Cory Booker

[DanTex]

Why do so many pro-gun people criticize Cory Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark whose anti-crime policies are widely acknowledged to have greatly reduced violent crime within his first few years of office?

Because Booker is a proponent of gun control, and to the pro-gun crowd, anything having to do with gun control is a failure ipso facto.

I bring up Cory Booker right now because crime in Newark has actually increased recently, and the "failure" of Cory Booker's "gun control policies" has become something of a pro-gun talking point. And it's true, as any pro-gun advocate can probably tell you, violent crime indeed is up in Newark. What they won't tell you, but what essentially every article on the recent surge of crime in Newark will, is that budget issues have recently forced layoffs in the police force. What's more, the police director has headed from Newark off to Chicago. And (clearly), police layoffs, combined with an economic downturn are major factors contributing to the increase in crime.

But, reality notwithstanding, the recent upsurge in Newark crime continues to be heralded as a failure of gun control, and -- very tellingly -- rarely do those making the point even acknowledge that the police layoffs occurred.



Beyond the immediate argument about police layoffs and crime, there is a point to be made about big city mayors, Cory Booker in particular, and their views on gun control and violent crime. It is very telling that large city mayors are almost universally proponents of gun control. The pro-gun crowd will naturally paint most such mayors as out of touch urban liberals, and dismiss their expertise on gun crime offhand. But there's a difference between having a lot of experience handling guns, and having a lot of experience dealing with gun violence at a municipal level.


It's not that Booker doesn't understand the statistical high-level side of the debate -- he's been described as "obsessed" with crime stats. It's just that, unlike most right-wingers who work at the think-tanks that churn out pro-gun "research", Booker supplements statistical knowledge with experience and street-level understanding. Sure, international comparisons show that gun availability is associated with greater homicide, but how exactly does that translate to useful gun policies, given political, economic, and social realities.

PS many will have seen this, but here's an enlightening discussion between Rachel Maddow and Cory Booker a while ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2o7DLwrOWo
Of course, both Maddow and Booker are dismissed as non-credible by the pro-gun side (but then again the pro-gun side also dismisses just about every other liberal politician or commentator on the issue). But, for people not fully on the "pro" side, I think you will find that Booker speaks clearly and soberly about the issue, and understands there are no easy solutions but that doesn't mean that there are no solutions.

[PavePusher]

1. "both Maddow and Booker are dismissed as non-credible by the pro-gun side"

Yes, because talking about "plastic guns" and "designed to kill many people quickly" is a mark of erudite thinking and demonstrateable facts?

And quite frankly, the state has not been delegated the power to restrict my ability to defend myself, or appropriate tools to do so, especially in the face of their reduced capacity and demonstrated inability and unwillingness to do so themselves.

Good luck with all that....

[CTyankee]

2. Thankyou for this, DanTex. Newark's problem is also New Haven's problem.

Booker didn't bring in drug activities into the conversation but, as a citizen of New Haven for the past 26 years, I have seen the toxic brew of drug trade and illegal guns (worsened by our recent recession) result in shootings and murders happening every day. I have also worked, as a Literacy Volunteer, in some of New Haven's worst areas for this sort of violence. The victims of these shootings, while often the criminals themselves, are not folks who would escape harm if they or their parents simply owned a legal gun. These are never fair fights, nor could they be. Victims are little kids and old people and those who have to feed their families with no money to buy guns for "protection."

I wonder if decriminalizing drugs, if it were ever to happen, would bring down the gun violence. I am no expert on the subject but I do think the argument makes sense. The gun corridor is also a drug corridor (I like to call it our "silk route"). After seeing what has happened to people in my city, I can only wonder...

[gejohnston]

7. Yes decriminalizing drug will

I remember when these gangs had only knives and clubs. If they had a gun at all, it would be home made zip gun. The war on drugs made business more profitable. It is that simple. Like I said several times before, the average pot smoker and coke head is responsible for more gun violence than the the NRA ever will be. Republicans profit from the drug war because of the private prison industry and looking "tough on crime" and the current crop of Dems lack the guts face the real issue.
Want to take away guns from the gangs? Take away their money.

[Starboard Tack]

15. Decriminalizing drugs would definitely change the equation.

Take away the black market and bring it into the commercial mainstream would not only save billions of wasted dollars annually, but would create billions in taxes. I think, though, your statement that "the average pot smoker and coke head is responsible for more gun violence than the the NRA ever will be" is absurd. That would be like blaming a drinker of bootleg liquor during prohibition for the Valentine Day Massacre, or blaming the average car owner for the deaths in Iraq. The stupidity of the laws and the legislators who voted for them are to blame and they should be made accountable.

[gejohnston]

20. not really

Who gave them the money to buy the gun? If there no profits, there would be no drug war. It is a matter of degree. None of my guns were used to kill anyone. None of my money went to the drug trade.

[Starboard Tack]

25. But I bet you drive a car and use it more than you absolutely need to

Many pot smokers grow their own. Nobody is innocent.

[gejohnston]

41. As long as they grow their own I'm good. I'm not anti pot

just anti scapegoating.

[PavePusher]

10. One need not "wonder" at all, as the proof is readily available.

The history and effects of the 18th and 21rst Amendments are clear and freely available to everyone.

[CTyankee]

12. True enough, but I wonder if we can really compare the two prohibitions.

Drugs are a bigger business than booze during prohibition. Some very powerful interests, acting alongside the public's own fears about the use of drugs, don't want drugs decriminalized in this country. Too much money is to be made.

There have been interesting studies about Holland's experience in decriminalizing drugs but again, Holland is a very small country so it would be difficult to know if their experience could translate in the same way here in the U.S.

[PavePusher]

17. 1. "Drugs are a bigger business than booze during prohibition."

Only because we have let the issue fester for far longer. And that is no reason why we can't still do something about it.



2. "Some very powerful interests, acting alongside the public's own fears about the use of drugs, don't want drugs decriminalized in this country. Too much money is to be made."

This could be mitigated by co-opting those interests. Let the drug lords go legit, regulate for purity, dosage and safety/effectiveness/advertising claims. Create legal channels and markets for importation/domestic production, tax like alcohol and tobacco. Reduce the risks/costs of the industry, while preserving a profit channel. How many people currently in the distrobution industry would prefer to open a legit store-front, pay some federal taxes and leave the risks of jail/assasination behind? I think you'd have to make them form a line, and worry about how fast you could proccess the business licences...


3. Who cares what Holland is doing? What we are doing here isn't working now nor has it ever. We need to try something else as soon as possible.

[CTyankee]

22. Oh, I think it is always valuable to study what other countries have done

with the same problem. If it is a good study, it will take into consideration the factors that are different between the two countries and size is certainly one of them.

The biggest problem we would face, and one that the Dutch have experienced, is the effect on drug use in society. Our big fear is that more people would get drugs and become addicts. I don't know if I believe that because I cannot find a direct causation of alcoholism and the repeal of prohibition.

