Wednesday, December 11, 2013

A Good Year for Gun Reform


Twenty-one states enacted new laws to curb gun violence, according to the 2013 State Gun Laws Scorecard jointly released Monday by the Brady Campaign and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The profusion of gun reform measures amounts to a broad shift in momentum on the gun debate that has often flown under the radar.

“A year ago, not only were we swimming unsuccessfully against the tide of these dangerous laws, there really wasn’t much hope at all that people felt in terms of passing meaningful laws that would actually save lives,” Brady Campaign president Dan Gross said during a press call on Monday morning.

Gross added that the country has made “unthinkable progress” during that time.

The scorecard described eight of the new state laws as major. Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, and New York all closed a loophole that had allowed for the sale of firearms from private dealers without background checks. Additionally, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, and New York required gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms.

But this wasn’t just a blue state phenomenon. There were also constructive measures passed in some states with historically weak gun laws, including Florida, Missouri, and Texas.

32 comments:

  1. "The scorecard described eight of the new state laws as major. Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, and New York all closed a loophole that had allowed for the sale of firearms from private dealers without background checks. Additionally, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, and New York required gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms."

    It's surprising that there was no mention of Illinois passing legislation implementing a shall issue carry permit system. I wonder how that will affect their Brady score.

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    1. Well, I think they were listing the gun control improvements not the setbacks.

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    2. Going from no-carry to shall-issue is an improvement.

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  2. If you trust the bizarre scoring system of the Brady Bunch, rationality is lost on you.

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    1. That doesn't even make sense. There's nothing bizarre about it except that the whole exercise points to how fanatical you are.

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    2. The Brady Bunch awards points primarily on the basis of silly laws that accomplish nothing, but the fact is that forty out of fifty states are essentially the same in their gun laws.

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    3. You have no rationality at all in your criminal thinking, so what you say is bullshit.

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  3. There is a statistical opportunity that will come from 2013 being "the year of gun reform". We can look at how the murder rates in these states change compared to the rest of the country. In most of our discussions we've been looking at static analysis (a snapshot of current gun laws to murder rates). And since you tend to poo-poo every valid method of analysis I talk about, for our dynamic model we can pre-agree on the methods and measure of success, and then examine the data next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. We could make a little wager around it. What say you?

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    1. Your advanced math skills are eluding me again. Before we only had static numbers but now we have dynamic ones? The way I see it, we'll soon have another year to add to our trends and analysis, nothing more. My predictions remain unchanged. In the big picture the Supreme Court balance will change in our favor. This will trickle down and affect everything, including a reversal of Heller and McDonald. Before that in the 2014 and 2016 elections pro-gun politicians will lose more than they win. Over the next 10 years it'll become clear that your time, the time of gun-rights, has passed you by.

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    2. We've always static or dynamic analysis based on the data we have. I only said that the bulk of my mega posts were on static geographic data at one point in time.

      So your prediction is only about Dems and gun control gaining more power. You're not willing to give predictions on crime rates?

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  4. With the Brady’s releasing their newest scorecard, it’s time for me to do some more numbers crunching. I computed the correlation between the latest Brady score and the 2012 murder rate from the FBI and got -0.0624 (again no correlation). Two years ago, when I last did this, it was -0.0503 which is effectively the same (I’m not about to brag about another 0.01 in my favor). So my numbers don’t change, but there is something very interesting that happened to your numbers, Mike. Let’s go back and reference this post of yours which was meant as a rebuttal to my numbers:

    http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2013/03/states-with-weak-gun-control-laws-have.html#comment-form

    You took the top ten Brady States, calculated their average murder rate, and compared it to the bottom ten. You came up with an average of 4.08 for the top ten, and a 4.33 for the bottom ten for a difference of 0.25. You called this small difference “proof” that gun control works. This despite the fact that both sets are under the national rate of 4.7 (noting that the national rate is not the same thing as the average of all the state’s rates due to population density), so how is that a case for gun control? In fairness, you goofed by including Michigan in the top ten and excluding California (you grabbed 2-11 by mistake). After we substitute CA for MI, the average of the top ten falls to 3.94 for a difference of 0.39 in your favor. Even better “proof”, right?

