MonDie

Speaking of managing one's own body, there are also drugs that can be forced on you if you do yourself bodily harm. It's not just about protecting others.

Both Heller and McDonald won by the skin of their teeth, with a 5 to 4 vote.

Alright, but consider some developments since 1789. Should our guns have silencers, be accurate at a mile's distance, or fire ten rounds per second? If 18th century guns didn't, why should we assume the framers had this in mind? With guns so advanced, each lone individual becomes his own one-man militia. I agree that the 2nd ammendment is probably an individual right, in keeping with the rest of the ammendments, but this has been challenged. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment

wrong thread?

I'm questioning the meaning of "Arms" two and a half centuries ago.

That's a good thing. We don't want the individuals of our sample to vary in other ways because we don't want confounding variables. We want the equivalent of a controlled experiment.

I cannot understand how using states or nations as "individuals" of a sample invalidates the data. Towns, states, and nations vary in different ways. You think the variation between "individuals", and thus the potential for confounding variables, increases as one zooms out, but some variations lessen as one zooms out. For example, towns may be extremely rural or extremely urbanized, but each state consist of mostly rural land with cities dispersed throughout. Furthermore, state boundaries are not "arbitrary", they are widely agreed upon. You mention drug wars and organized crime as potential confounding variables, but gang violence only accounts for one-eighth (12.5%) of homicides, which doesn't come close to the 65.5% decrease in homicides that corresponded to the 55% to 75% decrease in gun prevalence (post #485). National Youth Gang Survey Analysis The table at the bottom gives number of gang-related homicides per yer. Compare those to the number of homicides per year given by FIGURE 1 in the PDF below. Homicide in the U.S. Known to Law Enforcement, 2011 More stats. The BJS report coroborates Table 3 of Miller, Azrael & Hemenway (2002) on the finding that approximately 65% of homicides are committed with guns. Section I: Gun Violence in the United States In 1996, gun deaths consisted of 54% suicides, 41% homicides, 3% accidents, and 2% other. According to BJS, homicides per year have hovered around 16,000 for the last decade. Deriving some estimates from the above, that comes out to 16,000 homicides, 10,400 gun homicides, and 13,700 gun suicides, dwarfing the approximately 440 child deaths per year implied by the opening post. Note: We could have greater accuracy with homicide-vs-suicide data newer than 1996. Actually, if you read it in context, "Arms" refers to 18th century firearms, specifically.

Poetic posters don't get upvotes.

GlobalTemporal Minimal Optimal Postal Doctoral Pharyngeal Mesial Distal Proximal I don't see it. I would say Ignoral - stemming from the tendency to ignore, or characteristic of such individuals.

Why does one stupid machine have to have so many capabilities!? Why!? Tell me why! Just imagine when they start hacking into our smart homes!!! http://www.wired.com/2015/09/smartthings-desperately-wants-turn-houses-smart-homes/

You're right, and thus any correlation between gun rates and lead will probably be positive. If no correlation, however, then lead's not a confounding variable. If they're negatively linked, then the study may under-estimate the potential effect of guns on homicide rates.

Sensei is right. Disconnect it. Don't trust a GUI either; physically disconnect the ethernet cord, etc. That's the first thing to do before using forensics techniques on a compromised system. You can no longer trust its web browser content anyway. Wireless laptops usually have a wifi hardware switch that lets you toggle wifi with a keyboard shortcut. AFAIK it's not part of your operating system, so it's out of the hacker's reach. Bluetooth can be compromised too, but I think that's only with multiple compromised devices "talking" with eachother. For extra, extra safety, don't plug in important USB devices. BadUSB code was released online, and it may be in use by now. Call your Internet service provider, and ask what to do. They might have you hard reset your networking devices. This usually involves holding the reset button 30 seconds or so. Each device has a sticker on it with a domain name or IP address for accessing the settings after reset. Just put it in the address bar like a website name. What about VoIP hacking? Could they do it remotely? If he has VoIP phone service then, to be safe, he should know it could be tapped or even spoofed. I find it odd that he was cut off three subsequent times until reaching the scam number, which didn't cut him off. If they gave him over-the-phone instructions that let them into his computer, then apparently they did it "within a minute"! I can check my bank account balance over my cellphone with one of their automated service systems. Just remember, those are some sensitive dial tones! Make it silent.

