more gun crime? Or the one with more top down control and less gun crime? It depends on the person asked, I suspect. But using events like mass shootings as trends, instead of the Black Swan outliers that they are, is misguided and leads to bad policy, in my opinion. My point was simply that events such as mass shootings, or the run of mass stabbings that China has faced in recent years, are anomalous and incredibly infrequent, even if media coverage might make you think otherwise. And legislation that governs concealed carry permits would have done less than nothing to change the outcome of those events, neither shooter in Aurora nor Newtown perpetrated their crime with any help from concealed carry permits. Writing a balanced appraisal of the facts of the Concealed Carry permitting process is all I set out to do, so I think stating both sides of the debate was appropriate. I did not set out to debate gun rights with the piece, and I think if you read it again, you may see that as well. Thanks again for reading and joining the conversation! Stan ! August 8, 2013 - 9:07 am
Ygal, Black Swan events are not just defined by infrequency, and the fact that you are now trying to attribute differences between the US and Europe to culture suggests that you don’t really know what ‘Black Swan’ means. Trying to cover different sides of a debate is perfectly fine. What is not fine, but which is way too common in the media, is suggesting that arguments on both sides of a debate are equally valid. Making up imaginary facts, including imaginary kniferelated violence facts, to defend such a ‘balance fallacy’ is even worse. It’s hard to blame you for doing this because many of the nations most prominent journalists also do it, and get rewarded for doing so. But maybe you have a chance to be better than that. Re: the gun issue, let me suggest that you consider a much more defensible position instead one that challenges your credibility. The US has looser gun laws, more gun ownership, and much higher gun-related violence that other industrialized nations. According to a Boston Children’s’ Hospital study released earlier this year, US states with more restrictive gun laws have less gun violence than US states with less restrictive gun laws. These facts do not necessarily make looser gun laws wrong. So don ‘t make a fool of yourself by explicitly or implicitly denying these facts. Culturally, we accept higher rates of gun violence in exchange for the right to own guns for self-defense. Full stop. Ygal Kaufman ! August 8, 2013 - 12:03 pm
“If we were actually seeing mass shootings happening every day, happening in statistically significant places (i.e. mass shootings happening frequently in states where there are more guns and less laws), and being perpetrated by sane people, it might become more statistically significant, and therefore a useful measure for the gun debate.” I never defined Black Swans as merely infrequent. But infrequency is the bedfellow of statistical insignificance. Here’s an example. If 2 different commercial airline pilots purposely steered their planes into mountains killing hundreds of people, and it happened in the same year, you would almost certainly have people clamoring for background checks for pilots, and new laws governing airlines. But the fact that 2 pilots happened to go crazy, does not tell us anything meaningful about plane safety. If on the other hand, 20 pilots did it, and they all graduated from the same flight school, that would be a clue that something fishy was going on. That is why I called mass shootings like Newtown or Aurora black swans: they were tragic, but they told us almost nothing about gun control success or failure. I’m confused why you think I made up “imaginary knife related violence facts.” I made a bet based on my impression of things. The prevalence of knife crime in Western Europe, particularly the UK, is not seriously debated by anyone. The United States has a much higher murder rate per capita across the board, meaning murders by any weapon, including knives. And it’s difficult to make direct comparisons in numbers because crimes are defined and recorded differently in different countries and continents. However studies (of varying and debatable methods) have universally found that “knife crime” per capita is higher in the UK. Some say, somewhat unbelievably, that you’re as much as 4 times more likely to be the victim of violent crime with a knife in the UK than here. I tend to doubt that figure, and I would certainly entertain debates about how much higher it really is, but I can’t seem to find any data, or even just people claiming, that “knife crime,” as nebulous a term as that is, is actually as bad or worse here than in Western Europe. But I’m open to the possiblity. If you did point me to such data, I’d be willing to entertain that notion. Regarding that Boston Children’s Hospital study, here’s a quote from a boston.com article about it: “In an editorial that accompanied the study, Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, a University of California, Davis emergency medicine physician, cautioned that this type of study is “inherently weak” and that a correlation between more laws and fewer deaths does not show cause and effect.” I wish it was a simple as that, but it’s really not. You seem to believe very strongly that there’s obvious blacks and whites and no nuance at all in any of this. Which is fair, I guess. I just don’t happen to agree with you. Thanks again for reading. Maybe my next piece will redeem me in your eyes. It’s called, “Is There a God? Who Knows?” Just kidding. Stan ! August 10, 2013 - 1:19 pm
No redemption necessary, Ygal. You are obviously smart enough and conscientious enough to go look up the facts. We could go on with the rebuttals… As you suggested, gun control is one of the least black & white issues, but I’ll stop bugging you after a couple of parting points. 1. As Matt Taibbi recently said, all journalism is advocacy even when you play the ‘fair and balanced’ game. The only question in this case is whether you are advocating for “safe consensus” or for what the preponderance of evidence actually tells you.