Cliff,

Readership getting low at OneUtah again?

I’ve wondered about the pattern of your posting anti-firearm screeds.

Do you only post anti-rights screeds about firearms when you stats drop off?

Or do you post when aren’t getting enough attention?

And of course, I can’t forget to mention one of your biggest fans: MikeB302000 liar, lying criminal or criminal.

I’ll give you credit for one thing, you aren’t even trying to hide your bias or that of the groups you support.

Really, Berkeley Media Studies Group as a reference?

From their webpage

Media Advocacy Planning

Organizations that want to change policy or influence decision-makers enlist BMSG to help them develop a media advocacy plan, a message strategy, and an access strategy for becoming part of the public debate in the news media.

I like this section, it is extremely apt I think

Case Studies

BMSG has been commissioned to tell stories of how local groups apply media advocacy to change policy.

And about that study?
Aren’t you the one deriding anything not peer reviewed?

Prepared for the “Strengthening the Public Health Debate on Handguns, Crime, and Safety” meeting,
October 14 & 15, 1999, Chicago, IL, with support from the Joyce Foundation

Doesn’t appear to be peer reviewed does it? It looks like was brought and paid for by the anti-freedom Joyce Foundation

James,

First, I don’t agree that the proposals and ideas floated here by you, Cliff and others are reasonable.

So, why would I want to dignify those unreasonable restrictions with that phrase?

You are right about where to draw the law of “reasonable”.

Isn’t reasonable to ask for evidence? To have the further restrictions of our rights proposed show some evidence, some shred of factual basis in reducing crime ?

The social utility theory is great but at what point do gun control advocates like you stop?

If one new law reduced the approximate 250,000 deaths and injuries by 25%, would you stop there?

Would the other gun control advocates?

How about if another law reduced that approximately 187,500 deaths and injuries by another 25%, would you or the other advocates stop?

Now, with just two hypothetical laws deaths and injuries would be down nearly 44$…..how much more would you want to restrict my rights?

See that is the problem with social utility theory, that will continue to restrict our rights forever. Always claiming they are just trying to ’save lives’.
And still people like you and Cliff would claim each new law needed would be reasonable, right?

Cliff is on the record as wanting to ban all handguns and heavily regulate rifles and shotguns…when would he stop?

All the while, ignoring the lives saved by the defensive use of firearms.

While claiming to push for laws to save lives, how many lives would be lost because more people wouldn’t be able to defend themselves?

How many more rapes would happen because it was “reasonable” to restrict handgun ownership like Chicago does?

How many more home invasions and the deaths or injuries from them would happen because the police never got around to approving someone’s application to purchase a firearm (Illinois requires approval simply to purchase a firearm)?

Do you have any evidence to show that criminals would simply stop committing crimes because it was more expensive for them to buy a firearm?
Or would they just switch to another tool or just gang up on people?

I see nothing reasonable at all in any of the suggestions in additional gun control laws.

Bob S.:

For completeness, let’s reiterate the parenthetical following the CDC study:

(Note that insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.)

Not sure why that part got left out of your follow on discussion re the Task Force findings. Indeed, at best, the parenthetical relegates the results of the study to an equipoise draw (no pun intended).

Cliff,

You recieved a number of links to peer reviewed studies when you privately emailed Dave Hardy, myself and Alan Korwin.

Doncha remember?

This was the email where you mused about “putting a bullet” in Korwin’s head.

Shame shame, Cliffy.

How’s the anger management thing coming? Smack any smart-ass kids lately?

Bob:

Cav raises an interesting point that has been mentioned but tangentially in the past. Your entire argument depends on the assumption that the 2nd Amend provides unrestricted access to purchase and carry guns. Regardless, if the restriction at issue passes muster under strict-scrutiny (assuming a lesser standard does not apply), then your rights have not been violated per the Constitution – restricted, maybe, but certainly not violated. Again, it all boils down to whose ox is being gored and how badly. My ox is doing fine!

jd:

Good to hear from you again; best to you and yours.

As you will certainly recognize, my commentary and willingness to concede points is lost on your colleagues these days; excepting, from time to time, the thoughtful commentary of Bob S. Perhaps the two of us can bring a modicum of rationality back to the debate?

MikeB302000,

Do you know what the word “liar” even means?

Do you have reading comprehension failure syndrome also?

Do you not notice the link I’ve provided in this thread to a study that supports Kleck and Gertz’s survey?

That is supported with hard statistics?

You’ve already have shown you don’t know how to tell truth from falsiity.

Now you’ve shown that you don’t know how to tell statistical analysis of an accepted survey method from you made up guesses. Wow.