    As, you may recall, I spoke at length about how poor this method was, and how you were inconsistent in applying this same method to other sets of data, and in particular I spoke about its instability. But you called it “proof” anyway. You poo-pooed my methods without actually critiquing what I did, and you hung your hat on this method as acceptable and obvious to you. Ok, so now let’s do the exact same thing you did, but with this year’s data:

    The first nunber is the Brady score, and the second is murder rate 2012:

    CA 75 5
    CT 70 4.1
    NJ 68.5 4.4
    MD 66.5 6.3
    NY 65.5 3.5
    MA 60.5 1.8
    HI 58.5 2.1
    IL 45 5.8
    RI 41.5 3.2
    DE 34.5 6.2

    AVERAGE 4.24

    UT -2 1.8
    MT -3 2.7
    KY -3.5 4.5
    MS -4 7.4
    VT -4 1.3
    KS -4 2.9
    SD -4.5 3
    WY -5 2.4
    AK -7 4.1
    AZ -8 5.5

    AVERAGE 3.56

    Wha-what happened? That’s a -0.68 difference, which is against you. This is what I warned you about when I criticized this method, Mike. Take a look at the numbers, and see why there is such a big difference in just one year while my calculation remains stable (hint: there is an easy way to rationalize how these numbers should be equal instead of negative if you make one of the same criticisms I made when you did it, but at best you’ll be confirming my point that gun laws are not correlated with murder). Remember, this is an exact reproduction of your methods. So if you insist on standing by what you did, then you need to eat it this year- because it has swung the other way, and then some. Can we agree now that this method sucks, it’s arbitrary and unstable, and that there is no correlation between gun laws and murder rates?

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  5. No, I don't admit that. I've shown it to you in half-a-dozen posts coming at it from different angles. Simply put, nearly 70% of murders are done with guns. That means all your lengthy analysis and "numbers crunching" is wrong if it says there's no correlation between guns and murder.

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    1. Mike, listen very carefully. Just because 70% of murders are done with guns doesn't mean gun control works. That maybe the reason why you want gun control- but the numbers show that passing silly little laws at the state level hasn't helped anything.

      Do you at least admit that your previous analysis was faulty?

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    2. TS, to the gun control freak, you're making the error of using facts and logic without deciding in advance what conclusion you want to reach.

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    3. Silly little laws, are not gun control. You are afraid real gun control laws that work, will be enacted. America History proves real gun control laws work. Educate yourself, or maybe you have, and that's what you are afraid of, the truth.

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    4. To get from "70% of murders are done with guns" to "gun laws reduce murder" is making the assumption that gun laws work as part of your logical deduction. So when I present data that shows gun laws don't work, your answer boils down to, "nuh-uh. Gun laws work, because gun laws work."

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    5. "You are afraid real gun control laws that work, will be enacted. America History proves real gun control laws work."

      Which ones are those exactly Anon? All of them have been tried, to include those so onerous that they were found to be unconstitutional in Chicago and DC.

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    6. Steve, if you guys want to operate on the idea that nothing we've done so far is "real gun control", and that's why it hasn't worked, then we can move the discussion in that direction. Just drop any talk about "reasonable" gun control then, because what you are talking about is considerably more strict than the most restrictive state laws, but on a national level.

      But what "America history" are you talking about. What was done in our past that isn't done now on some state level, and what are the data that supports your conclusion? Like murder rates before and after enacting this "real gun control" relative to places that didn't enact it.

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    7. "Mike, listen very carefully. Just because 70% of murders are done with guns doesn't mean gun control works."

      Hidden within that sarcastic statement is a bit of the con job that you seem to think you'r really good at. I was saying that the 70% figure proves there ìs a correlation between gun availability and murder. You changed it to something else, didn't you?

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    8. I'm not Steve. Do your own homework, or are you just a lippy idiot.

