What is it With You Guys?

[rkbabang]

 

There is no causal inference being made. Rkbabang said that black markets lead to violent crime, which suggests that less restrictive gun laws should lead to less violent crime.  My point is that ALL the statistics I am aware of suggest the opposite correlation, so I'm really unclear where he's coming from. 

 

 

What statistics are you aware of?  Violent crime was reduced in every state that liberalized its gun licensing laws in the United States over the last 25 years.  The safest state VT, you don't even need a license to carry a concealed handgun.

 

There are studies which claim that handguns are used defensively by civilians many multiples of the times they are used criminally.    The statistics do show that suicide by gun goes up with availability of handguns, but not total suicide, so people are using the best and quickest method which they have available to them.  Yes, it would be hard to commit a mass murder without a gun, but it would also be hard to commit a mass murder in a heavily armed society.  Where guns are outlawed however it is pretty easy.  You may remember a group of guys some years back killing 3000 people with a few boxcutters, by taking control of aircraft where everyone was banned by law from bringing their weapons.  That is why about a month later I started selling bumper stickers which said "Where guns are outlawed, terrorists need only boxcutters".  I don't run the website anymore but you can see it on the wayback machine:  RKBAbang.com.  And now you know where my username came from.  RKBAbang stands for "RKBA!", which is the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and bang(!).

[COYS]

I've linked an oped piece written by David Brooks back in July after the Colorado movie theater shooting.  His points are, in my view, constructive and deal with identifying the behavioral patterns of people who have committed such crimes in the past.  The idea would be to educate people about these patterns to identify and treat  at risk individuals well before they act.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/opinion/brooks-more-treatment-programs.html

[txlaw]

Wow, just saw the news.  This is terrible.

 

Just makes you wonder what's wrong with the world . . .

 

I think it's what's wrong with human psychology. If you're already disturbed, seeing the shooting in Oregon gives social proof for going out and doing something similar. Just like airplane crashes increase after a first well-publicized one.

 

Let's hope you're wrong, but unfortunately you may not be.

[Uccmal]

I generally think the NRA stance is nuts but they are not the problem in this case.

 

Unlike gang, or domestic violence, these cases are Black Swan events, in their truest definition that Taleb intended.  You cannot predict them.  They are random, happen worldwide, and cannot be prevented.  You would need full airport style security to enter any public place in the world.

 

To our Canadians on this board, dont be too smug.  Just this summer in Toronto was a multiple shooting at a barbeque;  recall Marc Lepine in Montreal killing 14 women at the college; or Robert Pickton killing dozens of prostitutes over years, or Olsen, murdering dozens of boys, or our esteemed Colonel at the Trenton military facility killing at least two women, raping more, and stealing panties. 

 

My bet is that a population adjusted analysis since 1960 would show that these events are equally distributed across the world.

 

Now to drug legalization.  Production should be decriminalized, possession decriminalized, and the money put into treatment.  This would solve violence problems across the world.  Imagine Billions of dollars pouring into treatment rather than policing, and imprisoning.

[ubuy2wron]

 

 

There is no causal inference being made. Rkbabang said that black markets lead to violent crime, which suggests that less restrictive gun laws should lead to less violent crime.  My point is that ALL the statistics I am aware of suggest the opposite correlation, so I'm really unclear where he's coming from. 

 

 

What statistics are you aware of?  Violent crime was reduced in every state that liberalized its gun licensing laws in the United States over the last 25 years.  The safest state VT, you don't even need a license to carry a concealed handgun.

 

There are studies which claim that handguns are used defensively by civilians many multiples of the times they are used criminally.    The statistics do show that suicide by gun goes up with availability of handguns, but not total suicide, so people are using the best and quickest method which they have available to them.  Yes, it would be hard to commit a mass murder without a gun, but it would also be hard to commit a mass murder in a heavily armed society.  Where guns are outlawed however it is pretty easy.  You may remember a group of guys some years back killing 3000 people with a few boxcutters, by taking control of aircraft where everyone was banned by law from bringing their weapons.  That is why about a month later I started selling bumper stickers which said "Where guns are outlawed, terrorists need only boxcutters".  I don't run the website anymore but you can see it on the wayback machine:  RKBAbang.com.  And now you know where my username came from.  RKBAbang stands for "RKBA!", which is the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and bang(!).

 

Violent crime was reduced in every state that liberalized its gun licensing laws in the United States over the last 25 years.  The safest state VT, you don't even need a license to carry a concealed handgun.

