guns prevent violence!

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue May 4 12:45:16 PDT 1999


At 12:41 PM 5/4/99 -0400, Barkley Rosser wrote:
> The real problem with this Lott/Landes drivel
>is that it does not make a proper comparison.
>How about comparing the US (or the states in
>the US with concealed gun laws) with the rest
>of the world? Guess who has a whole lot more
>deaths from guns, and I mean a whole lot more!

Barkley, I generally like what you write, but I think you screwed up this one. Between-country comparisons are even more suspect than between-state comparison because the ceteris paribus condition is very difficult to meet, hence the attribution of causality is moot.

I think the main problem with the guns-prevent-violence drivel (and I really think it is a textbook example of hogwash) lies in small-number comparisons: the incidence of defensive gun use is so low, that even a single instance can significantly alter the rate. I suspect our friend jordan may object to those low incidence rates, but claiming high rights would put everything we know about criminal behavior on its head. It just ain't so.

Wojtek



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