Gun Control V3.0

But I still don't see the larger point of that illustration.

As Brett illustrated above, not too many people are going to stick their hand into a tank of black widow spiders.

I suppose you can say that it is motivated by fear, but is not wanting to be bit by black widows a bad thing?

You said yourself, fear is just an emotion.

Not ever leaving your house because you are afraid of getting mugged is one thing. Simply clipping a handgun to your belt is another.

Again, I guess what I am missing is the scope of your argument. You think any carrying of a weapon for personal defense is irrational.

Again, though why stop there? What about carrying pepper spray, or a loud whistle, or even staying out of dark alleys?

I could just as easily say "I go in all of the dark alleys I see, because I focus on the real dangers in the world. Anyone who doesn't is just afraid."

I don't know how that statement applies to anyone else but me.

It is all simply a matter of perspective

 

Gun advertising aimed at promoting gun ownership for personal safety is overt fear-baiting. Take my example above of the hypothetical 90-lb weakling who obsesses about being beaten up by big guys. Is his fear realistic? No, of course not, except in his teenage years, but not even then unless he projects fear, because teenagers can smell fear on other kids. And we don't want to arm all highschool kids - that would be cultural suicide (although maybe Special_Fred would disagree).

I just spent some time looking at sexual assault statistics from the doj. 16-19 year old girls are victims of sexual assault at more than twice the rate of 20-24 year old women, who are victimized at a rate many times higher than the 25 and older group.

After the age of 25 you are, statistically speaking, safe from sexual assault.

However, "People aged between 25 and 64 are more likely to own guns than those aged 18-24 or 65 and over. Only 19% of those aged 18-24 own guns." (from "conservativenews.net") Moreover, according to an FBI survey, most gun owners are middle class, middle age white males from rural areas, 46% of whom own their guns for protection. Why are they being such sissies, I wonder, when the vast majority of violent crimes are not aimed at them?

Statistically speaking, the wrong people are arming themselves against violent crime. Their decision is an irrational, fear-based choice. Either that or it reflects a basic common sense deficit.

A high school girl has the most legitimate fear of violent sexual assault. Now I admit there are Americans out there who believe that high schools would be safer if every high school student were armed, plus the teachers, maybe, and the janitor, and the ladies who serve that crappy lunchroom pizza.

By pandering to a culture of fear, the guns-for-protection movement, creates absurd outcomes for all of us, like the cost to society of children who accidently blow their own heads off, or the cost of domestic disputes that turn deadly because of the immediacy of a loaded gun, or the cost to society of stolen guns that find their way into the hands of violent criminals.

 

jabba,

You of all people should know that statistics are not everything. For example, in your "fear" thread, you stated:

I don't fear gun owners. I'm not squeamish about guns. I am a gun owner. I don't fear people who want to carry a gun around for personal safety, I pity them. They are a bigger threat to their family and neighbors than any terrorist, by virtue of sheer numbers. A woman is statistically more threatened by her handgun owning spouse than she is by an unknown armed assailant. And I should add a woman is statistically more threatened by her handgun owning spouse than she is by Al Quaeda.

Similarly, you also stated that:

You mean, a simple choice to be prepared to have your child die in a firearm accident. In protecting your children, out of fear, from an irrational perceived threat, you have exposed them to an actual threat of inavertently killing them yourself.

What your argument comes across as is something completely irrational. You seem to be claiming that simply because the statistics say that (random number for illustration) 20% of shootings are accidents in the home, it means that each gun owner has a 20% chance of shooting someone in their home.

The statstics don't exist in a vacuum. They do not dictate people's behavior. They describe it as it is at a certain point in time.

To use an analogy, the teenage pregnancy rate could be 10% (random number again), but that doesn't mean that each teenage girl has a 10% chance of getting pregnant, no matter what. It means that out of all teenage females, 10% of them had been pregnant at the point in time of the study. Individual people still have great control over their own actions and results (such as a girl who practices abstinance having a 0% chance of getting pregnant barring sexual assault).