 

Violent crime was reduced in the states that did not change their gun laws as well, but you already knew that. Ya quit the NRA cuz they were not vigilant  enuff in protecting your "right to bear arms" We have dozens of dead school children because of the gun lobbies insistance on fighting any attempts at restricting access to firearms. How may dead children does it take to defend your so called rights and freedoms .What makes America strong is not that they have the right to bear arms but that it is a democracy, through a democracy stupid laws can be changed like only allowing men to vote and allowing slavery and allowing any idiot to get their hands on a gun.

[doc75]

 

There is no causal inference being made. Rkbabang said that black markets lead to violent crime, which suggests that less restrictive gun laws should lead to less violent crime.  My point is that ALL the statistics I am aware of suggest the opposite correlation, so I'm really unclear where he's coming from. 

 

 

What statistics are you aware of?  Violent crime was reduced in every state that liberalized its gun licensing laws in the United States over the last 25 years.  The safest state VT, you don't even need a license to carry a concealed handgun.

 

There are studies which claim that handguns are used defensively by civilians many multiples of the times they are used criminally.    The statistics do show that suicide by gun goes up with availability of handguns, but not total suicide, so people are using the best and quickest method which they have available to them.  Yes, it would be hard to commit a mass murder without a gun, but it would also be hard to commit a mass murder in a heavily armed society.  Where guns are outlawed however it is pretty easy.  You may remember a group of guys some years back killing 3000 people with a few boxcutters, by taking control of aircraft where everyone was banned by law from bringing their weapons.  That is why about a month later I started selling bumper stickers which said "Where guns are outlawed, terrorists need only boxcutters".  I don't run the website anymore but you can see it on the wayback machine:  RKBAbang.com.  And now you know where my username came from.  RKBAbang stands for "RKBA!", which is the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and bang(!).

 

I haven't done a thorough analysis and am not claiming to be an expert. 

 

Violent crime rates have been dropping across the board, as far as I know -- even in Canada, where guns are more tightly controlled.  So I'm not so sure you can claim this is a result of liberalized gun laws.  Did violent crime drop more in the states that liberalized their gun laws than those that didn't?  That would be interesting.

 

As to those defensive handgun studies... are you referring to the work of Lott?  If so, there's a fair bit of controversy there, is there not?  I haven't looked into the multiple regression black box of his original study, but his personal behaviour has made it pretty clear he's an untrustworthy egoist.  It's hard to trust a man who posts about himself under assumed names!!  The last I recall was that his data set was questionable, and in any case his statistics were very "fragile" at best.  And didn't he quote some statistic about defensive handgun usage that was based on data that was apparently lost in a hard drive crash??  All a bit questionable in my mind.  (Then again, show me a social science statistical study that isn't...) 

 

My understanding was that various studies have since concluded that concealed carry laws in the US don't alter the crime rate in any statistically significant way, either up or down. 

 

Using the 9/11 hijackings to undermine gun control is questionable.  There is no way in hell such an attack would ever work again.  It only worked because there was no precedent.  Everyone figured they'd be prisoners for a while and then be let go.  It would be pretty straightforward for a plane full of people to take out a few guys with box-cutters if they knew their lives depended on it.

 

 

 

 

[Aberhound]

Rather than debate the gun control issue as a result of this tragedy I suggest we all consider what has changed which caused the killer or killers to be willing to murder children. If there was any significant risk of children being killed my parents would not have let me play outdoors without adult supervision. What has changed to remove the basic human instinct of all adults to protect children?

 

If this event is repeated I suggest we ban violence in TV, films and video games. It would save far more children than banning guns.

 

If children continue to be harmed I would arm all parents and teachers. I think of an old photo of my Scottish ancestors in Ontario in the 1800s. The men all carries rifles as there were no police in rural areas. Children were rarely harmed except for a sore backside when they misbehaved.

[doc75]

Now to drug legalization.  Production should be decriminalized, possession decriminalized, and the money put into treatment.  This would solve violence problems across the world.  Imagine Billions of dollars pouring into treatment rather than policing, and imprisoning.

 

I've had the same thoughts.  Have you read anything on this subject?  I'm really curious how the $ figures line up because for me it's just a gut feeling that putting the money toward treatment rather than policing and incarceration would be far more productive.

[ubuy2wron]

I generally think the NRA stance is nuts but they are not the problem in this case.