Interestingly, there is a book (written in the late 60s)entitled "The Alcoholic Republic." I read it in a grad school course "Virtue, Self Interest and the Origins of the American Republic." The author traces our historical use of alcohol, how in the early days of the Republic we were essentially a nation of drunks, and how Americans stopped drinking in such excess. His two main reasons: the Industrial Revolution and the Temperance Movement. Both had a "sobering" (literally) effect. Given that, one wonders why the need for Prohibition was perceived to be any kind of a solution, since the problem had essentially been solved at that point in our history. But public perception was very different, hence the drive leading up to the 18th amendment...

[PavePusher]

30. Oh, I didn't mean we shouldn't look at what others are trying....

we very much should examine that. But we don't need to let it force us into similar actions. We are not the Dutch, we do lots of things as well, but differently.

As far as the "more addicts" claim, my response is generally "So what? Do you believe in evolution? If so, the problem, if it exists, will take care of itself in a generation or three." Most people find this very cold and heartless; yep, that's evolution in a nutshell. Nature doesn't care how you feel about something.

[CTyankee]

65. your last sentence, while true, is not what I was trying to say.

Nature doesn't care but people do, sometimes wrongheadedly, in terms of public policy. With regard to the early American experience, there were many factors at play. Human greed played a big role: the new class of industrialist needed a certain kind of worker and it was NOT one that nipped on hard cider all day. The worker had to show up and mind the office away from home all day whereas in the past he would be more likely to be in a rural setting planting the food he would eat, exerting hard physical labor and soothing his muscles with that cider. The new industrialist also had factories with newfangled machinery and working while alcohol impaired could be disastrous. Couple this reality with the fact that the new Americans were pushing further west (manifest destiny) and settling very lushly fertile areas where they planted corn. The corn crop was super abundant. What to do with the excess? Whiskey, of course, and stronger drink than these Americans had previously experienced...they got drunker faster and with accelerated degrees of toxicity and horrible side effects.

No wonder there was a Temperance Movement pushback! It's good to remember that in the beginning the temperance movement was independent of the Religious Awakenings, but Americans were accustomed to this kind of effort and were easily mesmerized by it's tactics: tent revivals, personal confessions of sin and publicly witnessed conversions to temperance, all very emotional.

Thus, we see the human effort to control nature unleashes its own undesirable consequences. In the long run does nature win? Yes, but in the words of J.M.Keynes, "in the long run, we're all dead."

[Starboard Tack]

21. Why would the size of Holland make a difference?

It has over 12 times the population density of the US and a very diverse population

[gejohnston]

23. We agree on that question

given that it is part of the EU. Other factors that is less obvious would be relevant.

[Starboard Tack]

71. What other less obvious factors would be relevant?

[CTyankee]

26. I wasn't thinking population density and diversity.

I was thinking about the huge disparity in the geographical size of the two countries.

[Starboard Tack]

70. I don't see how the geographical size would make a difference

Legalization, or decriminalization would make a huge impact on our society. It would reduce crime tremendously, especially violent crime, which is a far greater threat to society than people taking drugs, which they will do regardless of the law. Incarceration has become an industry fueled by repressive drug laws.

[CTyankee]

72. Well, it just seems to me that we have such a huge geographical and sociological

area covered it just isn't as easy as in a smaller area. I agree that we should try but some parts of our great land might have all kinds of religious fits over it and make it more difficult politically to carry out.

If we just legalize, without offering the therapy that Holland offers, do you think we might end up with more indigent drug addicts, at least in the beginning? And what then would happen to the concept of legalization?

[Euromutt]

44. I can provide some input on the Dutch policy towards drugs

(Speaking as a Dutch national by birth, and having spent 3/4 of my life there)

The main problem with Dutch drugs policy, as to some extent with prostitution, is that it's half-assed. Possession of small amounts of cannabis, and retail sale via "coffeeshops" is decriminalized, but producing or importing cannabis remains a prosecutable offense. As a result, the coffeeshops' supply can only come from the criminal element, a fact to which the authorities turn a blind eye. But it does mean the wholesale end of the cannabis market is entirely in criminal hands, and competing suppliers do settle "business disputes" with lethal force, up to and including automatic weapons.

Where "hard" drugs are concerned, possession and use are generally not prosecuted (drug use is treated as a health problem rather than as criminal behavior) but import/production and distribution is, placing the entire supply chain down to retail sales in the control of the criminal element. As a result, gunfights between competing street-level dealers do occur.

It is noteworthy that the main supply conduit for illegal firearms into the country partly follows the same path as the heroin; criminal organizations in Turkey, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia acquire the firearms from local manufacturers and ship them to their associates in Germany and the Netherlands.

[gejohnston]

49. so why doesn't parliament simply legalize it?

[CTyankee]

64. I had the same question but my guess is that the Dutch parliament could not

do so unilaterally and not expect repercussions from other nations where such legalization does not exist. Is there some sort of "international" policy that binds Holland, putting them in that strange schizophrenic situation of just not enforcing some of the laws? Or just looking the other way? If Holland could legalize drugs, would there then be pressure within other European nations to follow Holland's lead and then having to provide the therapeutic services that Holland currently provides to addicts who are Dutch citizens?

This question is all the more interesting as I will be in Holland in October. I'd like to talk to my Dutch hosts about this issue, altho most of my time will be spent researching in art museums...

[Euromutt]

73. Because the Netherlands is party to the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961

And withdrawing from that is a bit more complex than simply amending the Opiumwet (the "Opium Act," i.e. the section of Dutch criminal law covering drugs).

In addition, the Christian center-right and right-wing parties don't really want full legalization because they think drug use is immoral. They're prepared to put up with decriminalization in the name of "harm reduction," but they don't want to give a government stamp of approval to use of cannabis.

[aikoaiko]

3. I'm proud of Cory Booker's overall tenure. I knew him in HS and I respect him for taking on Newark

I agree that his smarter, more efficient use of more police is the key to reducing crime, but on firearms he is parrotting the great asshole from across the river, Mike Bloomberg.

I saw the Rachel Maddow piece when it ran live and watched it again just now to refresh my memory of why I didn't like it.



First please note that Rachel is arguing against a straw man she creates. Virtually, no one on the pro-gun or anti-gun thinks nothing can be done about gun violence. That is a myth she created in which to make herself look grand. Its hard to respect that type of reasoning. Do you find it compelling?

When Cory enters the conversation he goes right into the fear mongering himself. For example, gun show loophole with no background checks and trunk loads of weapons to terrorists. For example, fire sales with without background checks. This is the law. When a business closes down, the inventory is converted to the FFL private inventory and can be sold under the laws of any private seller in that state. Nothing crazy there. Please note that states can regulate their private sales as they see fit and do.

