Need your opinion on this

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Hello everyone,

Sorry I haven't been on for a bit, but I got into the office early today to get ahead and I found something interesting to share with you all. I was reading some statistics about gun control, and I found that "The Brady Bill was implemented in February of 1994. In 1997, the number of violent crimes committed with firearms had fallen 25% since 1994, while the overall number of violent crimes had declined 14%." "Gun Control Facts." By James D. Agresti. Just Facts, June 10, 1999. Revised 6/27/08. http://justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

As a liberal, I'm still trying to understand the whole gun ownership thing, and I'm actually starting to think that maybe guns aren't the problem after all...maybe just the ammunition.Though, I would like to read some gun owners input on this statistic.

Thanks! :celebrate

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I think we can definitely correlate crime levels to one thing, and I think we've reached consensus on it.

Walter Lantz's "Woody Woodpecker."

I would note that as the 1980s wore on, Woody Woodpecker was being shown less and less on television. America, in its Chilly Willy-less-ness, was going into the crapper. The crack epidemic. AIDS. And so on.

Eventually the amount of Woody Woodpecker on in the afternoons dropped to zero. I was crushed. I know that I was entertaining ugly thoughts in my head.

So why did crime start to drop in the 1990s?

The Internet.

The Internet made Woody Woodpecker widely available, at first on FTP sites, then P2P services, and today, via BitTorrent and so forth. As Woody Woodpecker returned to public consciousness, crime plummeted.

That's all it is. Woody Woodpecker, bro.

GUESS WHO?

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All hail the wood pecker.

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but i thought the emergence of barney (or whatever the name was of that purple dinosaur) was what made the crime go down? i love you, you love me.

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McX wrote:

but i thought the emergence of barney (or whatever the name was of that purple dinosaur) was what made the crime go down? i love you, you love me.

Click to expand...

'Purple dinosaur' head of the House Financial Services committee? Frankly, my dear, I don't give a a good Damn for the Obamanation wimp unions.

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It wasn't the Brady Law. It was the fact that a number of states had passed "shall issue" laws and the results were starting to show up in the stats. Brady didn't do anything to lower violent crime rates. The primary thrust of Brady was outlawing semi-automatic rifles erroneously referred to as "assault rifles" (which they were not). These types of firearms were rarely used in crimes so their control did next to nothing to lower rates.

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He was gone for a few days, did some burning of the midnight oil on Brady sites, and came back here breathlessly with a single statistic to prove his case.

Come on, guys. Give him a pat on the back.

cw, nice job of illustrating the folly of reliance on a single statistic. His logic also suffers from the error of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, an error relied on heavily by those who try to make emotional arguments seem rational.

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Welcome back Mr. Berkowitz.

Well, if you choose to believe the reduction in crime is due to gun control, why does this reduction also coincide with over 30 states adopting concealed carry provisions at the same time?

Which is it?

How do you link your causation? We can both argue that our perspective is the single thing that caused the reduction. As crisisweasel also points out, it could be caused by re-emergence of Woody Woodpecker.

Your choice to believe that gun control caused the resulting drop is exactly that: a choice.

But, if you are correct, maybe you would kindly point out some individuals who's lives were saved by a particualr gun control law. After all, if lives are saved by gun control laws, you should easily be able to name some of them, correct?

In a matter of minutes I can Google "victim shoots robber" or "victim shoots would be rapist" and I can provide you with thousands of individually named, actual people who saved their own life with a firearm. Try it yourself.

These are actual real people who I can provide concrete evidence of having their life saved by the use of a firearm.

This is called "real evidence".

If your theory that gun control saves lives.....

Maybe you could provide some "real evidence" as easily as I can.

Go ahead. Google "victim saved by gun control law" or anything similar and see what you get. Maybe you could provide just one name to counterpoint my thousands. Try it. See what results you get in comparison to "victim shoots robber".

Well? Any luck? Or, as it behooves theories about gun control working, will you revert back to the world of causation and trying to tie it to results using wishy-washy and unproven choices?

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Awww, see now, y'all went and treated this with the seriousness it does not deserve.

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If someone comes here with a stat, let's rationally refute it.

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McX wrote:

but i thought the emergence of barney (or whatever the name was of that purple dinosaur) was what made the crime go down? i love you, you love me.

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No, that caused suicides to go up.

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This thread is the win.

Thanks for your post A_Berkowitz.

