🚀 go-pugleaf

ag414@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech), not being satisfied with 
having just one foot in his mouth, has to get the other in, as is 
exemplified by his response to Rosco (Roger_Walker@CUEHere.bohica.net):
>> A simple glance at a chart of "death by" will show you that death by
>> firearms is way at the bottom (I believe on a par with death by 
lightning).
>
>Because our guns laws are fairly strict already. Now look at the US stats.
>I believe firearms are the *leading* cause of death among certain
>demographic groups (young coloured men, for example) - outstripping even
>cars. Now compare us to Western European countries. There is certainly a
>correlation between the deaths by guns and the severity of the gun laws.

Colin, as an engineer, I would hope that you use more logic when you are 
engaged in your profession than you do in these discussions.  There is NO 
study which demonstrates that firearms regulations are effective in 
reducing the rate of homicide.  I've searched the literature, and have 
been unable to find a study with appropriate controls to investigate this 
topic.  Belief that one is doing the right thing is a cop-out.  
Witch-doctors who firmly believe that their rituals which will exorcise
evil spirits from plague victims is logically indistinguishable from the 
approach of Canadian politicians to the problem of firearms homicides.  
In fact, the politicians are even less effective since the witch-doctors 
are effective through the placebo effect whereas politicians are simply 
wrong.

There is evidence that firearms training reduces the number of accidental 
deaths in firearms users.  The studies are not of the power I like to see 
in a properly conducted medical trial, but it is unlikely that anyone 
would be willing to fund a study to prove a hypothesis which should be 
self-evident to any firearms user.  IMO, it is thus highly suggestive, 
but not proven that the remarkable decrease in accidental firearms deaths 
over the last 100 years is a consequence of increased firearms training 
among users of firearms.

Canada and the US have virtually identical numbers of rifles and shotguns 
per-capita.  The US has significantly more pistols/capita than Canada, 
but the homicide rate/10,000 pistols owned is no different in Canada than 
in the US (Centerwall, 1991).  This would lead one to conclude that 
Canadians are either intrinsically more violent than Americans, or that 
strict pistol regulations which have been in place in Canada since 1934 
do absolutely nothing to prevent misuse of firearms by criminals.

With regard to European data, the following table is of interest (taken 
from Killias, 1993)

                            Rate per Million
                _______________________________________
                       Homicide              Suicide
                       with a                with a      % of households
Country      Overall      Gun       Overall     Gun          with guns
_______________________________________________________________________
Australia       19.5    6.6        115.8        34.2            19.6
Belgium         18.5    8.7        231.5        24.5            16.6
Canada          26.0    8.4        139.4        44.4            29.1
England/
Wales            6.7    0.8         86.1         3.8             4.7
Finland         29.6    7.4        253.5        54.3            23.2
France          12.5    5.5        223.0        49.3            22.6
Holland         11.8    2.7        117.2         2.8             1.9
N. Ireland      46.6   35.5         82.7        11.8             8.4
Norway          12.1    3.6        142.7        38.7            32.0
Scotland        16.3    1.1        105.1         6.9             4.7
Spain           13.7    3.8         64.5         4.5            13.1
Switzerland     11.7    4.6        244.5        57.4            27.2
USA             75.9   44.6        124.0        72.8            48.0
West Germany    12.1    2.0        203.7        13.8             8.9

Now why is Switzerland's gun murder rate half of Canada's despite the 
fact that every Swiss male is required to keep an assault rifle and 
ammunition in  his home?  Why does Norway, with a fraction of population 
having guns second only to the US have a gun murder rate which is < 1/10 
of that of the US.  This data raises more questions than it answers.  As 
far as the rest of the paper goes, don't bother reading it - Killias 
commits several major errors including the ecological fallacy, but this 
doesn't seem to be a concern of the reviewers.  Finally, with regard to 
the severity of gun laws and homicide rates, please explain why N. 
Ireland, with the same extremely restrictive firearms prohibitions that 
are also present in England, has a firearms homicide rate little 
different from that of the USA?

Before you tell me about "the troubles" in N. Ireland, perhaps I should 
mention the "war on drugs" which is taking place in the USA.  Wars result 
in deaths - why are you then surprised when so many young black males are 
killed as a result of their involvement in the drug trade?  Also, in the 
areas where the death rate from firearms exceeds that of MVA's, over 25% 
of the population has served time in jail for various offences.  Such 
groups are hardly representative of the general population (far fewer 
than 25% of the people I regularly associate with have served jail 
terms), and generalizing from them to the rest of the population is 
fallacious.  There already are laws saying that people with criminal 
records should not own guns - is it any surprise that criminals don't 
obey these laws?  Prison inmates are not allowed to own firearms for good 
reason, and one would expect that populations which are comprised of 
substantial proportions of prison inmates can't be trusted with guns 
either.

