All Things Second Amendment

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Exploding cannon balls as well

Not exempted from the 2nd amendment either
It is a worthy thought experiment at least, to just consider the idea that the Second Amendment means what you suggest here---that literally no weapons /weaponry /weapon systems are excluded, up to and including nukes, and whatever becomes the new maximum escalation weapon of the future, if even nukes are obsolesced one day.

If that's what it means, then can we put together a super majority to amend the Second Amendment, as the Constitution requires, if we disagree with having a law like that? I mean something like, "The Second Amendment is amended to add that nuclear weapons are not Constitutionally protected arms." Could we get a super majority for that, as the Constitution demands, in order to amend it?

It surfaces the way we think about our legislature. We think about conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, we sometimes talk about 'the balance of power' in relation to these competing factions, but there's none of that in the Constitution, and the only balance of power is set up between the three branches of government, not through which party or political opinion holds a simple majority in Congress. There are things with "bipartisan" support, where we actually do achieve super majorities. The tug-of-war between everything else tends to come down to which justices get into the Supreme Court. This is nowhere in the Constitution either, the S. Ct. is supposed to have a boring desk job of nullifying laws that objectively contravene the Constitution, not weigh in on what the Constitution meant in 1791. We Americans need to tell the S. Ct. what to think, not hope that they think what we want them to think. We do that by amending the Constitution. The S. Ct. has zero authority to "overrule" a Constitutional amendment, they have to treat the amended Constitution as the Constitution, full stop. And that's how we get the S. Ct. back under our control, the control of We the People. They shouldn't be this powerful, but in order to remedy this hopefully temporary power surge We the People need to form a super majority to amend the Constitution to take away this power and return it to its rightful owner, We the People.

This also concerns abortion.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
This is Idol's opening kill the messenger bit, which he'll back up by throwing a bit of Latin at you (curiously, after the fact) and waving a few terms of art he's reasonably sure won't be understood, both diminishing a number of well educated people, the institution they're authoring the paper for, and the conclusion, if indirectly, while promoting the idea of his authority to judge the work without establishing his credentials.
If I show how it's wrong, then the showing speaks for itself, and obviously obviates any need for my 'credentials,' since I'm in no way appealing to my own authority here.

Everything I wrote regarding statistics is factual. This study is, while valid statistically (which I never denied), insignificant due to the magnitudes of the estimated statistics involved. The study, for one thing, seeks to show that the yearly variance is partly explained by this one binary parameter, whether or not the federal "AWB" was or was not in force.

What someone versed in statistics knows is that this is only one part of the problem, and the other one is far more important, which is the intercept, because in relation to the intercept, the variance is minuscule. If you remove all yearly variance such that we have a straight line from year to year, that straight line is going to be near 15000 murders. So what good is e.g. (Latin ;)) making an 'AWB' law?

I mentioned the magnitude of the estimate of the coefficient, it's 9 parts in 10000, or 0.09%, so we'd 'permanently' lower the fraction of those murder victims who are murdered in a mass murder, by less than 1%. It wouldn't lower the overall murder rate at all, is only one of the unspoken conclusions of this study.

I also mentioned that there were a variety of things that the "AWB" did, and also some things that it did not do (there were plenty of high-capacity magazines for assault weapons floating around, legally, in the US during the period that the "AWB" was law), so even the selection of this very imprecise binary parameter isn't without its own difficulties as to what exactly it means that the "AWB" was law. Practically, it did not mean nearly as much as the study's authors appear to think it means.

Do you deny that 0.09% is a tiny change, Town?

Do you deny that that 0.09% estimate is actually the midpoint of a confidence interval, that drops down even lower that 0.09%, but excludes zero (which is what is meant by a 0.05 p-value constituting statistical significance)? It means that there's a decent chance that the actual value could be higher---or lower---than the already tiny 0.09%.

Also, you quoted two paragraphs of mine but seem to only respond to the first one, so I'll requote it and ask a followup:
What the study tries to say is that all things being equal (ceteris paribus) there is an upward, unexplained trend every year of 0.7 in the proportion of people killed in mass murders. Controlling for this unexplained trend, they found that during 1994-2004, there was a 9 out of 10000 decrease in people killed by mass murders.
Can you identify a single error in the above?

Also, 'ceteris paribus' is common lingo in certain fields, perhaps especially in fields employing statistical analysis; and I led with the English anyway, only adding the Latin parenthetically to clarify to those in the know what I'm talking about. I don't fear, in the age of wiki, confusion that might in decades past have been caused, by invoking a common Latin phrase in otherwise English. Anybody can check to see what's meant there, and they'll just see that what I wrote in English, is precisely what the Latin means, or 'vice versa' (;)).
It's a neat rhetorical trick.
And what I would say is that it's you with the neat rhetorical trick, trying to cast doubt on my brief analysis of the study you copied-and-pasted.

One thing you should be careful about is that superscript '2' next to the R statistic. The study itself has the 2, making it an R-square instead of just an R, which is what your erroneous copy-and-paste has there, and it's incorrect that an R-value of 0.3 means that 'a third' of the variance is explained. The relationship between R and R-square is just as you'd think, the R-value is squared to get the R-square value. And an R-value of 0.3 is closer to a third of a third of the variance explained, not a third. But as I said, I inspected the actual published study and saw that the authors did in fact at least get the R-square interpretation right. So I didn't mention it, since I was only addressing the study and not your copy-and-paste job.
Here comes the second leg of that.


What he sort of noted there, is that each year of the ban contains a set of data.
I didn't say that, because the study doesn't indicate that. The study indicates that they took one summary statistic estimate per year, and that this data set is the 'raw' dependent data used in their analysis, which looks like an extremely simple multiple regression (with two parameters /independent variables; the year, and the binary "AWB").

Each whole year is one datum, iow. As I said, there are about 37 data in the whole analysis. That is enough statistically to make a valid statistical analysis, it's just a very small dataset, 'ceteris paribus' (all other things being equal). To make a better estimate, you need more data.