For examnple, my older brother is a handgun owner (as he has said here many times). Were he to get married, he would not be likely at all to shoot his wife (he is actually one of the kindest and gentlest people I know), and he would make sure that she was trained in gun safety before they were married. To claim that his chances of shooting his wife are just as great as a habitual abuser is a gross fallacy.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Individual people still have great control over their own actions and results (such as a girl who practices abstinance having a 0% chance of getting pregnant barring sexual assault).

the degree to which individual people have "control" over their own actions and results is debatable. we know that over 80% of teenagers who decide to remain sexually abstinent don't actually end up practicing sexual abstinence (i don't have the exact figure here, but it's in that ballpark).

we can also look at large groups of people and determine with a fair amount of certainty that X percentage of them will perform Y action, and our degree of certainty increases with the amount and quality of data available. in that context, focusing on individual choices is kind of foolish. if we know that, whatever they say, X percentage of people are going to do Y, it doesn't really matter who chooses to do Y and who doesn't. if someone chose not to do Y, statistically speaking that basically just means that someone else did. there are ways of changing those percentages, but the ones that focus on trying to change individual decisions basically never work.

does this mean we're not free to choose our own actions? maybe, maybe not, but a better question is probably "who cares, and does it really matter anyway?"

people make decisions based on circumstances and context, and given certain circumstances, they're behavior is basically predictable based on culture and race and age and sex and other demographic info. if you want to change the rate of a behavior, you have to change the circumstances, because you're never going to be able to convince the same people to react to the same circumstances differently in any statistically significant way.

 

Let's look at a specific example then for clarity. Let's say someone is trying to decide whether to keep a gun in the home to protect himself and his family from the threat of an intruder.

The American Academy of Pedriatrics, which in fact is not a virulently anti-gun organization, as was suggested in this thread, but rather an organization devoted to issues surrounding children's healthcare, states first that the safest thing for children is not to have a gun in the house - but if you do insist on having a gun...then the AAP lists a series of steps you should take to reduce the risk of having your child injured in a firearm accident.

Of course, many of the 46% of gun owners who own a gun for protection would object to these steps, because the more steps you take to secure guns from children, the less useful it is likely to be to you in an armed intruder emergency.

It's a pretty clear spectrum. The more useful a gun is to you in an intruder emergengy, the more likely it is that a child in your house can get hold of it and injure him/herself or others.

But this little exercise completely ignores the actual likelihood that an intruder will ever enter your home while you or anyone else is in it. You do far more to protect yourself from threat by simply locking your doors and signalling that you're home than you do by arming yourself. Every police officer in the world knows this to be true.

I don't live in a particularly wealthy neighborhood, but I've taken the time to review crime statistics for my community. The number one crime in my neighborhood is the burglarized garage. The scary intruder who sneaks into an unlocked empty garage in the middle of the day when everyone's at work or at school.

If my bicycle gets stolen out of my garage, I don't think to myself, "damn, I shoulda set up all night with a loaded rifle." I think, "damn, I shoulda locked the damn door."

 

But you are doing nothing more than focusing on the tool again, when what you should be doing is focusing on the behavior.

How many normal gun owners do you think sit up at night watching their garage?

Removing the gun from the equation, we might as well say that type of person would be sitting up all night with a jar of acid, ready to throw it on intruders.

It is not an example that is really grounded in reality.

Much of what you are relying on is simple generalization, and again, not everything is reflected by your perception.

You live in an urban area, and as such are using that perspective.

Well, what about those who don't?

Let's use an example that is close to both of us.

There is a rual area, Galatin County, in Southern Illinois, that only has 2 deputies on duty.

There is the Sheriff, and his part time support officer.

Practically, this set up means that the law enforcement in that area is nothing more than an on call response team. (for serious matters and road patrol, they rely on the State Police)

Maybe the situation dictates that people view self-defense differently in that area?

And not just crime, but there are coyotes and various snakes as well.

Simply put, the people view guns differently than you do.

A person may never be attacked by a coyote on his farm there, but if the nearest emergency response is minimum 20 minutes away, a gun represents a necessary tool.

Additionally, what you need to be focusing on is behavior, instead of the object used.

You keep mentioning all of these battered wives who are endangered by guns, yet make no mention of the abusive behavior.

An abusive spouse needs help changing the cycle of abuse.

Taking something away isn't going to change that pattern.

In a fit of passion, a lack of a gun doesn't mean that there isn't a kitchen knife, or golf club, or broken table leg that would be used.

A spouse doesn't turn abusive simply because there is a gun in the house, just like a gun alone doesn't turn people into the raving psychopaths.

 

You live in an urban area, and as such are using that perspective.

Well, what about those who don't?

Let's use an example that is close to both of us.