 

Unlike gang, or domestic violence, these cases are Black Swan events, in their truest definition that Taleb intended.  You cannot predict them.  They are random, happen worldwide, and cannot be prevented.  You would need full airport style security to enter any public place in the world.

 

To our Canadians on this board, dont be too smug.  Just this summer in Toronto was a multiple shooting at a barbeque;  recall Marc Lepine in Montreal killing 14 women at the college; or Robert Pickton killing dozens of prostitutes over years, or Olsen, murdering dozens of boys, or our esteemed Colonel at the Trenton military facility killing at least two women, raping more, and stealing panties. 

 

My bet is that a population adjusted analysis since 1960 would show that these events are equally distributed across the world.

 

Now to drug legalization.  Production should be decriminalized, possession decriminalized, and the money put into treatment.  This would solve violence problems across the world.  Imagine Billions of dollars pouring into treatment rather than policing, and imprisoning.

 

Ya I love the war on drugs. Opium is grown in Afghanistan it is shipped to the USA sold at black mkt prices on the open mkt it would be as expensive as asparin. The junkies break into your home  or  turn tricks to support their habits and also are the largest source of aids in our culture. The money gets back to the Taliban which use the money to blow up American boys and girls fighting for their country. Decriminalize use ,spend the money on treatment reduce the deficit about 100 billion a year. Or you could just shoot junkies bullets are cheap, same effect. I opt for the decriminalization route it seems slightly gentler.

[Cardboard]

Gun controls won't prevent mass shootings and what happened in Montreal proves it.

 

In 1989, Lepine shot female engineering students at Ecole Polytechnique with an assault weapon. There was a public uproar and much tighter gun controls were implemented especially on arms with military background. In 1992, Fabrikant goes on a shooting spree at Concordia University. In 1995, registration of all firearms is passed into law. Fast forward to 2006 and Gill enters Dawson College with an assault weapon. And this year, Bain kills one on election night after trying to enter the building where the PQ was celebrating its victory with an AK-47 which jammed.

 

That is four mass shootings in what I would consider a very safe city if I am to look only at the number of total homicides in a given year. When I lived in the States, I could not comprehend how many homicides were occuring on a weekly basis. So I assume that gun control may reduce the number of death committed by people trying to defend themselves or victims of theft, but that it won't do a thing against insane individuals shooting blindly.

 

I agree that looking at our society, our values, the media and things like video games in which the goal is to kill as many as you can, could do a lot more to prevent these horrors. Giving a goal to people, a sense of responsibility and the need to sacrifice a bit of your own pleasures for the good of society and others could do a lot. The hero generation understood that, it has been downhill ever since.

 

Cardboard

[SouthernYankee]

rkbabang - +1 for each post, as well as to the other posters who see this event as a single event, where the perp is the problem, not the weapon he used.

 

Parsad - a big fat MINUS for, once again, starting a thread which has NOTHING to do with value investing, BRK, or Fairfax!

 

God bless the victims, and their families!

 

*Don't own a gun, and have only shot a .22 airgun*

[alwaysinvert]

Sorry I don't agree.  I'd prefer a world where I could buy my cocaine at the grocery story by the pound and my fully automatic machine guns without a license.  I'd prefer a world without all of the violence, poverty, and corruption that black markets create.

 

I don't understand how this point of view jibes with the statistical fact that the western countries with more stringent gun laws have lower rates of violence per capita than the US.  (Can't speak for poverty and corruption, though I doubt the US is on top there either.)

There is an implicit causal inference from this that I'm not sure is so easy to make as you seem to think. There are probably very strong cultural factors at work here.

 

Easy solutions are great for soundbites but reality is a lot messier.

 

As an aside, I heard no mentions of gun laws being problematic when the Norwegian massacre happened last summer.

 

Marginalization of young men is a far more worrisome problem than gun laws, not only when it comes to these crimes but for a number of societal ills.

 

There is no causal inference being made. Rkbabang said that black markets lead to violent crime, which suggests that less restrictive gun laws should lead to less violent crime.  My point is that ALL the statistics I am aware of suggest the opposite correlation, so I'm really unclear where he's coming from. 

 

Agreed that there are very strong cultural factors at work.  And surely the culture is shaped by the legislation, just as legislation is (at least originally) shaped by the culture.  There are plenty of confounding variables at work here.  A big tobacco executive would have a field day.

 

The phrase "Easy solutions are great for soundbites but reality is a lot messier," is very interesting:  It is, in itself, a soundbite.  You hear it most every time a large change is proposed to a well established system.  It's quite patronizing.    (Maybe you know some people who think that gun control laws will completely eliminate such atrocities.  I'm not one of them.)

