Alex's world.

We all know that Alex "Ilovewarmapplepiesmorethanyouloveyourgun" the "Culturologist" is constantly attacking us "gunloons" for vigilantism against violent criminals for being a direct threat while at the same time advocating vigilantism against pedophiles for being a direct threat.

Well here's some people that live in the kind of world that Alex wants:

Tenn. men accused of vigilante justice

Two of Chandler's neighbors decided to do something about it, police say. They're accused of trying to scare him off by setting fire to his tiny house tucked away in a hardscrabble Appalachian hollow.

Chandler, 53, escaped from the flames. But his wife was killed in what authorities are calling an example of vigilante justice...

Sellers and Bell told police they did not intend for anyone to die. They just wanted to get Timothy Chandler out of the neighborhood because he was "a pervert," Chief Deputy Bill Lane said...

Sound familiar? Wonder if they were reading Alex's site?

Sellers admitted driving the pickup truck used that night, but he claimed Bell set the fire, according to an affidavit. After lighting the blaze, the pair "drove to a close location where both men watched the residence burn."

Enjoying the sight of people burning. I guess the screams from inside and people running over to help get them out of the house wasn't enough of a clue.

Bell "feels like it was a very unfortunate incident, just like everybody else," said his court-appointed lawyer, Lief Jeffers. "This was not anything that was intended by any of the parties."

I'm sure the wife feels much better now.

And a few others that support Alex's worldview:

A Nova Scotia man used Maine's sex offender registry last year to find and fatally shoot two registered sex offenders. Two convicted child rapists were killed in Washington state.

*Breaking News!!!*

Violent Sociopathic Organizations don't listen to the UN

Next up: Water is wet
Later: Bears crap in the woods

School Stabbings in Toronto, Canada...

So there's a call for handgun bans....

Gun ban needed, not school metal detectors: McGuinty

"Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday that he does not want to see the provinces' schools resort to installing metal detectors and having uniformed security officers patrol the halls in the wake of Tuesday's fatal stabbing at a Toronto high school."

"Instead, he said, Ontario needs to distinguish itself from the United States by imposing an outright ban on hand guns.

“Let's ban handguns in Ontario,” he said. “Let's ban handguns across the country. Let's declare war against handguns.”"

and he'll have to raise taxes to pay for it all.

You can't make this up folks.

Tip to WOG

Swiss crime numbers: The Saga Continues...

As reported earlier, there was a discrepancy between the UN and INTERPOL/CDOJ Swiss crime numbers. Discussions w/ Gary Mauser have yielded no clear answer as of yet:

I've now looked at the stats in the UN 9th report for both
Switzerland and Finland, and it's not obvious to me whether these
stats are for homicide or if they include attempted homicide as well.
The table says both, which is confusing.

This differs from the UN's 7th report which explicitly stated that
the homicide stats did not include attempted homicides.

If the 'homicide' stats in the 9th report do include both, as Un and
Interpol statistics often do, then clearly that would explain why
these rates per 100,000 are higher than the ones that Mr Kates and I
found in the Canadian Dept of Justice publication.

Typically, Interpol reports both a 'homicide' rate [including
attempted homicides] as well as a percentage of of these 'homicides'
that are unsuccessful and which would be better classified as
'attempted homicides'.

The Canadian Justice Department may well have adjusted the Interpol
statistics in this fashion to eliminate attempted homicides.

Thus, at this point, I cannot say that the UN statistics are
superiour to ours.

Cheers,

Gary Mauser

He sent me the 2002 INTERPOL report on Switzerland for comparison. It does indeed list 213 murders w/ the next column listed as "attempted" and a percentile of 59.6%. The UN 2002 report ,however, lists 213 murders "completed" w/ an additional 127 "attempted"(59.6%).

So did INTERPOL list the "attempted" as a percentile of the 213 as a whole or did they mean it in addition to the murders and just presented it as a percentile? Did they UN read it as "in addition to" to inflate the numbers of a pro-gun country or did the INTERPOL report just phrase it poorly?

My response? I've contacted the Swiss Office of Justice (Communications and Information) requesting clarification. We'll see if they respond.

Anti mathematics..

Here's another statement from Hemenway:

"The majority of Americans who die unintentionally from firearms are under twentyfive
years of age." No date is given for this claim but one can assume it's for 2003 or 2000, depending on the cited paper.

According to Wisqars, in 2004, there were 649 unintentional deaths by firearm for all age groups. For the ages of 1-25, there were 247. 38%.

Assuming he stayed w/ the "early nineties" wording before switching over to 1996-2001 (as looking at each individual year shows he did), the numbers for 1990-1994 for under 25 were 3926/7143. 55%

For 1990 alone it was 772/1416. Still 55%.