The conclusion that homicide rates are related to levels of firearms 
ownership is clearly fallacious.  Yes, there is a positive correlation 
between rates of firearms ownership in the list of countries above, and 
rates of homicide.  This is meaningless.  Correlation does not equal 
causation - it can suggest causation, but to prove the relationship, one 
needs to setup a controlled experiment.  This has never been done.

One of the reasons for using country size units by Killias (1993) was 
because the firearms legislation is the same throughout the country.  
This fails to explain why Great Britain, composed of England, Scotland 
and N. Ireland was divided into 3 pieces, and N. Ireland, the part 
failing to demonstrate the desired relationship, was omitted from the 
analysis.  Similarly, Killias omitted Switzerland from his analysis as, 
he notes, it is illegal to use the assault rifle kept in each males home 
for any non-military purpose.  He fails to specify how effective such an 
admonition would be in US inner cities where each crack dealer was told 
that he was to keep an M16 and a sealed tin of ammunition in his closet 
with only the threat of severe legal sanctions standing between him, and 
use of this firearm in any event other than invasion of the USA.  Perhaps 
Colin would be prepared to speculate on this issue.

Given Killias's assumptions about the uniformity of gun laws in a 
country, then one would expect that the homicide rate in each state or 
province of the country would be equal.  Why Killias didn't extend his 
analysis to the USA on a state by state basis is mysterious as many 
states have a much larger population than some of the European countries, 
or portions of countries he was using as a single data point.

In 1992, the following racial distribution of death rates occurred in the 
USA.  The death rate from AIDS in the US in 1992 is of interest for 
reasons which will soon become apparent  (all data from MMWR vital 
statistics, 43(6) 22/3/95)

             AIDS         Homicide         MVA
  Race    Male  Female   Male  Female  Male  Female
  ------+--------------+--------------+------------
  White   19.3    1.6     9.1    2.8   22.4   10.2
  Black   59.5   14.7    67.5   13.1   24.0    8.8
  Other   45.5   11.3    52.9   10.7   22.7    9.0
  ------+--------------+--------------+------------
  Total   23.6    3.2    16.2    4.1   22.5   10.0
  
  All rates are in deaths/100,000 people

First, it should be noted that the AIDS death rate is higher than the 
homicide death rate and climbing yearly.  Black males are still victims 
of homicide more often than they are AIDS victims, but they are 3X as 
likely as white males, and over 30X more likely than white females to die 
from AIDS.

The reason for considering AIDS death rates is because Killias (1993) 
tells us that it is OK to look at a country as a unit for the purpose of 
firearms effects on homicide rates.  Thus, under his assumptions, there 
is a uniform availability of firearms in the USA - if there are local 
restrictions, they can be readily circumvented by smuggling firearms 
across state lines (much easier than across international borders) from 
a jurisdiction with lax firearms laws to one with tight firearms controls.

Next is a table of death rates from the above causes for each state and 
the District of Columbia sorted by increasing homicide rate (all 
numbers/100,000 population):

      State           AIDS       MVA  Homicide
     -----------------------------------------
     Iowa                2.1    16.8    1.9
     North Dakota        1.1    15.1    1.9
     New Hampshire       2.9    10.3    2.0
     Maine               4.0    17.1    2.4
     South Dakota        1.0    21.3    2.7
     Utah                3.3    15.0    2.8
     Rhode Island        8.1     9.3    3.2
     Minnesota           3.8    14.3    3.2
     Vermont             3.1    14.7    3.5
     Hawaii              9.6    10.8    3.6
     Mass               11.7     9.4    3.8
     Nebraska            3.4    16.7    3.8
     Idaho               3.0    22.1    3.9
     Wyoming             2.8    28.8    4.5
     Montana             2.2    21.9    4.7
     Wisconson           3.8    13.8    4.9
     New Jersey         24.6    10.6    5.1
     Delaware            9.4    19.1    5.4
     Oregon              7.6    15.0    5.4
     Connecticut        12.3    10.1    5.5
     Kentucky            3.5    21.9    5.6
     Washington          8.7    14.0    5.9
     Ohio                5.6    13.3    6.1
     Kansas              5.1    16.9    6.2
     Colorado           10.8    16.1    6.3
     Pennsylvania        8.3    13.6    6.5
     Alaska              3.4    18.5    7.0
     Indiana             4.7    16.9    7.2
     West Virginia       2.1    23.6    7.2
     Oklahoma            6.0    20.4    7.9
     Virginia            9.2    13.6    8.9
     Arizona             8.9    20.8    9.6
     Florida            23.1    18.2   10.2
     New Mexico          6.4    25.5   10.2
     Missouri            8.0    19.3   10.9
     Michigan            6.1    15.3   11.2
     Tennessee           5.6    23.9   11.3
     Nevada             10.0    15.9   11.8
     North Carolina     10.0    19.2   11.9
     South Carolina     10.8    22.1   12.2
     Illinois            9.6    13.0   12.3
     Georgia            17.2    20.2   12.3
     Arkansas            3.8    25.2   12.7
     Maryland           15.5    12.9   13.2
     Alabama             5.4    26.2   13.2
     Texas              13.6    18.1   13.3
     New York           35.9    11.1   13.5
     California         19.5    14.4   13.6
     Mississippi         6.0    31.7   17.5
     Louisiana          13.4    20.9   18.5
     D. of Columbia     87.5    10.1   66.5
 
