alanschu

Hahaha I've done that before too.

Well, if they use bombs more than guns, an initial response would be that it would not be effective, since they're not using guns

While I obviously dropped the bomb with that previous link, I was fairly certain that the discussion expanded well beyong what just you or I do. The article didn't state that there's an increased risk of homicide in Aram's house. Public policy isn't just made for you and me though. As for the "vague percentage," upon looking closer at that link, the percentage isn't vague. It's 2.7 times more likely, or 170% (according to their data: "adjusted odds ratio, 2.7"). Looking back at what you said though: You see, it's not uncommon for the stuff that people believe to be right to not actually be correct. For instance, this one time, I did not put forth due dilligence and briefly looked over an article from the New England Journal of Medicine and grossly neglected the actual point of the article (I blame having 20 tabs open) and read into it incorrectly. But I carried on believing I was right. People persecuted Galileo about his beliefs of heliocentrism, because they believed they were right and he was wrong. Climate change has a group of people investigating solar influences, and posting their conclusions because they believe they are right. They are counted by traditionalists that hold that it is CO2 increases that are causing the increase, because they belief they are right. While not technically mutually exclusive, I'm guessing only one of those camps is correct regarding the level of impact their ideas have (or they're both wrong). Discounting some statistical analysis because they don't agree with your stance, on the merits of them being "written by people you don't know, based on people you don't know," is akin to putting your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala." You can (and should) argue that the findings may not apply to you. That's fine. You can (and should) question issues regarding their scientific methodology (unfortunately this is a bit hard as accessing the full study is somewhat expensive). Maybe they did not take into accountSociological trends never account 100% for everything. You'll always find exceptions. But unfortunately, you are just an anecdote. You'd have been better served addressing the issues in the conclusion. Don't forget, this article refers specifically to homicides in the home. It talks about how the use of illicit drugs and a history of domestic violence are high risk factors. I imagine these high risk factors for homicide are independent of the firearm being present, and therefore probably still contribute to a fair amount of the homicides where the victim is killed at home. Given the high risk factors already present, adding a firearm to an already volatile scene probably won't help. With regards to gun control, it's actually pretty easy to deflect this study. All this study really concludes is a correlation. Sure, gun control may prevent some homicides, but a more effective treatment would likely be providing avenues that help prevent illicit drug use and domestic violence, the other high risk factors. The firearm probably has just an ancillary effect that accentuates a previous problem. Given the sharp increase, I wonder if it's because an overwhelming majority of the homicides already have these higher risk factors associated with them. In other words, homicides in homes don't typically happen without one of these two factors. If that's the case, since they concluded an increased risk of a homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance, I wouldn't be surprised if "virtually all" homicides in the victim's home are done by close friends and family. When discussing society and the effect policy has on society, I don't see how you can discount statistics though. I'd certainly prefer to rely on empirical evidence over "commonsense" or whatever conclusions one can come up with through introspection.

Well, at least you read the length more thoroughly. I skimmed through it. -100 points for me EDIT: Errr, I think I may have linked the wrong article........that link doesn't look right.

WOW!

I doubt the article was referring to you being killed by family, but rather an increase in homicides by people feeling more confident with a weapon and then putting themselves in a situation where they get killed by an intruder. I was hoping that that was kind of obvious.

Since there hasn't really been any "evidence" (that I can remember anyways) posted for the other side, I figured I'd dig some up. Guard Dog's most recent post had me doing think of doing this. In any case, it is pretty interesting. Interesting Unfortunately it's just an abstract, but apparently the murder rate showed declines in Washington D.C. at least in the short term. Since I already found the information elsewhere, I'll take a look here to see what the effects were. Violent crime exploded in the 60s (well, crime in general did). 1960 had a value of 553.7 (all numbers are per 100,000 inhabitants), and by 1968 it had tripled (that seem really friggin' fast). Robbery in particularly shot off the charts, with Murders, Rape, and Aggravated Assault Moving up a bit slower. Based on this, I assume that the hand gun ban brought in in 1976 were done in reaction to the escalating crime rate. From 1975 to 1976, there was a drop from 1774.3 to 1481.3. 270 less Robberies, and 6 less murders make up most of that. In fact, for the next 3 years, the violent crime rate would slowly drop until 1979 showed an increase to 1608.7. By the time the 1980s hit, these rates were back to higher than their pre-gun law levels. It was crazy in the 1990s, and it has steadily fallen since then. In fact, it's current levels are similar to those levels shortly after the gun restrictions were put into place. Things to note: In the few years prior to the gun law, violent crime rates were rising. Half a decade prior to the gun law, crime rates were significantly higher though, so there was a drop before the rise again. Immediately after the ban on handguns was put in place, violent crime dropped 16.5% (mostly murders and robbery). The following few years showed a slow decline in crime rates (1977 showed a sudden drop in rape as well), before things started increasing again. It looks like in the short term, the hand gun ban resulted in a decrease in crime. It really helps its case given that the crime rate was slowly rising prior to the ban, with a sudden decrease immediately afterwards. Now crime rates do steadily go up afterwards, which may be do to the hand gun ban, though crime rates were increasing prior to the ban. I'm not sure what forces were at play to cause such a sudden increase, outside of maybe the prevalency of Rock and Roll and Ozzy Osbourne. And interesting thing is shortly after Maryland and Virigina put gun restrictions in place (which neighbour Washington, DC - Source). To make things doubly interesting though, is that the most recent sharp decline in violent crime came in 2004, the same year that Congress voted to repeal gun limitations. The decrease is similar to the decrease that violent crime rates had shortly after gun restrictions were put in place (and similar in absolute numbers to the 1998 drop). Now they went back up again in 2005, though they were still lower than 2003. It didn't have the slow, short term decline that the hand gun ban had in the 1970s, but there may be other confounding variables. Kind of messed up. Place a handgun ban, watch the crime rate drop. Repeal the Gun Laws, watch the crime rate drop! I wonder if gun laws show effectiveness in the short term, but then perhaps as guns are procured from elsewhere, the crime rate ultimately increases. I wonder if the short-term response of decreasing crime would be affected if there was a widespread gun ban, rather than just one in the city. I wonder if ultimately gun laws have little permanent effect on crime rates one way or the other. Maybe they don't increase nor decrease them, and other factors are more important in the long term. One other interesting thing I found is this PDF. Those poor Brits are poster childs for crime rates going up with gun laws coming into effect. I didn't look as deeply into it, but I stumbled upon this PDF file that basically says (either unfortunately, or conveniently) the way violent crimes are counted and reported in the UK have changed. Who know what to believe anymore!?!?! And since Aram posted while I was busy, I did notice something he commented on: I notice that this is the second time you have used the term "intruder who means you harm." Since I have no idea, how often are home invasions motivated specifically by an intent to harm someone living there? I imagine the reasoning behind the New England Journal of Medicine article indicating that gun ownership as being a risk factor for homicide in the home (and suicide, but that's beyond the scope of this thread) is that if a home owner has a gun, it involves a risk of that gun being used in a homicide against the home owner (it could just well as be some messed up situation where shooting an intruder results in a murder charge, but I'm trying to be optimistic that that is statistically insigificant).