Here are a couple of links that might help you out.
1. What Kleck and Gertz did.
2. What you did.

If you have any trouble with any of the big words, let us know and we’ll explain them to you.

Sorry, but I’m not going to stop calling you out on your lies and/or criminal past.

You’ve admitted on at least 2 occasions that you’ve owned firearms illegally. You are so concerned with the “flow of guns’ yet you won’t talk about what you did with your illegally owned firearms.

You advocate laws that you have not followed, right?
Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite?

You denied saying that you owned firearms illegally, doesn’t that make you a liar?

Bob & Weerd,

You guys are classic cons. Whenever you find yourselves in a corner, you start attacking the messenger. Did you learn that defense form Rove and Cheney, or coaches at the NRA?

Even if MikeB were a convicted felony liar, it wouldn’t change the fact that Gary Kleck’s findings are unsupportable. Does that make Kleck a liar? You decide.

Oh, and Bob S, thanks for the link to the definition of sampling.

Bob S,

I am astounded, SHOCKED you would use the Clinton era study. It is perhaps the strongest refutation of Kleck’s numbers and I used it effectively to shut down David Hardy and Alan Korwin over a year ago. Not even they were dumb enough to reference it, so I am pleased, to say the least, that you set yourself up so perfectly. Chop chop chop.

Herewith, I post the rest of the report which you conveniently left out.

In addition to destroying Kleck’s results, it also impunes the integrity of gun owners (see reasons they gun owners lie at the bottom)

Some troubling comparisons. If the DGU numbers are in the right ballpark, millions of attempted assaults, thefts, and break-ins were foiled by armed citizens during the 12-month period.
According to these results, guns are used far more often to defend against crime than to perpetrate crime. (Firearms were used by perpetrators in 1.07 million incidents of violent crime in 1994, according to NCVS data.)
 
Thus, it is of considerable interest and importance to check the reasonableness of the NSPOF estimates before embracing them. Because respondents were asked to describe only their most recent defensive gun use, our comparisons are conservative, as they assume only one defensive gun use per defender. The results still suggest that DGU estimates are far too high.
 
For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in which a woman defended herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated from NCVS (exhibit 8). For other crimes listed in exhibit 8, the results are almost as absurd: the NSPOF estimate of DGU robberies is 36 percent of all NCVS-estimated robberies, while the NSPOF estimate of DGU assaults is 19 percent of all aggravated assaults. If those percentages were close to accurate, crime would be a risky business indeed!
 
NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases.[14]
 
The evidence of bias in the DGU estimates is even stronger when one recalls that the DGU estimates are calculated using only the most recently reported DGU incidents of NSPOF respondents; as noted, about half of the respondents who reported a DGU indicated two or more in the preceding year. Although there are no details on the circumstances of those additional DGUs, presumably they are similar to the most recent case and provide evidence for additional millions of violent crimes foiled and perpetrators shot.
 
False positives. Regardless of which estimates one believes, only a small fraction of adults have used guns defensively in 1994. The only question is whether that fraction is 1 in 1,800 (as one would conclude from the NCVS) or 1 in 100 (as indicated by the NSPOF estimate based on Kleck and Gertz’s criteria).
 
Any estimate of the incidence of a rare event based on screening the general population is likely to have a positive bias. The reason can best be explained by use of an epidemiological framework.[15] Screening tests are always subject to error, whether the "test" is a medical examination for cancer or an interview question for DGUs. The errors are either "false negatives" or "false positives." If the latter tend to outnumber the former, the population prevalence will be exaggerated.
 
The reason this sort of bias can be expected in the case of rare events boils down to a matter of arithmetic. Suppose the true prevalence is 1 in 1,000. Then out of every 1,000 respondents, only 1 can possibly supply a "false negative," whereas any of the 999 may provide a "false positive." If even 2 of the 999 provide a false positive, the result will be a positive bias–regardless of whether the one true positive tells the truth.  
 
Respondents might falsely provide a positive response to the DGU question for any of a number of reasons:
 
o They may want to impress the interviewer by their heroism and hence exaggerate a trivial event.
 
o They may be genuinely confused due to substance abuse, mental illness, or simply less-than-accurate memories.
 
o They may actually have used a gun defensively within the last couple of years but falsely report it as occurring in the previous year–a phenomenon known as "telescoping."
 
Of course, it is easy to imagine the reasons why that rare respondent who actually did use a gun
defensively within the time frame may have decided not to report it to the interviewer. But again, the arithmetic dictates that the false positives will likely predominate.
 