I did not notice, in reading what is available of the study, which parameters were initially included in their analysis (tested for statistical significance), but were subsequently (and rightly) excluded from their model, as being statistically insignificant contributors. That would have made the study far more helpful, by not only identifying those parameters that do statistically significantly correlate to their dependent variables, but also identifying those ruled out as statistically insignificant, so that we can stop thinking about literally every possible factor, as we discuss this and other statistical studies regarding gun control.

Also, that of the (count em) two parameters that they do include in their resultant model, one is a binary parameter, and the other is an arbitrary 'year' parameter, tells those who understand statistics just how limited an analysis this is. What explaining power is there in identifying the year the data was collected from? Zero. Are we supposed to roll back calendars in order to achieve lower proportional mass murder rates? Even given statistical significance, there's no practical significance at all; nothing actionable; in identifying the year as a statistically significant contributor to the dependent variables. Most statisticians wouldn't include this parameter at all, since it readily shows that we have no idea what causes this upward trend.

By normalizing the dependent variable through dividing by total murders, the study's authors lose what could have been more clear data, if instead they actually counted the number of mass murders per year, multiplied by total victims, or something like that, to get a more sensitive metric to better answer the question that the study sets out to answer.

Something else I noticed, as an uncredentialed person, is that while the study indicates that 'year' explains about 30% of the variance in the dependent variable, they never mentioned how much additional variance is explained by "AWB." Given the extremely small estimate of the coefficient for that factor, my guess would be that it didn't provide a 'significant' enough boost to their model's explanation power to warrant calling it out explicitly, but I could be wrong. 'Just a disinterested and uncredentialed person's thoughts on the matter.
There's actually ten years in the ban period
I gave them more credit than they deserved then. I thought it was 1994-2004 inclusive, but apparently they take 1994's data as part of the '0' setting for the binary "AWB" parameter, instead of a '1.' My bad. But it actually means the study's weaker by a bit, because now one of the two datasets has only 10 data points instead of 11, which would have been marginally, but really, better.

I'll also mention that if we could see plots of the data they used, we might see something like a definitive step change from before and after the "AWB," which would lead a reasonable person to conclude that the real effect of the "AWB" was that it caused an otherwise unexplainable increase in the number or severity of mass murders, as compared with the period leading up the "AWB." iow, perhaps the "AWB" somehow prompted people who wouldn't have otherwise committed mass murder, to do so, once the "AWB" expired. You can't unring that bell.
and two different periods, before and after the ban, to look at and essentially see if there was any statistical difference notable.
Yes, right. An exceptionally facile analysis.
Turns out, there was.
The estimate was 0.09% difference, right? It's still a tiny number. Which is why I said the study while statistically significant, is practically insignificant.
They're saying that if you look at the same rough period before and after the ban you'll see a significant statistical variance occurs during, lower numbers of fatalities by gun.
Lower fatalities proportionally due to mass murders, specifically. 0.09% lower. That tiny number.
Idol says this without any practical demonstration of why it's so, how what appears significant is altered by his introduction of the term "practical."
The magnitude is tiny. It'd be like measuring how high off the ground you can lift a barbell. If I stand upright, then it lifts maybe two or three feet. If you try to do it, maybe you're able to lift it a little bit, and we're given five or ten or twenty tries at it. I lift it up all the way each time, and the estimate of the coefficient is say 24 inches, and the p-value of the measurement is 0.000. Your twenty attempts average a quarter-inch, with many measured at zero, but a handful get an inch or two off the ground, so the estimate is a quarter-inch, and the variability of the measurements work into the estimate of the confidence interval for the average measurement and we'll say that the lower confidence interval is an eighth or a sixteenth of an inch, which excludes zero, and so the p-value of this estimate is also less than 0.05, so it too is statistically significant.

But if you're going to use this analysis to determine who you want lifting something heavy off the ground, you're going to go with me, because the estimate /coefficient when I lift the bar is so much greater than when you try to lift it.

That's the difference between statistical and practical significance, and why statistical significance in and of itself in insufficient to determine whether or not a parameter or model is worth getting excited about.

This study is not worth getting excited about, if you're looking to argue that it's a good idea to 'bring back' an "AWB." It'd be like hiring you instead of me to be a furniture mover, thinking that we'd be equal to the task, based strictly on that we can each statistically significantly lift the barbell off the ground. The magnitude of the estimate of the coefficient matters. That tiny number.
An abstract is not the entirety of the thing, is a summary of sorts. It's examining the years in question to determine a particular impact. It manages to do exactly that.
Whatever that means. It's a simple binary parameter. It's a certain way to carve up a relatively small dataset into two groups. Also as an aside, one could just as easily take the 1994-2004 years and compare them with the other years using a t-test, and the confidence interval and estimate for the difference would have been the same. A multiple regression is one way to essentially multiply out many different simultaneous t-tests, with also being able to include continuous independent variables, like in this study, with one of the two significant factors being 'year.'

To perform a categorical analysis (without any continuous variables), you could use an ANOVA to simultaneously analyze multiple categorical (not continuous) independent variables. For example, the authors could have had three categories of data; the years preceding the "AWB," the "AWB" years, and then the years following the "AWB," to test for a statistically significant signal between these three categories. That wouldn't have been the worst idea, and probably would have captured the general rise in people killed in mass murders more precisely, is my guess. Or, it would have shown that before and after the "AWB" are relatively similar, with the "AWB" years being statistically lower. It just would have provided more insight into the data.
Idol's sorrows notwithstanding, he's wrong.

The years before and after are chosen for a purpose. The rule, the norm, the average that either continues uninterrupted or is impacted by some change is found in that examination. The reason you want years before and after, and why those years are markedly more valuable to understanding the answer to that particular inquiry than randomly chosen sets of data, isn't really difficult to see, unless you don't mean to. If a trend established in the years prior to the years of the bans is suddenly and significantly altered, then resumes with the ending of those bans, it speaks to the impact of them absent some other factor of equal or greater weight that began and ended in the same period.

