Guns
If I told you the US has both the world’s highest per-capita incidence of osteoporosis and the world’s highest per-capita intake of calcium does this mean that calcium causes osteoporosis. No, in fact doctors believe just the opposite, and they prescribe calcium to treat osteoporosis. The more likely explanation of our high rates of osteoporosis in the US is that our older women don’t lift a lot of heavy weights. Lifting makes your body demand growth in bone density. People lift things more in other countries as part of their daily activities.
What does this tell us about gun statistics? We have more guns than Japan and more attacks on people using guns. However, there are other significant differences between the US and Japan, however, that help explain the difference in gun violence. Guns are far more regulated in Japan than in the US. Thus, most people owning guns in the Japan are necessarily engaging in criminal activities. Who are those most likely to break the law? You guessed it criminals.
My thesis is that liberalizing gun laws, and thereby allowing more people to own guns, will reduce gun crimes in any country.
This is because all the statistics are driven by ordinary human nature. Given the opportunity to be able to defend themselves and their families, fathers and mothers will take the opportunity, making criminals and government (or do I repeat myself?) less daring in their threats against our lives and property. At the same time, the vast majority of us, in every country, don’t want to go out and commit crimes against others for a living. With these two ordinary, observable facts together, you can bet that in any country, taking guns away from people will result in an increase in ordinary crime and in government oppression. Ultimately, the statistics paint a picture consistent with that.
When you see vast disparities in a single datum between one country and another, nothing as simple as the "presence of guns" will be the explanation. Guns are, after all, completely inanimate. And there is no case in which a single correlation is all you need to know.
Here are some statistics on gun crimes:
http://www.graybeardoutdoors.com/facts.htm
posted by Anonymous at
3:04 PM
2 Comments:
You make some good points with regards to the ineffectiveness of gun laws. In fact, this points to the ineffectiveness of any laws that impose prohibitions on one group by another (i.e. restrictions on alcohol drinkers in the 1920s, gun owners, pot smokers, abortion usually don't acheive their stated goal of limiting the behavior).
A problem with this issue is that it is so polarized that it is difficult to get dispassionate analysis. I generally go The Economist magazine, which does try to give a fair shake to differing opinions.
With regards to your thesis about the relationship between gun laws and crime be sure to consider alternative views. Can you make a reasonable case for the opposite view? If not, then you may be susceptible to "confirmation bian". This occurs when you have an opinion that is stongly held then you look for evidence that supports your viewpoint while downplaying contradictory evidence.
The website this post links to contains many examples of the poor use of statistics, particularly confirmation bias. For example, guns are not listed under "The Most Common Activities that Lead to Emergency Room Visits" but this might not be surprising since 1) the other activities are more common so it's important to look at rates or proportions rather than raw numbers, and 2) gun injuries are probably more severe than baseball or playground injuries. The implied conclusion is that guns are safer than we think since there aren't many gun related emergency room visits. Fallcy: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Probably the best argument the gun lobby has on its side is the constitution, which gives us the right to bear arms. For me, this is enough to limit the right of the government to impose any restrictions on gun ownership.
By
John Topoleski, at 10:13 AM
Here's an article from the Economist that discusses some research that directly answers James' thesis. In fact, an article that received a lot of attention a few years ago was by John Lott called "More Guns, Less Crime".
There are three articles mentioned in The Economist Article; we don't have access to the original Lott article from Loyola, but you can get the others from our campus computers. These articles are in professional journals for economists, so you might have a tough time with them. Econ majors should be able to understand a little more. If you have any questions feel free to ask me and I'll do my best.
From the American Economic Review; there's also an article on this page from John Lott.
This is the article noted from the Journal of Political Economy.
You can the John Lott article from this link
By
John Topoleski, at 1:17 PM
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