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    9. Gee, talk about changing the topic to something else. My post is about Brady scores to murder rates. You came back with saying my “number crunching is wrong” by talking about percent of murders committed with guns (which has nothing to do with it). Doubly ironic is that my numbers crunching in the case is the same number crunching that you did and dubbed as “proof”. So now you are saying your number crunching was wrong back then, right?

      But if you want to talk about “gun availability” instead of gun laws- I’ve done the correlation to gun ownership rates as well, and that came out as nil. What you seem to keep overlooking by applying flawed logic over facts, is that a small percentage of guns are used for murdering. Even when gun ownership is low, there are still more than enough guns to make it into bad hands. Gun murder is not a random occurrence equally distributed among gun owners. That would have to be true in order for you to deduce that gun ownership is correlated to murder. But maybe you should define what “gun availability” means to you? Is that availability to everyone or availability to criminals? For example, we can see that DC has extremely low availability to its general population, but high availability to criminals, and a high murder rate.

      To Anonymous- If you don’t want to be confused with Steve, don’t make the same arguments as him, with the same tone, using the same words, especially since Steve is known to also post anonymously.

      Obviously I have done a lot of homework right here on this post. So where is yours? You seem to be talking about something, somewhere in history having stricter gun laws than modern America. Why don’t you tell us what you are talking about, because I know of no such thing?

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    10. You are the dishonest idiot who insisted I call myself Steve. You created the confusion, live with it. I'm enjoying all these piggybacks on my comments.

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    11. Both you guys are intelligence challenged. Did you ever study American History? Is it possible you could use your computer for study and learning instead of your bullshit lying insulting daily comments on this blog? NO! It's on you to know the subject.

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    12. Shouting insults is easy, but how about those of you who disagree with TS show us what's wrong with his data or his calculations? I'm saying that you can't. Prove me wrong.

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    13. You won’t even give me a hint to the “proof” you are thinking of. Instead I am supposed to review the entire United States history trying to guess what is going on in your mind, and rebut that. This is the mark of someone who’s got nothing. This reminds me of a line by William Shakespeare. Why don’t you read his entire body of work and tell me which line I am thinking of, and then argue why it doesn’t fit you perfectly. You and I have a busy weekend ahead…

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    14. Since when is it my job to educate idiots who spew lies and idiocy? Since you believe nothing others tell you, it's your responsibility to find out for yourself. The fact that you don't shows your dishonesty. The fact that you refuse to even find the facts shows what a dishonest idiot you are.

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    15. If you want people to believe your argument, then yes, minimally it's your job to at least present what your argument is.

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    16. I prove my point by having you expose yourself as the uneducated lying gun loon that you are, And thanks for proving me correct.

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    17. Anonymous, your random searches through the thesaurus aren't help you, since the words that you toss at us have no bearing on reality. If you claim that TS's math is wrong, show where and how that's so.

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    18. You refuse to answer questions like that from me, so go fuck yourself.
      It's your problem that you are to stupid to know what you are talking about, then refuse to even research it, but blow your hot lying air anyways.
      These site liars are deep into dishonesty. They are ass holes also.

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  6. "Gross added that the country has made “unthinkable progress” during that time."

    To quote Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."


    "An impressive (roughly) 1,500 state gun bills have been introduced in the year since the Newtown massacre and, of those, 109 are now law, according to The New York Times. Seventy of the enacted laws loosen gun restrictions, while just 39 tighten them. And, though largely symbolic, some 136 bills nullifying federal gun regulations were sponsored in 40 states. In Colorado, two pro-gun control lawmakers were booted from office in historic recalls and a third stepped down in anticipation of a similar fight.
    The nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government openness and transparency, reviewed lobbying, spending and policies at the state and federal level over the years and, along nearly every metric, rights advocates have trounced opponents."

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/11/how-gun-control-is-losing-badly-in-charts/

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    1. I thought Dan Gross's description of things was extremely convincing. But I would, wouldn't I?

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