The study makes its point, Idol's protest aside.
I've already touched on the matter of statistical 'versus' (;)) practical significance, and now I'll include some other thoughts that should occur to anyone good with statistical analysis.

2017 is included in the data. In 2017 the suicidal mass murder Braddock murdered 58 people. What I'd want to see is how much of a contributor this single data point was, upon the overall analysis. Since it occurred right at the tail end of the data used in the study (with 1981 being the start), I'd think to check that this one event didn't explain the 'year' independent data coefficient enough to render that arbitrary factor statistically significant. Do you have any idea if they did that? What's available to read doesn't mention it.

Another thing is the residuals of the model---is there any statistically 'out of control' behavior in them? This could be one way to see if 2017 all by itself skewed the analysis in a somewhat counterintuitive way. The residuals of any good model should be in statistical control, and not show behavior indicative of some special cause that isn't captured by the analysis. 'In statistical control' means that the data you're looking at is normally distributed. Any model that leaves residuals that are not normally distributed has a big weakness in it.

That's just some thoughts coming from an uncredentialed person.
And that's before we understand the data we have from every other Western Industrial Democracy with stronger gun laws and safer citizenry
How do you get safer citizenry? This factor seems pretty important to me. And by "safer citizenry," do you really just mean people who aren't murderers? Because for sure, if we could just lower the population of murderers, we can lower the number of murders. Ipso facto, id est, QED, ibid, et cetera. And supra.
, and before we examine the rule established by the top and bottom states here in terms of gun laws
What "rule," and what precisely do you mean by "established?"
, and the substantive difference in gun violence and deaths you find among the weaker laws as the rule.
I've seen pretty much the whole earth's data on the matter, taking murder rate as the dependent data, and gun control (as measured by the inverse of civilian gun ownership), and population density, and their cross product (to test for any interaction between gun control and population density), and none of those parameters is statistically significant in explaining the variance in murder globally.

With the US, there are 120 civilian owned guns per 100 people, which is far and away the biggest number in the gun control dataset (it means the US has the least gun control of all the other nations---the next closest country Yemen, isn't even half as large a number), and so what that does is it makes the US's murder rate (around 5.0 per 100k people) a bigger contributor to the overall analysis, so I excluded the US data to see the difference that it makes.

The difference between including or excluding the US from the global analysis of murders, turns the coefficient from civilian gun ownership from being slightly negative (the more civilian gun ownership, the fewer murders) when the US is excluded, to being slightly more negative (even fewer murders with more civilian gun ownership) when the US is included in the analysis.

But it doesn't matter since in both cases the p-value for the estimate of the coefficient is greater than 0.05, so statistically therefore gun control (inverse of civilian gun ownership) has Zero influence on murders, worldwide, because the null hypothesis is not denied.

It means that we don't know what causes murders, until we can find independent parameters that statistically significantly explain at least some of the variance in murder rate.

In my next round of analysis, I hope to include other readily available and uncontroversial data (civilian gun ownership data is collected from an anti-gun organization that tracks it, so there's no possibility of bias), such as GDP 'per capita' (;)) as a measure of a country's overall wealth, along with civilian gun ownership and population density, and all the possible interactions between these parameters, to get an even better idea of how much or how little we know about what we can do to lower murder rates.

What we would love to see is a model that explains something like 90% or more of the variance, not 30% or even less, because if we can identify independent factors that explain a bulk of the variance, then we can act on it and do whatever we can to reduce murder rates. What we have is murder rate data with a lot of variance, that is unexplained by the factors that we're submitting as possible causes of that variance.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
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If I show how it's wrong, then the showing speaks for itself, and obviously obviates any need for my 'credentials,' since I'm in no way appealing to my own authority here.
Rather, when you sit in dismissive judgment on an approach without actually ever getting around to invalidating it, you are neither establishing your position as a fit judge nor actually managing what you wave an off hand at.

Everything I wrote regarding statistics is factual.
In the sense that you believe it to be practically without value, I suppose. Otherwise, no.

This study is, while valid statistically (which I never denied), insignificant due to the magnitudes of the estimated statistics involved.
There you swerve from the objective into the subjective valuation, but I'll come back to this in a bit.

The study, for one thing, seeks to show that the yearly variance is partly explained by this one binary parameter, whether or not the federal "AWB" was or was not in force.
That would be the independent variable. The dependent variable being fatalities by gun.

What someone versed in statistics knows is that this is only one part of the problem, and the other one is far more important, which is the intercept,
For those following along, the intercept can be thought of as a constant and is the expected mean value of Y when all X = 0. X is the predictor. If X never equals 0 then it's meaningless, since its only the expected mean value of Y.


because in relation to the intercept, the variance is minuscule. If you remove all yearly variance such that we have a straight line from year to year, that straight line is going to be near 15000 murders. So what good is e.g. (Latin ;)) making an 'AWB' law?
Miniscule is a subjective term. It's statistically significant and the outcome is a contributing argument for making the laws.

Though remember, I'm calling for models resembling our European cousins and those are much more encompassing, and the data much more compelling than this problematic side bar.

Do you deny that 0.09% is a tiny change, Town?
Per 10,000 people. I deny that's insignificant. And I think you would too, if pressed on the point of what we're actually talking about in terms of outcome and how that translates over larger populations.

Also, 'ceteris paribus' is common lingo in certain fields, perhaps especially in fields employing statistical analysis; and I led with the English anyway, only adding the Latin parenthetically to clarify to those in the know what I'm talking about.
Okay. I can accept it, but it was oddly placed and seemed more a part of an overkill in establishing credibility for an easy dismissal that I still reject as an established conclusion, supra.

And what I would say is that it's you with the neat rhetorical trick, trying to cast doubt on my brief analysis of the study you copied-and-pasted.
Now that was a neat rhetorical trick, the inference in copy/paste. I did supplement my approach, but if I'm talking about an abstract, the best way to present it clearly is to set it out, not spend time rewriting it and risk missing or mistatting something of importance. As someone familiar with the application of statistics to a number of models, but not someone who does this regularly or has a particular distinction within that field of study, it seemed the prudent course of action.