 

100% agreed on marginalization of young men.  I find that situation to be very alarming, particularly in Europe.  In the past, lunatics have been eerily opportunistic at such times.

I thought your point was that the social behavior and social conscience followed the laws and there was no chance of it being the other way around. If that was not the case, I apologize.

 

I think that most of the time people think that prohibition will make the problem go away and  this probably stems from an evolutionary advantageous way of acting. Repulsion -> get the f away from it and fast. The brain knows no difference between moral repulsion and bodily repulsion.

 

In some cases we appreciate that this model does not work so smoothly, but in others we don't. Why that is I don't know.

 

Alcohol is bad but should be legal - no sweat

Taking loans at 12% is dumb but should be legal - no sweat

Taking loans at 500% is dumb but should be legal - free-market nutcase

Suicide is bad but should be legal - no sweat

Illegal drug X is bad but should be legal - nutcase/addict

Homosexuality is natural - some controversy, although almost non on the legality

Paraphilia X is natural (evolutionarily) but perhaps immoral - nutcase

Guns should be legal for all to bear - some controversy in the States (complete nutcase where I live)

 

Maybe it's just me but I find it highly interesting where and why we draw those lines and as an agnostic on many of these things (who leans libertarian in most cases) I sometimes feel like an alien species :)  I'm meandering away so I'll stop here.

[alwaysinvert]

As for the topic of marginalization of young men, which actually is the question I found most interesting in all of this, I actually find myself leaning more and more to an autocratic/conservative point of view and I can assure you that makes me feel very ill at ease.

 

But young men are dangerous as hell and if mitigating their explosive power means stressing traditional values or implementing/keeping societal structures that cement old 'outdated' gender roles (which may be the 'correct' ones from an evolutionary standpoint) it may very well be worth it even if doesn't fit a political ideology that I'm comfortable with. I don't know, reality IS messy.

[rranjan]

 

 

There is no causal inference being made. Rkbabang said that black markets lead to violent crime, which suggests that less restrictive gun laws should lead to less violent crime.  My point is that ALL the statistics I am aware of suggest the opposite correlation, so I'm really unclear where he's coming from. 

 

 

Case is similar to Man with a hammer syndrome.... You won't be able to present any arguments which will fly.

 

I personally have never fired a shot and don't have any fixed view on everyone carrying a gun. If data( right one) suggest that society with gun controls have better record in preventing violent crimes then we should consider this point strongly. This freedom to carry weapon argument is fine but it goes over board with next step of everyone being allowed to carry whatever government has(nukes)..., World will cease to exist in 5 minutes.

 

It is impossible to control 6 billion people. Logically you can't have public access to destructive techs like nukes which might wipe out everyone. Freedom or no freedom, you can't allow a situation which will wipe out everyone. Being able to carry automatic weapon which can fire 60-100 bullets in minute may fall in some what similar category but far less destructive. You need only few mentally disturbed people  and they can kill 100s before they can be stopped. It's a grey area where line has to be drawn. I don't know at which point but I would think mentally sick people having capacity to kill 100's in 1 minutes is too high a cost for my freedom to carry such weapons.

 

Carrying gun for defense should not extend to weapons like rocket launchers otherwise you will have few mentally sick causing 1000s of death within seconds. As far as the argument about government killing innocents and then asking for freedom to carry nukes goes -  case is similar to man with hammer syndrome. It starts with full freedom/no government control and ends there. Torture everything to fit into that model without cost involved.

 

As I said, I don't have fixed opinion on everyone being allowed to carry a gun but I strongly feel you can't allow public access to hugely destructive tech. What constitute that tech and where to draw a line can be argued.

 

 

[alwaysinvert]

 

 

There is no causal inference being made. Rkbabang said that black markets lead to violent crime, which suggests that less restrictive gun laws should lead to less violent crime.  My point is that ALL the statistics I am aware of suggest the opposite correlation, so I'm really unclear where he's coming from. 

 

 

Case is similar to Man with a hammer syndrome.... You won't be able to present any arguments which will fly.

I hope you do realize that goes the other way around too. If there were no sensible, emotionally appealing or logic arguments for the opposite position then surely there would only be one opinion, period. 'Gun nuts' by and large are not utilitarians so obviously you aren't going to convince them with utilitarian arguments even if the facts in that case may be on your side (I'm not sure).

