Reply #21: in the CONTEXT of this thread

[iverglas]

you gave a great big AMEN to:

Both sides play games with statistics and the lament that an unbiased source statistics was hard to come by.

The entire point of the article cited in the opening post was NOT that anyone had been playing any games with statistics, it was that statistics (actually "data") are not available.

Your post, and the one it was echoing, would have been very relevant if anybody had been playing, or talking about somebody playing, game with statistics. No one was.

Dragging "playing with statistics" into a discussion that opened with a lament for the ABSENCE OF DATA looks to me like a diversionary tactic designed to imply that the people whose analysis was in question -- the US's National Research Council -- had been saying something about someone's use of statistics.

The author of the opening post chose to quote this:

However, the report found no credible evidence that such laws either decrease or increase violent crime...

entirely out of its context, with the effect being, in my humble suggestion, to misrepresent the purpose and content of the report in question -- which was, as the news report said, that "there is not enough evidence to reach valid conclusions about <the> effectiveness <of efforts to control violence by restricting guns>".

The inadequacy of data does not mean that the data that exists is inadequate for ALL analyses, or that ALL analyses of what data there is do not produce valid conclusions.

Just to opine a little further on my suspicion of diversionary intentions on someone's part, let's consider what the news report said here:

A serious limit in such analyses is the lack of good data on who owns firearms and on individual encounters with violence, according to the study.

Research scientists need appropriate access to federal and state data on gun use, manufacturing and sales, the study urged.

If someone seriously WANTED such analyses to be possible, in order to actually attempt to determine what effect permissive or restrictive firearms legislation might have, would s/he not be calling for the licensing of firearms owners and the registration of firearms possessed and transferred?

Or, at the very least, for what the authors themselves called for? --

The National Research Council said that a major research program on firearms is needed.

The report calls for the development of a National Violent Death Reporting System and a National Incident-Based Reporting System to begin collecting data.

Columbia didn't bother to enlighten us on his reasons for posting this article, and for selecting the passages he selected -- which blatantly omitted the point that the researchers were making.

Perhaps no one responding bothered to read the actual article. But there was nothing in that article to support the allegation that Both sides play games with statistics or to which such an allegation was even relevant.

In post # 8, I asked you what the experts were saying that you agreed with.

And in post #10, you responded by saying that permissive/restrictive firearms laws had not been shown to have an effect on violent crime rates.

And that just is NOT what the report said. It said that there was a lack of DATA that could be used to attempt to determine the effects of such laws. Who in hell could possibly "show" the effect of anything if there are no facts that could be hypothesized to be attributable to it??

The Committee is called the Committee on Improving Research Information and Data on Firearms
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/claj/Data_on_Firearms.html
NOT the Committee on examining the validity of claims about the effectiveness of firearms laws.

I'm unable to find the actual report in question at that site or anywhere else, unfortunately.

I'm afraid that I just interpreted your "gratification" at the experts saying that there was no evidence of the effectiveness of firearms laws (despite the fact that they did not say this -- they said that data that is needed in order to study the effectiveness of firearms is not available; ignorance of evidence, which might exist, is not no evidence) as gratification at the state of affairs that makes the existence of such evidence, or the strength of it, something that we do not know.