I didn't say that, because the study doesn't indicate that. The study indicates that they took one summary statistic estimate per year, and that this data set is the 'raw' dependent data used in their analysis, which looks like an extremely simple multiple regression (with two parameters /independent variables; the year, and the binary "AWB").
We may need a harder and longer look at the full study.

As I said, there are about 37 data in the whole analysis. That is enough statistically to make a valid statistical analysis, it's just a very small dataset, 'ceteris paribus' (all other things being equal). To make a better estimate, you need more data.
You don't really need more data if you have enough to establish the significance from data mined pre and post and the variance during.

I concede you appear to have a real grasp of the topic and one that, so far as I can tell at present, is more broadly developed than my own. It's fun to read. Doesn't alter your concession or my points, but if you want to keep doing this I'm game to keep reading it in relation to the additional consideration you indicate you want to give the larger issue.

I'll also mention that if we could see plots of the data they used, we might see something like a definitive step change from before and after the "AWB," which would lead a reasonable person to conclude that the real effect of the "AWB" was that it caused an otherwise unexplainable increase in the number or severity of mass murders, as compared with the period leading up the "AWB." iow, perhaps the "AWB" somehow prompted people who wouldn't have otherwise committed mass murder, to do so, once the "AWB" expired. You can't unring that bell.
That was a very creative bit of writing, but no. It's on par with suggesting that were we to look over time at highway fatalities involving cars where the occupants were not required to wear seat belts, looked at that same data during a prolonged period where the law required the use of seat belts (we could factor non-compliance) and later looked at data after those laws were overturned and saw a lowering of fatalities during the time of the laws and a rise in fatalities once the laws were repealed, that something about seat belts led to the surge of fatalities, instead of the independent variable, the absence of those laws.

Yes, right. An exceptionally facile analysis.
The estimate was 0.09% difference, right? It's still a tiny number. Which is why I said the study while statistically significant, is practically insignificant.
And in saying it step from the objective to the subjective, and I'd argue that you wouldn't find it insignificant were those still walking about members of your family or others you know and value. That is, in hybridizing your response you accidentally shed an essential humanity that is at the foundation of caring about the point at all. And in that sphere all human life is significant. The avoidance of dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries in a given year is a compelling public good.

This study is not worth getting excited about, if you're looking to argue that it's a good idea to 'bring back' an "AWB."
No, it's more an addition to an easier and straight forward notice of rates of mass shootings, violence and homicides and how in those states and nations with the strongest gun laws the lowest levels of those undesirable elements occurs, predictably. But yes, it is an argument. There's just a better, stronger one to be made and for stronger action.

2017 is included in the data. In 2017 the suicidal mass murder Braddock murdered 58 people.
A full examination of the study seems reasonable at this point to get at a number of points/concerns you raise that seem completely valid to me, though none of them seem set to nullify the conclusion or your acknowledgement of it, if indirectly.

What I'd want to see is how much of a contributor this single data point was, upon the overall analysis. Since it occurred right at the tail end of the data used in the study (with 1981 being the start), I'd think to check that this one event didn't explain the 'year' independent data coefficient enough to render that arbitrary factor statistically significant. Do you have any idea if they did that? What's available to read doesn't mention it.
I'll see how easy it is to snag the thing in full and if I can I'll throw a copy your way.

That's just some thoughts coming from an uncredentialed person.
Not bad. I'm enjoying it, largely for your approach to it.

How do you get safer citizenry? This factor seems pretty important to me. And by "safer citizenry," do you really just mean people who aren't murderers?
A safer citizenry would entail those less imperiled by gun violence and the corresponding rates of violence. And when we look at the data across generations now, every society with stronger gun laws does a better job of making their citizenry safer. The stronger the laws the better the outcome, but even the weakest of our cousins in that regard do a great deal better than we manage, just as our states (if to a lesser extent) with stronger gun laws our perform states with the weakest.

I've seen pretty much the whole earth's data on the matter, taking murder rate as the dependent data, and gun control (as measured by the inverse of civilian gun ownership),
This isn't about the number of guns, though you can make an argument on the point. It's about the kinds of guns, aids, and public responsibility. My argument from the beginning is that we can retain the right, but that we have created a class of affordable weapons largely if not entirely distinguished by their ability to kill a great many people in a very small window of responsive time and that if we address those weapons, and couple that with mandatory gun safety courses and the elimination of certain aids that help those and other guns in the infliction of that sudden potential for mass killings, the ease of it, we can save a great many lives that we've seen lost in parks, churches, etc.
 

Stripe

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We don't know what causes murders, until we can find independent parameters that statistically significantly explain at least some of the variance in murder rate.

I doubt that any parameter that showed a significant correlation would be a useful answer to the question of what causes murder. :)

The main issue is statistics in the hands of those who are either ignorant or malicious (the ignorant and malicious are easy to spot).

It's far too easy, even for an untrained person, to take a dataset and draw an inference that seems to support their agenda. Then it takes 10 times as much work to show how they are not justified in their conclusions.

Thanks for the input. Much appreciated. :up:
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
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Another thing I'll be interested in seeing in that study is how the the change in fatalities occurs. That is, given there aren't any large scale buy backs or confiscations associated, or other laws in support of it, how scrambled it was, and how the effect can reasonably be limited to the denial of easy access only for those without it at the time of the ban enactment, if that impact was immediate or escalating over time. That is, was there an ongoing and downward trend in fatalities, or an immediate response that plateaued and sustained, or varied around the average.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Do you even know what a coefficient is?
The 'gold standard' for estimating coefficients is the factorial experiment. (I exclude for this post the curvilinearity1 that can exist between independent and dependent variables, for simplicity. This is going to be complicated enough with just a factorial design.)

An example.