[mikazo]

I've wondered for years whether there's something different about Canadian society that makes these things less "infectious" there.

 

I don't think your average lunatic is too concerned about the legality of their actions, so the illegality of carrying a gun into a school is not a barrier.  Given ready access to a weapon, the perpetrator is going to commit the act regardless of any law.  The point of gun control is to restrict access to weapons so that it is substantially harder (not impossible) for a lunatic to get one.

 

The unfortunate consequence of gun control is that it also impedes on the rights of responsible non-lunatics such as you and me.  For me the tradeoff is well worth it; for you and many others it apparently isn't.  Fair enough.  But it's silly to suggest that gun control laws would have no effect on school shootings and domestic violence simply because it's already illegal to walk into a school with a gun or attack your partner.

 

I think that the second quote answers the first. I can't speak for all Canadians, but for myself, the personal right to own a firearm with no questions asked is well worth losing for the sake of making guns more difficult to obtain. I'd rather that all citizens have to jump through a lot of hoops and screening to get a gun. That way, those that want them and don't appear to be a threat can get guns if they want, and the lunatics get screened out and are denied access (legally, anyway). Personally, I don't own a gun and haven't even touched one.

 

This quote from the RCMP's Possession and Acquisition License application form is what I agree with:

 

"Processing a firearms licence application involves a variety of background checks. In some cases, in-depth investigations are conducted. We require a minimum of forty-five (45) days to process your application. There is a minimum 28-day waiting period for all applicants who do not presently hold a valid firearms licence. A PAL is valid for a period of five (5) years."

[ERICOPOLY]

The best weapon for home defense is a shotgun.  Also the best for bird hunting.

 

You don't even need to get it licenced in California.

 

I don't buy the home defense argument for handguns -- informed gun people will always reach for the shotgun if there's an intruder.

 

It's also more difficult for your child to shoot himself in the face, although not impossible.

 

I agree on the shotgun for home defense.  But this latest shooting took place in someone's home?  Why should you lose the right to defend yourself the moment you walk out of your door?  Maybe some of the dead adults in CT today have guns at home that they are not allowed by law to take to work inside the school building.  You are most at risk outside of your home, around other people.

 

My point was that most people who have handguns don't need them. 

 

Few people open carry or concealed carry their handguns.  Those that do don't need to have high magazine capacity weapons to take down an assailant.

 

I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

[Olmsted]

This is a horrible event and there is a lot of emotion involved in this discussion.  There is a lot of emotion involved in most policy debate.  But I'm going to attempt to develop some thoughts on that subject that do not rely on an emotional reaction to an especially vivid tragedy, nor a knee-jerk appeal to the purest form of the 2nd amendment. 

 

Let's think about the benefit-cost tradeoff with legalized firearms in a structured way, just like we might think about other technology.  For example, cars.  There is a big benefit: mobility.  And there are accidental deaths.  That tradeoff is apparently worth it to most of us and to most (all?) societies.  Let's attempt to do the same for guns, and inject some fact into how we think about the drawbacks of legal firearms.

 

Pros:

-Enables self-defense, security of the home and family

-Perhaps provides some deterrent against tyranny, enables citizenry to at least pose some challenge to an abusive government

 

Cons:

-Enables bad actors to cause commit homicide much more easily than they could with the next-best weapon

-Accidental deaths

 

Clearly this isn't an all-inclusive list, and individuals points may be debatable.

 

I am going to quantify the "cons" first, since the "pros" are somewhat fuzzy.  Homicides comprise "normal" (non-mass-event) homicide and the mass-shooting events like today.  Let's examine mass shootings first, since they are the homicides that would most clearly be prevented if we could magically eliminate every gun in this country now.  (I say most clearly because it is just very, very difficult to kill 10+ people with weapons besides firearms.  But you can still stab or beat single individuals without a gun.)  Let's put some numbers to it.  Mother Jones "Guide to Mass Shootings" details all 61 "mass shootings" in the USA that it could find over the last 30 years (defined as a shooting where the killer took the lives of at least 4 individuals besides himself).  In these 61 events (plus today's) there were 983 individuals killed or injured, including the attacker.  Since I cannot find the data broken out, let's just count all of these as fatalities to be conservative.  That means over this compiled history, there were 32.77 deaths/injuries per year (with no clear pattern over time).  This equates to a probability per American of dying in one these events of .000000192.