Cory continues his fear mongering by calling regular civilian firearms weapons of mass destruction.

"when you can pull a trigger and let go of that many bullets" is an attempt to conflate semi-auto with full autos.

Cory goes on to say that we should be doing things to prevent criminal from access firearms and we are. No one wants a dangerous criminal to have a gun.

Where I think we all agree is that we need to improve our ability to deny criminals access to guns. And even Cory says he has no problems with the law abiding owning firearms. That's the trick isn't it.

How do we prevent the prohibited from accessing firearms without trampling over the liberties of the nonprohibited.

edited to add: the keys to reducing violence is improving the economy, improving mental health car, and putting violent criminals in prison for a long time.

[LAGC]

4. Rachel is so clueless when it comes to guns.

Bullet engraving? Are you fucking serious?

So police can track individual bullets back to the store that sold them. As if you can't just pay cash and buy ammunition anonymously. What's next? A background check and registration just to buy a box of ammo? As if that wasn't a big enough infringement on law-abiding gun owners... you have a big city mayor complaining about lax gun laws elsewhere. So we have to pass nation-wide authoritarian laws because big cities refuse to deal with their gang problems? Good luck getting rural America to go along with such obvious failures in policy. Spin the numbers all you want, but most Americans outside of big cities don't want more gun controls. It loses Democrats elections, and the "professional left" doesn't seem to care.

[RSillsbee]

11. Rachel is so clueless when it comes to guns.

I don't think she is. Rachel Maddow is not a stupid woman. I think she has an agenda and I think she is deliberately spreading false information

[PavePusher]

18. Lying is worse than ignorance. Ignorance can be cured.....

if the subject wants to heal.

Predicated on the "if"...

[gejohnston]

5. Since when was Florida State University a think tank?

Mayors are politicians not criminologists. Their expertise is getting elected and political theater. There are no peer reviewed research done by criminologists that supports your or the mayor's thesis. Besides, Rachel lost all credibility when she brings up the plastic gun urban legend. If you lie or screw up on subjects I know something about, I have to wonder about everything else.
So if Booker wants to engage in theater rather than tell the city "look folks, we need to raise taxes to keep cops on the street" that is his problem.
You would dismiss peer reviewed science written by a liberal criminologist if it did not conform to your view. Rachael does just that.

[DanTex]

13. Since when is NEJM not a peer-reviewed journal?

Oh wait, it is. One of the most prestigious, in fact. Not popular with the NRA, though.

Speaking of "If you lie or screw up on subjects I know something about, I have to wonder about everything else"...
Umm, you do remember the Liechtenstein debacle, right? What was it, two, three days ago? I suggest you lay low for a bit before getting into a credibility debate.

[gejohnston]

14. I know the article you are referring to

and no it was not peer reviewed. The "study" is over 10 years old and data has never been released for peer review. That has been raked over the coals before. Also, it was funded by the Joyce Foundation. A bullshit shill study by an fourth rate economist who needed the cash, not a criminologist.
I was correct for that year. Rachael has been corrected about the plastic gun AWB bullshit and she continues to repeat it.

Speaking of credibility, I have yet to even see your attempt at facts.

[DanTex]

16. LOL. There's more than one article about guns in NEJM.

There's also plenty of research published elsewhere.

But I get it. You prefer the AEI guy over the Harvard guy. Every piece of research that doesn't support your conclusions is a "bullsh*t study". The natural statistical comparisons don't go you're way and so you snoop around for some more friendly numbers. Blah, blah, blah...

Typical pro-gun, and I've heard it all before.

[gejohnston]

19. Hemenway has been discussed here before and exposed.

John Lott is another shill economist and you are being hypocritical to say the least.

No I prefer the Florida State University guy. http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/faculty-gary-kleck.php

Typical anti-gun, don't bother me with empirical evidence, my gut feeling and moral superiority will save the day.

[DanTex]

24. "Exposed" by a pro-gun echo chamber. The hits just keep on coming!

Yeah, those idiots at NEJM have no publication standards whatsoever. Are you aware that NEJM is up with JAMA and Lancet as one of the most prestigious and influential medical journals? But go ahead, trash away. It just goes to show the lengths the pro-gun side will go to deny reality.

Those sucker NEJM referees! Morons at The Harvard School of Public Health! Don't you know that one of your faculty members has been "exposed" by pro-gun advocates on the internet!

LOL. I didn't realize you only consider empirical evidence to be "empirical" if it's been approved by you and your pro-gun buddies.

[lawodevolution]

40. The prestigious have a long history of intellectual dishonesty and closed mindedness. How did the

Prestigous treat the theories of Darwin?

They are still willing to use intellectual dishonesty against gun owners because the "elites" of today are capable of bring ignorant bigots as well.

[DanTex]

43. Too funny! NEJM: hotbed of intellectual dishonesty. But NRA, now there's some truthiness!

True colors. Beginning to show.

For the pro-gun advocates, it's not about facts, statistics, legitimate studies, or peer reviewed publications in mainstream journals after all (there's a shock!). It's pure 100% ideology.

Congratulations. You are now entering global-warming-denial/creationism territory, which is precisely where the pro-gun movement belongs. Those darned "elites" at the New England Journal of Medicine with their "academic standards" and "rigorous statistical analysis".

[gejohnston]

42. I'll take your straw man and appeal to unqualified authority

and your projection; and raise you a professional, liberal, kind of anti gun criminologist who won the Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology.
So, you and your anti gun buddies and whine your hypocritical bullshit all you want.

[Euromutt]

46. Don't put too much faith in a study being published in a peer-reviewed journal

Let me quote a blog post by Amy Tuteur, MD on the subject of "Science by Press Release":

Moreover, journalists appear to suffer from a misunderstanding of the scientific literature. Publication of a scientific paper is not the end of a process confirming the truth of a paper; it is only the beginning. Publication does not mean that the findings should be accepted uncritically; it merely means that the findings are worthy of being included in the ongoing public discussion that characterizes science. The findings of the paper may ultimately be deemed worthless or wrong.

And indeed, five years ago, John Ioannidis had two papers published that caused a bit of a stir: "Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research" in JAMA and (the more provocatively titled) "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" in PLoS. The fact is that there is no shortage of studies that manage to get published in peer-reviewed journals--even highly prestigious ones--despite the conclusions not being supported by the data. At least the Lancet had the excuse that Andrew Wakefield fraudulently fabricated his data, though even then, it took them twelve years before they finally retracted "Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children."

The NEJM, however, has distinguished itself by twice publishing studies which concluded, in so many words, that Guns Are Bad, in which the authors refused to deposit their raw survey data with the journal: "Firearm Regulation and Rates of Suicide" by John Sloan et al. in 1990, and "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home" by Arthur Kellermann in 1993. It is practically unheard of--and it should be completely unheard of--for a journal or a peer reviewer to sign off on a study in which the author has made it impossible for others to check whether his conclusions are supported by the data, but the NEJM's reviewers signed off on both studies and the NEJM published them.

