From: jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (J. Giles)
Subject: Re: The guns of roston (wa
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 19:56:55 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.165406.1@fnalf.fnal.gov>, rhatcher@fnalf.fnal.gov writes:
|> [...]
|> > So, what is the objective of gun-control?  
|> 
|> I'm not sure I know what "motivation" has to do with a skeptical claim
|> of effectiveness ... but it's your paranoia, not mine.

Whether or not gun-control achieves its stated goals *is* what I'm
skeptical about.  In fact, I conclude that the evidence that it 
*doesn't* is fairly persuasive.

|> [...]
|> Okay, since this is sci.skeptic I have to ask:  How has this been shown?
|> What constitutes the control group?  I'd guess that baselines are
|> impossible to estimate from historical data and that no two locations
|> are identical.  There's just too much noise in the "data" that effect
|> any such baseline estimates needed to claim "*NO*" effect.  Sorry, but
|> I'm skeptical that you could prove that gun-control has had *NO* effect
|> on crime (nor do I believe that one could prove the converse as well).

The difficulty of *any* socialogical study is fairly large.  However,
crime rates of cities with similar ethnic and economic mixes are
similar - independent of the toughness of their gun-control laws.
Further, places whose population is changing find their crime rates
change to match that of similar places elsewhere - independent of
gun-control laws.  Consider England: the crime rate is rising now
due to ethnic tensions and economic factors.  This is in spite of
*long-standing* gun-controls which are toughly enforced (and have
been for some time due to the terrorist threat from Ireland).

No, just to justify the cost and vehemence of the present debate
over gun-control, the evidence that it *might* be effective would
have to be considerably better.  The evidence to date doesn't
justify the cost of a single congressional committee wasting its
time on the issue for as long as an hour.
 
|> [...]
|> How about REASONABLE control of dangerous instruments (sort of like getting
|> a drivers license). [...]

I don't *need* a driver's license to use a car, truck, van, or farm
equipment - as long as I don't operate it on public roads.  I would
agree to such constraints on gun owners for the issuance of concealed
carry permits and such - where I'm planning to make use of the weapon
as protection in a *public* context. 

|> [...]             There, see, I make no claim that this will help
|> reduce violent crime by strangers, but instead I'd claim the safety
|> training will reduce the number of accidental deaths in the home.
|> I think *this* IS something that could be verified (and probably 
|> already proven)

There have been laws passed in many places where the misuse, accidental
or deliberate, of firearms is a severely punished crime.  This works.
It *may* work better than prior restraint on ownership.  If an unsupervised
child kills or injures self or others with a gun, the guardian(s) of the
child and the gun should face possible criminal action.  Laws like this 
*have* been shown effective against such domestic misuse (the statistics 
go down).

People seem to want a riskless society where everyone is prevented
from potentially dangerous activities, rather than a responsible 
society in which people are free, but responsible for their actions.
I disagree that such a riskless society would be either achievable
or desirable. 

-- 
J. Giles
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic