Barkley Rosser, liberal economist, sneers at John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" thesis here, entitled "Gun Nuts Exposed at Distorting Data and Results."
A snippet --
In the latest Econ Journal Watch, just out, Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue III have a paper, "Yet another refutation of the more guns, less crime hypothesis - with some help from Moody and Marvell" . . .
I am not doing their paper justice, but the media discussion is often dominated by Lott and his allies who are now pushing for loosened gun laws in Virginia, and are counting on Dems laying low and not challenging their incessantly repeated claims that such gun law relaxations reduce crime. They should not lay low. The claims are baloney and lies, based on distorted date and misrepresentations of results from ones with better data.
The comments back and forth are often silly and Say Uncle rightly calls this, "I know you are, but what am I?"
In a reply on both Barkley's and SayUncle's sites I endeavour to "scare the white people" again. I entitle my response:
How many economists (with their social scientist dates) can dance on the head of a gun control pin?
The fascinating thing about intellectuals is that they actually believe that their trench warfare over footnotes and data actually MEANS anything in the grand scheme of things as we are faced with today.
All of your snarky arguments are about to be overwhelmed by events. Either the society collapses under the economic tidal wave that is about to hit (in which case those who have firearms will no doubt survive better than those who eschew them, and the armed will be ill-disposed to obey any scheme that works toward their disarmament) or the Obamanoids will proceed with AWB2 and the federal seizure of control over all private transfer of arms (the ill-named lie called "the gunshow loophole") thus sparking armed civil disobedience if not outright civil war.
In the first event, you left-wing academics are either going to be stew for the cannibal's pot, or pulling plows for those who are armed.
In the second, those who advocate citizen disarmament of the "gun nuts" are going to be hiding in deep cellars and caves from those people who, having lost family members to a predatory government, will be using Bill Clinton's Serbian rules of engagement to wipe out the political, media and intellectual underpinnings of that tyrannical regime.
In any case, your footnotes will be used for kindling.
Kinda makes you want to go buy a firearm, doesn't it? Better hurry, before they're all gone.
Mike Vanderboegh
sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com
LATER: I also posted this response at another science blog out of Australia, Tim Lambert's Deltoid. There, I was presented with this remarkably cogent and well reasoned rebuttal:
Shorter Mike Vanderboegh:
I don't care if you're right or wrong, because I has gunz!!!!!!
Posted by: bi -- IJI | January 22, 2009 12:06 PM
To which I replied:
And you were trying to be insulting with that, right?
Put another way: "When Democracy Turns to Tyranny, I STILL Get to Vote." People may vote with their feet (as in leaving deadly "citizen disarmament zones" like the liberal-conrolled cities or states for places where gun ownership is cherished), with their wallets (as in the Great Obama Gun Rush) or, if all else fails, with their rifles.
You know, calling us "gun nuts" and advocating that our liberty and property be taken from us does not endear you to us. If the Obamanoids decide that they can twist the meaning of the Constitution and the laws so that they no longer protect us, then they can hardly quibble if we decide that the law no longer protects THEM either. Nor will they protect you, come to that.
For 75 years we have been pushed back by the federal government in the free exercise of our right to arms. Each time we backed up grudgingly. Now some of us have decided that we will no longer back up -- that if the administration draws the line of the law behind where we now stand, we will resist. And we will do so at the muzzles of our rifles if necessary.
We don't want to tell you how to live, we merely wish to be left alone. You can sneer at us, revile us, call us names, but you cannot deny (unless you are as ungrounded in reality as you accuse us of being) that we are here, we are armed and we are not going away quietly.
Now, you can either accept that, or you can try doing what has always worked for you in the past. If you do the latter, we will introduce you to the Law of Unintended Consequences. It is the the statute that kicks in when all the other laws have been knocked flat.
Or, as my Grandpa Vanderboegh told me: "Don't poke a wolverine with a sharp stick, boy, unless you want your balls ripped off."
All of the intellectual argument between Lott and his critics, in the end, is spit in the wind. Don't poke the wolverine. Good advice. It remains to be seen if y'all are smart enough to recognize it.
Mike Vanderboegh Pinson, AL
OK, OK, I'll get back to Absolved now.
13 comments:
John Lott no John Ross. Good slip though.
Couldn't help myself and left a comment over there as well.
Peter
Thanks anon. Fixed.
I'm trying to figure out how AWB 2.0 could spark armed conflict. I had heard, though I cannot verify, that only a very few people (as in the single digits) were ever charged for violating it.