Note, moreover, that the published studies concluding that Guns Are Bad are always retrospective in nature, such as case control studies. Retrospective studies certainly have a place in medical science; they're very useful for investigating whether an association exists between a phenomenon and a possible cause, at comparatively low cost, because the data has already been gathered for other purposes. If they turn up something interesting, that can then be used as a basis for more expensive prospective studies and/or randomized trials. However, retrospective studies can't be randomized, and are thus particularly prone to confounding factors, and producing spurious associations. Here's a quote from David Gorski, MD, PhD, talking about a Polish study concerning MMR vaccine and autism (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2962 ):

Whatever the case, here’s one thing to remember about retrospective studies in general. They often find associations that later turn out not to hold up under study using prospective studies or randomized trials or, alternatively, turn out to be much weaker than the retrospective study showed. They do not so often find a result that is exactly the opposite of hypothesis tested for.

Bolding mine. Note that Gorski is talking about retrospective studies in general; this is something that is commonly understood in the field of medical science, which is why findings of retrospective studies are generally not accepted unless and until they have been replicated using prospective studies or randomized trials. Even the very strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer produced by Sir Richard Doll had to be validated by a subsequent cohort studies before it was accepted.

In spite of this, no public health researcher has ever set up a prospective study to see if the results from decades of exclusively retrospective studies will be replicated. One can only wonder why this reluctance exists...

[DanTex]

50. I was responding to the claim that no "anti-gun" research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals

So you'll understand why I brought up NEJM. I still hold that NEJM is a credible journal, but I don't really feel like getting into a debate about the soundness of the peer review system, as it is somewhat peripheral to this discussion. Moreover, NEJM is not the only peer-reviewed journal which has published studies favorable to gun control.

Imperfect as it may be, peer-reviewed research is still something. I'm not sure how you feel about David Hemenway, but if you are supporting the claim that his entire body of research should not qualify as evidence because he has been "exposed" on DU Guns by a bunch of pro-gun internet posters, well, I'm going to disagree with you. If you are merely urging caution, that just because something is in a peer-reviewed journal doesn't mean it's the final word, then I absolutely agree.


edit: changed title

[gejohnston]

53. The issue is not with NEJM itself

just with Hemenway and his crew. There is an entire thread dedicated to his work.

So why do you dismiss work that you never read that has no connection with AEI or any other think tank?

[gejohnston]

56. the claim was that anti gun has not been peer reviewed

I said nothing about journals. While the work you cite did show up in a journal, the raw data and methods have not been released so that others can try to replicate it.

[DanTex]

57. A truly clueless statement. Gives insight into how little you know about the academic process.

The term peer review has a very specific meaning. It means that before publishing a paper, an academic journal sends it out to experts in the field who read the paper and determine whether it is quality research. NEJM is a peer reviewed journal. Which means that any research that appears in NEJM (except things like letters to the editor or invited editorials) gets peer reviewed before it gets published.

Now, if you want, you can claim that NEJM is a lousy journal with weak standards. Or maybe you can argue that certain papers should not have made it through the peer review process. Or that if you were chosen as a referee (there's a scary thought), you would not have accepted the paper.

But you can't claim that such papers weren't peer reviewed.

So you've been caught telling falsehoods again. In the words of Jon Stewart, are you ever right about anything?


PS There are lots of examples, it's not just the one study you are criticizing. For example, here's a study published in the (peer-reviewed) Journal of Trauma with largely "anti-gun" conclusions. And there's more where that came from (google).

Of course I only need to find one such study to demonstrate that you made a false claim.

Are we out yet?

[gejohnston]

58. see post 46, he knows more than either one of us.

So where is his peer review? Who carried out the same study and got the same results? The same guy? Like that really convinces me of shit. I was hoping for a Kellerman. I don't really give a rats ass what some MD or economist claims on subjects that have nothing to do with their specialty. That is like taking my car to my dentist and having my mechanic replace a filling. Their methods have nothing to do with criminology or sociology. That has been pointed out by others here. Nor does it have anything to do with the historical record. What ever applies to me applies to you. But first, you have to prove that the study is correct. As Euromutt pointed out, studies printed in journals often can not be replicated. Has it ever been replicated by someone else?
Since you started with a straw man, and argued as if we thought the same as your straw men. You have yet to directly show where your ideas will do anything either one of us want. We can throw bullshit statistics around all we want. No one convinces anyone of anything. So if you want to sit on your happy ass and think what you want. The bottom line is this:
No one here claimed that more guns equal less violence. That can never be proven. I doubt that is not the case.
You made the claim that more guns equal more violence. I showed that is necessarily the case. No before law/after law shows positive changed in any country. That is the real issue.
So, yeah we are done. You tried. We both failed to convince each other. So let's just say screw it and work together on stuff we agree on.

[DanTex]

59. When it comes to not knowing things, please speak for yourself...

Because the fact that you're clueless doesn't mean that I am also. Particularly when it comes to the peer review process.

I'm not sure whether you really don't know what the term "peer review" means, or you're just playing dumb to try and back out of the false claim you made earlier. But whatever. You should get someone else here to explain it to you, along with the difference between peer review and replication, and the fact that you don't actually "prove that a study is correct", and that "where is his peer review" is a nonsensical question; pretty much your entire picture of how academic research works is totally wrong.

I could explain these things to you, but I suspect that you reflexively won't believe anything I say, so it's probably better that you get someone else to do it. You seem to be fond of Euromutt, and while I have no idea what his/her level of expertise is, I think it's extremely likely that he knows a lot more than you. Maybe if you ask nicely he or anyone else might step in with some explanations.

In fact, I'll ask for you. Does anyone feel like explaining this stuff to our good friend gejohnston?

[gejohnston]

60. Thank you but you assume a lot.

Judging from the quality of your arguments and your condescending manner, no I would not take you seriously quite frankly. I don't do anything reflexively. I don't have to feel anything about anyone to tell how informed one is or their ability to make an intelligent argument. Frankly, I never met the guy.

[Straw Man]

61. Yes, that was a faulty claim. But that's not the real issue.

I still hold that NEJM is a credible journal, but I don't really feel like getting into a debate about the soundness of the peer review system, as it is somewhat peripheral to this discussion.

Actually, I would say that it's central to the discussion. The issue is that the raw data was not submitted along with the study, yet the NEJM published it anyway: not the best way to maintain credibility.

[Euromutt]

76. That wasn't gejohnston's actual claim

gejohnston said:

There are no peer reviewed research done by criminologists that supports your or the mayor's thesis.

Emphasis mine.
He didn't say anything about public health researchers, be they MDs or economists (like Hemenway), nor medical journals.