I have heard that they are planning a shorter cycle for their OS releases. Just make sure you don't keep waiting for the next one.

Hahahaha

Well, while things may not be "proven," they do become "really, really certain" when numerous, repeated, falsifiable tests occur. Gravity is just a theory, but as it stands we feel we have a high degree of certainty in using current understanding of gravity to make predictions. Of course this isn't concrete, as demonstrated by that wacko Einstein that told everyone that Newton was wrong, so we had to make some adjustments. (Well, Newton wasn't wrong, just incomplete).

Well, I have actually seen poor shifting of a manual transmission in an emergency situation (well, typically remembering the shift is something that goes out the window entirely. Even with an automatic transmission few people will think to place the car in neutral if they find themselves losing control of their car for some reason). It may be a natural part of shooting, but if pressure didn't affect things, then a typical Green Army Recruit would be just as effective in a firefight as a multi-year veteran. I have fired 9mm pistols at a firing range. My experiences don't go into night shooting, nor shooting at live targets though. Since I had never fired a gun before, I only had the target about 30 feet away or so, and I was pretty accurate at firing the pistol. It was on this experience that led me to the opinion that hitting something 10 feet away would not require the utmost of precision, since I tried doing a variety of things with the 50 or so rounds I bought. I did a "rapid" fire (I use the term "rapid" loosely, as it was hardly fast) as I was curious to see how accurate I could be emptying a magazine quickly. I would return the pistol to eye level after each shot, but wouldn't take my time to ensure that the sights were as lined up as I could make them. Accuracy degraded, but I don't recall missing the figure on the target paper. I tried 9mm variants of 5 different pistols, a Glock, a Beretta, a Sig, an H&K, and some other manufacturer I was unfamilar with. I found myself liking the Beretta the best. I kept jamming the Glock because my inexperience frequently had me absorbing the recoil with my wrists rather than with my elbows. But my experience was in daylight. If it was dark enough that I couldn't actually make out what direction my gun was pointing in, then yes I'd want night sights. But if it's that dark, outside of a silhouette if there happens to be some backlight from a window or something, how exactly could you be sure that you were pointing at the intruder. I'd likely have to see it in order to appreciate it, since the only experience I have shooting stuff in limited light was friends with toy dart guns.

And here you are hoping that they'll do Jefferson.

Build a Biosphere! As for the Solar Activity, there may be research done in 2001 that made it seem unlikely, but continued research done and published earlier this year are starting to state the same thing. I remember an interesting comment that Jan Veizer made a while ago. He said it was tough for him to come forward with his initial findings, because the scientific community had so widely accepted the idea the CO2 emissions were causing global warming that they were quite resistant to other ideas. This wouldn't be the first time something like this happened. Einstein's Theory of Relativity flipped the world upside down, when the rest of the world had so accepted Newtonian Physics that they made his theories Law. Fortunately for Einstein, his theories were easily testable and easily verified. He didn't have to go through the same stigma that people like Galileo had to endure. Copernicus was hesitant to suggest that the solar system was heliocentric. I wonder if similar stigmas exist when discussing Global Warming (which is a misnomer, it seems the idea is now "Climate Change.")

Point taken.

I don't know. Is it a world affair?

Which countries are Allies? Is the conflict a NATO jurisdiction?

Thanks coach.

I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here. But yeah, I'm sure the guy making the push to El Alamein was busy slaughtering Jews when he wasn't making a push or repelling an attack.

I remember seeing one that bounced back and forth almost by the minute over some small detail. I had no idea people would be so adamant.

The death of the Jews are on their hands. And had they refused to go if they stood up for what they believed in, they would have gotten the death penalty. Would it be fair to impose that choice on them? You cannot prove that the death of the Jews is on the hands of soldiers on the front lines, mostly because there was too many people fighting on the front lines.

Here is an interesting article I read. I'm posting it since it's relatively new. Think what you will.

I blame Smyth for his greedy stat padding attempt to fire the puck the length of the ice for blowing Roloson's shutout. And of course Hemsky, who's penalty I think came because he was looking to pad his stats by getting a steal and an empty net goal.

Would a nuclear war cause global warming?

In case it's not clear, my use of the term "awesome" is sarcastic...