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Tom Arnold Pens Passionate Essay Arguing for Gun Control After Losing Nephew

since9

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Article: Tom Arnold Pens Passionate Essay Arguing for Gun Control After Losing Nephew to Suicide

Gee, Tom Arnold, I'm really sorry your nephew committed suicide.

HOWEVER, that does NOT give you or anyone else the right to take away MY right to protect life, limb, and property against bad guys armed with everything from fists to knives, clubs, and guns.

Furthermore, a very detailed, in-depth Harvard study firmly concluded that absent firearms, the suicide rate DOES NOT CHANGE, specifically stating that those who wish to take their own lives will find a way, using whatever means is available.

Thus, Tom Arnold, had there not been a firearm, it's highly likely that your nephew would still have committed suicide. That's just reality, and you're going to have to accept it instead of depriving myself and all other Americans of our Constitutional RIGHT to keep and bear arms.
 

since9

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so since9, ya'll got a cite for your claim about the harvard suicide study?

Citation and Reference from The Harvard Study.

Citation

"Conclusion: This Article has reviewed a significant amount of evidence from a wide variety of international sources. Each individual portion of evidence is subject to cavilat the very least the general objection that the persuasiveness of social scientific evidence cannot remotely approach the persuasiveness of conclusions in the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the burden of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially since they argue public policy ought to be based on that mantra. To bear that burden would at the very least require showing that a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that have imposed stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared across the world.

"Over a decade ago, Professor Brandon Centerwall of the University of Washington undertook an extensive, statistically sophisticated study comparing areas in the United States and Canada to determine whether Canada’s more restrictive policies had better contained criminal violence. When he published his results it was with the admonition: 'If you are surprised by [our] finding, so [are we]. [We] did not begin this research with any intent to “exonerate” handguns, but there it is—a negative finding, to be sure, but a negative finding is nevertheless a positive contribution. It directs us where not to aim public health resources.' "

Reference

Kates, D.B and Mauser, G. "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?" A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, pp 693-694. Retrieved from http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

* Don B. Kates (LL.B., Yale, 1966) is an American criminologist and constitutional
lawyer associated with the Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco. He may be con‐
tacted at dbkates@earthlink.net; 360‐666‐2688; 22608 N.E. 269th Ave., Battle Ground,
WA 98604.
** Gary Mauser (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 1970) is a Canadian crimi‐
nologist and university professor at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC Canada.
He may be contacted at www.garymauser.net, mauser@sfu.ca, and 604‐291‐3652.
We gratefully acknowledge the generous contributions of Professor Thomas B. Cole
(University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Social Medicine and Epidemiology);
Chief Superintendent Colin Greenwood (West Yorkshire Constabulary, ret.); C.B.
Kates; Abigail Kohn (University of Sydney, Law); David B. Kopel (Independence
Institute); Professor Timothy D. Lytton (Albany Law School); Professor William
Alex Pridemore (University of Oklahoma, Sociology); Professor Randolph Roth
(Ohio State University, History); Professor Thomas Velk (McGill University, Eco‐
nomics and Chairman of the North American Studies Program); Professor Robert
Weisberg (Stanford Law School); and John Whitley (University of Adelaide, Eco‐
nomics). Any merits of this paper reflect their advice and contributions; errors
are entirely ours.
 
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solus

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thank you...

first article about you bs study...

https://www.thetrace.org/2015/10/harvard-study-false-claims-armed-with-reason/

quote
For starters, the phrase “Harvard study” is a misnomer, as the paper was not written by researchers at all affiliated with Harvard. Kates is a prominent,
NRA-backed Second Amendment activist, while Mauser is a well-known Canadian gun advocate. Their paper appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a journal that, unlike most academic publications, does not have peer review.
What’s more, the report by Kates and Mauser does not meet even the loosest criteria of an academic study, which requires either new analysis of an old dataset or boilerplate analysis of a new dataset. Kates and Mauser’s paper offers neither of these, instead relying on highly subjective eyeball comparisons of suspect data, without constructing a single statistical model.unquote.

and yet another article on the bogus study
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/9/5/1236614/-Shoddy-gun-paper-excites-right-wing

ipse
 

davidmcbeth

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thank you...

