"Coming from people at Stanford and Johns Hopkins already taints it in my view, and the statements about how they used "plausible" models, leads me to think they made their conclusions, and did a study to back them up."
I really hate that we so often utilize source bias in this area, but not nearly so much as I hate that said rejection is practically always clearly justified. It ticks me off that almost all discussion outside the reviled "echo chamber" really is riddled with all manner of misinformation, to the point of being nearly useless for the exchange of ideas. Like a "last sane man" scenario
Because guns have been purged from education for generations, they have basically become something of a lost technology for large swathes of Americans. Whatever moral implications carried with the guns became forgotten covenants. The result is that the public discourse rapidly devolves into how many guns equal the weight of a duck, and whether that determines if they should float. Sometimes very technical and erudite discussions, from accredited academic institutions, no less.
How do you rebut that? How do you even engage it? I must say, the most disturbing and damning aspect of these types of studies is that they show how the role of law has become distorted in the modern era; no longer rooted in moral authority (i.e. punishing that which is wrong or harmful to others) it is guided almost solely by the ethereal faith of "utility." That's how you end up with gems like this from supposed intellectuals;
"Across the basic seven Index I crime categories, the strongest evidence of a statistically significant effect would be for aggravated assault, with 11 of 28 estimates suggesting that RTC laws increase this crime at the .10 confidence level"
"Our analysis of admittedly imperfect gun aggravated assaults provides suggestive evidence that RTC laws may be associated with large increases in this crime,
perhaps increasing such gun assaults by almost 33 percent."
*cough*
What? One third of your estimates suggest AA increases at a 10% confidence (even in High school AP, it was understood that anything over 5% was wild speculation, with 1% being preferred for supporting anything close to 'incredible claims' like that mere passage of laws will increase aggravated assaults with a gun 33%). I would also argue that the fact 100 pages of analysis was required for such broad and simple conclusions is also strong evidence of a very convoluted analysis concealing misrepresentation or outright manipulation of data. There should be a number of very clear and simple data correlations if carry laws are increasing assaults with guns by 33%
No mention either of the attempt to untangle correlation/causation; just the assumption that laws would have an effect on the crime rates. That's a pretty big assumption if you think about it (why do specific laws get enacted when they do, again...when a relevant class of crime has spiked up and gotten attention)
TCB
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