If that's the case then barring door to door checks how does AWB 2.0 cause a civil war? I don't plan on parading my arms downtown if they become "illegal".
Fact is, the best-case scenario for anti-gunners that arises from the intellectual wanking by Social Scientists is that they are reduced to explaining why "gun control" laws make no difference. The NRC claims, "There is no credible evidence that "right-to-carry" laws, which allow qualified adults to carry concealed handguns, either decrease or increase violent crime."
If it really were a free society that you live in then the argument would be over: no arguments involving the greater public good are available if the data demonstrates it makes no difference whether citizens carry guns or not.
John Paulding sez:
"I'm trying to figure out how AWB 2.0 could spark armed conflict. I had heard, though I cannot verify, that only a very few people (as in the single digits) were ever charged for violating it. If that's the case then barring door to door checks how does AWB 2.0 cause a civil war? I don't plan on parading my arms downtown if they become 'illegal'.
Ah, but I do. Not only that, but the next AWB will ban not merely "features" like the first one but entire classes of arms. It will be much more comprehensive and invasive, leading to conflict one way or the other.
Use 'em, or lose 'em. That will be the choice.
Mike:
I'm not really even arguing that AWB 2.0 won't cause a conflict. I'm just trying to figure out most III's vision of it is. Are you saying that you think there will be door to door searches? I see that as unlikely considering the fact that it will guarantee a civil war as men like us refuse to disarm and even the 9th circuit would consider it a violation of the 4th amendment.
Was the "yes I do" you saying that if AWB 2.0 passes you're going to grab your M14, hit right shoulder arms and walk downtown with the intention of shooting anyone intending to arrest you?
If that's your purpose then godspeed, but I see no value in a martyr. No one would have heard the "shot heard round the world" if it were fired by one man. I don't think you're a blowhard, but I see you serving the cause better as the author of Absolved than as another Carl Drega.
To John P. We'll possibly be yelling "Remember New Orleans". Don't forget R. Nagan and crew had cops going door to door in New Orleans not too long ago, taking legal, lawfully owned arms from citizens "for their protection" (yeah right). I haven't forgotten. Many won't. The NRA "won" those firearms back under the second ammendment, but the pictures I've seen of them look more like they're best used as fishing weights now. So, my point is, they've ALREADY gone door to door... and it worked.
John Paulding,
I think you should spend a couple of hours reading Mr Bobby Rush's little HR45. I don't have a link handy, but, you can look it up on Thomas "Findlaw," and, scare yourself.
Yes, there will be house to house searches, focusing on houses where the residents did not register guns, but, not for a while yet (they'll need a while to manufacture a 'need'). They will also go house to house of those who registered Weapons, checking to make sure all weapons are registered, and, the paperwork kept in good 'government' order (or, in Fed speak: ...have their transient waterfowl arranged in a linear fashion).
HR45 is so Draconian it could literally punch a Constitutional Advocate into a lifetime Funk. In this one bill they rip the Bill of Rights from the Constitution and shitcan it.
"Don't poke the wolverine. Good advice. It remains to be seen if y'all are smart enough to recognize it."
They are not smart enough to recognize it in this case. They have a complete blindness to the real situation and your warning falls on deaf ears.
They simply don't believe you. They don't believe there really is such a line that they cross at their own peril. They think they can simply pass laws and you will obey - or that the rest of use will obey when a few are made examples of.
They just cannot picture what you warn of coming to pass (that is in large part due to the actions of the prags, who have shown again and again that they really have no actual line in the sand).
These academic and political elites very simply cannot see it (our line in the sand) and will likely never really see it, even while their nuts are being ripped off.
Alas, I too could not resist chiming in over there in the rarefied air of supposed sophisticated economic analysis. Here was my response to the author's insinuation that Mike V. was somehow a racist for calling the NRA "Judenrat.":
Rosser said:
"Which brings us to "Judenrat" Vanderboegh, who somehow thinks he can undo his earlier remarks [equating the NRA to judenrats] by accusing me of acting like a Hitler apologist, followed by a statement apparently desiring my early death. Just what one would expect from someone who talks about "Judenrat." You don't happen to belong to the Aryan Nations do you, "Judenrat"?"
Rosser, Mike's use of the term "Judenrat" refers to Jews who did the bidding of the Nazis and actually assisted in the extermination of fellow Jews. It is not an antisemetic term, as you seem to think, but a term equivalent to "quisling" or "turn-coat." There are some who think this use of the term is unfair, but it is hardly a racist slur.