first article about you bs study...

https://www.thetrace.org/2015/10/harvard-study-false-claims-armed-with-reason/

quote
For starters, the phrase “Harvard study” is a misnomer, as the paper was not written by researchers at all affiliated with Harvard. Kates is a prominent,
NRA-backed Second Amendment activist, while Mauser is a well-known Canadian gun advocate. Their paper appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a journal that, unlike most academic publications, does not have peer review.
What’s more, the report by Kates and Mauser does not meet even the loosest criteria of an academic study, which requires either new analysis of an old dataset or boilerplate analysis of a new dataset. Kates and Mauser’s paper offers neither of these, instead relying on highly subjective eyeball comparisons of suspect data, without constructing a single statistical model.unquote.

and yet another article on the bogus study
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/9/5/1236614/-Shoddy-gun-paper-excites-right-wing

ipse

If you want to state a study, its always best to see all the raw data collected and methodology used that resulted in the conclusions of the study. Unfortunately, most won't give out this information.

So, I generally do not cite any studies at all concerning my RKBA. I really don't need to for one, and you look like an idiot for two for citing a bad study.

Its hard to get to the truth of this type of examination. It really would take a study wherein suicidal people had a gun that they would use, remove it and provide other means of suicide (poison etc) and observe if they take another way out. If they do, then guns would be irrelevant as they killed themselves with the gun removed. I know of no such study.
 
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since9

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thank you...

You're welcome.


First, your source, "thetrace.org" is quite corrupt, a known anti-2A website: "The Trace is an American non-profit journalism outlet devoted to gun-related news in the United States. It was established in 2015 with seed money from the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, which was founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg,[2] and went live on June 19 of that year.[3] The site's editorial director is James Burnett.

Second, they even admit to their own bias on their About page: "We bring an admitted bias to our beat: We believe that this country’s rates of firearm-related deaths and injuries — an average of 91 lives lost per day, and more than 200 people suffering nonfatal bullet wounds — are far too high," an emotional appeal preface to their subsequent call for further gun controls from all sides.

This, their article trashing the Harvard study isn't journalism at all. Claims like it "was not written by researchers" are patently false. Anyone with an advanced degree is a "researcher," and one of the authors has his PhD. Of course he's a researcher. You do not obtain a PhD without having learning long before to conduct proper research. In fact, the process of obtaining a PhD requires PhD-level research, and neither one's PhD advisers nor the review board will recommend or confer a PhD until the research is rock-solid. With two post-graduate degrees under my belt, I amassed some 1,822 papers involved in my own research, including 18 full-fledged research papers for my Master of Science and another 48 full-fledged research papers for my earlier Masters in Business Administration. These include the additional classes I took for concentrations in each program. I graduated at the top of my class in both programs, with all 66 papers having been graded by instructors possessing PhD's. On top of that, I was the Assistant Chief of Academics for a leading U.S. Air Force school at Nellis AFB, where I developed courseware and helped the school obtain full academic accreditation.

So, whether you believe it or not, I've had a *little* bit of experience in determining the difference between excellent and shoddy research, and the Harvard paper is indeed very good research, whereas thetrace.org's article is a pathetic, libtard attempt to discredit it.

Third, thetrace.org just flat-out LIED when it claimed, "the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a journal that, unlike most academic publications, does not have peer review." Horse hockey: "Students at Harvard Law School produce scholarly journals devoted to specific substantive areas of the law and to various approaches to examining legal developments. These peer reviewed publications offer invaluable practical experience in legal writing, editing, and scholarship."

If you knew anything at all about research, solus, you would have been able to find this reference in about the same ten seconds or so it took myself, and if you had any integrity, you not be endorsing thetrace.org's false claims.

Fourth, thetrace.org article claims, the Harvard study "does not meet even the loosest criteria of an academic study." Ok, by now, thetrace.org no longer has any academic credibility whatsoever. Reading through their pathetic attempt to discredit the Harvard study shows thetrace.org's "reporters" would have failed Base News Reporting 101, much less be qualified to comment on scholarly research. They make yet another (of many more) false claims by saying, it' does not possess "either new analysis of an old dataset," when at the bottom of EVERY PAGE of the Harvard study you wind a total of 150 references to

Studies of prior studies more certainly IS "new analysis" and fully comprises "scholarly research" which, in the context of this particular study, most certainly has been peer-reviewed.