When one examines homicide rate as a function of AIDS death rate, one 
gets the regression equation:
    Homicide = 0.626*(AIDS) + 2.74
    Correlation coefficient = 0.872
    Slope 95% confidence limits 0.05
    Intercept   "          "    0.81
The Spearmann correlation coefficient is 0.614 which gives p<0.001 that 
this there is a significant relationship between total homicide rates and 
AIDS death rates.  The District of Columbia is particularly interesting 
having the highest rate of death from AIDS and the highest homicide rate
in the US.

From this correlation, using the logic of Killias, handgun control, and 
related groups, it is obvious that HIV causes homicides.  It is quite 
clear that this neurotropic virus causes release of homicidal behaviour 
in infected individuals, and thus the solution is to take everyone who is 
HIV+ and exile them to a remote island where they can slaughter one 
another in isolation from the remainder of the population.  The data 
above is PROOF that this needs to be done.

Before some of the more impressionable readers of this group rush off to 
get their baseball bats and rubber gloves to head out for a night of 
statistically justified queer bashing, I would like to remind them that 
correlation does not equal causation.

If we seek reasons for this correlation, it is necessary to dig deeper 
into how HIV is spread in the USA.  In Canada, HIV is primarily a disease 
of homosexual men - there is a small population of iv drug users who have 
obtained HIV from sharing needles, but this is usually as a result of 
stupidity rather than lack of access to sterile syringes.  In the USA, 
the prevailing ideologic climate does not allow iv drug users easy access 
to sterile syringes, so they are forced to share.  This creates an ideal 
situation for inter-personal transmission of HIV.

The vast majority of non-hospitalized users of iv drugs have to obtain 
their drugs from criminal sources.  As their drugs of choice are illegal, 
they are also expensive which usually requires the users to engage in 
criminal activity to obtain sufficient funds to buy their drugs.  
Obtaining sufficient funds through criminal means ranges from simple 
theft, to armed robbery, or dealing drugs and shooting the profits.  As 
criminals are unable to take disputes with their associates to courts for 
resolution, often violence is used to settle these disagreements.  In 
short, HIV infection rates (and thus AIDS death rates) can be seen as a 
surrogate marker of iv drug use, and hence criminal activity.  There is 
also a significant heterosexual spread of HIV in this population where 
female iv drug users resort to prostitution to raise sufficient money to 
buy drugs.

Dealing with the problem of homicide in the USA can't be done by someone 
who assumes that legislation is the only possible approach.  The primary 
cause of most of these deaths is criminal activity associated with the 
"war on drugs" - since drugs are already illegal, it's difficult to make 
them even more illegal.  Thus, one is left with attacks of surrogates of 
drug use - drug dealers like to shoot their business associates so lets 
attack guns.  After all, most of the heroin users are going to die of 
AIDS eventually, and the coke users will burn out and die, so the problem 
will sort itself out eventually - attacking guns allows politicians to 
give the impression that they are actually doing something about the 
problem.  In this respect they aren't much different than the shaman who, 
in front of a cowering village of people terrified during a total 
eclipse, screams incantations at the eater of the sun to spit her out.  
In 30 minutes his threats will have miraculously worked, and his prowess 
at banishing darkness is generously rewarded.  One would have hoped that 
the scientific advances of the last 2000+ years had made the population 
less susceptible to this type of trickery, but it appears that most of 
the population has not advanced much beyond their stone-age ancestors in 
clarity of their daily thinking.

Boris Gimbarzevsky

References
Centerwall, B.  Homicide and Prevalence of Handguns:  Canada and the 
  United States.
  American Journal of Epidemiology.  134(11):1245-1260, (1991)
  
Killias, M., International correlations between gun ownership and rates of
    homicide and suicide, Can Med Assoc J, 148(10):1721-1725 (1993)