There is a rual area, Galatin County, in Southern Illinois, that only has 2 deputies on duty.

There is the Sheriff, and his part time support officer.

Practically, this set up means that the law enforcement in that area is nothing more than an on call response team. (for serious matters and road patrol, they rely on the State Police)

Maybe the situation dictates that people view self-defense differently in that area?

And not just crime, but there are coyotes and various snakes as well.

Simply put, the people view guns differently than you do.

this, i will admit, is an excellent point, and goes a long way towards explaining that support for gun control is strongest in urban areas, and opposition to gun control is strongest in rural areas.

private gun ownership in cities is a very different animal than private gun ownership in rural areas, but i can't think of a way to have laws that vary by area in that way with this issue. gun control in urban areas would be rendered meaningless if someone could just drive out to a more rural area and buy whatever he or she wanted. but, on the other hand, it's kind of crazy to be endangering the safety of people in the cities by keeping restrictions as loose as rural people might like them.

You keep mentioning all of these battered wives who are endangered by guns, yet make no mention of the abusive behavior.

An abusive spouse needs help changing the cycle of abuse.

Taking something away isn't going to change that pattern.

this is also a good point. i don't think the spousal abuse issue is a particularly strong one for gun cotnrol activists to be using.

 

My personal experience happens to include rural southern life and Midwest urban life. And I understand completely and fully the gun culture of the south.

My grandfather had guns, and certainly used them to shoot snakes. My grandmother wouldn't hesitate to shoot at the deer who got into her garden. That's farm life.

But never once in all the time I spent on a farm in the heart of gun country did my grandfather suggest that he kept guns for protection from people. And he certainly didn't own any handguns. That's the difference. If you asked him why he kept a gun, he would've mumbled something about deer and snakes. Common farm occurrences. Never in the 75 years he spent on the same plot of land did he ever need a gun to scare someone off his property or to protect his home and family in any way. He taught me what it meant to be calm in a scary situation when a tornado ripped through the back of his property and tore half the roof off the farmhouse one summer. How he reacted - I think that's one of the reasons I'm not scared of anything. I know how to react rationally to my own fear, and I know how to handle myself in any situation, and that's why I don't need to walk down the street armed.

I know bad stuff happens. I know there are actual cases of ordinary people with guns thwarting crime. But for most people in most places, owning a handgun for personal safety, or to protect your home, is just plain unwise, and likely the result of an irrational calculation of risk, driven by fear.

And again, the advertising and media of those who promote gun ownership for personal safety panders to fear, encourages the fear, thrives on that fear, and ultimately succeeds on the fear.

If fewer people lived in fear there would be far fewer gun owners, and no one would ever have to bring up the words "gun control."

 

"Why are they being such sissies, I wonder, when the vast majority of violent crimes are not aimed at them?"

I can't resist. Maybe the crimes are not aimed at them because they are armed and DON'T present themselves as victims, as you stated you do.

The problem with this debate is that, Although I see your point-
The fear of a possible threat, so one arms himself-
I don't see how: 1) that makes one a sissy coward
2)That means the person is Living in Fear

Now if carrying a firearm is a person's defining
characteristic, then yes maybe THAT person is living in fear. BUT I don't see that being the case in the majority of gun-owners.


Now about how to keep a firearm in your house for self defense. I've seen two devices on the market just for this. I think they are called the Gun-Safe and a Gun-Vault.
One has a key-pad that the user keys in a code and the door opens. In case of someone trying to key in a code and it's the wrong one, an alarm goes off. (tattletale feature) If the power goes out (or is cut) then it has a battery back up, if the battery runs out it just stays locked until you use the key.
The other one has a thumbprint scanner and is basically the same thing.
That should cover that issue.

Okay now what I don't get. It's okay for a cop, but not me? Let's see If I take 2 semesters of Police Academy, take the state test, and join the local Police Department Reserve (one day a month, most cities)THEN it's okay for me to carry the other days of the month.
But if I'm an avid shooter, and I carry I'm a sissie coward???
You keep saying it but haven't really explained it to make sense.

You call it Fear, I call it my civic duty.
Hypothetical Situation.
Rabid Dog walks into my yard. I can stay in the house and call animal control and HOPE they get there before it's gone. (the safest thing to do, RIGHT?)
OR! I can go outside and blow it's head off with my 12 gauge.
I have to kill it. It's a threat to my ENTIRE neighborhood. What if it attacks a small child?
If I have a clear shot it's MY DUTY to stop it.