True, that's a "majority".

By 2000, however,(three years before he finished this report) it was 306/776. 39%. Not a majority. The same holds true since at least as early as '96. Over three years before his self cited other paper.

So even assuming he used the same wording from his 2000 paper, it would seem he would have to added over a decade of pre-'96 data to more current to come out w/ a "majority" or he intentionally used old data to make a current claim. Since he cites having accessed WISQARS for numbers in 2004, either way it shows nothing but a case of blatant intellectual dishonesty.

Mexican Police arrested in AZ..

And what were they doing? Buying guns:

ABC News


"3 high-ranking Mexican officers arrested at Phoenix gun show
Last Update: 9/12 9:16 am
Three high-ranking Mexican police officers were arrested over the weekend for buying weapons at a gun show in Phoenix in violation of a law barring non-citizens from purchasing firearms, a federal official said Wednesday.

The three include the director of the Baja California Sur state police and a commander of the federal police in Baja California, said Tom Mangan, a spokesman with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix....

Mangan said Mexican officials have been pressuring U.S. officials to cut off the supply of weapons going south."

I guess we've pushed guns on them so much that the brain altering waves are taking effect. We need to shut down gun shows to protect Mexican police from themselves.

Thanks to Michael S. for the link

The debate continues..

Sidetracking from the original Mauser/Kates article, CH has brought Hemenway's "A Public Health Approach to Firearms Policy" into the debate to prove correlation between ownership and homicide/suicide rates. Using various sources like Smallest Minority and Alphecca beside my own personal info, I brought quite a few weaknesses to light:

"Twenty-five other high-income, populous countries."

What countries? what years? Why limited to "high income"? What are the ownership levels of those countries and their specific crime rates?

"Note: The fifteen states (included in this table) with the highest average levels of household gun ownership...
(based on the 2001 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System)

Vs.

The six states (included in this table) with the lowest
average levels of household gun ownership were Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey,
Connecticut, and New York."

What about the other 29 states? Are there variations among the different states? What about Wash. DC? Why only 2001? Where are the actual datasets? Oh here they are:

http://www.alphecca.com/mt_alphecca_...es/002976.html

Now look at the numbers when they haven't been "controlled for". Makes a different story now doesn't it? How did he "control" for them? Where are the specifics on that?

"The majority of Americans who die unintentionally from firearms are under twentyfive years of age. Not surprisingly, in states with more guns, many more youth as well as adults die from firearm accidents".

Nice bit of selective phrasing there. "Unintentionally"? How about "intentionally"? Why doesn't he include the highest risk factor 17-25 in his charts? What states are those highest in? What are the homicides and injuries usually in result of?

More guns = more gun accidents? Well duh. More cars, more car accidents etc. Howabout from other accidents?

Suicides:

Same thing. The primary suicide demographic are males between 18-35. Why are they not counted? Would it skew the results? Oh, right, it would as most of Western Europe , Canada and Japan have higher suicide rates than the US and less ownership. In fact, after Australia banned most firearms, the suicide rate stayed the same as they just performed weapon substitution.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad303.pdf

Women: "Guns in the house are at higher risk."

Legal guns or illegal guns? Were the husbands restricted from ownership when it happened?

"Instead, Congress is considering giving the industry immunity from tort liability for negligence."

False.

"Like
aspirin bottles, new guns could also readily be made childproof, with minimum trigger pull standards to prevent very young children from shooting them."

"Readily made childproof" = only "very young children"?

What's "very young"? Are the "very young children" the ones pulling the triggers?

"promote personalized, or smart, guns that only the authorized user can fire."

Technology that isn't reliable and even the police don't want.

"Sniper rifles available to civilians can shoot .50-caliber rounds capable of downing helicopters."

Any firearm is "capable of downing helicopters" if you hit a vital part. At least he didn't say airplanes.

"Caseless ammunition reduces the ability of law enforcement officials to identify a crime weapon by the cartridge left at the scene."

Another type of tech that's still in development for military firearms, unreliable, and extraordinarily expensive. Not something criminals tend to use.

"Various types of ammunition, such as Glaser safety slugs"

Designed to stop blow through, a common argument from anti's. All they do is effectively turn a bullet into shot. They're also over $2 each. Not something Billy Crackhead would spend his money on.

"Requiring all firearm transfers to pass through licensed dealers, with the required background checks
and paper trail, would reduce the enormous flow of firearms to the illegal market"

While at the same time he's supporting the civil lawsuits against dealers and manufacturers to shut them down, all based off "trace data".

"ATF agents cannot now pose as felons in sting operations,"

because that's called entrapment.

