U.S. Report Fails to Link Gun Laws to Violent Crime

"WE DON'T KNOW"

"This means that we don't know what effects, if any, a law has on the outcome," Fielding said in a conference call. "We don't mean it has no effect, and that's why it's important to do more studies."


So the purpose of this article is to tell us that a study was done that learned nothing either way? Useful.

 

The CDC, a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, is prohibited from using funds to promote gun control.

On a separate note, why does the Center for <I>Disease Control</I> want to be involved in gun control anyway?

 

Interesting article. Thanks for the link.

 

One would think that were such laws really effective, then the results of a study of their effectiveness would be readily apparent.


Ummm, no you wouldn't. There are far too many socioeconomic factors to conclusively show that one way or another, and far too little evidence.

These laws do not prevent or deter crime.

Show some evidence please. If this was so clear, why didn't the study conclusively show that (since in your opinion, these kinds of things would be "readily apparent")?

A study that shows nothing is exactly that: a study that shows nothing. It doesn't in any way show that there's no link - if it did, the study would substantively conclude that.

 

Just do a simple comparison of other western countries with REAL gun control laws, like Great Britain, or Australia....gun crims are WAY WAY WAY down there.

DD

 

I'd like to see the stats on that, because frankly, I don't believe it. From what I've heard, gun violence in those territories went up because the right for people to own weapons for self-defense was taken away and when you take away guns from law-abiding citizens, you have only criminals and govt. with guns (and there is not much difference between the two).

 

Bama,

Wrong, you take away guns from EVERYBODY, and you enforce the laws with jail time.

Some crocks have guns, but not many, and the new ones have a very hard time getting them.

This is why we have 30,000 murders by gun a year in this country while in the UK they have like 50, and we are only 5 times bigger then them.....


Nothing wrong with updating the constitution and gun control for today's world.

How many of these high school shootings would we have had if the kids could not even get a gun?

Common sense if you ask me.


DD

 

Crocks = Crooks


I miss eidt.



DD

 

Excellent points.

 

What in God's name are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me that the issue is so complex that merely counting the number of gun-related deaths and injuries would not suffice???


That's your definition of an analysis? Yes, the issue is far more complex than that. Wow.

That doesn't take into account even a fraction of the factors involved in the effectiveness of gun control legislation. What about neighboring states? If Delaware institutes some type of controls on gun purchases, but neighboring states don't, that's very different than if a cluster of 8 neighboring states have it. What about current guns? How long do they take to filter out of the system? Where are those guns going? If they aren't leaving the system, that's different than if the old guns are being cleared out. Are there loopholes in the laws (like the gun show thing)? How are these different between states? Were crimes already dropping or rising in these areas? Did the types of crimes fall or rise? This is only the tip of the iceberg.

You don't just count gun-crimes and conclude anything.

Dude, you're missing the whole point of this article. If these laws worked, then there should be evidence for that in the form of decreased gun-related violence. They are saying that there is no evidence that they work. They're not saying that they don't work, they're saying that they're getting mixed results in the metastudy.

Exactly! Which means they MIGHT work. Or certain ones MIGHT work. They don't know! There wasn't enough data or there were too many factors for them to isolate whether the laws are having an impact. They made it very clear that there wasn't enough information:

<I>Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the Los Angeles County Health Department and head of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, said the studies were marked by unreliable data, inappropriate analysis and inconsistent findings, making it impossible to determine the true effectiveness of gun laws.
</I>

To somehow infer this means that gun laws work or don't work is an intellectually dishonest use of statistics.

 

US/UK gun violence

http://www.davekopel.org/2A/OthWr/CriminalAdvantage.htm

Here are a couple of links I thought you might find interesting. According to Linda Gorman,a Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado:

I live out in the friggin' boonies in the N. GA mountains. The nearest sheriff's office is 12 miles away on mountain roads. And you're going to tell me that I don't have a right to defend myself and my family? What am I supposed to do, wave my lizard at someone trying to rob my house?

I know it sounds common sense to get rid of all the guns, but if (big if) we were suddenly able to outlaw guns completely, what makes you think that criminals will not find a way to smuggle them into the U.S. If they can smuggle millions of pounds of drugs across the leaky sieves of our borders, what makes you think they can't smuggle in firearms?

It is a proven fact that states with concealed carry laws see a DECREASE in crime. It is also a simple thing to marry the two, as an armed citizenry is also not a victimized citizenry. And need I repeat that the 2nd Amendment was intended by the Founders of acting as a check on the power of govt. I remember a thread where someone was saying that it wouldn't do any good against the might of our armed forces if they were turned against us, but they forgot Vietnam, Afghanistan and other cases of a superior enemy beaten by a simple, poorly trained force.

It would be nice to have a perfectly safe society, but our mortal and fallible natures prevent it. It would be nice to ban guns to eliminate all the people who die at their hands, but far more people die from drunk driving. So should we ban cars and alcohol?
Of course not. We regulate those things and we can regulate gun buying the same way. A gun is nothing except an extension of the hand that wields it. I hate to repeat it ad infiniteum, but
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

 

I don't want to get rid of all of them, just regulate the HADES out of them.

DD

 

What am I supposed to do, wave my lizard at someone trying to rob my house?

If it gets the guy to laugh, that might give you an opening for a second or two.

And need I repeat that the 2nd Amendment was intended by the Founders of acting as a check on the power of govt. I remember a thread where someone was saying that it wouldn't do any good against the might of our armed forces if they were turned against us, but they forgot Vietnam, Afghanistan and other cases of a superior enemy beaten by a simple, poorly trained force.

I've never understood this argument. You were in the army, right? If the government went and told you to attack Americans, would you do it? I assume not, and I assume that applies to pretty much everyone in our army. How exactly is our government going to attack its own people?

Of course not. We regulate those things and we can regulate gun buying the same way.

That's what modern gun-control arguments are all about. There's not a huge group that advocates banning all guns. There is a large group that wants trigger locks, gun registration, etc.

 

treeman, I respect your opinions on things like this, and I apprecate the frankness of your response in the Rush Limbaugh/Junkie thread, but I have one question to pose to you:

Breaking the question down to it's basic tennants, shouldn't the burden of decoupling the lax gun laws relative to the rest of the world with the rate of violent crime relative to the rest of the world rest with the pro-firearms lobby as opposed to the anti-firearms lobby?

Responses appreciated...

 

There's a fairly good basis in Constitutional law for the arguement that there is no protection against banning things like handguns and shotguns, but rather the Constitution protects personal ownership only for things which can be used for military purposes. Things like anti-aircraft SAMs and machine guns, and RPG's.

 

Trigger locks render guns useless.....useless to me when I need to use it to protect myself or my family. And besides, if they passed a mandatory trigger lock law, how the hell are you going to enforce it? So what if you compel gun companies to put trigger locks on new firearms, people like me who know that such an emcumberance would make the weapon useless would remove it and toss it. And as for gun registration, I don't want my govt. to be able to find me if Rosie and her ilk have their way and ban all guns except for the ones carried by her security staff and the govt. It would just add another huge layer of govt and besides, the LE folks are able to track down gun ownership pretty easily anyhow without it. We just need to enforce the laws on the books rather than add more useless regulation.

And as for the Army reference, I take that as a dire insult. I was in the Marines. And as for shaking my lizard at a burglar, about all I could do was poke them in the eye.

 

Man, crime really has shot up in the last few years. In 1999, the total number of murders by firearm in the United States was 8,259 (there were 62 in the UK, by the way, in 1999).