 

Let's put some perspective on that number.  The accidental death rate by automobile in the USA is 1.5 deaths per 100 million miles driven.  The risk of death caused by a mass-shooting event is roughly equal to the risk you accept when you drive your car 7.28 miles.  That is clearly not a level of risk most of us worry about.  I would gladly accept this risk in order to provide safety and peace of mind to my family in my house.  (Some may observe that these events seem to disproportionately affect schools.  Let's say children are 10 times more susceptible - then that's equivalent to a child driving 73 miles.  That's not something most parents worry about either.)

 

Homicides and accidental gun deaths are a different story.  The US averages 9 gun-related deaths per 100k people.  I am going to disregard suicides - those are tragic but are a choice.  The remaining gun-related deaths are 2.98 homicides per 100k and .27 accidents per 100k.  This means that the probability of death from gun homicide or accident per year per person is 0000325.  Let us say we could eliminate all of these deaths if gun control were enacted (a very debatable proposition) - that would eliminate as much risk as driving 2167 miles in a car.  That is still not something most of us fret about too much, but it is starting to get more significant.  Of course this risk amelioration could be much less significant if some of these homicides would occur anyway but by different means, or if illegal guns persisted and were used in significant numbers.

 

My takeaway: the category that seems to drive the gun-control debate is mass shootings.  It is logical that this category of violence would is most likely to abate given gun control - but the risk is infinitesimally small - equivalent to a short drive to the grocery store for many of us.  I believe the debate is driven by emotion not risk assessment.*  If one were to develop an argument for gun control based on risk assessment, reducing non-mass homicides and accidental deaths is a more reasonable goal.  If gun control would diminish these events by only .5% - it would have a bigger benefit in terms of lives saved than if the risk of mass events went to 0.

 

Now that we have some facts surrounding risk of death by gun in the USA we can weigh the benefits against these risks.  To me, the security of my family, peace of mind, and (perhaps slight) hedge against tyranny outweigh the numerical risks I laid out above.  This is very clearly the case in terms of mass shootings.  It is perhaps less clear in terms of non-mass homicides, and depends on how effectively gun control would decrease non-mass homicide. 

 

I hope nobody finds thinking in terms of numbers and risk per person too insensitive after a horrible event like this - for me crunching the numbers and comparing it to a risk we deal with daily is a way to stay sane and grounded, and not get paranoid and freak out about something happening to my kids.

 

Now time to go pray for all the poor people affected by this terrible event.

 

*This is a perfect case study of how our ingrained risk heuristics skew.  I vaguely recall from one of my classes that our internal risk perception tends to scale with the number of people involved in an accidents, squared.  So 10 dead in one event might have a similar impression to a normal person as 100 isolated events.    This may be a rule of thumb, don't take it too literally, but the point is, it's skewed by large numbers.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

 

[ERICOPOLY]

This is a horrible event and there is a lot of emotion involved in this discussion.  There is a lot of emotion involved in most policy debate.  But I'm going to attempt to develop some thoughts on that subject that do not rely on an emotional reaction to an especially vivid tragedy, nor a knee-jerk appeal to the purest form of the 2nd amendment. 

 

Let's think about the benefit-cost tradeoff with legalized firearms in a structured way, just like we might think about other technology.  For example, cars.  There is a big benefit: mobility.  And there are accidental deaths.  That tradeoff is apparently worth it to most of us and to most (all?) societies.  Let's attempt to do the same for guns, and inject some fact into how we think about the drawbacks of legal firearms.

 

Pros:

-Enables self-defense, security of the home and family

-Perhaps provides some deterrent against tyranny, enables citizenry to at least pose some challenge to an abusive government

 

Cons:

-Enables bad actors to cause commit homicide much more easily than they could with the next-best weapon

-Accidental deaths

 

Clearly this isn't an all-inclusive list, and individuals points may be debatable.

 

I am going to quantify the "cons" first, since the "pros" are somewhat fuzzy.  Homicides comprise "normal" (non-mass-event) homicide and the mass-shooting events like today.  Let's examine mass shootings first, since they are the homicides that would most clearly be prevented if we could magically eliminate every gun in this country now.  (I say most clearly because it is just very, very difficult to kill 10+ people with weapons besides firearms.  But you can still stab or beat single individuals without a gun.)  Let's put some numbers to it.  Mother Jones "Guide to Mass Shootings" details all 61 "mass shootings" in the USA that it could find over the last 30 years (defined as a shooting where the killer took the lives of at least 4 individuals besides himself).  In these 61 events (plus today's) there were 983 individuals killed or injured, including the attacker.  Since I cannot find the data broken out, let's just count all of these as fatalities to be conservative.  That means over this compiled history, there were 32.77 deaths/injuries per year (with no clear pattern over time).  This equates to a probability per American of dying in one these events of .000000192.

