From: andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Subject: Re: UFO "October Surprise" and USA TAKEOVER?!
Followup-To: talk.politics.guns
Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 00:13:53 GMT

[My newsserver is acting up.  I've tried to cancel previous versions
of this article that were sent inadvertently.  Sorry about that.]

In article <BsI8Iz.3LL@newcastle.ac.uk> Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>cescript@mtu.edu (Charles Scripter) writes:
>>Actually, it appears that areas with the most firearms have the
>>lowest crime rates (perhaps because the risk to the peretrator is
>>too great).  Likewise, they appear to be *highest* in regions with
>>the most restrictive gun laws.
>
>People keep saying this as though it means

Not really, but let's go with that assumption for a bit.

>        Restrictive gun laws cause high crime rates.
>A rather more likely situation is
>        High crime rates cause restrictive gun laws;

Actually, the data offered can't distinguish between those two
"meanings".  The latter is more reasonable, but that's doesn't help
the argument for gun control.

The reason people point out that gun control is often associated with
high crime while low gun control is often associated with low crime
that is that it demonstrates that "gun control works" is false and
also demonstrates that high gun ownership levels can coexist with low
crime rates.  It demonstrates that the traditional gun controller
"proofs" are merely examples of biased data selection.

To recover the initiative, gun control advocates have to develop a
"gun control works when ..." argument, but they don't like that
argument because one of the possible "...."'s is "never" or even "it
makes things worse", plus gun control opponents then get to ask "how
much does it cost".  Gun control supporters don't want to get into a
"the incurred costs exceed the realized benefits" argument.

>in which case the question that has to be answered (and hasn't been)
>is, would the crime rates have been higher or lower without the
>restrictive gun laws?

Hold it.  That question can't be answered, so if you require an
answer, you're out of luck.  We can't know what would have happened if
we'd tried something else instead.

>		It probably depends on availability nearby,
>whether you're looking at short term differences vs. long term
>changes in attitudes, and a host of other things that make any
>such study unreliable; but saying that gun laws are useless because
>places that have such laws have a lot of crime is not an argument.

How come gun controllers always ignore smuggling and illegal
manufacture?  Even drug warriors have figured out that those sources
can be important.

BTW - When gun controllers take a "there's no way to take into account
all relevant variables" stance, their "conclusions" can be ignored
(because they've admitted that they can't provide useful evidence) at
the same time they get to be targets for a "if there aren't any
successes, then you've got a lot of nerve insisting that they're
possible just because I can't prove that there can't be." argument. We
have to make decisions even if we don't have a perfect decision
method.

The existence of gun control failures is a successful counter to a
significant claim of gun controllers; it isn't applicable to every
gun-controller claim, but that's no great flaw.  (There are no
universal arguments.)

We can look at before-after experience if you want to address some of
those other claims.  (That's a depressing exercise for gun control
proponents, but ....)

-andy
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