🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@peterdrake

> 1) It’s a coincidence. Significance tests and replication can rule this out.
> 2) A causes B.
> 3) B causes A.
> 4) A and B are both caused by a third factor.

So.. this is sorta valid but a gross oversimplification. As a professional who tries to do this stuff quite often it might help if i explain how we map these things...

So A causing B is what we call a "conditional probability". In reality there isnt just "some third factor" but a huge map of conditional probabilities with A effecting B effecting C and D effects B as well, etc etc. So we have a MAP of probability. We call this a "graphical model". The job of a data scientist is to discover that graphical model, define the probabilities between the individual links, and from that model the events.

When your graphical model is incomplete and you have influencing factrs you havent mapped we call that "confounding", sorta.

> Your one example does show a spike a few years later, but it disappears immediately. What we ideally need is a control country that is like Ireland in every other way but didn’t confiscate guns in 1972. Without this policy, aside from the one-year spike, would homicide rates increase, stay steady, or decrease?

You are correct of course that I am giving somewhat shallow arguments here, largely because if i get too technical it will probably be too complex for the scope here When I discuss this issue with fellow data scientists our models are far more involved. I am trying more to show the simple to understand elements that are part of a much bigger and more rigorous line of research one would need to do.

> (BTW, is there an easy way to quote text with >?)

You just have to do it manually as far as i know :(

> 1) The media overemphasizes school shootings specifically. Your child is extremely unlikely to die this way.

Yes this was one of my main points

> 2) Because of these splashy mass shootings, the media makes too big a deal out of gun deaths. It would make more sense to worry about lightning, which is more likely to kill you.

That was more for dramatic effect than a literal point, no.. My point is more that both of these things are such exceedingly rare events they arent really worth being our focus.. Problems with overall violence, and if guns have a role worth considering in that, is the bigger issue.

> (I assume being hit by lightning is almost always fatal, so I didn’t distinguish between being hit or killed.)

90% of people struck by lightening survive actually.

> If you “never argued mass killings (by gun or any other means) was something we shouldnt address”, I apologize for misreading that.

Mass killings, and really any killings, are a huge problem that needs addressing... Guns just arent really the problem anymore than spoons are the problem when it comes to physical health in the USA... our problem is lack of access to mental health, and generally poor environment.

Ironically this problem is usually very much exemplified in most internet threads on gun violence where people are so hateful and toxic to eachother it gets vile, demonstrating the very mental-health issue driving the violence, far more than the guns.

> How do you suggest we address that problem?

1) is the hardest solution, its social.. we have to teach people to be caring to other people, something that as i point out, is usually at its most vile when we discuss these topics.

2) prioritize access to mental health.. im not talking asbout fixing healthcare, thats just aprt of it, but also normalizing mental health and psychiatry and many other aspects.

@trinsec

@LadyDragonfly

Never "declared victory" either.. you should really stop hallucinating up things I did say... I did point out your intellectual dishonesty though., big difference

@bonifartius

@LadyDragonfly

Sooooo, yes what I said was correct, could of just said that.. you were referring to a different thread.. gotcha.

Literally the thread I linked to when I asked by the way... so LOL on the not reading bit.. maybe you should have read what **I** said when I linked it :)

@bonifartius

@LadyDragonfly

Yea, people are usually terrible at doing a thing their not doing, thats what happens when you dont do the thing :)

@LadyDragonfly

> 1. Reading

At no point in this thread did I, or you post any links to anything, let alone and article

You probably mean int he co-thread over here?

https://universeodon.com/@LadyDragonfly/110101801862192785

> 2. Understanding

Already read and understood it... I am discussing **your** points, not the articles.. so you would like to discuss any aspect of the article we didnt, feel free, but I already refuted the points you made in the post you linked to and explained why they were incorrect. Anything else int he article feel free to bring up if you wish.

> 3. Taking your meds

Ahh good old "I am wrong so now im going to act like a toddler having a tantrum and result to personal insults"... great way to prove you have 0 credibility, thank you for this one.

Also, considering you literally hallucinated me saying things that I at no point said... well.. might want some self reflection on this one.

> We can't have a conversation when one of us is straight up lying. (Pssst, that's you)

Yea... i mean your the one who said i said a thing that i never said, multiple times, and when challenged to show me the quote of me saying it... silence... soooooooo yea not me sorry.

@bonifartius

@LadyDragonfly

Please show me where I said that.. Is aid nothing even remotely resembling what you just said I said.

@LadyDragonfly

Not sure what your smoking but said nothing of the sort.. the chart I posted clearly shows a trend of rape cases increasing int he years following 1996 with a huge increase in the rate of increase... What you said has no reality or connection in anything I said, try again.

@bonifartius

@realcaseyrollins

#1 is coming from where exactly? I am not aware of children being exposed to child porn as a recent trend... id be curious where this is coming from

#2 makes sense of course

@medigoth

@LadyDragonfly

> cool story bro.

Lets not let this devolve into an imature insult fest.. leave the snarky comments out, ill do the same, lets stick to a mature convesation.

> 1. The Dunblane massacre happened in 1996. Sexual crimes have been on an upward trend in Scotland since the 70s. Are you saying that a law passed in 1996 caused a rapist to rape in 1971?