"While evidence regarding the effects of these more permissive gun-carrying policies is
not conclusive, the best scientific studies suggest that they may increase rather
than reduce crime overall"

So even though the evidence from every state w/ CCW shows that CCW holders are significantly less likely to commit ANY crime, crime "may" go up? Where's these "best scientific studies"? What are the numbers? Oh, here;s the report. More "controlled" numbers based off of incomplete data and it still shows homicide went down.

"It is not clear why allowing individuals whom the police want to prohibit from carrying guns to do so should
boost public safety."

Because people don't believe in "pre-crime".

"Gun leaders do this partly by fomenting fear and anger among
gun owners, portraying any minor gun policy initiative as a veiled attempt to confiscate
everyone’s guns"

Kind of like the hoplophobes claim that having a gun in the house will automatically cause death and destruction, that the gun will just be taken away from you, and the gun lobby wants to give guns to children? That kind of fear mongering?

"it still totals some three million members."

Really? The NRA at the time was still over 4m. The current estimates are at 3.6m. That's only one organization.

"By contrast, gun-control groups have smaller memberships, and many members have little knowledge of firearms;"

Like the author. Trust me, this comes across. So we should have people who don't know what they're talking about determining technical based legislation?

"reasonable gun policies"

Nice terminology. The BC et al. consider the DC handgun ban,.50 cal bans, "Assault weapon" bans and the confiscations that occured in NY, CA, and NJ (which Hemenway considers only fear mongering) to be "reasonable".

"Motorists in the United States must obtain a driver’s license and register their automobiles."

Only if they're using them on public roads. Not on private land. We've gone over this bit before.

And on the bias bit, look who funded the paper:

the Joyce Foundation

By their own admission, they only fund anti-gun organizations and reports including the VPC who have called for bans on "intermediate power sniper rifles" and have it as policy to misdirect the public to promote bans and other legislation.

Here are the bits that really put the whole study into question:

"The percentage of households with a firearm has declined in the past two decades; about one in three households now contains a firearm."

Now assuming this is true, crime still increased and decreased proportionally in all states over those years. His causality and correlations should have led to a universal drop among the general populace and an increase among the decreasing legal owners.

And this flat out lie:

Rather than producing and promoting firearms that appear primarily designed
for criminal use, such as those that do not retain fingerprints, manufacturers could produce guns with unique, tamper-resistant serial numbers.

Now the onus is on the Anti's to find a single instance of any manufacturer promoting a firearm that doesn't retain fingerprints. Find an instance of a firearm that exists that doesn't retain fingerprints.

Where is this technology for "tamper-resistant" serial numbers?

The funniest thing I found was that he cites himself and his partner Miller nearly half the time.

For the most part, the report relies on cherry-picking selected numbers and demographics w/o providing the specifics unless you dig through the the reports they cite and then the sources they used. By citing themselves, that lends a lot of support to a circular reasoning argument. "There's correlation because I've shown proof of correlation".

Hat tip to the opposition..

Michael S. informed me that Zach Ragbourne is leaving the Brady Bunch. I'ld like to say that it's because he came to his senses but he's probably just moving on to bigger and better things.

Good luck Zach. If you're ever in Illinois, contact me and we'll ventilate some cans after emptying them.

Don't trust the Candadian DOJ...

As I mentioned earlier, it was noted that the CDOJ/INTERPOL report contained a typo on the murder rate in Luxembourg making it 9.01 instead of .9 . In the ongoing debate, a few more discrepancies have been noted, all from the CDOJ 2003 and 2004 reports.

The Mauser/Kates report shows the murder rate for Switzerland as 0.99 [2003] and Finland 1.98 [2004].

However the Ninth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends shows

Switzerlands murder rate at 2.59 (2003) and 2.94 (2004)

Finland murder rate at 2.75 (2004).

I hate to say this, but I'll put my money on the UN report being more accurate. The 7th UN report has Switzerland at about .98/100K in 2000 and increased through '04. Did the CDOJ take the 2000 number and claim it as '03? Don't know. I've contacted Mr. Mauser again. He's checking into it.

Still debating the Anti's.....

or "Say it over and over again".

Yes, this is still going on. CH likes using edited versions of reports to get numbers to make implied causality. He keeps referencing the 2000 ATF trace report. The problem? He keeps going back to the "highlights" and doesn't use the whole report. This is an important distinction. Anti's are always using the talking points of "1% of dealers", "guns from the South", etc. They selectively ignore the disclaimer in appendix B:

"For these and other reasons, the available data from
the participating jurisdictions does not yet constitute
a fully developed statistical series from which reliable
comparisons can be made from one reporting period
to the next or from one participating jurisdiction to
another. "

So then we go to the CRS report:

"At the same time, ATF’s findings might have undergirded the policies of a number of municipalities, under which civil lawsuits were pursued against the gun industry for gun violence in their jurisdictions. This is despite the fact that ATF has consistently stated that trace frequency, in and of itself, is not indicative of criminal activity by an FFL."

