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".