Rabid Dog or Rappist
it's all the same

"A ship in a harbor is Safe,
But that is not why a ship is built"

The safest thing to do is not always the RIGHT thing to do.
It's safest to not enlist in the Military
It's safest to not expose your skin to UV rays
It's safest to not drink.
It's safest to not eat any fatty foods
It's safest to not have any sex

 

Ok, Atticus Finch, but the gun lobby tell you it's safest to own a gun - that's the only way you'll possibly be able to live your life without constant fear. But I pity those who can't get peace of mind without a handgun. Their fear has made them lose touch with common sense.

 

once again.
You CALL it fear. BUT you haven't made your point.
You just keep saying what you think. It would be nice if you would back it up.
But since You don't, I assume you can't.

It's just being prepared. I am an Eagle Scout the motto is "Be Prepared", not "Be Safe and never do anything yourself".

If everyone had THAT mentality then no one would ever be a LEO or enlist in the Military, or change thier car's oil, Wow the list could go on forever!

I don't live in Fear. I assess threats and prepare. Maybe it's a flat tire. Maybe it's a dead battery. Maybe it's a slip-n-fall. Maybe it's the next Ted Bundy.
No one can prepare for EVERY situation. But those situations I can prepare for I do prepare for.
That's why I have a retirement fund.

"I want nothing
I fear nothing
I am free"

*edit starts here-
"Okay Atticus Finch"
Actually shooting a High Power rifle in a neighborhood is dangerous. That's why I clearly stated I would use a shotgun. ya'know "Old Yeller" style.

 

diz
gun control in urban areas would be rendered meaningless if someone could just drive out to a more rural area and buy whatever he or she wanted.

So what if you extended it across the entire nation? Wouldn't matter. The market supplies those things that are in demand.

You regulate it, you create greater potential value for it.

Besides, I'd just buy it on the market.......open or illicit.

Gun control doesn't work....not in our culture.

You want to change something, change the culture.

This nannyism makes me want to puke.

I think militias should be legalized. They would be merchants and would sell their protection services to neighborhoods, communities, etc.

A federal commission from rotating communities would provide oversight. It would be comprised of veteran law enforcement officers, polticians, community activists,etc.

 

Talk about a dead political issue..... Once upon a time, I recall Patrick Kennedy vowing he would take the Gun Issue, wrap it around the necks of the GOP and hang them with it when he was chair of the Democrats House caucus for the 2000 election.

Amazing how the Democrats have gone into full retreat on this issue. AMazing how there was not a peep about this at the Dem Convention.

 

Actually, I specifically recall a backhanded insinuation about 'assault weapons' posing some undefined threat to America during the Democratic National Convention. I could be wrong, of course, but I remember commenting on it to one of my friends.

Anywho, back to fear and all...

I don't think that we necessarily disagree all that much, Jabba. I just don't know that we're communicating on the same wavelength.

Let me turn this on its head a little bit, and, in so doing, echo some of Mr44's thoughts on the matter... Let's say that, as a gift, you were given a SIG-Sauer P228 semi-automatic pistol and (through some sort of not-yet-understood legal magic) a valid concealed weapons permit. You then proceed to carry this firearm upon your person legally for a day. Are you now living a life utterly dominated by fear, paranoia, and irresponsibility?

Will you leave your pistol lying around loaded when young children visit your home? Will you hole up in your house for fear of being murdered by evil death commandos? In short, will the possession of a firearm fundamentally alter your personality so as to negate your predeliction toward common sense, reason, and responsibility? Will owning that pistol--a lowly little pistol--wash away everything that your childhood role models taught you?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, why is it the fault of the weapon and not the man (or woman) who wields it when said weapon is misused?

As for 'the gun lobby' that you mention but never define preying and feeding upon perpetual terror, I'm afraid that I simply do not agree, for the same reasons I've mentioned in my previous post. When Diamler-Chrysler advertizes their new 300 sedan as being the safest car in its class, or having name-brand safety systems with various governmental accolades, I don't believe that some nebulous 'car lobby' is encouraging a market fueled by the abject fear of crashing. I know the cars/firearms comparison has already been used, but I felt the context of this post was sufficiently different to revisit the basic concept.

