Saturday, August 27, 2016

The big kill


Although I said I wouldn’t have more to say about guns, reflecting on the book “Bloodlands” got me to thinking. “Bloodlands” didn’t add anything to my knowledge about gun deaths but it did inspire me to compare three facts I already knew, and that is the method implied by “restating the obvious”: We know more than we think we know.

The NKVD shot something over 1,000,000 people. The SS shot closer to 2,000,000.

Neither – nor even both combined – shot to death as many people as American gun nuts have.

Possibly the Second Amendment was a bad idea.


18 comments:

  1. You have come completely unhinged, perhaps aided by your impenetrable innumeracy. Rate and quantity are not the same thing.

    Tell us, what is the rate in gun deaths per year for the NKVD and the SS? The US? After excluding suicides, of course. Because only fact-immune zealot would fail to do so.

    Here's my bet: you won't answer the obvious question, but rather will prevaricate.

    (And that is completely ignoring the likelihood of an SS or NKVD getting to have their murderous ways in the face of an armed populace.)

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  2. Both did operate in the face of an extreme armed opponent, y'know.

    Dunno why rate enters into it. Dead is dead. It take a special kind of fantasy to ignore 3,000,000 dead

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  3. You don't know why rate enters into it because you are a mathematical retard.

    Extrapolate the NKVD or SS rate over the same amount of time with which you are measuring the US gun shot deaths.

    What do you get?

    Oh, and exclude suicide. Which you haven't, with your (as has been pointed out several times) either dishonest, or irreversibly foolish, 3,000,000 number.

    As I bet, you will choose prevarication over the indefensible.

    (Just like you have chosen to scarper instead of updating that CU post.)

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  4. Why exclude suicides? As the Australian example has demonstrated, most of them don't happen when guns aren't easily available. The ongoing need of gun enthusiasts for their toys enables most of those suicides; they should definitely count in the total.

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  5. Bollocks, Harry. Complete bollocks.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12882416

    Just like that CU post.

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  6. That citation is from 2003, a bit too soon to see the difference (although I can certainly understand why certain people feel the need to hang onto it). Try this one:

    http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2530362

    And I'm not Harry.

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  7. The NKVD was a going concern for a long time but it did not continue to shoot people at its peak 1937-8 rates, for reasons that might inspire reflection. While 2A deaths show little sign of abating.

    And among reasons to count suicides is that rates of this go up where rates of gun ownership are higher.

    In a moment, I will post a review of deaths at Grand Canyon. Although I do not go into it in my review, the book has a discussion of would-be suicides who jumped off cliffs but did not die. It appears all of them thought, on he way down, 'I really didn't need to do this.' That matches results of interviews with people who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. A small sample, that.)

    I don't know (because I have never looked) whether survivors of gunshot suicides feel the same way but I wouldn't be surprised.

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  8. [M:] That citation is from 2003, a bit too soon to see the difference ...

    2003 is seven years after the gun ban. In what way is that too soon? People commit suicide in the here and now, and they use the means available to them.

    The evidence is quite clear that people changed their means, primarily, apparently, to rope. (Not investigated, but it should have been, is how many fatal single car accidents are suicides.)

    SFAIK, they are never counted that way. So means substitution has to include that, but doesn't. The result is that the suicide rate must always be, by some unknown amount, undercounted.

    I looked at the link, and it drove me up the wall in the same way that an hour of trolling for suicide and murder stats did: they always, as did this, pull what seems to me the Harry-esque disingenuous trick of comparing gunshot deaths before and after the ban.

    That's fine if you have a zealot's focus on means. However, if it is the ends that are of concern -- death -- then what matters is the overall death rate.

    And that is exactly the sin your link commits. It says, among other things, that there have been no mass firearm killings through May of 2016.

    Does that mean there have been no mass killings? Not only no, but hell no.

    That Chalpman, Alpers, and Jones failed to mention that, or, indeed, that there doesn't appear to be any significant change in the frequency or lethality of mass murders, strikes me as willful ignorance.

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  9. [Harry:] And among reasons to count suicides is that rates of this go up where rates of gun ownership are higher.

    When you are in a hole, Harry, stop digging.

    Compare Korean and Japanese suicide rates against the US. Then compare their gun laws to ours.

    Compare British suicide rates against ours. Compare theirs before and after confiscation.

    Maybe, just maybe, if you did a little thinking and investigation before the keyboard spew, you wouldn't troll your own blog so much.

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  10. Let's stick to US states, OK? More guns, more suicides.

    The statistics are nowhere as solid as they could be and should be, and we know why: the gun nuts are terrified of proper studies, because they know what that would show. The numbers, such as they are, already show that trend.

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  11. No, let's not. You made a general statement about suicides that is woefully ignorant.

    And Let's stick to US states, OK? More guns, more suicides. is just as impenetrably obtuse.

    How about we stick to this rule: no citation means smoke blowing.

    The statistics are nowhere as solid as they could be and should be, and we know why: the gun nuts are terrified of proper studies, because they know what that would show.

    Also a lie, and a world class example of conceptual confusion.

    Congress prohibited the CDC spending money on gun studies. Pro-tip: guns aren't a disease, they are a tool. And the reason Congress did that is because fact-immune zealots such as yourself were happy to spend tax dollars making crap up.

    Just like you do.

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  12. Actually, acquisition of guns, especially lots of guns, is the symptom of serious mental disease and delusional thinking.

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  13. Harry, your abuse of facts, mathematics, statistics and reason are the real symptoms of delusional thinking: if you cannot support your point of view other than through lying and assaults on logic, then perhaps it is your point of view that needs changing, not facts, mathematics, statistics and reason.

    Pro-tip: in saying "Dunno why rate enters into it" then you have proven you are intellectually incapable of discussing the subject. To avoid continually reproving that point, learn why rate very much enters into it.

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  14. Enquiring minds want to know: why is it you refuse to address this?

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  15. Well, which rate are you referring to, the nearly zero rate of the NKVD and its successors along about 1980? It would be nice if the American gun nuts could get down to under 30,000/year.

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  16. Let me do the math for you. SS shoots 2,000,000 in six years. Six goes into 100 16.7 times. So the comparable amounts are 3,000,000 v. 33,400,000.

    But that really isn't right, because unless you are willing to completely trivialize people who commit suicide, and are happy to ignore all the facts, then all of those suicides would have found a different means.

    So, it is really 33.4 million against 1 million.

    Oh, and while you are at it, how about comparing the European-American murder rate against European rates?

    And since you can't be bothered to address your lying about Citizens United, perhaps you can ponder how many people are fooled by your transparently foolish "facts"?

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  17. I saw what you did there, flipping from NKVD to SS. Not the same thing, you know. Or perhaps you do not know.

    You certainly don't know anything about suicides.

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  18. I saw what you did there, flipping from NKVD to SS. Not the same thing, you know. Or perhaps you do not know.

    Oh, for Pete's sake, don't be a complete tool.

    The point is obvious: you summed numbers over entirely different periods, then presented them as if they were comparable. That isn't just lying with statistics, that is being completely retarded. I have no earthly idea who you are hoping to persuade with that kind of incompetence, but even my dog was too smart to be taken in.

    You certainly don't know anything about suicides.

    Bollocks.

    I know that the suicide rates are strongly correlated with gender and culture. (Males commit 3 times as often as females; cultures with invisible gun ownership rates -- Japan, Korea -- have far higher suicide rates than the US.)

    I know that confiscating guns didn't budge the UK suicide rate, which was, and remains, very similar to the US rate.

    I know, and mentioned above, that in Australia, after gun confiscation, suicides found different means.

    Which means I know that you are trolling your own blog.

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