One 'lux' is one 'lumen' per square meter. It's a quantitative (continuous variable) instrument measurement of light.

Imagine we've got a room with windows to outside. Imagine in the room there is an installed light connected to a light switch. Imagine there is a candle also.

We arbitrarily decide to measure the light in the room (the response /dependent variable) in the center of the room.

We want to know what if any influence, each of three independent variables /factors have on the room light measured by our light meter. Assuming we find some factors that are statistically significant, the outcome of our study will be a mathematical model that explains some of whatever variance in our response that we measure.

So the independent parameters (aka factors) of this study are:
Outside lux (a continuous numerical variable spanning all the way from noon on a clear day, to an overcast moonless sky at night)
Light switch (0/1)
Candle (0/1)

The response (the dependent variable) is the lux measurement taken at the center of the room.

A factorial design will test each factor independently, and also every possible interaction between these three variables, up to a term that multiplies together the outside light measurement with the light switch setting and whether or not the candle is lit.

Once the experiment is performed and the results are recorded, then a multiple regression analysis will estimate the coefficients for each of the tested parameters, including whether or not the light switch is on or off, whether the candle is lit or not, and how much light is coming in from outside, all together at once.

Because the outside light will sometimes be very great, the analysis will show a large coefficient for that variable. And because when the outside light is low (it's dark out), the candle and light switch will show a large influence on the measured room light, these too will have positive coefficients, when the outside light is low.

But when it's bright outside, the influence that the light switch and the candle have on room light will be tiny, maybe even imperceptible to our light meter. This is what an interaction looks like. At different values of one variable, the coefficient of another variable changes. In this case when outside light is brilliant, the coefficient for the light switch and for the candle will be small if not zero, but when outside light is low, their coefficient will be large. A factorial experiment will reveal relationships like this that exist between independent factors.

The response can then be explained through a mathematical model that takes into account the outside light level, and whether or not the light switch is on, and if the candle is lit. The amount of variance explained by our model should approach 95% (R-square= 0.95), with all this information. That would be a very good model.

The coefficients are just the multipliers of the independent variables' settings /values that explain the most variance in the dependent variable. Each variable's estimated coefficient is tested for statistical significance, meaning that each estimate includes a confidence interval, and if the confidence interval does not include zero, then that estimate is statistically significant.

The coefficients are right in the model. Based on outside light, the position of the light switch, and whether or not the candle is lit, we can with the model predict what the light measurement will be in the room, when we've got a model with an R-square of something like 0.9 or greater (the maximum possible R-square is 1.0, which would mean that the model explains All of the variance).

For an independent variable with zero influence on the dependent variable, the estimate for its coefficient is also zero. It means that, for whatever setting or value of this independent variable, there is no change to the measurement of the response. If e.g. one of our factors was whether or not a dark closet in the room is open or shut, then that factor's coefficient would likely be zero, since it probably doesn't add to the light in the room at all, regardless of the other factors' settings /values. We would exclude such a factor from our resultant model entirely.

1 - It could also be that outside light influences room light exponentially or logarithmically, and this too can be tested through carefully designed experimentation, but the design couldn't be just a factorial design. With the right design, the estimate for the coefficient of a square or cube or log term would be statistically significant, if the outside light affects the room light exponentially or logarithmically, instead of only linearly. This would mean that there is a curvilinear relationship between outside light and room light.​

The factors that greatly influence the dependent variable, whether they are just the 'main effects' (linear estimate of the independent factors), or cross products (interaction terms), all have large coefficients, and the ones that do not affect the dependent variable /response have zero coefficients.

The factors that affect the dependent variable statistically significantly, but only to a small extent, have small coefficients.

This is all what I mean by 'coefficient.'
 

Yorzhik

Well-known member
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You never did answer a question that would be good for you to answer: If our leaders decided to confiscate semi-autos instead of doing a buy-back, would you still support them?

No, that's both oversimplified and missing pieces.
Simplified but not oversimplified. Nothing you said showed how my nutshell assessment differed on our major point of contention. In fact, you seemed to pull a Gruber. If you don't remember Gruber here are the quotes that made him a household name:
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber said. "And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."

"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes."



You follow up my clear nutshell statement with what should be un-oversimplifying of what I said, but instead you wrote:

I don't want automatic and semi automatic weapons in the stream of commerce.
You see the problem here? This is oversimplifying at best. More likely this demonstrates you trying to torture the text and add a lack of transparency.

The logical conclusion is that if you can preserve the right to bear arms while dramatically inhibiting the likelihood of those events you should do it.
But it comes at a cost of more violence and tyranny. You're jumping out of the pan and into the fire. The largest body of evidence shows that more guns means less crime, or make no difference, and confiscating guns results in more violent crime.

You've yet to state mine correctly, as I keep noting. So that's funny right there.
Sure, elitists love laughing at their own jokes. But you didn't change anything about my simple statement that shows it was wrong. I stated, in a nutshell, what you want - touching on the point of contention between us.

Elitist is just another attempt to shift the focus, to peddle fear, to avoid the inarguable good and to cloth paranoia and selfishness in the robes of public virtue.
Elitists in academia (but I repeat myself) almost universally support leftist government ranging from democratic socialism, fascism, to full blown communism. With all the people killed under those ideas, I'd say the little people's fears are founded.

Elitists in journalism proffer fake news like the Russian hoax and still claim to be unbiased while reporting the elitist narrative. Or consider Carlos Maza's TED talk about how the MSM should be the gatekeepers of cultural knowledge - the same gatekeepers that have been supporting violent Antifa. So, yeah, the little people should keep up the hurdles that the elites want removed if for nothing else because we know they hate us, we know they are dangerous, and for some reason even if we can only use our guns in our fantasies it still bothers them that we have them.

And that's where too many people opposing reasoned measures to reduce violence while preserving the right are found. A step removed from the fantasy of violently opposing that straw man under the flag of watering the tree of liberty. It's a violent fantasy found in the wheelhouse of people who should know better.
By everything you've written it seems like you think my fear of the government is irrational. Do you really believe that? Are you so stuck in your elitist thinking that you can't even acknowledge the grievances of the little people like me?