And where public health literature into firearms is concerned, peer review--or possible lack thereof--isn't the issue (I tend to subscribe to David Gorski's view that, to paraphrase Churchill, peer review is the worst system yet devised to disseminate scientific research, except for all the others). What is the issue is that a sizable segment of the medical/public health community has succumbed to groupthink where firearms are concerned: they have decided that privately owned firearms are a public health menace, and eagerly produce and publish any and all research that supports that predetermined conclusion.

There are numerous problems with the "public health menace" approach. The first is that it takes an epidemiological approach, that is, it treats firearms as a pathogen. The problem with treating firearms as if they were a pathogen is that it assumes that everybody is more or less equally at risk once they're exposed. It doesn't make any difference to a virus or a carcinoma whether you have a criminal record, are a member of a criminal organization (like a drug gang) or have a tendency toward violence coupled with poor impulse control. It most assuredly does affect the likelihood that you will handle a firearm irresponsibly, or become the target of an assault with a firearm (unlawful or otherwise). In fact, the epidemiological research data bears this out, but the researchers consistently try to sweep it under the rug with the unconvincing claim that they "controlled for other variables," and avoid mentioning it in their conclusions, abstracts and press releases.

Case in point: "Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault" (Branas et al. American Journal of Public Health 2009 http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/AJPH.2008.143099v1 ). The first warning sign was this was "science by press release", with the press release preceding print publication of the article (http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/09/gun-possession-safety). From the press release:

The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.
<...>
Penn researchers investigated the link between being shot in an assault and a person’s possession of a gun at the time of the shooting. As identified by police and medical examiners, they randomly selected 677 cases of Philadelphia residents who were shot in an assault from 2003 to 2006. Six percent of these cases were in possession of a gun (such as in a holster, pocket, waistband, or vehicle) when they were shot.

You have to love econometric modeling; how else could you take a study population of shooting victims in which the ratio of non-carriers to carriers is almost 16 to 1, and come up with a result that carrying a firearm makes you over four times as likely to be shot than if you weren't carrying one?

This is the same approach that epidemiologists have historically used to establish links between such things as smoking and lung cancer or drinking and car crashes.

Yeah... Thing is, at the time Sir Richard Doll did his research, something in the order of 90% of lung cancer patients were smokers; not 6%. The hypothesis that a particular behavior is a major causal factor in a particular outcome is a lot more plausible when 9 out of 10 people who suffer that outcome engaged in that behavior than 1 out of 17.

As for establishing a link between drinking and car crashes, well, drinking by itself doesn't cause car crashes, does it? That is, you can drink enough to give yourself cirrhosis of the liver, but if you never operate a motor vehicle, you're never going to cause a car crash. It's the combination of drinking and operating a motor vehicle that is the causal factor.

And what was this "same approach"? According to the press release:

These shooting cases were matched to Philadelphia residents who acted as the study’s controls. To identify the controls, trained phone canvassers called random Philadelphians soon after a reported shooting and asked about their possession of a gun at the time of the shooting. These random Philadelphians had not been shot and had nothing to do with the shooting. This is the same approach that epidemiologists have historically used to establish links between such things as smoking and lung cancer or drinking and car crashes.

It's illegal to make unsolicited calls to a cell phone, so they had to be calling land lines.
According to the study itself:

However, compared with control participants, shooting case participants were significantly more often Hispanic, more frequently working in high-risk occupations, less educated, and had a greater frequency of prior arrest. At the time of shooting, case participants were also significantly more often involved with alcohol and drugs, outdoors, and closer to areas where more Blacks, Hispanics, and unemployed individuals resided. Case participants were also more likely to be located in areas with less income and more illicit drug trafficking (Table 1).

Which just about describes the demographic of any large city least likely to have a land line telephone. So you have a study group that contains significant numbers of individuals who are poor, members of ethnic minorities, and/or have prior histories of criminal behavior and substance abuse; who do you select as your control group? Why, people who are sufficiently settled and have enough money to have a land line telephone! Rather than try to exclude the possible confounders going in, we'll just "adjust for the variables" afterward (or at least say we did).

So might the possibility exist that, insofar as there is a causal relationship between carrying a firearm and being shot, it is that people who perceive themselves to be at greater risk of getting shot (particularly those engaged in criminal activity) are more likely to carry guns as a result? That possibility should at least merit investigation. However, according to the study itself, the researchers "did not account for the potential of reverse causation between gun possession and gun assault."
I'll repeat and emphasize that: the researchers "did not account for the potential of reverse causation between gun possession and gun assault."
Note that neither the abstract, let alone the press release, mention this fact; you have to actually dig through the article itself (that'll be $30, please) to find it.

Researchers in the medical and public health fields have an ugly tendency to imply that causation exists when all they have at best is correlation; they've even developed a whole vocabulary to serve this function: terms like "linked to," "risk factor" and "associated with." To see how this is put into practice, let's turn to "Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study" (Dahlberg et al. American Journal of Epidemiology 2004 http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/160/10/929#KWH309C20 ).
The abstract starts:

Data from a US mortality follow-back survey were analyzed to determine whether having a firearm in the home increases the risk of a violent death in the home <...>

So the authors are seeking to establish a causal relationship: is the risk of violent death increased by having a firearm in the household? However, what they conclude with is:

Results show that <...> having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.

Note the phrase "associated with"; i.e. the authors established a correlation. That's all "associated with" means; having insulin in the house is "associated with" having diabetes. But correlation does not imply causation. Because the authors fail to acknowledge this difference between their stated objectives and their actual findings, they are in effect pulling a bait-and-switch. The same goes for the UPenn study, the one in which the researchers "did not account for the potential of reverse causation between gun possession and gun assault." In fact, it goes for pretty much the entirely of public health research concerning firearms.

To conclude, I'll quote an excerpt from a review looking at international comparisons of suicide rates.

A problem with international studies is the difficulty in fully accounting for the disparate cultural factors that may influence the incidence and method of suicide. The few international studies that address the gun-suicide question suggest that firearm availability affects the method of suicide and may have an influence on the total level of suicides, especially among youth. The evidence, however, is far from convincing that gun ownership levels are related to overall suicide rates for all age groups. The U.S., for example, has the highest levels of gun ownership, but its overall suicide rate is only 16th out of 26 high-income countries. One study found a statistically significant relationship between gun ownership levels and suicide rate across 14 developed nations (e.g. where survey data on gun ownership levels were available), but the association lost its statistical significance when additional countries were included.

Emphases mine. The article is "Firearm Prevalence and the Risk of Suicide: A Review" (http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~epihc/currentissue/Fall2001/miller.htm ) by Matthew Miller and David Hemenway. Yes, the same David Hemenway.

Curiously, the "Guns and Death" page of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center sums up the findings of the very same article as:

The evidence that gun availability increases the suicide rates of adults is credible, but is currently less compelling.

Isn't it... odd how the evidence went from being "far from convincing" in the article itself, to "credible, but currently less compelling" in Hemenway's own, non-peer reviewed description of the article?