Try looking at www.gunfacts.info and you will find research on gun control vs. violence that has a worldwide data set. It also adjusts individual states/countries numbers for various other influences outside of the gun control issue that affect crime.

http://www.gunfacts.info

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A_Berkowitz wrote:

Hello everyone,

Sorry I haven't been on for a bit, but I got into the office early today to get ahead and I found something interesting to share with you all. I was reading some statistics about gun control, and I found that "The Brady Bill was implemented in February of 1994. In 1997, the number of violent crimes committed with firearms had fallen 25% since 1994, while the overall number of violent crimes had declined 14%." "Gun Control Facts." By James D. Agresti. Just Facts, June 10, 1999. Revised 6/27/08. http://justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

As a liberal, I'm still trying to understand the whole gun ownership thing, and I'm actually starting to think that maybe guns aren't the problem after all...maybe just the ammunition.Though, I would like to read some gun owners input on this statistic.

Thanks! :celebrate

Click to expand...

An interesting, humorous, and sad, peek into the desperation felt by the anti gun factions out there.

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i kinda wonder if the OP actually read the page he so kindly linked for us?

http://justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

* In the United States during 1997, there were approximately 7,927,000 violent crimes. Of these, 691,000 were committed with firearms. (12)

* Americans use firearms to defend themselves from criminals at least 764,000 times a year. This figure is the lowest among a group of 9 nationwide surveys done by organizations including Gallup and the Los Angeles Times. (16b)

* In 1982, a survey of imprisoned criminals found that 34% of them had been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim." (16c)
* Washington D.C. enacted a virtual ban on handguns in 1976. Between 1976 and 1991, Washington D.C.'s homicide rate rose 200%, while the U.S. rate rose 12%. (1)

* When the law went into effect, the Dade County Police began a program to record all arrest and non arrest incidents involving concealed carry licensees. Between September of 1987 and August of 1992, Dade County recorded 4 crimes committed by licensees with firearms. None of these crimes resulted in an injury. The record keeping program was abandoned in 1992 because there were not enough incidents to justify tracking them. (13)(15)

* 221,443 concealed carry licenses were issued in Florida between October of 1987 and April of 1994. During that time, Florida recorded 18 crimes committed by licensees with firearms. (15)

* As of 1998, nationwide, there has been 1 recorded incident in which a permit holder shot someone following a traffic accident. The permit holder was not charged, as the grand jury ruled the shooting was in self defense. (7)

* As of 1998, no permit holder has ever shot a police officer. There have been several cases in which a permit holder has protected an officer's life. (7)

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I smell an agent provocateur in A_Berkowitz postings - read them, there are three OP threads with similar bait - he has stated he is from NY - wonder how that would under investigation? hmmmm

Yata hey

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Grapeshot wrote:

I smell an agent provocateur in A_Berkowitz postings - read them, there are three OP threads with similar bait - he has stated he is from NY - wonder how that would under investigation? hmmmm

Yata hey

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true, but i still like throwing facts at the "feely" people.

besides, this is the first of his threads i got into before the lock.

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Broondog wrote:

Grapeshot wrote:

I smell an agent provocateur in A_Berkowitz postings - read them, there are three OP threads with similar bait - he has stated he is from NY - wonder how that would under investigation? hmmmm

Yata hey

Click to expand...

true, but i still like throwing facts at the "feely" people.

besides, this is the first of his threads i got into before the lock.

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It is good practice isn't it - guess we should thank him for that.

Yata hey

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Grapeshot wrote:

Broondog wrote:

besides, this is the first of his threads i got into before the lock.

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It is good practice isn't it - guess we should thank him for that. Yata hey

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So, I wonder how the lock gets thrown in a particular instance, like this one? Might it be locked on some principle, or are threads locked after sufficient complaints or from some special users? Similarly, why are some users banned, some sooner, some later, but others not?

As we know and are frequently reminded, this is John and Mike's site run utterly at their discretion.

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A_Berkowitz wrote:

As a liberal, I'm still trying to understand the whole gun ownership thing, and I'm actually starting to think that maybe guns aren't the problem after all...maybe just the ammunition.Though, I would like to read some gun owners input on this statistic.

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You are correct. Guns are not the problem at all. The root cause of crime isan environment where scum floats to the top and violently attacks others. This scum is being raised to be criminals instead of responsible contributors to society. What exacerbates the problem is legislators enacting feel good legislation which infringes on honest reasonable responsible adults but does nothing to curb crime by criminals.


If you were truly interested in the truth you would have presenteda statistic where the number of violent crimes committed with firearms had increased 25% from 2004 to 2007 and where violent crimes in general increased over 16% in the same time period.

You see my liberal friend, there is no such statistic. The world did not become more dangerous when the ill conceived "assault weapon" ban expired. We are not all in danger from the "shoulder thing that goes up"....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rGpykAX1fo

We are in danger from the uneducated and misinformed ignorance which prevails in the liberal Democratic leadership. Those people do not even know what it is that they are trying to ban.

Statistics can be manipulated and used to influence those who are weak of mind. Please come back when you have some better and relevant statistics which can not be so easily dismissed as coincidental and are a result of other crime prevention actions taking place.:?