A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S

Re:A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the... by jerf on Monday January 12, 2015 @02:14PM (#8875788)

That's just a drive-by comment by an ideologue. Consider it scientifically: The theory is that gun ownership causes crime. The truth is that gun ownership in the US has significantly increased in the past decade. Therefore, the theory predicts that gun crime must necessarily have gone up in the past 10 years. It has not.

Therefore, the only conclusion available is that the theory is incorrect.

You may be able to salvage pieces of the result your are trying to obtain by a more careful analysis, but the facts do not permit "guns = gun crime" to be sustained at such a simplistic level. By the time one is done examining what the facts do sustain the result is far, far weaker.

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Re:A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the... by gmac on Friday January 23, 2015 @11:08AM (#8935533)

An alternative statement of my theory is that easy access to and widespread ownership of firearms is a causal factor in gun crime.

That there is easy access to and widespread ownership of firearms in the US has not, to my knowledge, changed in the past 10 years, so a lack of change in the gun crime statistics indicates pretty much nothing.

As someone from a country with no easy access to firearms (and generally unarmed police), and knowing the gun crime statistics, I am continually amazed that people can argue that guns are uncorrelated with gun crime and keep a straight face.

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