Are software manufacturers spontaneously generating a phobic demand for antivirus programs or spyware detection systems? No. They're marketing a product that offers a modicum of protection from an identified threat that a sufficient percentage of the software-buying public is willing to invest in. I doubt that the majority of people, if interviewed while standing in line at Staples with McCaffey's latest update in their carts, would say that they were buying their software because they were scared crapless about faceless, nameless hackers assassinating their hard drives.

On the same note, I have never--ever--seen anybody in a gun shop either browsing over or purchasing a firearm in a visibly terrified state. In fact, the only person I have ever seen in a gun shop that seemed at all uncomfortable was a girl who appeared to be in her early twenties buying some pistol ammunition for her father while she was out and about running errands. She was in an unfamiliar environment surrounded with people she didn't know buying a product she didn't seem to have had any real experience with.

Anywho, I think that the big hole I see in your posts is that X percentage of firearms owners have their weapons for self defense. You then seem to simply interchange 'self defense' for 'an irrational and debilitating terror or fear that overrides common sense'. I don't see the connection, or understand your baseline reasoning from getting to Positoin B from Position A.

As near as I can tell, you can't prove that a meaningful number of firearms owners that posess their weapons primarily for defensive purposes are actually the delusional paranoid public dangers that you assert they are. This isn't a flame or anything like that. I know that tone and intent can be hard to judge on the internet, where commodities such as body language and tone of voice do not exist, so you'll just have to take my word for it, but I mean it. This is in no way, shape, or fo

 

Oh, I nearly forgot something, Jabba (sorry for the double-post, by the way)...

Take my example above of the hypothetical 90-lb weakling who obsesses about being beaten up by big guys. Is his fear realistic?

According to the California Department of Justice, in Fiscal Year 1998, it was more common for violent crime victims to be beaten to death with a criminals' bare hands than they were to be shot to death by a very wide margin.

I see nothing unrealistic about wanting to be able to defend oneself against attack. People have been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. The only thing that changes is the minutae with which they do so.


Finally...

After the age of 25 you are, statistically speaking, safe from sexual assault.

This sounds a lot like, 'it doesn't happen all that often, therefore it does not happen at all' to me. The logic of your statement here doesn't pan out for me. Perhaps you could clarify?

 

"...primarily for defensive purposes are actually the delusional paranoid public dangers that you assert they are."

First, I haven't said that. I have taken pains to distinguish irrational, cowardly fear from delusional fear that is the product of mental illness.

Lets assume for a moment that, not unlike every other business sector, companies that sell guns for personal protection do marketing research.

Consequently, they have found the fear that's dripping from their target consumers, and so they advertise based on that fear.

Their target market is people who fear for their lives. In other words: chickens.

Effective advertising always reflects its target market. If their advertising appeals to fear, you can bet the people they sell to are fearful. The gun manufacturers know these people for who they really are, even if you don't.

 

It's worth noting that I live in southern West Virginia, which is a pretty gun-totin' area, and I do not recall ever seeing a gun ad of any sort other than just some basic, informative sign saying "Authorized Firearms Dealer" or somesuch. It seems to me that, largely, the people who want guns know they want them, and guns aren't something you push on people the way you would a breakfast cereal or a motorcycle.

And I still don't get your "irrational fear" points. I lock my home doors before I go to sleep at night. Do I have an irrational fear of intruders in my home? Some people with valuables have security alarms on their houses. Do they have an irrational fear of being burgled? I think most people would agree that those are just basic, reasonable precautionns. I don't see why buying a tool increasing your ability to defend yourself is any different.

Heck, if I bought a gun (which is something I will probably consider in the future), I'd buy it expecting never to use it except during shooting practices. It's not like I'm a mafia target; I don't expect to be attacked by anyone. But it seems only a sensible precaution to have the ability to defend myself should something unexpected happen.

-Paul

 

Whoa...Whoa..

First of all, a major clarification needs to be put out there:


Let's say that, as a gift, you were given a SIG-Sauer P228 semi-automatic pistol

Well, if I was given a gift of a SIG, the first thing I would do is trade it for something...you know..effective

Then the rest of the illustration could be discussed

 

Jabba:

Sorry, I didn't pick up on the 'delusional' point you were trying to make. It sounded for all the world like you were stating that people who owned firearms primarily for the purposes of self-protection were irrationally paranoid. That, in fact, they were deluded.