And:

"In conclusion, the ATF firearms trace database is an operational system designed to aid in ongoing investigations, rather than a system to capture “crime gun” statistics."

So, as we always point out, the Anti's have and continue to misuse the data by claiming absolute statistics even when the ATF said in the report that that's not what it's good for. It's just a summary of findings.

So what does that make any Anti individual or organization who uses those talking points as absolute statistics especially when the facts have been pointed out over and over? It makes them Intellectually dishonest. A nice way of saying "liars".

Edit:

In a little bit of coincidence, "wheredidtheguns.." posted a bit on trace data yesterday that I just read after I posted this. She's still new, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt on the limitations even though she posted a link to the 2006 data. Now that it's been pointed out in a "still to be moderated" post (as of 9:32am CT 9/12), we'll see if my post makes it up and her response.

Update:
Well, the comment didn't make it through.
Updateupdate:

OK, it went up about an hour after I posted this.

Obama and the Joyce Foundation

Via GLN and Saysuncle:

Obama was a board member of the Joyce Foundation.

So he claims he wants to protect "sportsmans and hunters rights" yet wants to ban the favored firearms of said individuals along w/ providing support to some of the most vitriolic anti propoganda there is.

Why oh why am I not surprised?

"US"v "THEM"

or 'Email from Gary Mauser over an internet exchange'

On a message board I frequent, I've debated past counting an anti who's primary tactic is repeating arguments even after I've refuted it in another thread, red herrings, and ad hominems. He does come up w/ some excellent sounding statistics but, as is usual in stat wars, counter ones can easily be brought up.

In this most current exchange, he (CH) claimed a correlation between strong firearm laws/ownership and low crime levels. I countered w/ the Mauser/Kates paper stating that , at best, the correlation (not causality)is towards more private ownership and lower crime. CH first blatantly dismissed the paper because "Gary Mauser makes a ton of money from the gun lobby". This point was made several years ago in another debate. He couldn't prove it then either so I emailed Mr. Mauser w/ it and several other questions. Here was his response:

" How? Please let me know?"

His next tactic was to try and get me to claim I read all 107 pages and found it 100% absolutely perfect. There was no way I was going to fall for this obvious ploy so I strung him along asking him to refute the article. Now this is the important part folks. After about 3 more pages of Ad Hominems and Red Herrings, he finally pointed out an error in the paper. Mauser/Kates stated that the murder rate in Luxembourg was 9 times that of Germany. CH pointed to several sources that this wasn't true and nearly messed himself in glee over me "getting caught with my pants down.

So what did I do? Did I leave in shame? Attempt to get him banned for being mean? Start insulting his mother? Nope. I emailed Mr. Mauser again:

Mr. Mauser,

In your recent paper w/ Mr. Kates, on page 7, you have listed Luxembourg as having 10x the murder rate of Germany and 30% higher than the US. I have seen the 9/100K number listed before but it doesn't correspond to the .9 as listed on page 28 of the UN Crime Survey.

http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/eighthsurvey/8sv.pdf

This discrepancy has been pointed out and used to dismiss the entire paper in a debate I am involved in. Could you help me as to where your data came from?

-Regards,

Mr. Mauser had the audacity to respond:

Thanks for pointing this out.

As it says in our paper, the homicide rates for this table were derived from the Canadian Department of Justice. This statistic comes from Homicide in Canada, 2002, where it does report [p 3] that the Luxembourg homicide rate is 9.01, not 0.9. The Canadian Department of Justice reports their source for this stat as Interpol. I guess the decimal got misplaced by someone in this translation. Interpol is notorious.

Our general point is still valid. Despite the differing percentages of gun owners in the two countries, the homicide rates do not reflect this. Germany has many gun owners, while Luxembourg has banned guns. Nevertheless, Luxembourg's homicide rate is not appreciably smaller than Germany's [0.92 or 1.11, depending upon the year].

Cheers,


Gary
www.garymauser.net/

The report itself is located here.

So w/ all the claims of dishonesty and "gun nuts" running w/ faulty data and meme's, it turns out that the information came from that disreputable source, the Canadian DOJ. I'm ashamed of myself for daring to use a source like that.

How many times has your average anti contacted the author of the many anti-gun reports and discussed w/ them the errors in it? How many times have those authors admitted to the error and explained where it came from?

Note this in case it's pointed out again.

Edit: For those interested , here's the thread:

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=537357