Alright alright, but do state-by-state lead emissions correlate with gun ownership rates?State by state gun data is easy to come by. I can do the calculation for Pearson's r. Just need Reyes' state by state lead data.

How convenient. "Lead exposure does not appear to affect the murder rate though, a result the author finds not entirely surprising given that her analysis omitted the effects of gangs and crack and that it is possible that only substantial exposure to lead would lead to an extreme outcome like murder." - the NBER Gotta love that evidence.

They did control for poverty, which may ultimately be more to the point than controlling for ethnicity. "percentage of the population who live in poverty (as defined by the poverty index developed by the Social Security Administration in 1961 and revised by the Federal Interagency Committees in 1980, with thresholds updated yearly to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index)" Show me evidence that lead exposure etc makes people violent.

Overtone, the researchers did their best to control for known confounding variables. "Our study extends previous work by using recent data, looking across both regions and all 50 states, disaggregating victims by age, and adjusting for potential confounders, including poverty, urbanization, unemployment, alcohol consumption, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery." You have a point since the distribution of gun toting states isn't hetergeneous. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/119908408802266349 As the map shows, although there are 10 states with 50%+ gun ownership rates, they cluster together into 4 regions (if you count Alaska). The lowest states are somewhat more dispersed. Regardless, there could be other relevant variables that would remain linked to gun ownership even in a heterogeneous sample, for example political leaning. With all that said, this may be the best data available, so we should use it. The discussion section acknowledges that the study doesn't address causation, and it poses the very same hypothesis. What stood out to me is that gun toting states had higher gun-related and non-gun-related homicides, although the former link was much stronger. I read the research, and Table 3 is the most interesting. They compare the 6 highest states with the 4 lowest states in gun ownership rates. note: The FS/S is a validated proxy for gun ownership that uses the fraction of suicides committed with guns. The gun-high and gun-low states had 53% vs 13% guns-per-household (4:1) 76% vs 33% on the FS/S* (2.3:1) 21,148 vs 7266 homicides (3:1) 15,283 vs 3,668 gun-related homicides (4:1) 5,865 vs 3,598 non-gun-related homicides (1.6:1) Here's the link once more: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447364/?report=classic If Overtone provided data, then we could discuss his population density argument. I'm not wasting breath on qualitative hearsay.

In fact, your argument implies that failing to control for state-wide population density should lead to an underestimate.

Then homicide rates are correlated with and potentially influenced by both variables: guns-per-capita AND popultation density. All you've demonstrated is that the correlation coefficient (r-value) is not a perfect 1.0.

iNow doesn't include this research paper, but links to the Harvard article and other research on page 6, post 118. On page 9, post 173 they are rehashed, and you decline to discuss them in post 175, refering iNow back to "earlier posts, in the 70s and so forth." I figured we could use the stats in their results section to estimate just how bad the problem is/might be. Granted the data is old, and the US homicide rate is lower now.

This looks like one all debaters ought to read. Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across US Regions and States, 19881997 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447364/?report=classic Summary below.

Overtone is such a bad ass.

You can never go wrong with exercise! It helps people with AD H D. anxiety too

Okay, I see. I guess that doesn't include the burden of maintaining your vehicle to avoid the felony of manslaughter. Please tell me where these ideas come from.

Yet it can require that we aren't felons... Please provide a source for your claim.

Guns present more of a threat to our others rights than speech does. It seems awfully hypocritcal to call something a right, then deprive people of it. Why can't the state impose cost barriers to the objects of our rights? More broadly, where is it outlined exactly how the government goes about justifying assistance or hindrance to the objects of our rights? It's a fact of nature and society that there are always requirements for obtaining or maintaining the objects of our rights, be they monetary, cognitive, or laborious. The government can assist or hinder us in meeting these requirements, with its hindrances including the establishment of its own, legal requirements. Such legal requirements may have denial or approval as their default position. For example, requiring that we not be felons, although it holds approval as the default, is a hindrance as much as the requirement that we produce money.