Guns? Suicides? Why Can’t People Actually Derive Logically From Statistics?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state

Note: The District of Columbia and Louisiana (i.e. New Orleans) have the highest murder rates by a multiplier of 2x-10x higher than any other state. Both of these two areas have a city, which has the highest

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

Note: Suicide Rate, Japan’s is more than 2x the US’s at 26 per 100k vs. our 11 per 100k. Again valuable derived information can be found by this extreme lack of correlation. Remember, Japan basically has zero guns, the United States has tons. Japan is greater than 2x our suicide rate yet they have nowhere near as many lethal options to commit these actions. I’ll lay it out simply, that provides proof that having or not having guns to commit suicide is not the key to decreasing said incidents, but instead changing one’s cultural characteristics is the key. In other words, banning guns is very likely to have almost no affect on suicides over the long term if the United States can’t fix it’s cultural issue, the same is obviously true for Japan, since they’ve already banned firearms and as far as I know from the data, there are zero suicides by firearm. If there are any in Japan, it is such a small number they don’t even differentiate the mechanism used.

Needless to say, the statistics and single data points the anti-gunners, and the pro-gunners use are often nefariously used at best and often completely irrelevant without looking at more data points around culture, habits, behaviors and other indicators within social groups. Until we as a nation learn to do that and mold our society into something more closely that we actually want, we won’t get very good results by screaming about gun crimes and guns and the horror of the tools we employ.

Strangely enough, this goes the same for the automobile vs. any other mode of transport argument. Until we realize the costs, the REAL costs, we’ll keep making absurdly stupid as hell policy decisions around these things.

The “RISK” of Terrorism

Nice Statistics

Guns Are for Old People…

Funny, so many interests are focused around the older, more fearful citizens of the country.

Gun ownership for instance, is vastly higher among the older rural middle class than urbanites.  Funny were the crime happens.    hmmmmm.  Make yourself prey, the crazies will attack.  However the suburbs are the new crime zone…   how strange and awkward for those conservative Republican enclaves of the suburbs. They’re like the hypocrites of the party.  😦

However most progress and wealth is NOT created in the rural world, it is almost solely focused in urban areas.  Even the suburbs provide a moderate middle class generation of wealth, and often are a net loss to urban and rural workers. How perverse really, that the suburbs are labeled the “American Way”.

Funny when one looks at the various numbers, statistics, correlations, actual causation, and other numbers.

It really makes registered Democrats and registered Republicans seem like a bunch of cranky, unyielding, nut cases…

 

…even though the media would have us all think the “middle of the road” people are the crazies.  WTF?!?!

I 100% Support Gun Rights…

But this is an impressive statement and at the same time so very true in an idealistic way.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 – 1969), From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

Just A Few Shots

‘‘The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.’’

– Adolph Hitler, Edict of March 18, 1938 – Me – With quotes like this, one can see why almost all Americans can easily hate this guy.

“The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.”

– Thomas Jefferson – Me – This is, unfortunately as our great leader Thomas Jefferson states, is the sad truth.  When it is needed, the bullets will have already left the barrels, and liberty will be on the line.

My last gun related note for today.  I saw a sticker recently, “My next door neighbor wants to BAN all GUNS!  Their house is NOT armed!  Out of RESPECT for their opinions I promise NOT to use my guns to protect them.”

That is all.