[DanTex]

78. Yes, he slides by on a technicality (this time)

Perhaps he should have said "no evidence by criminologists at FSU whose names start with K". Of course, in other threads he's repeated the "no empirical evidence" lie without this qualification, but yes, this time his statement was grossly misleading, but not technically false (or I should say, it hasn't been proven false, it might still be false, but I'm not going to bother trying to find a reference).

Second, re: gejohnston, I have a request. I think that if you read gejohnston's posts about peer-review, you will agree with me that he is sorely confused. Perhaps the pro-gun people have some kind of omerta where nobody ever points out each other's misconceptions, you only criticize the "antis". But maybe, just this once, you might send a post his way explaining how the peer review system actually works. For some reason, he seems to believe your opinion much more than mine.


As far as your critique, I guess at some point I am inevitably going to end up writing a very long post about gun research, so here goes...

Re: Gorski
Despite the fact that Gorski was talking about medical research in particular, I'm sure you would agree that things like publication bias and politics are just as prevalent in other fields as well. So don't act like research in medical journals is particularly tainted, but research from sociology or criminology journals is A-OK. The fact of the matter is medical research is among the highest profile research in all academia, that's why it receives so much attention and scrutiny. Frankly, nobody really cares about sociology papers outside of sociology (OK that's an unfair generalization, but still...). If anything, the greater scrutiny would tend to imply that medical journals would be higher, not lower quality.

Re:

What is the issue is that a sizable segment of the medical/public health community has succumbed to groupthink where firearms are concerned: they have decided that privately owned firearms are a public health menace, and eagerly produce and publish any and all research that supports that predetermined conclusion.

And there it is: a conspiratorial allegation of community-wide bias. Unlike others here, at least you concede that the mainstream academic consensus is not on your side: it is a fact that there is extensive peer-reviewed research in mainstream, reputable journals supporting gun control. I'll credit you for that, and you should speak up, because so many on your side don't even seem to be aware of this.


But on to your theory of community-wide bias, which, I must note, puts you in the company of every other fringe group whose theories go against mainstream academic opinion. I'm not saying that the mainstream is always right, but usually they are. Everybody who has ever been wrong thinks they are Galileo, bravely standing up against the closed-minded establishment and their biases.

You bring up Wakefield, well guess what the anti-vaxxers say when confronted with the fact that the peer-reviewed evidence is overwhelmingly opposed to their point of view? Something about how mainstream medical researchers have "succumbed to groupthink" and just want to support their "predetermined conclusions". Come to think of it, at least the anti-vaxxers can claim that big pharma has some kind of profit motive for their conspiracy, but on guns, the motivation is nothing by the usual "liberal elite anti-gun bias". So conspiratorial suspicion of gun research is actually more like global warming denial. Or intelligent design.

I hope you realize what you are really suggesting. Because, unlike the Wakefield case, for you to be right, it's not just one fraudulent paper that slipped through and later got retracted. It's not just a couple referees from NEJM. If the gun research were really all crap, then in order to get it all published in the variety and quality of journals in which it has appeared, tens and maybe hundreds of highly accomplished and reputable researchers would have to be involved

Now, I'll be honest, the case for gun control is far weaker than the case for global warming, evolution, and vaccinations. Not even close. Hemenway and the rest of them readily admit that there is a scarcity of good data, partly because of the nature of the field, and partly because so many gun control laws that might be effective on a large scale simply have never been tried in the US. Nevertheless, your conspiratorial accusations of groupthink could be taken verbatim from a global warming denial website.


Re: Your specific critique of those two papers.

Really, save your breath. Because it's all been said before. If you spend a little time with google you will quickly find that what Rachel Maddow calls the "100% pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands, all caps, guns forever rabbit hole" of right-wing pro-gun websites will probably have gone over every single gun study word by word and given a "refutation".

You see, the easiest thing in the world is to take a statistical study, crunch some of the numbers in a different way, pick out some wording you don't like, and conclude that it is bunk. I don't know if you thought up this stuff yourself, or if it came from ilovesmesomeguns.com or wherever the pro-gun people are hanging out these days. But it has all the hallmarks of a lone internet loon attempting to discredit mainstream peer-reviewed research. Here are some common signs:
-Mumble something about "causation" and "correlation".
-Claim that the authors forgot to control for something.
-Bring up a past and irrelevant example of improper use of statistics.
The only biggie you seem to have missed is the use official-sounding logical phrases like "modus ponens" or "fallacy of composition".

Even if this is original work, believe me, anyone with even a modest background working with data can very easily whip up a persuasive-sounding critique of a study, enough to seem convincing to a lay audience and send true believers into ecstatic convulsions. And many are even better than yours: I've seen them produce charts and graphs and t-tests and everything. What's more, if you like the pro-gun stuff, you'll positively love the global warming deniers, who are by and large more sophisticated.

That's why the peer review system is necessary. It's not that "correlation/causation" and the rest are not valid concerns. Quite the opposite: everyone who has ever taken an undergrad class in stats knows about them. You see, the people doing this research are not idiots. Neither are the editors or referees at NEJM or elsewhere. If there were really errors as severe as you and the pro-gun sites would have us believe (and not in just one paper, but in every gun paper!), then it would almost surely not have gotten past the referees.

At the end of the day, the peer review system is indeed flawed, but it is far superior to the "some crap I read on the internet" standard. You'll note that gejohnston claimed earlier in the thread that Hemenway has been "exposed" here on DU. That's the real groupthink: the fact that the pro-gun crowd really believes that scores of peer-reviewed studies have been debunked by a bunch of internet "experts" with no expertise to speak of, a clear herd mentality, and an obvious pre-existing bias.

[PavePusher]

79. You seeem to be fixated on "academic opinion", to the exclusion of facts and evidence.

In fact, you've been ignoring and sidestepping evidence so diligently, it seriously begs the question: "Why?"

[Euromutt]

80. Wow, could you be any more patronizing?

Despite the fact that Gorski was talking about medical research in particular, I'm sure you would agree that things like publication bias and politics are just as prevalent in other fields as well. So don't act like research in medical journals is particularly tainted, but research from sociology or criminology journals is A-OK.

Interestingly, the medical field does have this problem to a larger extent than other areas, because much of the research is performed by MDs, who are not strictly speaking scientists, and whose grounding in the scientific method often leaves a lot to be desired. And, by the same token, much of the peer review is also performed by MDs, who may suffer from the same problem.

Unlike others here, at least you concede that the mainstream academic consensus is not on your side: it is a fact that there is extensive peer-reviewed research in mainstream, reputable journals supporting gun control.
<...>
But on to your theory of community-wide bias, which, I must note, puts you in the company of every other fringe group whose theories go against mainstream academic opinion.

