I am sure that if you have the inclination you have the wherewithal to find out what gun law legislation has been passed in the last 12-15 months in the USA.
Why is the CDC prevented from researching gun violence using government appropriated funds? Surely allowing the CDC to undertake that research using government appropriated funds would provide that analysis that was lacking at the time of the writing of the 2A?
The gun culture is neither smart nor dumb. Just like guns, cultures do not exhibit anthropomorphistic traits.
Quit changing the subject until you have responded to previous questions. That’s no way to carry on a rational discussion.
Absolutely hilarious.
Part of the reason why America is lagging behind in education, is that many Americans have an anti-science agenda, because actually examining these subjects objectively would work against their political interests.
Apparently I need to repeat the question.
What legislative changes have been proposed that would not of necessity “violate the Constitution”?
Authorizing funding for gun related studies by the CDC is not a Legislative change related to gun control.
When I say “gun culture” I’m specifically referring to the people who don’t want to do any scientific analysis about whether gun ownership is having a detrimental effect on our society. It’s simply holding up gun ownership as some sort of religious virtue that should go unquestioned.
When politics ignores a careful analysis of the facts and doesn’t adjust to new knowledge or changes of circumstance, then that is dumb, imo.
You can continue to repeat the question as oft as you like. You won’t need a licence.
So, in other words, you have no answer because you made up the assertion that I questioned. Why didn’t you just say so.
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I have no problem with researching the facts. But correlations (which is what your probability statistics are) are not causations. Basing public policy on statistical studies can and often does lead to bad public policy. And then, even if the study was valid and showed what you suggest that it would, it still would not circumvent the Constitutional issue. What it would do would be to establish a basis to discuss changing the Constitution to accommodate legislation that would address the findings, it would not be a basis to enact legislation that would violate the Constitution. Do you not agree?
So you’re okay with researching the facts, but you are just against actually using analysis of that research to make policy decisions?
To be against the use of statistics is to be essentially anti-science. The study of medicine, physics, economics, investing, artificial intelligence and many more all rely on statistical modeling. The fact that statistics can be used to reach the wrong conclusion, does not mean that statistics should not be used to reach conclusions.
The constitution can be amended and it should be if that’s what’s best for society moving forward.
Did you miss my first sentence ? I am all for finding facts, but finding correlations is not the kind of facts that should be used to form public policy. As we discussed earlier, statistics that show that you are more likely to be shot if there is a gun in your house, do not in any way show what the cause of the shootings are. That is why I gave you the string of other correlations related to death and injuries … to demonstrate how absurd it can get when you approach a study that way. Statistics are nothing more than a correlation between two things. Nobody is claiming that guns are not associated with and, therefore, correlateable with shootings, but the statistics alone say nothing about the cause of the shooting or whether the incident would not have resulted in death or injury had the gun not been present. And on the other hand, there are almost no statistics to show how often the presence of a gun prevented injury or death unless the defender actually shot their attacker. Interviews with criminals have revealed that just the presence of a gun is enough to make them turn tail without committing the crime. So if the statistics show that guns do more harm than good, they are not covering all of the harm that was not done because of a gun.
“Statistics are nothing more than a correlation between two things.” <— You understand that the study of say…gravity is statistical? You’re attempting to do a lot of hand waving here. By looking at statistics and the correlation between things we can launch rockets into space and predict the orbit of distant planets.
Simply pointing out that statistics can be used in a lazy way or that statistical analysis can sometimes lead us to wrong conclusions, does not mean that statistics is not a powerful tool used by scientists every day to make discoveries and to make advancements in their fields.
To address this part of your post in particular…:
[quote=“Samm, post:1735, topic:166036, full:true”]And on the other hand, there are almost no statistics to show how often the presence of a gun prevented injury or death unless the defender actually shot their attacker. Interviews with criminals have revealed that just the presence of a gun is enough to make them turn tail without committing the crime. So if the statistics show that guns do more harm than good, they are not covering all of the harm that was not done because of a gun.
[/quote]
Scientific studies have to deal with blind spots all the time. There is also a wide range of problems in which finding the best solution would require an infinite amount of time. I’m a programmer, and I’ve been taking online classes and reading books on building algorithms and artificial intelligence… and from my studies, I know that issues like this are something that computer scientists have to deal with all the time.
Generally, how this is addressed is by building statistical models that will give you the best answer you can hope to obtain in a reasonable amount of time. For instance, you might build a model that will result in you predicting the correct answer 95% of the time in 3 hours… after that, you can keep running the simulation for years without having any major increase in confidence.
To create good prediction models, you don’t need to account for every possible factor… you just need to account for enough factors to make accurate predictions the majority of the time. Algorithmic stock trading can’t account for every single thing that can influence stock prices for example, but by accounting for enough strong factors, you can create a good model that will make you more profitable than the average person.
So simply because we can’t account for every single thing that may influence gun deaths, that doesn’t mean that we can’t take the best available evidence we have and create statistical models that can predict how the ownership of guns increases the rate of death to some degree of certainty.
One wonders why there wouldn’t be government money appropriated for the CDC to thoroughly research and investigate the root causes of gun violence in the USA? To me there doesn’t seem like there could be any rationale for opposing that position.
Or you know people could just leave me alone.
I own firearms for self defense. Nothing more, nothing less. I have a right to defend my life and my property.
If you have an issue with it, that’s on you.
If you want me to turn them in than I expect to be given private security on your dime.
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Sure. Go ahead.
I have a hypothesis and I would like to see the results.
I bet reforming our retarded drug laws would actually lessen gun violence since many of the perpetrators and victims of firearm related violence in this country are involved in the trade.
I’m willing to bet money that if we legalized marijuana and decriminalized all other narcotics we would see a dramatic decrease in gun violence.
I bet it would do more than the feel good initiatives the anti gun lobby has been pushing for the better part of a century.
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To me gun control is both classist and racist. The poor and racial minorities are disproportionately impacted by gun control legislation; they lose the ability to defend theirselves. Not only that but almost every piece of gun control legislation that was ever passed in this country were targeted at black men specifically. Because the state fears a black man with a gun.
Elitists living in their gated communities with half the police force sitting outside the entrance don’t have to worry about it as much as the working proletariat and blacks/Latinos do.
If the CDC was allowed to use government appropriated funding to do the research into gun violence then answers to the position you stated would hopefully be included.
What is clear that unless maintaining the status quo is not the answer.
