John Lott and research about firearms

[MadDogs]

Suppose that there was research that proved that people were more likely to commit a violent crime following a major negative life event (divorce, death of a family member etc). Does that mean that society is justified in taking away the firearms of people who have just experienced a major negative life event?

No.

 

[chuter]

I figure we are endowed by the creator with the right to life and self defense, and thanks to our founding fathers, that includes firearms as a means to defend our lives, families, homes, communities, and country.

Some people will behave irresponsibly with the tools we use; guns, knives, blunt objects, bare hands.
That doesn't mean those behaving irresponsibly should be cause to deprive the rest of us of those tools.

People behave irresponsibly with driving, drinking, parenting, etc. but that doesn't mean we all have to stop driving, drinking, and parenting. In all those cases we try to improve the behavior, not take away from everyone the things they use in their irresponsible behavior.

 

[Shadowrider]

There are areas which are not in the realm of judgement by the scientific method. Human rights for instance.

True but the science of statistical analysis is used to "justify" the regulation of those rights. Turnabout is fair play except to the left when it's turned on them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[vvvvvvv]

Hey scientist, I couldn't find any citations in that article.

http://www.nap.edu/read/10881/chapter/8

http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayres/Ayres_Donohue_comment.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20130304061928/http:/www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lindgren.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...critics/f3ae3f46-68d6-4eee-a65e-1775d45e2133/

http://crimeresearch.org/2015/09/cp...ias-in-recent-studies-on-right-to-carry-laws/ vs https://econjwatch.org/issues/volume-12-issue-3-september-2015?ref=issues

http://archive.is/9HZ7w#selection-169.0-174.0 vs http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2524729

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2003/01/21/maryrosh/#1999-08-18

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2003/02/05/the_other_lott_controversy

 

[YukonGlocker]

There are areas which are not in the realm of judgement by the scientific method. Human rights for instance.

Depends on what you mean by "judgement". Quantifying how rights differentially affect individuals or groups of people are important. That doesn't mean policy/law has to change, but creating policies/laws based on rights gives us great responsibility to understand how those rights-based policies/laws affect people. This is particularly important when we're trying to understand controversial or conflicting rights.

Suppose that there was research that proved that people were more likely to commit a violent crime following a major negative life event (divorce, death of a family member etc). Does that mean that society is justified in taking away the firearms of people who have just experienced a major negative life event?

No, it doesn't. But having that data would help those people in other ways. There are many things we can do to improve (or not) society other than changing gun laws (i.e., having this information can actually help preserve gun rights because alternative interventions don't have to involve guns).

I figure we are endowed by the creator with the right to life and self defense, and thanks to our founding fathers, that includes firearms as a means to defend our lives, families, homes, communities, and country.

Some people will behave irresponsibly with the tools we use; guns, knives, blunt objects, bare hands.
That doesn't mean those behaving irresponsibly should be cause to deprive the rest of us of those tools.

People behave irresponsibly with driving, drinking, parenting, etc. but that doesn't mean we all have to stop driving, drinking, and parenting. In all those cases we try to improve the behavior, not take away from everyone the things they use in their irresponsible behavior.

Exactly, there are many interventions that work without taking things away. The same principle holds in firearms related cases.

True but the science of statistical analysis is used to "justify" the regulation of those rights. Turnabout is fair play except to the left when it's turned on them.


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That is one of many applications of statistics. On the flip side, they are also used to grant people rights that they didn't have. Statistical analyses that are used in the context of human rights are typically being used because there is a disagreement about the right. Like it, or not, those disagreements have to be argued out; and that means everyone involved needs relevant information (i.e., statistics, etc.) that is as reliable and accurate as possible.

http://www.nap.edu/read/10881/chapter/8

http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayres/Ayres_Donohue_comment.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20130304061928/http:/www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lindgren.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...critics/f3ae3f46-68d6-4eee-a65e-1775d45e2133/

http://crimeresearch.org/2015/09/cp...ias-in-recent-studies-on-right-to-carry-laws/ vs https://econjwatch.org/issues/volume-12-issue-3-september-2015?ref=issues

http://archive.is/9HZ7w#selection-169.0-174.0 vs http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2524729

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2003/01/21/maryrosh/#1999-08-18

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2003/02/05/the_other_lott_controversy

Thanks for pulling those out. Maybe they are worth opening and criticizing now that they aren't embedded in a liberal website.

 

[vvvvvvv]

Thanks for pulling those out. Maybe they are worth opening and criticizing now that they aren't embedded in a liberal website.

I noticed that SSRN didn't correct their citation until after the article was published. It shows that even when looking at SSRN, one still needs to verify the cited publication to see if a paper was really published in the cited journal.

 

[ConstitutionCowboy]

...
Exactly, there are many interventions that work without taking things away. The same principle holds in firearms related cases. ...

The most effective intervention is either 100% guardianship or institutionalization or prison - when ever execution is not appropriate.

Woody

 

[Dale00]

YG: There are many things we can do to improve (or not) society other than changing gun laws (i.e., having this information can actually help preserve gun rights because alternative interventions don't have to involve guns).

My concern with this is that government lacks both the needed wisdom (subjective discernment) and good will to beneficially intrude upon people's lives and freedoms.

 

[Dale00]

This sums up one of aspects of the issue of academic research into crime and guns. "Peer review" should never be proclaimed as absolute proof. "Peers" can collude.

Gun Control Researcher: You Can’t See My Data Share
by Jason Richwine August 15, 2016 12:07 PM

Last month I advised supporters of federal gun research to give the public concrete reasons to believe the work would be unaffected by politics. Here’s an example of how not to do that. Fox News reported a few weeks ago that University of Alabama researcher Adam Lankford, author of a media-sensation study on the connection between mass shootings and gun ownership across countries, refuses to share his data and the details of his methodology with skeptics. I’d be the last person to assume that a news story has all its facts straight, but the details in this Fox News article, if accurate, are disturbing. Academics are expected to be as transparent as possible with their data and methods, but when skeptics wondered how Lankford was able to tally the number of mass shootings in countries where the records are sparse and are not kept in a language that he understands, Lankford offered only the vaguest responses. Worse yet, Lankford’s editor apparently does not agree that the lack of transparency is a problem. The editor instead fell back on the old standby that the study has been peer reviewed — as if that removes all doubt about its validity. (See Slate’s Daniel Engber on why peer review deserves much less esteem than it receives from the media. Short answer: Peer reviewers are rarely thorough, and they tend to build echo chambers for like-minded researchers.)

So why doesn’t Lankford just release the data? “I am open-minded about sharing data with other scholars for collaborative purposes, and consider those opportunities on a case-by-case basis,” he told Fox News. In other words, he’ll share data only with people unlikely to criticize him. I wish this were an isolated case. Unfortunately, many academics are eager to set up rules to shield their work from scrutiny. After medical journals proposed requiring data sharing as a condition of publication, a group calling itself “The International Consortium of Investigators for Fairness in Trial Data Sharing” condemned the plan earlier this month. One of the consortium’s arguments against data sharing is that researchers need to be protected from “analyses aimed at unfairly discrediting or undermining the original publication.” I suppose the researchers themselves get to decide what “unfairly” means. Social science is facing a major challenge — I’d call it a crisis — in that some of it has become politicized to the point where Americans feel like they cannot trust anything that comes out of a university. I don’t blame them. It certainly doesn’t help when researchers try to duck public scrutiny.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/438989/gun-control-research-data-sharing

 

[vvvvvvv]

"Peer review" should never be proclaimed as absolute proof. "Peers" can collude.

Or even be non-existent.

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...blish_fraudulent_plagiarized_or_nonsense.html