 

Let's put some perspective on that number.  The accidental death rate by automobile in the USA is 1.5 deaths per 100 million miles driven.  The risk of death caused by a mass-shooting event is roughly equal to the risk you accept when you drive your car 7.28 miles.  That is clearly not a level of risk most of us worry about.  I would gladly accept this risk in order to provide safety and peace of mind to my family in my house.  (Some may observe that these events seem to disproportionately affect schools.  Let's say children are 10 times more susceptible - then that's equivalent to a child driving 73 miles.  That's not something most parents worry about either.)

 

Homicides and accidental gun deaths are a different story.  The US averages 9 gun-related deaths per 100k people.  I am going to disregard suicides - those are tragic but are a choice.  The remaining gun-related deaths are 2.98 homicides per 100k and .27 accidents per 100k.  This means that the probability of death from gun homicide or accident per year per person is 0000325.  Let us say we could eliminate all of these deaths if gun control were enacted (a very debatable proposition) - that would eliminate as much risk as driving 2167 miles in a car.  That is still not something most of us fret about too much, but it is starting to get more significant.  Of course this risk amelioration could be much less significant if some of these homicides would occur anyway but by different means, or if illegal guns persisted and were used in significant numbers.

 

My takeaway: the category that seems to drive the gun-control debate is mass shootings.  It is logical that this category of violence would is most likely to abate given gun control - but the risk is infinitesimally small - equivalent to a short drive to the grocery store for many of us.  I believe the debate is driven by emotion not risk assessment.*  If one were to develop an argument for gun control based on risk assessment, reducing non-mass homicides and accidental deaths is a more reasonable goal.  If gun control would diminish these events by only .5% - it would have a bigger benefit in terms of lives saved than if the risk of mass events went to 0.

 

Now that we have some facts surrounding risk of death by gun in the USA we can weigh the benefits against these risks.  To me, the security of my family, peace of mind, and (perhaps slight) hedge against tyranny outweigh the numerical risks I laid out above.  This is very clearly the case in terms of mass shootings.  It is perhaps less clear in terms of non-mass homicides, and depends on how effectively gun control would decrease non-mass homicide. 

 

I hope nobody finds thinking in terms of numbers and risk per person too insensitive after a horrible event like this - for me crunching the numbers and comparing it to a risk we deal with daily is a way to stay sane and grounded, and not get paranoid and freak out about something happening to my kids.

 

Now time to go pray for all the poor people affected by this terrible event.

 

*This is a perfect case study of how our ingrained risk heuristics skew.  I vaguely recall from one of my classes that our internal risk perception tends to scale with the number of people involved in an accidents, squared.  So 10 dead in one event might have a similar impression to a normal person as 100 isolated events.    This may be a rule of thumb, don't take it too literally, but the point is, it's skewed by large numbers.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

 

Now, what is the probability of ever needing your concealed firearm to defend your life from a man on the street? 

 

Weigh that against the chance of being killed in a car crash.

 

Then, what is the probability of needing a gun to defend your life from an intruder in your home?

 

Weigh that against the chance of being killed in a car crash.

 

 

My point is that rather than using automobile statistics to refute the benefits of curbing gun access, instead ask whether automobile statistics show that we need guns at all.

 

Then, of all the incidents where guns were necessary to protect life from attacker, ask whether single shot capacity firearm would have done the trick.  Or two shot or three shot.

 

 

[Parsad]

I am with rkbabang.  Crime isn't the point.  The freedom to speak out against the government, and the freedom to own weapons to overthrow the government if need be, was the whole point of those amendments.  The people who wrote this into law knew human nature and what happens when people have too much power.

 

Look at what the U.S. did after one attack.  They were hauling people off in the middle of the night to secret torture facilities, indefinitely detaining them, without charging them with a crime or giving them access to a lawyer.  You want to give all the guns to these people?

 

They had also just fought a war against the British, so they needed to maintain a militia to protect their interests.  I don't think that has been a concern for the last 125 years, so the average citizen isn't going to need to go all "Red Dawn" on an invading China or North Korea...let alone try and overthrow their government by being armed. 

