From: lambert@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Lambert)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: NSW homicides
Date: 16 Oct 92 16:48:05 GMT
	<1992Oct8.003530.18632@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
	<LAMBERT.92Oct14034507@henna.spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au>
	<1992Oct13.202432.8901@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: none

On Tue, 13 Oct 1992 20:24:32 GMT, andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) said:
> In article <LAMBERT.92Oct14034507@henna.spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au> lambert@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Lambert) writes:
>> On Thu, 8 Oct 1992 00:35:30 GMT, andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) said:

>>Your claim that I have not shown that the situations were
>>stable is false.  The homicide rate was roughly constant in the period
>>before gun control and in the period after gun control.

> The graphs have shown that it was roughly constant AFTER, but before....

there was a dip in the period 1915-18, associated with WWI and
fluctuations before 1905.

>>2. It might be that demographic change caused the decline i.e. a
>>decrease in the percentage of young men in the population.  However,
>>the demographic change associated with WWI when 40% of the males 18-45
>>enlisted, is far far larger than any other change during the period,
>>and the homicide rate 1915-18, while lower than the surrounding years
>>is still higher than the post gun control rate.

> Note the assumption that one young male is as violent as another.

> The US military tries to avoid enlisting/drafting certain problems.
> Moreover, it claims that it "improves" the people it does accept.  Is
> the Australian military any different?

40% of the men of military age ended up enlisting - they were not
fussy about who they took to throw into the meat grinder.  Even if the
unlikely proposition that the experience of trench warfare turned the
veterans into saints who committed not one single homicide, it STILL
would not explain the fall in homicides after 1920 (and the rurn to
prewar levels of homicide in 1919-1920).

>> and a 17th century Andy Freeman might have replied:

> Ooh.  I'm slain.  Lambert has produced a caricature AND introduced
> the "they laughed at Einstein" argument.

Good old Andy.  You can always rely on him to miss the point.  It is
not a caricature - I gave the "17th century Andy" exactly the
arguments you used.  The only point of exaggeration was suggesting you
might go for a 27 epicycle model, but then you did say that you were
not looking for simple models but good models, so you certainly asked
for that one.  And it's not a "they laughed at Einstein" argument.
I'm not trying to associate my model with the correctness of Kepler.
(Anyway Kepler, while being right about ellipses, was wrong about the
spacing of the orbits being determined by the Platonic solids.)  The
point is, in 1605, before Newton provided the physics that predicted
elliptical orbits, what reason do you have to choose the ellipse over
the epicycle, other than its greater simplicity?

>>Pull the other one Andy.  You claim that it could not cause an abrupt
>>change because that would require the law to cause existing gun owners
>>to decide not to kill with their weapons.  Finding the gaping hole in
>>this argument is left as an exercise to the reader.  (Hint: gun
>>control did not apply only to new gun purchases.)

> Hint: passing a law doesn't necessarily affect controlled weapons.

True, but  the basis of your argument is that the law CANNOT affect
controlled weapons.

> Lambert would have us believe that people who would kill lined up
> outside police stations to turn in their guns.  Or maybe the police
> conducted house to house searches.  What?  

Those no longer allowed to own or carry either turn the weapons in or
hide them.  Either way, weapon availability is reduced.  Some killers
acquire the gun in order to kill.  The law could reduce weapon
availability to these types.  Those who have owned guns for several
years are much less likely to kill with them than new gun owners.  By
reducing the number of new gun owners, the law could have an immediate
effect.  (This would in fact be a steep decline over a couple of
years, which is statistically indistinguishable from an abrupt effect.)

>>I provide the data that Andy requested and now he tells us that it is

> No, Lambert provided PART of the data requested.

> Of course, if Lambert is claiming that my data requests, or his
> interpretation of them, are to be considered authoritative....

Oh heavens no, Andy.

Here is what you asked for:
> Why doesn't Lambert tell us about pre-control crime and murder rates
> and trends in Oz and compare them to post-control rates and trends?

And this is what I have posted:

Homicide rates for NSW 1900-1977, Homicide rates for Queensland
1900-1977, Homicide rates for South Australia 1921-1940, Homicide
rates for Victoria 1901-1940, details on the changes in rape, assault
and robbery rates in Quensland and NSW before and after control,
firearm homicide rates in NSW 1910-1930, "other means" homicide rates in NSW
1910-1930,  homicide rates for Australia, England, Scotland, Germany,
Italy, Portugal, Japan and USA over the period 1911-1930, summaries of
the changes in demographics and unemployment in NSW, details of
enlistments during WW1, a chi-square analysis showing that a constant
rate before and a constant rate after gun control gives a good fit
to the data, and t-tests and Mann-Whitney tests showing that the means of
the homicide rates were significantly less after gun-control in NSW,
Queensland, and South Australia.

Please give us the authoritative answer as to what I'm missing that
make all this data "meaningless".

Tim