Yes, the piece (of crap) on thetrace.org is THAT bad.

With respect to your dailykos citation, I believe Shamash's opinion, offered on Sep 05 at 06:47:05 PM, is spot on:
Out of curiousity
a) Will you be turning your attention to shoddy gun papers that excite the left wing? Or are gun papers that excite the left wing automatically non-shoddy and thus need no scrutiny?

b) Do you have any opinion on the recent CDC firearm paper? Since it is making the right wing excited, can we assume it is shoddy by default, or will we have to wait for a badly written casual dismissal of it by someone completely unacquainted with statistics?

Now that I have finished with the biting sarcasm, I could write an entire diary about the flaws of your analysis. But let's just hit a few high points:

1) Number of firearms per capita is unrelated to firearm availability. If there are 100 people and one of them has $100 and the rest have none, that is $1 per person on average, but says nothing about the likelihood that any one of those 100 people has one or more dollars. Using firearms per 100 people to "debunk" one of the opening statements of the paper is flawed. You might still be right, but you aren't showing it with the argument you presented.

2) The paper makes a statement about murder rates, at which point you a) blithely discount one of the world's largest economies as a nation worth measuring, and then b) use the fact that you discounted it to call the statement false.

It's okay to have a strong opinion on gun control, one way or the other. But torturing numbers in an obviously partisan fashion is probably not the most convincing way to "debunk" a paper you think is torturing the numbers in an obviously partisan fashion. Doing the same thing would be, as a2nite noted, selling odious BS to the stupid.

solus, I tired of your pedantic nonsense and grow increasingly suspicious as to your true affiliations. The "attack the edge" pattern I've observed her suggests you're not a 2A supporter at all, except in a limited fashion, but certainly contrary to the principles abundantly espoused by our Founding Fathers.

Bottom Line: When you hold up two flagrant LIARS as sources protecting your point of view, you're either ignorant or you're knowingly complicit in the LYING.

Which is it, solus?
 
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since9

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Its hard to get to the truth of this type of examination. It really would take a study wherein suicidal people had a gun that they would use, remove it and provide other means of suicide (poison etc) and observe if they take another way out. If they do, then guns would be irrelevant as they killed themselves with the gun removed. I know of no such study.

Not at all, david. All one needs to do is take the set of all suicides, both attempted and successful, within a homogeneous population, and analyze the means by frequency by successes and failures of mode. Repeat the study in other homogeneous populations in other countries and then conduct comparative statistical analysis to determine the relevance, nature, and strength of the differences.

That is precisely what the Harvard study accomplished.
 

davidmcbeth

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Not at all, david. All one needs to do is take the set of all suicides, both attempted and successful, within a homogeneous population, and analyze the means by frequency by successes and failures of mode. Repeat the study in other homogeneous populations in other countries and then conduct comparative statistical analysis to determine the relevance, nature, and strength of the differences.

That is precisely what the Harvard study accomplished.

You cannot do it this way because folks in other countries have totally different viewpoints on suicide.
 
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since9

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You cannot do it this way because folks in other countries have totally different viewpoints on suicide.

Their viewpoints are not at all "totally different." Somewhat different, yes. Perhaps even significantly different in some countries. But in most countries, particularly the westernized countries mentioned in the study, the differences are minor, at best.
 

solus

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You're welcome.

First, your source, "thetrace.org" is quite corrupt, snipp...

solus, I tired of your pedantic nonsense and grow increasingly suspicious as to your true affiliations. The "attack the edge" pattern I've observed her suggests you're not a 2A supporter at all, except in a limited fashion, but certainly contrary to the principles abundantly espoused by our Founding Fathers.

Bottom Line: When you hold up two flagrant LIARS as sources protecting your point of view, you're either ignorant or you're knowingly complicit in the LYING.