 

Of all the dictators who have been overthrown in the last 50 years, it didn't come from the citizens having weapons, but the fact that the generals in power under the dictator actually turned to support the general populace.  As Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Walesa and so many others have shown...the human spirit eventually takes care of tyrants and injustices.  Cheers!

[Parsad]

I generally think the NRA stance is nuts but they are not the problem in this case.

 

Unlike gang, or domestic violence, these cases are Black Swan events, in their truest definition that Taleb intended.  You cannot predict them.  They are random, happen worldwide, and cannot be prevented.  You would need full airport style security to enter any public place in the world.

 

To our Canadians on this board, dont be too smug.  Just this summer in Toronto was a multiple shooting at a barbeque;  recall Marc Lepine in Montreal killing 14 women at the college; or Robert Pickton killing dozens of prostitutes over years, or Olsen, murdering dozens of boys, or our esteemed Colonel at the Trenton military facility killing at least two women, raping more, and stealing panties. 

 

My bet is that a population adjusted analysis since 1960 would show that these events are equally distributed across the world.

 

Now to drug legalization.  Production should be decriminalized, possession decriminalized, and the money put into treatment.  This would solve violence problems across the world.  Imagine Billions of dollars pouring into treatment rather than policing, and imprisoning.

 

Al, compare the per capita number of gun-related injuries or deaths in the United States to any other developed nation...including Canada.  The number is shockingly disproportionate. 

 

If you had a small nuclear detonation in the United States maim or kill nearly 100,000 people, what would your reaction be?  Probably the same as even those proponents of gun control...need to get nukes secure and make sure no one else ever gets their hands on a nuke.  Yet, you have 100,000 people suffer from gun-related injuries or deaths in the United States every single year!

 

Per capita data for deaths is below...even the nutjob, right-wing Australians have a rate one-ninth the United States.  Canada, the most similar nation to the United States and pretty much a brother in arms has half the rate...and we have plenty of nutjobs here like you stated.  Cheers!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

[Parsad]

Parsad - a big fat MINUS for, once again, starting a thread which has NOTHING to do with value investing, BRK, or Fairfax!

 

Sometimes there are more important things than investing...like today for those parents.  If we have a debate about something other than investing once in a while, I don't think it lessens the board in any manner.  Just ask Buffett about tax rates or Prem about his faith and family.  Cheers!

[Olmsted]

Now, what is the probability of ever needing your concealed firearm to defend your life from a man on the street? 

 

Weigh that against the chance of being killed in a car crash.

 

Then, what is the probability of needing a gun to defend your life from an intruder in your home?

 

Weigh that against the chance of being killed in a car crash.

 

 

My point is that rather than using automobile statistics to refute the benefits of curbing gun access, instead ask whether automobile statistics show that we need guns at all.

 

Then, of all the incidents where guns were necessary to protect life from attacker, ask whether single shot capacity firearm would have done the trick.  Or two shot or three shot.

 

Eric, that's a really hard question if not an impossible one because it's counterfactual.  You may be able to count home invasions which were thwarted - if you dig enough you might be able to compile data.  You will never be able to count home invasions which never occurred at all because of general deterrence (i.e. would-be burglars/crazies/rapists who know a lot of residents in certain areas are packing and want none of it).  Now about high-capacity magazines vs shotguns, I don't know.  Note also that that is only one possible scenario.  Really that isn't the point I was trying to make.  The point was to get some actual perspective on the actual risks.  Putting actual numbers to actual risks at least helps us get beyond the emotional reaction.  Which is why I chose to focus on the side I could quantify. 

 

Rational people can disagree on the magnitude of the benefits - I think those probably defy tangible counting.

[zippy1]

At the same time, in Henan Province, China. A madman got into a local elementary school and attacked school children with a knife.  22 children and one woman were hurt.  I wonder if China has the same gun control law as US, there would be 22 dead children and one dead woman instead.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1105731/knifeman-henan-attacks-primary-school-children

A knife-wielding man attacked 22 children and a woman at a primary school in central China yesterday.

 

Police detained the suspect, who attacked the children at the entrance of the Chenpeng village Primary School in Guangshan county, Henan, at 7.40am.

 

All the injured were taken to local hospitals and at least two of them, one pupil and an 85-year-old woman, were in serious condition, Xinhua quoted local police as saying. The elderly woman and most of the injured children suffered head wounds, the agency said.

[cwericb]

When people use a 200 year old law to justify their “right to bear arms” perhaps the type of arms they are allowed to bear should be limited to those in use at the time the amendment was written?