Meanwhile, children are dying in schools, neighbors in churches and mosques, at concerts and nightclubs. And most of it is preventable without surrendering your right to bear arms.
And after you've taken almost everyone's guns, there will still be crazy people that kill people at schools, neighbors in churches and mosques, at concerts and nightclubs. And since your solution before was to ban a tool, that's what you'll do again. Where does that end?

Not even a little true. I'd do no such thing.
Yes, when you make a law against something that was allowed before it makes criminals out of innocent people. Sometimes that's a good idea, but in this case it isn't.

Not my limitation, though there's nothing I can't accomplish with my bolt action and over under, or a good pistol, or even a Winchester with seven shots that you can with the blunderbuss of an AR, except endanger a lot of people needlessly.
You're being inconsistent in your arbitrary line. If you leave guns that can shoot more than once per reload you are just asking the crazies to keep doing what they are already doing. After that you can get to banning more tools that innocent people own when a single person at a school, a neighbor in a church and mosque, at a concert and nightclub, gets killed.

It would take a single death, wouldn't it?

Registration really isn't remotely that complicated
To fill out registration? No, that isn't hard. Getting approved, that's hard if you aren't one of the elites. And think it doesn't happen here in the US? A reasonable person would look at Lois Lerner and understand that even if you personally never have to worry about registration, us little people sure do.
 

Town Heretic

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You never did answer a question that would be good for you to answer: If our leaders decided to confiscate semi-autos instead of doing a buy-back, would you still support them?
I don't think that's a good question. I think it's a paranoid fantasy I'm being asked to relate to. Now if you asked me how I'd address guns already in the hands of citizens, I'd say do what they did in Australia and create buy back programs. Beyond that, I'd simply make the continued possession illegal and the manufacturing or distribution illegal and let attrition take care of the guns.

Because if you can't take it to the range, and if you're subject to criminal prosecution for owning or using it then why would anyone keep them? Why would anyone fail to exchange them for something useful?

Nothing you said showed how my nutshell assessment differed on our major point of contention.
Of course an oversimplification can still hit on the major point of contention. Why would you think it precludes that?

In fact, you seemed to pull a Gruber. If you don't remember Gruber here are the quotes that made him a household name:
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber said. "And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."



You quoted him, but you haven't connected him to your assertion relating to me.

You see the problem here? This is oversimplifying at best. More likely this demonstrates you trying to torture the text and add a lack of transparency.
Rather, it was more particularly setting out sorts of guns I oppose. I also oppose (and have noted it) large magazines, speed loaders, and bump stocks.

But it comes at a cost of more violence and tyranny. You're jumping out of the pan and into the fire. The largest body of evidence shows that more guns means less crime, or make no difference, and confiscating guns results in more violent crime.
I've never cared or taken a position about the number of guns, though you really can't empirically establish your claim as a rule because, in part, we don't register our weapons. So you might have one guy, a collector or seller, with thousands of guns living in a remote area with little to no crime and say, "See? All these guns and look how safe it is?"

So own a hundred guns if you like. It's your right. I'm speaking to something else and where that something else exists the rates of gun violence and homicides are dramatically lower than they are here.

Elitists in academia (but I repeat myself)
No, you really don't. And I'm going to cull the rest of the little people song and dance. Why? Because you're looking down your nose at academics, and consider those little people to possess more of the thing you value, more...virtue or common sense, or integrity, whatever your coin is in the quiet of your mind you're as big a snob as anyone you can point a finger at. You just wrap yours in the pretense of an injured humility.

By everything you've written it seems like you think my fear of the government is irrational.
It is if you think your AR is what stands between you and tyranny. Your only hope on that count is at the ballot box and in your ability to convince people to value what you value.

And after you've taken almost everyone's guns
See...you can't claim to understand my position and write that sentence, because it oversimplifies to the point of misstating my actual position. You mean, once the limited type of guns I actually object to, which are a small percentage of the guns owned and available, once they are no longer in use. And I'm not advocating and haven't advocated taking them to begin with, supra.

there will still be crazy people that kill people at schools, neighbors in churches and mosques, at concerts and nightclubs.
I'm not suggesting we can stop every murder. But we can impact the ease of them, and the death toll from gun violence. True in Australia, and true everywhere those laws are on the books.

And since your solution before was to ban a tool, that's what you'll do again. Where does that end?
I haven't been vague about my position. I'm for the right to bear arms, so it ends with that right in tact, In fact, the weapons I'm in favor of are vastly superior instruments than the ones our Founding Fathers found sufficient for the right's exercise.

Yes, when you make a law against something that was allowed before it makes criminals out of innocent people.
No, it doesn't. People, made aware of the law and refusing to follow it make criminals of themselves.

You're being inconsistent in your arbitrary line.
That's a self-defeating statement.

If you leave guns that can shoot more than once per reload you are just asking the crazies to keep doing what they are already doing.
You just seriously suggested that someone could pull off the Vegas shooting with a revolver. Can do as much damage as an AR spitting out hundreds of rounds in the time it takes to fire that revolver and reload it. That's not reasonable, to be charitable.

What I'm after isn't going to cure mental illness or end the wrongful use of weapons. But what it will do is take an instrument designed to kill a lot of people in a crazy hurry out of their hands. And that's a good thing for everyone.

After that you can get to banning more tools
Well, no. You keep presenting a false dichotomy, as if the choice is eventually or ultimately between the wild west or a gunless society. That's not rational. In fact, for generations every other Western Industrial Democracy has been doing some version of what I favor and with terrific results.

To fill out registration? No, that isn't hard. Getting approved, that's hard if you aren't one of the elites.
Rather, gun registration is an easy process and you don't "get approved" for it. You get approval for other things, like concealed carry permits, but that's already in place. You appear to be conflating points.

 

Stripe

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I think it's a paranoid fantasy I'm being asked to relate to.