See this wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenrat
You would know this if you had simply done a google search for the term, rather than jumping to your apparently preconceived notion that hardcore gun rights folks just MUST be racist. Where did you learn that, from Morris Dees?
By the way, I attended Yale Law School and am very familiar with Professor Ayres.
Before I realized that he was simply another anti-gun academic who was seeking to "find" evidence to support his preconceived notions (just as Lott is accused of doing in the other direction and may well have done), I actually interviewed with him for a teaching assistant position.
I did not pursue the position further after I spoke with him, as his agenda was very apparent, however, during our conversation I suggested that if he really wanted to find out whether the issuing of concealed carry permits in Florida actually increases crime (as he was very evidently wanting to show) the way to find out is to simply compile the actual record of those people who got a concealed carry permit - did they commit crimes with their legally carried guns?
If the "gun crime" supposedly goes up because these people have been given permits and are now carrying concealed in public, then it is reasonable to presume it would be because those very same people are committing crimes with those guns. That would be a direct correlation between the two phenomena.
Was there any indication that the permit holders were the ones actually committing the crimes - and in enough numbers to account for any statistical increase? It just seemed to make sense to me that if you want to avoid the problem of correlation being mistaken for causation you would look for such direct evidence, rather than just a correlative rising of crime.
Sadly, Professor Ayres just wasn't much interested in that approach. Gee, I wonder why?
There is a reason for the old saw about there being three classes of lies: "lies, damn lies - and statistics," with the later being at the pinnacle of the art-form.
One point I will grant you is that most people who feel strongly about guns are indeed single issue voters who were silent as the grave while George Bush and his minions wiped their asses with the rest of the Bill of Rights for eight years - warrantless searches, "black bagging" and extraordinary rendition, secret detention and trial by kangaroo military tribunals using secret evidence or evidence extracted by means of torture, "enemy combatant status" denial of jury trial even for citizens, and the ridiculous arguments that the president had war powers equivalent to an absolute despot, etc.
For all too many "gunny" types, so long as thy have their gun, they still think they are free, even as the police state is being erected around them. Most are as blind to the rest of the Bill of Rights as you are to the Second Amendment.
But that does not mean they are wrong about the central importance of arms to freedom. They are correct about that, just as the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were correct, and just as Aron Bielski, Jewish partisan leader was correct when he said about their fight against the Nazis: "Without a rifle you are nothing, worthless, you are waiting for death, any minute, any second."
And just as the men at Concord bridge were right about that in 1775.
I will forgive my fellow gun rights activists for not being equally passionate and vigilant regarding the rest of the natural rights of human beings protected by the Bill of Rights, and I will forgive your ignorance and blind hatred and hope that you expand your thinking about this subject.
But I also must tell you that it will not simply be a matter of whether you get your way politically/legally.
That will not be the end of the argument.
While too many have tunnel vision, with a single minded focus on their gun rights, they have the focus of a badger guarding its den and will still react very strongly (to say the least) if you stick your hand in there and try to take the one thing they still hold dear. So please don't poke them with your assault weapons ban "stick."
And that reaction will not be isolated to a few "gun nuts." For every Mike Vanderboegh you see on the web, such are merely the visible and vocal tip of a massive iceberg of defiance. Try to avoid playing Mr. Magoo and crashing into it, sinking us all into a true disaster.
Stewart Rhodes, Yale Law School class of 04. Winner of Yale's William E. Miller Prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights for research on enemy combatant status and proud founder of the Yale Law Gunners, law student shooting group (which was mostly made up of lefties who wanted to learn to shoot for the first time in their lives - and loved it!).
PS - III
It was clear, early on, that Rosser is another linoge. His purpose is to call people names when they present him with facts that shatter his fantasy, no substantive debate is possible. When you warn him not to play in traffic, he accuses you of plotting his death. His logic is broken, beyond repair.
Anon, Warsong:
I don't think NO is indicative of federal behavior, but I very easily could be wrong. But I concede your point. Who the hell knows where we'd be RIGHT NOW if a few fine citizens had taken a stand in the face of those confiscations.
I just try to put myself in the mind of my enemies and apply some of the basics they taught in the Corps. You look for the worst course of action and the most likely course of action. I see the MCOA as one where they starve out our culture. If they pass this sweeping AWB and we take it like we did in '94 it will take a generation for us to lose our skills and our culture. That is the situation we need to be prepared for since it will be much more difficult to combat.
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