011

has DC crime rates since 1960. As you can see from the data, there were two major fluctuations, a hump in the mid 1970s, which then lead to a decline in the mid 1980s, followed by another hump in the early 1990s, followed by a long decline which has lasted through to the present. Unfortunately, if you look at the homicide rate of the US in general, you see a similar pattern:

United States Crime Rates 1960 - 2011

You'll find a lot of people who will point out that, say, the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 reduced the homicide rate in Washington DC, but as you can see the data doesn't bear that out; while it no doubt did drop after the act was passed, the homicide rate in the entire country declined, then rose again, then declined again through to the present day, so it is pretty difficult to point towards the law as being successful in its intended task. And indeed, after its repeal in 2008, the homicide rate in DC has fallen from 186 to 108, which was faster than the national homicide rate fell (though to be fair, it was higher to start out with, so you would expect it to decline faster as there was more room for it to fall than in most of the country).

This post has been edited by Titanium Dragon: 19 December 2012 - 04:37 AM

This is for comparing with general crime rates which we had already established. I was wondering about the number of shootings events such as the columbine, etc.

Migrant, on 19 December 2012 - 05:28 AM, said:

There haven't been enough school shootings to really construct any real trends; California does have fairly stringent gun control laws, and also has the most school shootings of any state, but it also has the highest population. There has never been a school shooting in the majority of the states, and no city has ever had two school shootings, so its kind of hard to draw any real conclusions from that.

If you look at ALL spree killings, only a couple cities have had more than one, with New York City having had five, and Omaha and Seattle two. Its pretty difficult to draw any conclusions at all from such small sample sizes. New York has fairly stringent gun laws, for what it is worth. But again, with such a small sample size, and New York City's great size relative to a lot of other cities, it is hard to tell if the number of killing sprees there is significant in any way.

Carch had some good points. I'm neutral now.
And brandon should go away.

This post has been edited by falconboy99: 22 December 2012 - 02:37 AM

i guess kind of stupid is better than completely stupid

I fully support the control of a weapon that can kill multiple pepole whith the squeeze of a trigger. Here in texas you can get a gun in about 10 min by filling out some simple paperwork and a background check. This seems entirely to easy to me.

That hurt, Tae. Who's being open-minded here?

This post has been edited by falconboy99: 22 December 2012 - 02:48 AM

This is the fucking bittersweet candy bowl forums, motherfucker. THE fucking forums of the Internet. You can be open-minded in preschool; we don't have time for that bourgeois jive here.

I sense exaggeration.

No, you're just a bit slow and Meowth is just being a dick.

Hey meowth, are you alright buddy? You sound more angry and bitter than usual.