Hold the phone. Your assertions only work if you look exclusively at the medical/public health community, while deliberately ignoring everybody else, including the field of criminology. Especially criminology. Because, in actual fact, there is no "mainstream academic consensus" outside the medical/public health community, and it's open to question to which extent such a consensus exists within that community. Because it's remarkable in research that concludes time and time again that Guns Are Bad that so much of it is produced by a fairly small number of researchers--names like Arthur Kellermann, John Sloan, Garen Wintemute, and the HSPH troika of David Hemenway, Matthew Miller and Deborah Azrael--and even when none of them are directly involved with a given study, you can bet they'll pop up in the references. So your "mainstream academic consensus" really consists of a comparatively small bunch of researchers from only one of the fields that takes an interest in this subject matter. That makes it a very different proposition than global warming or the theory of evolution, where just about everybody from a number of different fields broadly agrees that the phenomenon in question occurs (with disputes occurring mainly over how and why).

You should see how many MDs--even ones who perform research--are creationists, by the way.

If the gun research were really all crap, then in order to get it all published in the variety and quality of journals in which it has appeared, tens and maybe hundreds of highly accomplished and reputable researchers would have to be involved.

"Highly accomplished and reputable"? You're begging the question, since whether the researchers are, in fact, accomplished and their reputations are deserved forms part of the matter under discussion. It's not as even the most reputable journals don't publish some utter bilge from time to time; last year, both Nature Neuroscience and the NEJM published articles that made breathlessly positive (but upon closer inspection utterly unsupported) conclusions about acupuncture. Papers in which the authors' conclusions are not actually supported by their data are published with depressing frequency. I will again quote Amy Tuteur, MD, in the comments of this blog post:

<...> a lot of bad analysis gets by reviewers at leading medical journals. That’s why it is so important to read a scientific paper in full, not just the abstract. All too often, the data in the paper does not support the conclusion in the abstract.

But more importantly, the crappiness of the research in question very often doesn't lie in the research and the resulting paper itself, but the way the findings are (re)presented in non-peer-reviewed media, such as accompanying press releases. It's quite possible for a paper itself to be based on sound methodology and provided with appropriate qualifying phrases (at least in the main body) about its limitations, only to have those limitations blithely ignored when the study is discussed outside the journal in which it was published.

By way of illustration, take the caveat in the Branas study that the researchers "did not account for the potential of reverse causation between gun possession and gun assault"; that's good science in that it tells the informed reader what the study's findings do not indicate. You might legitimately ask "if you didn't look at that, what was the point of this study in the first place?" but at least you know there are unresearched possibilities. But what do we get in the press release?

The research team concluded that, although successful defensive gun uses are possible and do occur each year, the chances of success are low. People should rethink their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures, write the authors. Suggestions to the contrary, especially for urban residents who may see gun possession as a defense against a dangerous environment should be discussed and thoughtfully reconsidered.

Such conclusions are utterly unwarranted given the researchers' failure to "account for the potential of reverse causation." That's another problem with the medical/public health field's shakiness concerning the scientific method, incidentally: there is a strong tendency to base conclusions only on the findings of studies on a particular topic, without taking into account the general body of scientific evidence. That's why study after study gets published examining the purported efficacy of homeopathy, "therapeutic touch" and various other forms of "complementary and alternative medicine" and concluded that "more research is necessary" even though, for any of them to work, a large chunk of what we understand about the laws of nature would have to be discarded.

And so it is with the Branas study: decades of criminological research indicates that both perpetrators and victims of assaultive shootings are disproportionately likely to be individuals involved on a regular and frequent basis in criminal activity. It should hardly come as a surprise that such persons, considering it highly likely that a competitor might try to shoot them, would carry firearms, so you'd think it should be a fairly obvious step to look into whether that possibility might explain your findings. Actually, this applies to just about every study that asserted conclusions about "keeping a firearm in one's home/about one's person is associated with an elevated risk of (someone in the household) being shot."

You see, the easiest thing in the world is to take a statistical study, crunch some of the numbers in a different way, pick out some wording you don't like, and conclude that it is bunk. I don't know if you thought up this stuff yourself, <...>

If it's so easy, why would you suggest I hadn't, except to get in a gratuitous denigrating remark?

But it has all the hallmarks of a lone internet loon attempting to discredit mainstream peer-reviewed research. Here are some common signs:
-Mumble something about "causation" and "correlation".
-Claim that the authors forgot to control for something.
-Bring up a past and irrelevant example of improper use of statistics.
The only biggie you seem to have missed is the use official-sounding logical phrases like "modus ponens" or "fallacy of composition".

Leaving aside more gratuitous denigrating remarks (how does one "mumble" while typing, anyway?), by a staggering coincidence, those are also the common signs of a valid critique.

<...> believe me, anyone with even a modest background working with data can very easily whip up a persuasive-sounding critique of a study, enough to seem convincing to a lay audience and send true believers into ecstatic convulsions.

Have you considered the possibility that such critiques may sound persuasive because they're correct? You don't need a fashion management degree to see the Emperor's naked.

At the end of the day, the peer review system is indeed flawed, but it is far superior to the "some crap I read on the internet" standard.

Certainly, but it would be a hell of a lot more convincing if the medical/public health research community ever got beyond retrospective studies. Because that's how scientific progress is made: you conduct retrospective studies (which are not very rigorous but are comparatively inexpensive) to develop hypotheses, and then you test those hypotheses using more rigorous (and more expensive) methods (such as prospective studies or, in medicine, controlled randomized trials). But in over three decades, the medical/public health research community never seems to have developed any hypotheses, much less put them to the test.

If there were really errors as severe as you and the pro-gun sites would have us believe (and not in just one paper, but in every gun paper!), then it would almost surely not have gotten past the referees.

What you've got is essentially an argument from incredulity--you refuse to believe that supposedly reputable researchers and medical journals would put out study after study that is essentially garbage--but to maintain that incredulity, you have to hand-wave away every example of studies that did get published and are garbage.

[Tejas]

66. Deal with it, truth doesn't always fall on your side of the wall.

Actually, doesn't seem to hardly ever fall on your side.

[eqfan592]

74. And how exactly are you any different?

Oh, that's right, you're not. You dismiss out of hand anything that does agree with your position. The difference is that we CAN and HAVE punched holes in the conclusions of the papers you regularly promote. You, on the other hand, are unable to do so.

You are so alike to the climate change deniers it is not even funny.

[CTyankee]

27. What is the "Liechtenstein debacle"?

I didn't know there was an "issue" involving Lichtenstein on DU...:shrug:

[rrneck]

28. It was epic!

WHAM! BLAM! FOOM!

I don't know if I can go on without it. *sniff*

[CTyankee]

31. Do you have a link?

I'm truly curious. I have no idea how Lichtenstein could possibly play into an issue here at DU...

[rrneck]

32. I don't think it was related to Roy.

I just couldn't resist the reference. Sorry.