In line with the theory that many DGU reports are exaggerated or falsified, we note that in some of these reports, the respondents’ answers to the followup items are not consistent with respondents’ reported DGUs. For example, of the 19 NSPOF respondents meeting the more restrictive Kleck and Gertz DGU criteria (exhibit 7), 6 indicated that the circumstance of the DGU was rape, robbery, or attack–but then responded "no" to a subsequent question: "Did the perpetrator threaten, attack, or injure you?"
 
The key explanation for the difference between the 108,000 NCVS estimate for the annual number of DGUs and the several million from the surveys discussed earlier is that NCVS avoids the false-positive problem by limiting DGU questions to persons who first reported that they were crime victims. Most NCVS respondents never have a chance to answer the DGU question, falsely or otherwise.
 
Unclear benefits and costs from gun uses. Even if one were clever enough to design a questionnaire that would weed out error, a problem in interpreting the result would remain. Should the number of DGUs serve as a measure of the public benefit of private gun possession, even in principle? When it comes to DGUs, is more better? That is doubtful, for two kinds of reasons:
 
o First, people who draw their guns to defend themselves against perceived threats are not necessarily innocent victims; they may have started fights themselves or they may simply be mistaken about whether the other persons really intended to harm them. Survey interviewers must take the respondent’s word for what happened and why; a competent police investigation of the same incident would interview all parties before reaching a conclusion.
 
o Second and more generally, the number of DGUs tells us little about the most important effects on crime of widespread gun ownership. When a high percentage of homes, vehicles, and even purses contain guns, that presumably has an important effect on the behavior of predatory criminals. Some may be deterred or diverted to other types of crime. Others may change tactics, acquiring a gun themselves or in some other way seeking to preempt gun use by the intended victim.[16] Such consequences presumably have an important effect on criminal victimization rates but are in no way  reflected in the DGU count.

Another gun freak bites the dust!!!

Cliff,

That really sounds more like gun banners not wanting to admit reality.

or example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense.

They conveniently leave out the fact that is only for rape and robbery attempts reported to the police, right?

I always find it amazing to try to understand the mindset of people like you and the two that wrote the report.

Isn’t common sense to say that more crimes are attempted then succeed? Or are American criminals so good that every time they try to rob someone they get away with it?

Isn’t it likely that a rapist will follow or try to rape several women before finally being able to get the circumstances that allow him to actually commit the crime?

For example, of the 19 NSPOF respondents meeting the more restrictive Kleck and Gertz DGU criteria (exhibit 7), 6 indicated that the circumstance of the DGU was rape, robbery, or attack–but then responded “no” to a subsequent question: “Did the perpetrator threaten, attack, or injure you?”

Again, let’s look at the criteria they are using to try to discredit the Defensive Gun Use (DGU).

Did the perpetrator threaten you? Meaning did the perpetrator say anything that could be interpreted as a threat?
Isn’t it likely that many perpetrators would speak before an attack yet their very actions would be threatening? An entirely different criteria, right?

Or how about attack? If a person uses a firearm to stop a potential attack then the perpetrator couldn’t have attacked…simple logic.

The display of a firearm has prevented criminals from starting their attack, surely even you agree with that right?

Or injure? Hmm, let’s see a defensive gun uses that stops at attack before harm can be caused means that there wasn’t an attack?

You’ve asked for a study which validates Kleck and Gertz. I’ve provided it.

Even if the researchers didn’t like the conclusion of their study it clearly points out the fact that 2.5 Million Defensive Gun uses isn’t impossible.

Second and more generally, the number of DGUs tells us little about the most important effects on crime of widespread gun ownership.

i agree with this statement. What is interesting is combining the reports on Defensive Gun Uses, with information about the increases in gun ownership, with the increases in concealed carry permits and crime data.

You don’t deny that there has been an increase in the number of firearms owned by civilians, do you?

You don’t deny that there has been an increase in the number of people with concealed carry permits, do you?

You don’t deny that crime rates are dropping, do you?

So, guess that kind puts paid to the tired meme of “more guns =more deaths” and “more guns = more crime”, eh?

Great Comment JD!

It does matter that goverments are wary of armed citizens.

Precisely, jd, and this is why the debate continues. Everyone agrees that some restrictions are both necessary and pass muster under the constitution. There will, however, be limits on the restrictions. And thus the debate continues on the road toward defining and implementing those limits.

Bob S. and Weer’d, What’s wrong with your side of the argument that you find it necessary to spend so much time writing about me and focusing on my past? That’s what we call “personal attacking” and as Cliff mentioned it’s a shabby tactic used in debate.
Above you said “at least two times” I mentioned my having owned guns illegally. Well, it was exactly 2 times and you know it since you’ve lived and breathed this thing for months. Meanwhile, Weer’d your buddy said I had been “bragging about it all over the internet.” He repeated that several times. This is another lie that you endorsed. And this is what I denied, not my original statement but the fact that I’d been “bragging about it all over the internet.” You know that very well, yet you say I lied about the whole thing.

