On Sat, 13 Aug 2016 06:45:09 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Aug 2016 12:26:17 -0400, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Aug 2016 15:58:34 -0000 (UTC), Doug Miller
wrote:

John B. wrote in
:

On Thu, 11 Aug 2016 20:11:14 -0400, Ed Huntress
wrote:

The correlations between firearm ownership and violent crime are
pretty much uniformly positive, and lead to some of the most
imaginative spin you'll ever hear from the pro-gun-absolutist crowd.

Even assuming this claim to be true, the existence of a correlation does not imply the
existence of a cause-and-effect relationship -- nor the direction of any cause-and-effect
relationship that may exist.

We already addressed that.. For this purpose, there is no need to show
cause and effect. Once you have the correlation, you can get the
desired result. It doesn't matter how you got there.

Perhaps living in high-crime areas causes people to own guns
for self-defense -- but you'll never hear that from the anti-gun crowd, will you?

So far, we haven't heard it from any crowd. g Why don't you look it
up, rather than taking wild guesses?


And how is it that Chicago and Washington DC have the strictest gun-control ordinances
anywhere in America, *and* among the highest rates of violent crime?

Ah, I didn't think anyone was still dragging out that old chestnut.

The reason is that having strict gun control doesn't keep guns out of
the hands of criminals, if all they have to do is to ride a bus for
five miles to get a gun.


Ed, you simply prove Mark Twain's statement that, "Figures often
beguile me," he wrote, "particularly when I have the arranging of them
myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often
apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies,
damned lies, and statistics." To be very much correct.

You simply seize on a set of statistics that "prove your point" and
ignore any evidence that your assertion is not the correct one.

But for a correlation, lets try the following:

Concealed Carry Permits:
1999 approximately 2.7 million permits issued i YU.S.
2014 approximately 11.1 million

Residential Air Conditioning Systems:
1993 approximately 68% of U.S. residence had air conditioning
2009 approximately 87%

You see, Growth in CC permits results in increased sales in
residential air conditioning systems.

To quote Mark Twain, "Figures often beguile me," he wrote,
"particularly when I have the arranging of them myself".

Or to put it another way, "any fool can gin up a set of numbers to
prove HIS point".

Your example is the opposite of what I've argued, John. You're
engaging in mindless associations. The correlation between gun
availability and suicides by gun is not only NOT mindless, it's a
proven dependency.

If you're going to engage in statistics-bashing, you should spend some
more time learning those points.

--
Ed Huntress