This is pretty severe intellectual dishonesty, and I think you know it... while technically true look at the rate at which rape crimes were rising in the chart i showed. Then look at the rate they rose in the year or two after the ban as guns slowly trickled off tthe street. It is very clear that the rate of rise **significantly** increased in the years following the ban.

> 2. The graph you showed included several crimes including cyber crimes, which comprise most of the assaults. I wonder whether there might be another reason people committed more cyber crimes in the 2000s onward than in the 1960??

Somewhat fair criticism. Attached is now the chart excludes to rape and rape attempts... Sadly we see the exact same trend of a slow increase before the ban, and a very sharp increase after the ban.

> 3. The actual stats show that deaths from firearms decreased dramatically in the 10-20 years following the tighter gun control laws, and it's only in the last 2 or 3 years they've begun creeping back up again.

Again an intellectually dishonest argument.. Of course the death **from firearms** decreased. Much int he same way someone who was an antivaxxer would correctly, though intellectually dishonestly, woudl claim that banning vaccines would decrease the deaths **from vaccines**. In both of those invalid arguments the problem is you are ignoring the fact that guns, like vaccines, prevent **non-gun related violence**. Thus why we look at things like rape, or violent acts to get a more accurate picture, and dont play those sort of intellectual gymnastics that we all know sounds nice, but is paramount to lying.

> 4. Stop lying. If you have to lie to make your point, your point is dogshit.

I lied? Where. I have cited my points, back them up with charts, and in the case where you made a valid criticism I adapted to your argument and my point was still valid.... you might want to look in the mirror ont his one.

@medigoth Sadly no. When i responded i looked and didnt find it. The closest I got was comparing catholic priests to teachers.

@peterdrake @trinsec

> At the risk of diving into statistical weeds deeper than my understanding, there is a strong positive correlation between gun ownership and homicide rates:

I have spoken out on this as a professional data scientists many times. This sort of analysis is overwhelmingly dishonest for anyone with any training in data science who makes any attempt at being objective, and there is a reason for this.

That same correlation you show, guess what, youd see the same thing if you compared mental health access, or poverty levels, or any number of factors that lead to people being more or less healthy well rounded people. This is exactly why it is extreme intellectual dishonesty, you have no clue what of the countless factors are causing this, and as we all know correlation doesnt even **hint** at causality, it si corelation.

Now we **do** have something that is strongly suggestive of causality, they are called causality tests in statistics, and while they arent perfect anyone trying to be intellectually honest would use this method for decided how to analyze the situation. The simplest of these is called granger causality. When you do this form of analysis you more or less rule out other confounding factors by looking at the change in one value as another value changes. For example we look at.. does homicide rates go up when guns are banned, and vice versa.. you look for one event **following** another.

And guess what, when we provide these intellecually honest methods tot he data we see a very clear trend where banning guns tend to make violent acts and rapes skyrocket, and reversing bans on guns tend to cause those rates to drop (see some examples attached)

> Returning to your original post, there were 745 US deaths in mass shootings in 2021. Only 11 Americans were killed by lightning that year. (By odd coincidence, that was a record high year for gun deaths and a record low year for lightning deaths. There were a total of 444 lightning deaths from 2006 through 2021, an average of 27.75 per year.)

Why did you just run odds on something different than what I stated? No one was talking about mass shootings or lightening deaths, nor do those numbers have relevance to the point being made, which was that using school shootings as a political point to create action is pointless since they are exceedingly rare... I never argued mass killings (by gun or any other means) was something we shouldnt address

> To say that lightning is more dangerous than mass shootings is wildly inaccurate. Comparing all PEOPLE killed by lightning to CHILDREN killed specifically in mass shootings AT PUBLIC SCHOOLS is cherry-picking.

At no point did I, or anyone, make this claim. I never said lighting was more dangerous, I said it was more common to be struck by lightening, again, to make the point about how rare school shootings are, not to depict the danger of lightening.

@medigoth

> How about youth pastors, teachers at church schools, et al.?

If you have specific data for them im all ears.

> My point is that these days, religious conservatives in the US label things like teaching LGBTQ kids to be comfortable in their own bodies as “grooming”

Yes that is a serious issue, mostly from the right, and leads to all sorts of problems. No arguments there.

@bonifartius

Yes the solution absolutely lies in a combination of social problems and mental health accedd.

That said we can show that quite clearly when you start banning guns rape cases go up.. so there is a case to say that you can help prevent rape with better access to guns.

@LadyDragonfly

@medigoth While not an exact comparison, this is very questionable.. A **public** school teacher is about two times more likely to commit sexual abuse than a catholic preist.

@ambihelical saying its about number of incidents is debatable.. depends if hte argument here is that you can kill more people with an assault rifle or not... and yes there were a number of uyears with 0 deaths both before and after the ban was initiated..

@LadyDragonfly True, but it forgets to mention the devistating effect this has had in violent acts, and rape cases. They replaced the death of a child or two and traded it for tens of thousands of rape and other victims... Not really a win IMO.

@gdunn39 I mean while FOX is certainly one of the worst I think probably the majority if USA news on both sides of the aisle is pretty damn bad... Other countries usually have one or two yellow journals but at least there is some semblance of journalistic integrity outside of the USA.