Even if that's inaccurate, it's what I was reading in your posts.

At any rate, your marketing research point falls flat (for me, at least) because your conclusion presupposes the premise. Firearms companies market their wares to a paranoid, cowardly audience. Why? Because their target audience is fearful and cowardly. Why? Because firearms companies market their wares to a paranoid, cowardly audience. Again, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

For that to be a reasonable argument, you would first have to prove that people who own firearms for defensive purposes are, in fact, fearful cowards. From there, you would have to prove that firarms manufacturers conciously market their products to the same consumer-base of irrationally-terrified 'chickens'. As far as I can tell, the two concepts seem to feed off of each other in your view, while neither is actually quantified and verified through research, and making a claim like 'people who own firearms primarily for defensive purposes are largely irrational cowards' is a huge claim to make. In my eyes, you'd need to have some serious horsepower to genuinely support a claim of that nature.

Large percentages of the firearm-owning public are law enforcement officers, current or former military and naval personnel, and other people that developed an interest in and familiarity with such weapons through their careers, and I, for one, do not believe that these are exactly the 'bottom of the barrel' types with debilitating paranoia and cowardice.

Mr44:

Hey, the SIG P226 is good enough for the Navy SEALs, and the M11 (SIG-Sauer P228) had a higher operational success rate than the Heckler & Koch MK. 23 and the Beretta M9 during Operation Iraqi Freedom (the M9 was one of the most problematic weapons in-theater, by the way). I think the SIG's a good weapon. And handsome, too.



But hey, I own a Springfield and you own a Glock. I think we're on the same page.

 

One who argues by telling people what they are feeling,
seems to be suffering from projection.
Just thought I'd mention that.

Okay so getting back to my initial goal of this thread.
I believe
fully-automatic light firearms should be regulated to the fullest extent possible
semi-automatic light firearms should stay completely legal.
Concealed carry should be legal in all 50 states.
I also believe that Alaska has the right idea.
Have a concealed carry permit system, but not a requirement.
I also believe that first aid certification should be a part of Concealed Carry classes and Hunter Safety Coarses.

The current limit on new calibers not being greater than a .5 bore should stay.

I consider all current common calibers light.
Anything greater than a .5 bore or 10 gauge is what I consider Heavy firepower.

 

But hey, I own a Springfield and you own a Glock. I think we're on the same page.

I am well aware of what is going on, especially from you Mr44. Go on, make a crack about my PPK/S or KK.

<lousypeasants>



E_S

 

Brett, my argument isn't circular at all, as follows:

1. Product advertising reflects a company's market research about its target market.
2. If advertising promotes a fear-based message, it reflects a company's beliefs about the fearfullness of its target market.
3. Advertisements promoting gun ownership for personal protection have a strong fear component in their primary messages.
4. Therefore, gun manufacturers/gun promoters believe that their target markets/target audiences respond to fear-based messages.

You can deduce the nature of the target market from the nature of the ads aimed at it.

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about ads promoting gun ownership for hunting, sport, target practice, etc. So if you say, "I bought a gun for target practice," then certainly my argument doesn't apply to you, nor did I ever intend it to apply to you.

 

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about ads promoting gun ownership for hunting, sport, target practice, etc. So if you say, "I bought a gun for target practice," then certainly my argument doesn't apply to you, nor did I ever intend it to apply to you.

What about someone who buys a gun for target practice, attains proficiency and then gets a concealed carry permit, just to have the option, should they desire or need it? Are they fear based? It would have a relatively minor marginal cost for the gun owner, but it can also make several things much easier for them.

For example, if they had a conealed carry permit, they would not be legally required to transport their gun to the range in the trunk, but would instead be allowed to carry it in their car on their person. That reduces the hassle of going to the range for target practice.

That is the biggest problem with your argument. It's genrealizing about a large group of people in a very simple manner. However, simple generalizations never accurately describe complex issues.

Kimball Kinnison

 

"That is the biggest problem with your argument. It's genrealizing about a large group of people in a very simple manner. However, simple generalizations never accurately describe complex issues."

Statistics generalize about large groups of people in a very simple manner. They never speak for everyone, but they're still useful in characterizing groups.

If generalizations are bad per se, then statistics must be useless.

 

Yeah but stats can provide us with specific views of general issues.

You're just giving a general view about a general topic.
All gun owners - all buy guns based on fear.