Strange. You celebrate it happening in Australia and New Zealand.

Ah, New Zealand. Fifty-one innocent people get murdered. The government's response? Disarm thousands more people.

And note, they call them buy backs, but they're enforced with jail terms (try avoiding that, guess what happens), so really they're confiscations.
 

Town Heretic

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Strange. You celebrate it happening in Australia and New Zealand.
There's no paranoid fantasy involved in noting stronger gun laws make a nation safer.

Ah, New Zealand. Fifty-one innocent people get murdered. The government's response? Disarm thousands more people.
So they're following Australia's lead. I hope they have the same result as Australia after Port Arthur then. Looked up the mosque shooting there. Two semi-automatic weapons were used, I see.

New Zealand has around 1.2 million guns among around 5 million citizens, thinking about the safety in numbers nonsense a few have raised regarding gun ownership and safety that I noted as being problematic for any number of reasons. Nearby Australia has around 25 million people and about 3.6 million guns. Australia hasn't had a mass shooting like New Zealand just experienced since it changed its gun laws.

A man with semi-or fully automatic weapons can kill a lot of people in short order. That's what happened in that mosque. That's why the laws should have been changed and apparently were, to the exclusion of those semi-automatic guns and high capacity magazines. Good for them. It's too bad they waited until they had their own more recent Port Arthur to learn that lesson...but then, we've had a number of them and haven't learned it yet.

Meanwhile, in Australia, they've had decades without one.

And note, they call them buy backs, but they're enforced with jail terms (try avoiding that, guess what happens), so really they're confiscations.
All laws are backed with consequence and serious laws typically carry jail terms for violations. It's still a buy back. So far as I know the government isn't going home to home taking weapons and they're providing some form of payment for the weapons that citizens are required to turn in.

It should also be noted that people elect the representatives in New Zealand and that those representatives voted almost to a man (1 in opposition) for the gun measures. Also, a great many New Zealanders turned their semi-automatic weapons in before the laws were enacted and as a response to the massacre. People like New Zealander John Hart, who tweeted, "Until today I was one of the New Zealanders who owned a semi-automatic rifle. On the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn’t outweigh the risk of misuse.

We don’t need these in our country. "

No, John, you don't. Ask every nation where the people agree with you if they miss them.
 

Stripe

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There's no paranoid fantasy involved in noting stronger gun laws make a nation safer.

Those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.

They're following Australia's lead.
Never a good idea.

All laws are backed with consequence and serious laws typically carry jail terms for violations. It's still a buy back.

You're really taken in by the words politicians use, huh? They are confiscations.

So far as I know the government isn't going home to home taking weapons.

No duh. The political fallout would end "careers."

It should also be noted that people elect the representatives in New Zealand and that those representatives voted almost to a man (1 in opposition) for the gun measures. Also, a great many New Zealanders turned their semi-automatic weapons in before the laws were enacted and as a response to the massacre. People like New Zealander John Hart, who tweeted, "Until today I was one of the New Zealanders who owned a semi-automatic rifle. On the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn’t outweigh the risk of misuse.We don’t need these in our country. "No, John, you don't. Ask every nation where the people agree with you if they miss them.

Now go find a story about a guy who is informed on the issue and post one-sided, emotional manipulation touting his stance. :rolleyes:

https://youtu.be/hc8YfEMS_cc
 

Town Heretic

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Those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.
All criminal laws define what is permissible and what is not and by definition inhibit freedom. That's the price of a civil society. The question is where to draw lines, define what's reasonable, approaching the public good with a cost/benefit analysis of sorts.

Here we have a modern problem, the instruments capable of inflicting this sort of wholesale slaughter being relatively new as an accessible part of commerce. So the "freedom" to use one of these is also fairly new. Balancing that against the deaths of children and other innocents, the foreseeable and present harm against that new exercise, well, it's not a difficult one for many of us, but everyone has to come to their own conclusion on the point.

On Australia's lead for New Zealand.
Never a good idea.
I wouldn't care if Mussolini came up with antibiotics. So long as they worked.

You're really taken in by the words politicians use, huh?
No. I'm more known for my criticism of politicians than my praise, though here is an opportunity to get something right. Who knows, maybe they'll surprise.

They are confiscations.
No one is actively taking the guns, going door to door. And the government is paying people for the weapons. Whatever you want to call it, that's what's happening.

The political fallout would end "careers."
That's how elections work. If you take a stand your constituency disagrees with they tend to vote you out.
 

Stripe

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All criminal laws define what is permissible and what is not and by definition inhibit freedom.

:AMR:

You think freedom includes lawlessness?

It's clear that you do not know what the law is or what it's for.

The question is where to draw lines, define what's reasonable, approaching the public good with a cost/benefit analysis of sorts.
It's not reasonable to react to a murderer by disarming law-abiding people through gun confiscations.

Here we have a modern problem, the instruments capable of inflicting this sort of wholesale slaughter being relatively new as an accessible part of commerce. So the "freedom" to use one of these is also fairly new.

And the law is ancient, yet it is good because it applies regardless of the tools available. What you advocate is more and more rules as problems arise instead of the law, which done right teaches men regardless of the time.

Balancing that against the deaths of children and other innocents, the foreseeable and present harm against that new exercise, well, it's not a difficult one for many of us, but everyone has to come to their own conclusion on the point.

Emotional manipulation is boring.

I wouldn't care if Mussolini came up with antibiotics. So long as they worked.

Hint: Gun confiscations didn't work. There has been no downturn in murder rates because of them.

No one is actively taking the guns, going door to door. And the government is paying people for the weapons. Whatever you want to call it, that's what's happening.

Gun confiscations. It's happening.

That's how elections work. If you take a stand your constituency disagrees with they tend to vote you out.

Which just means politicians need to use special language to implement their fascist ideals.
 

Town Heretic

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You think freedom includes lawlessness?
I said that laws impede your freedom. They proscribe and prohibit, define its parameters. And there's no inherent vice in that. The value of a law is found in what it serves.