I’m afraid, Bob, you and Weer’d and Linoge whom you keep linking to, are sick men obsessed with what you see as a battle between yourselves and the gun control folks. Your obsession has warped your thinking to the point of blurring the boundaries of what’s acceptable behavior and what’s not. You justify lying in yourselves and accuse others of being liars, which is a good description of hypocrisy, another epithet you keep slinging at others. I suppose you feel since you’re in a “war” anything is justified, but it’s not, Bob.

MikeB302000,

necessary to spend so much time writing about me and focusing on my past?

Don’t flatter yourself Sparky, it only takes a few minutes of time to mention your hypocrisy, lies and involvement with illegally owned firearms.

That’s what we call “personal attacking” and as Cliff mentioned it’s a shabby tactic used in debate.

The most ironic part of that comment is that you don’t realize how ironic it is.

Cliff is well known for his personal attacks. Heck, I started coming around here because he called Alan Korwin a liar.

You allow personal attacks to be posted in the comments if they are against gun owners or 2nd amendment advocates but don’t approve comments that show the hypocrisy of your position even if they aren’t personal attacks.

I suppose you feel since you’re in a “war” anything is justified, but it’s not, Bob.

And more irony from you MIkeB. You seem to think that any infringement of the rights of others are okay as long as it might possibly, someday, someway, if everything goes right it could reduce crime or injury.

What war are you fighting MikeB302000 that you think it is acceptable to violate the rights of innocent people because of the actions of criminals?

Pointing out the nature of the people who oppose freedom isn’t unacceptable behavior. You seem not to like it because it shows you for what you are.

Hey look, James is accusing others of Dodging!

That’s IRONY! Funny! ; ]

Cliff,

As always you have it backwards

why MikeB’s so called “repeated lies” might pale in comparison to Alan Korwin’s lies on C-Span?

First, evidence presented, repeatedly shows that Mr. Korwin didn’t lie. You can repeat it all you want but the facts remain. Defensive Gun uses are established facts and the numbers have been verified by different studies.

MikeB302000 has repeated lies – such as “90% of all firearms confiscated in Mexico”. Even after multiple attempts to convince him of the truth, even after multiple citations of the actual facts and numbers MikeB302000 lied. Only after months of repeating the lie did he stop.

Next and most important, MikeB302000 lies are directed at trying to restrict our rights. Alan Korwin statements did not try to restrict anyone’s rights.

MikeB30200 lied by calling Weer’d’s statements unfounded and a personal attack. He called Weer’d a liar multiple times when Weer’d ONLY asked about his ownership of illegal guns. Not the “bragging” but simply calling Weer’d a liar and was making personal attacks.

If MikeB302000 owned firearms illegally, as he has admitted, then he has direct personal evidence that the gun control laws he is advocating do not work.
MikeB302000 has repeatedly claimed that gun control laws work….yet the laws didn’t stop him from illegally purchasing a firearm, did they?

Your entire argument claims that if MikeB is a liar, therefore his arguments about gun’s and gun policy is somehow not valid.

I would like a citation of Weer’d’s or my comments that claim this or would that be too close to calling you a liar?

What we state is simply this- Should trust a person who says they have your best interest in mind after that person has been proven to be a liar?

MikeB302000 has lied repeatedly about his ownership of firearms and the effectiveness of gun control laws. What else is he lying about?

Cliff,

I’ve shown you two studies. Kleck and Gertz was one.

The other study — commissioned by the Clinton administration was the other.

While the authors may not like the results of their survey, that survey confirmed Kleck and Gertz.

Not one piece of evidence was submitted to show the results weren’t valid. NOT ONE.

They just said We don’t like it, this study shows that guns prevent more crimes then what happens.

Did they present any evidence showing that firearms didn’t prevent more rapes then were reported? NOPE.

Also notice who you entirely skip over how MikeB302000 has been lying and how that fact undermines gun control laws.

The Dog is Dead, Cliff
http://weerdbeard.livejournal.com/584743.html

Rico.

Prosecute them. Exercising your 2A rights doesn’t give you the right to dump your trash in the desert.

Yes, ammo and guns are taxed to maintain public lands (sorry for the mangled sentence).

Lots of gun groups (local and grassroots) organize public land cleanups. We do what we can.

BTW – I didn’t read the article yet – just responding to the post (which was a great question).

Happy New Year.