I think it was about comparisons between countries.

[CTyankee]

35. Oh, that's OK. It'll be on my next Friday Afternoon Art Challenge...

[rrneck]

37. Cool! Itll be the only one I can figure out. nt

[CTyankee]

38. Actually, Lichtenstein is just TOO distinctive to fool folks...

some artists are just that way. We know them too well. Van Gogh and recently Caravaggio are good examples...

but DU folks are really, really savvy about art. I can't really stump them, but that ain't the point anyway. I just love to talk about art...I actually flew to Los Angeles to see a bust by Bernini...

[gejohnston]

48. What it was I added the place for a comparison of homicide rates with a couple of other countries

The point was that that more guns does not equal more murder. No, I was not trying to prove John Lott's more guns equals less crime. At any rate, Lichtenstein's murder rate varied from zero for most years and spikes to over 2 per 100K in 2005 and 2010. In all fairness, with that small population one murder jolts the per capita rate. Be that as it may, instead of addressing the over all point I was making, Tex decided to add that red herring to his collection of straw men. If he prefers not questioning his package deal fallacy thinking deeply about the issue at hand, that is his problem.

[DanTex]

51. In my defense, red herrings package straw men, questioning deeply thinking deal fallacy collections

[gejohnston]

54. correction: red herrings, package deal fallacies, straw men and other ways to avoid deep thinking.

[gejohnston]

55. I may be ADD but not fucking stupid. So, if you can learn not to use petty insults and bullshit you

may come sit at the grown up table.

[DanTex]

29. LOL, it's an argument between me gejohnston in a different thread.

It occurred in the context of a debate about interpretation of international crime/gun ownership statistics. It's not really worth reliving the entire thing, but here's the link:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x420173#421068

It might make for a kind of cool movie title though.

[CTyankee]

33. "Der Lichtenstein Debacle."

It has the sound of something to do with WW II or the Cold War. Espionage. Plastique placed on train tracks in the middle of the night by partisans, "drops" by agents in a park in Madrid, "Munich" style paybacks at elevators in Rome...

I just love those movies...

[DanTex]

34. There's nothing like old school intrigue

Casablanca has got to be on any list of all-time greats

[CTyankee]

39. Shot on the back lot of Warner Bros. studio in Burbank...LOL...

"We'll always have Paris."

Gotta love it...

[Euromutt]

77. Actually, "Das Liechtenstein-Debakel"

Debakel takes a neuter gender in German, thus the definite article "das" ("der" is for masculine, "die" for feminine, provided you're talking about nominative singular).

[CTyankee]

36. That was an interesting discussion...

Who was it who said "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics..."?

[gejohnston]

45. Mark Twain

[oneshooter]

47. Samuel Clements. n/t

[petronius]

52. C'mon! You've been here long enough to know that there's an 'issue'

involving absolutely everything on DU. And for the infinitesimal number of things for which there isn't, there will be soon enough... ;)

[CTyankee]

63. Well, I had a really hard time locating it on a map. And my only familiarity

with the name "Liechtenstein" comes from vaguely similar sounding "countries" in those old fashioned operettas that my parents loved to play on old vinyl 78s.

Poor Liechtenstein! What did it do to deserve to be the focus of controversy in the Gun Forum of DU (even tho it IS kinda funny)?

[rrneck]

6. Shrinking the police department

will sell more guns than anything.

Enacting incoherent laws to regulate interpersonal relationships will only increase the workload on the officers that remain. Thus driving up crime and selling more guns.

Corporate risk dispersal and profit enhancement through government cowardice. They're just management handing another shit sandwich to labor because they're too chicken to raise taxes on the rich to pay for an adaquate police force.

Better to try to disarm everybody and let them fight it out with fists and knives than have the powers that be feel threatened by armed workers.

[Logical]

8. There is no proof that more guns would cause a increase in crime in NJ or anywhere. n-t

[benEzra]

9. Maddow thinks (1) rifles are a big crime problem, and (2) the 1994 AWB banned stuff it didn't ban,

namely AR/AK type rifles and over-10-round magazines. I'd say either of those issues pretty much shoot down her credibility on the issue. She has been corrected over and over and over, yet she still clings to the idea that AR's/AK's weren't legal to manufacture and sell 1994-2004, or that importation and sale of 20 and 30 round magazines 1994-2004 was somehow illegal, when proof to the contrary is right at her fingertips.

As to Mr. Booker, he refers to the most popular civilian rifles in the United States as "weapons of mass destruction" and wants to turn the clock back 80 to 150 years on magazine capacities for the law-abiding. If he wants to be taken seriously by gun owners on this issue, as opposed as just another prohibitionist hack, I think he needs to seriously back off of that.

[Euromutt]

62. I don't know anyone who would dispute Newark's increased crime is due to fewer cops

But in pointing out that Newark's had to cut its police force and that we're still in an economic downturn, you've pinpointed two causes of increased crime; increased crime which New Jersey's comparatively stringent firearms laws have failed to prevent from occurring.

As a result, it's a reasonable question whether the stringency of the gun laws make a jot of difference to the violent crime rates.

Sure, international comparisons show that gun availability is associated with greater homicide <...>

Actually, they don't. Gun availability is associated with higher prevalence of firearms used in homicides, but not with overall homicide rates. For example, a higher percentage of Swiss homicides are committed using firearms than of Russian homicides, but the Russian homicide rate overall is almost 20 times as high as Switzerland's.

It is very telling that large city mayors are almost universally proponents of gun control.

Naturally; big cities are more likely to have high levels of crime, simply because that's where the highest concentration of victims/customers is. But the tendency of mayors to favor tighter gun control isn't because gun control is an effective means of crime control--it's not--but because gun control measures are one of the few things city governments are capable of effecting. They can't pass ordinances that are guaranteed to improve the local economy or raise tax revenue, but absent a state pre-emption law, they can restrict gun ownership. And when those (invariably) fail to work, the city governments can blame the rest of the state, or the next state over, or some other part of the country; wherever the gun laws are more lax.

[eqfan592]

75. Thanks for yet another great post.

I wonder if you'll get a well formulated response in return.

[Taitertots]

67. Why don't they just enforce the existing laws?

"but only one time have I seen a shooting in my city by someone who bought a gun legally"
Enforce the existing laws and we won't need to worry about creating egregious and draconian new ones.

[Tejas]

68. It's all about creating felons.

Come up with enough draconian laws (that hamper only the law-abiding) and sooner or later the Fascists are bound to finally accomplish their dream.

[Taitertots]

69. It is all about staying in office...

How fast do you think they would run him out of town if he said the crime problem was due to government failures? Is has to be a new boogie man, or the bucks stops with them.

[AtheistCrusader]

81. If she would stick to facts, Maddow would be as solid on this issue as any other.

On the other hand, nobody's perfect.

[rl6214]

82. Ah, a new drive-by spam poster