It's clear that you do not know what the law is or what it's for.
As between us and on the topic of the law, I'm a licensed practitioner, having met objective metrics for that note. You? Not so much.

It's not reasonable to react to a murderer by disarming law-abiding people through gun confiscations.
Most people don't own ARs and bump stocks. And removing those guns from the public isn't disarming them, only restricting how they are armed.

It's entirely reasonable to remove from the stream of commerce those things we find pose an unintended threat to the public safety that overwhelms their utility.

And the law is ancient, yet it is good because it applies regardless of the tools available. What you advocate is more and more rules as problems arise instead of the law, which done right teaches men regardless of the time.
I advocate what works everywhere it is applied. We have laws aimed at the same end, they're just inferior to the laws of nations doing a better job.

Hint: Gun confiscations didn't work.
Stronger gun laws demonstrably work.

There has been no downturn in murder rates because of them.
We know countries with stronger gun laws have lower rates of gun violence and homicides, but the problem with trying to speak to a downturn in murder rates is that murder rates are in decline in general. That said, we can reason easily enough that gun laws of the sort that ban access to the weapons I'm speaking about will necessarily impact murder rates, and reduce them.

Take the Las Vegas shooting. If that fellow hadn't had the ARs he had he wouldn't have been able to kill that many people. The same could be said for most if not all of the people who killed in the places I noted. Now unless the argument is that all those murdered people would have been murdered by some other person or means, it's logically impossible to suggest there's no impact on rate. It may be incremental in the larger setting of suicides and accidents, but it's still a reduction and that's the aim.
 

JudgeRightly

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Take the Las Vegas shooting. If that fellow hadn't had the ARs he had he wouldn't have been able to kill that many people. The same could be said for most if not all of the people who killed in the places I noted. Now unless the argument is that all those murdered people would have been murdered by some other person or means, it's logically impossible to suggest there's no impact on rate. It may be incremental in the larger setting of suicides and accidents, but it's still a reduction and that's the aim.

Blame the availability of weapons rather than the one using them, is what you're saying.

You're trying to make it impossible to commit crimes, rather than making it so that people don't want to commit crimes.

Do you really think that the man would have been deterred by the lack of the kinds of weapons that he had? Of course he wouldn't have been. He would have either gone to the black market for them, or he would have used a different weapon.

And then you'd be calling for bans on the kinds of weapons he used.

Instead, what would would have prevented (and I use that term loosely here) the LV shootings from happening is the law "do not murder," and the punishment of execution for murderers, and for those conspiring to commit murder, and for attempted murderers.

Such a law would have made the man think long and hard about committing such a crime, because people inherently try to keep themselves from dying or being killed, even criminals, and he probably would have chosen to not stockpile weapons in that room, let alone open the window and start shooting.

And none of that requires banning any kind of custom part for any weapon. Because weapons are just tools, and banning tools doesn't ban behavior, especially when said behavior is destructive.
 

Right Divider

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I said that laws impede your freedom. They proscribe and prohibit, define its parameters. And there's no inherent vice in that. The value of a law is found in what it serves.
You have a strange idea of what freedom means. It does NOT mean "anything goes".

As between us and on the topic of the law, I'm a licensed practitioner, having met objective metrics for that note. You? Not so much.
A fallacious appeal to authority to "support" your opinion.

Most people don't own ARs and bump stocks. And removing those guns from the public isn't disarming them, only restricting how they are armed.
Restricting their freedom... got it.

It's entirely reasonable to remove from the stream of commerce those things we find pose an unintended threat to the public safety that overwhelms their utility.
Opinions vary on this topic.

Some of us feel that it is unreasonable to limit honest people's right to ownership of some weapons that you don't want them to have.
 

Town Heretic

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Blame the availability of weapons rather than the one using them, is what you're saying.
No, I'm saying we can make it harder for the evil man or nutter to accomplish his end, AND we can do it without abolishing the right to bear arms.

Do you really think that the man would have been deterred by the lack of the kinds of weapons that he had?
I think that opportunity is often a motivator, that if you leave a loaded gun on your doorstep you may see a violence in your neighborhood that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

And here's the thing, where those weapons aren't in the stream of commerce we don't see a comparative uptick in some other means of mass murder. So yeah, if you make it harder to do a thing fewer people, especially those with mental issues, will accomplish that thing.

And then you'd be calling for bans on the kinds of weapons he used.
No, but I can see how you need to believe that to maintain some sense of opposition. No, I'm a gun owner and defender of the right, but I also believe the the right to bear arms is not the right to bear every sort in the exercise of that freedom.

Instead, what would would have prevented (and I use that term loosely here) the LV shootings from happening is the law "do not murder," and the punishment of execution for murderers, and for those conspiring to commit murder, and for attempted murderers.
We already have laws against murder and otherwise you're back to advocating a wholesale change to the criminal justice system that is a terrific thing to discuss ad nauseam, but has no traction in the realm of probable actions. What I'm speaking to has already happened once, to a lesser extent, and is a reasonable extension of approach within our system of existing law.
 

Town Heretic

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You have a strange idea of what freedom means. It does NOT mean "anything goes".
Rather, Only if you don't own a Merriam-Webster.

"Freedom: the quality or state of being free: such as: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action."

A fallacious appeal to authority to "support" your opinion.
Rather, I met a bone-headed, subjective evaluation with a distinction.

Now maybe you'd go to any guy with a good opinion of himself alone for legal advice, but I'm betting that most would rather find a licensed practitioner. At least if the matter concerned their own freedom.

Restricting their freedom... got it.
So NOW you're okay with noting that freedom is choice.

Opinions vary on this topic.
Opinions vary about whether the earth is flat, except among people with enough education to know better. So that's not saying much.

Some of us feel that it is unreasonable to limit honest people's right to ownership of some weapons that you don't want them to have.
You mean above the right to own some weapons distinguished only by their ability to facilitate a thing no one should reasonably desire. Just so.
 
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