Which is it, solus?

well, please i picked a source, there were at least six others stating the same headlines...the study you cited was pure and simply BS!

while you grow tiresome of my 'pedantic' (of or like a pedant.) where i hope you meant "Pedagogy" (the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.) is apparently warranted since you persist in posting misinformation, w/o a cite, so any member can challenge the erroneous subject matter you post and insist is gospel!

your commentary regarding complacency to ignorance is a burden you and you alone have brought to the table through your consistent garbage postings.

case in point, since9 quote: Their viewpoints are not at all "totally different." Somewhat different, yes. Perhaps even significantly different in some countries. But in most countries, particularly the westernized countries mentioned in the study, the differences are minor, at best. unquote. pure unadulterated ignorance on your part!

btw, i guess i missed the founding father's notes in their papers regarding 'you know Ben, we're going to do this 2nd amendment as is as we know firearms do not have any bearing whatsoever on reducing suicide rates' got a cite or is this more misrepresentative nonsense from since9?

ipse
 
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Citizen

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SNIP Thus, Tom Arnold, had there not been a firearm, it's highly likely that your nephew would still have committed suicide. That's just reality, and you're going to have to accept it instead of depriving myself and all other Americans of our Constitutional RIGHT to keep and bear arms.

It occurs to me that every suicide done without a gun tends to prove the point.
 

color of law

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Tom Arnold is of the Hollywood mindset that guns are only for hunting.

He just doesn't seem to understand that people determined to kill themselves will accomplish it by any means possible.

Over analogizing the chosen poison pill is simply fodder.

But, that's what academics do.
 

since9

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Rule #19...

"(19) COLORED TEXT AND OVERSIZED FONTS: The forum software allows you to change the colors and sizes of fonts. Sometimes this can make it easy to emphasize a point or to express sarcasm. However, if abused it can also make it very difficult to read posts. We reserve the right to deem a given post or signature line with colored or resized text to be considered abusive but the general rule is that such changes are fine for acceptable purposes such as purple for sarcasm or to highlight a given point."

Really?

Peer review's many failures have eliminated it as sine qua non of quality scholarship, epitomized by The Sokal Affair. At the very best, it enforces incestuousness (authoritarianism and credentialism) rather than open enquiry.

People have been criticizing the process of scholarly peer review for decades.

The burgeoning popularity of open access pre-print servers is the result. ETA: Indeed, the whole field of Open Access has grown from the recognized widespread failures of peer review.

So sayeth the Winnower. I do agree with some of the premises, particularly the acceleration of science. However, early release of unverified science can be costly in a number of ways. In summary, it's a mixed bag.

My favorites file titled Library started with arXiv and SSRN and is now two dozen sites pandering to my special interests.

Ok. Meanwhile, scholarly peer review is by no means dead. In fact, it remains the principle means by which research papers are vetted. Unlike the old days, however, these days the process involves a number of improvements which eliminate many of the problems you mentioned.

ETA: Here's the latest arXiv article I've read. It's good stuff, but it's hardly a scholarly article, much less a research paper like the Harvard study.
 
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since9

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Over analogizing the chosen poison pill is simply fodder.

But, that's what academics do.

Actually, true academics separate the chaff from the wheat, finding out what's what and what's not, and most importantly why.

Idealists like most people in Hollywood, including Ton Arnold, are the ones who attempt to force reality into their way of thinking, regardless of the consequences on the lives of other people.
 

Grapeshot

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"(19) COLORED TEXT AND OVERSIZED FONTS: The forum software allows you to change the colors and sizes of fonts. Sometimes this can make it easy to emphasize a point or to express sarcasm. However, if abused it can also make it very difficult to read posts. We reserve the right to deem a given post or signature line with colored or resized text to be considered abusive but the general rule is that such changes are fine for acceptable purposes such as purple for sarcasm or to highlight a given point."

Really?
--snipped--
Yep - really.

The effect of using colored and oversized fonts is to make one person's posting seem more important than the rest.

We have decided that utilizing a bold font is much more acceptable and are moderating accordingly.
 
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Firearms Iinstuctor

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Typical leftist, liberal logic and thinking instead of placing the blame on the person doing the act, they Place the blame on the object because they can not face up to the truth.
 
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