COURT OF DATA – GUN CONTROL
This is the first of our “courts of data” where we argue two opposite positions on important societal issue solely on the basis of available data. No emotions, no anecdotes and no hypotheticals! Just data – and data which comes from trustable and non-partisan sources. This time we have gathered nearly 150 presentations totally almost 3000 power point slides with hundreds of images of plots and tables of data.
There were two positions assigned: one against more gun control laws (we have enough or even more than enough) and for more gun control laws (we need more gun control laws, more background checks). Students were divided into two groups on alphabetical basis – often forced to represent a position with which they did not necessarily agree. This was the whole point: in your professional life you may have to argue a position which you personally disagree with and you will have to do with objective “cold eye” looking at what data tells you, where does the data come from, is it biased, possibly random. Are there additional lurking variables which were omitted? Defend position which you were assigned to defend with data and data only
We started with the following announcement:
COURT OF DATA ON GUN CONTROL
DATA & SOCIETY CHALLENGE
POSITIONS:
AGAINST: You are going to argue using *data* not emotions or anecdotes that American society does not need any more gun control measures than it currently has. You will make a point that more guns mean actually less crime, since weapons in hands of law obiding citizens are excellent deterrant against crime. You can for example find historical data on the web to back it up - and show that concealed weapons help to stop criminals.
FOR: You are going to argue using *data*, not *emotions* or anecdotes that we have too many guns in US already and that we definitely need more gun control laws. Less guns is less crime. You can, for example, argue by showing data from other countries which have strict gun laws.
What position you take:
If your last name starts from A -L (including L) you will argue AGAINST.
If Your name starts with M-Z you will argue FOR.
You need to submit power point slides (there is really no upper limit, but at least 10) with data and sources of this data (URL) + why do your trust them + interpretation to support your position.
MAIN CONTIBUTORS TO DISCUSSION (best power points and presentations)
For
Mark Simmons, Michaela Murr, Usama Sajid, Akhila Narayan, Bradley Sheridan, Christian Rodriguez, Stacey Mui, Steven Valle, Wei Peluso, Peter Tran, Mohammad Mohsin Raza, Andy Wang, Peter Tran, Brian Schillaci, Devin Soni, Tande Mungwa, Daniel Tsoni, Macauley Pinto
Against
Suraj Kakkad, Ran Gao, Victor Chen, Yichen Chao, Paola Giacommeti, Shadigna Chireno, Zachary Batista, Adebayo, Alex Gong, Kaila Anderson, Michael Lubin, Sanjay Kandu, Lance Fletcher, Adebayo, Chazulle Michelle, David Greydanus
SUMMARY
The main arguments in favor of more gun control centered around the following themes
a) It does work in other places, like Australia and England
b) States with more gun control have lower crime rate, states with less gun control have higher crime rate
b) Guns make suicide easier
For example, Devi Soni argued that the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is 3.2 times higher than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.
Usama Sajid summarized much more restrictive gun laws in some of the European countries
Germany: To buy a gun, anyone under the age of 25 has to pass a psychiatric evaluation
Finland: Handgun license applicants are only allowed to purchase firearms if they can prove they are active members of regulated shooting clubs. Before they can get a gun, applicants must pass an aptitude test, submit to a police interview, and show they have a proper gun storage unit.
Italy: To secure a gun permit, one must establish a genuine reason to possess a firearm and pass a background check considering both criminal and mental health records
France: Firearms applicants must have no criminal record and pass a background check that considers the reason for the gun purchase and evaluates the criminal, mental, and health records of the applicant.
Peter Tran showed data demonstrating that of the 29,618,300 violent crimes between 2007 and 2011, only 0.79% of the victims protected themselves with the threat or use of a gun. The least-employed protective behavior. In 2010, there were only 210 justifiable homicides from self-defense using firearms. Compared to the 8,279 criminal gun homicides
David Greydanus cited the following interesting study:
http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable.pdf
This is a study by the Violence policy center (a left leaning group) on firearm self-defense statistics. David's major problem with it is that he doesn't think the FBI has data on the majority of self-defense incidents (if you prevented a crime there might not be much to report). This applies to Victor Chen's diagram further down this summary.
David also pointed out that a lot of people found a graph a graph showing that the number of firearms in the USA has increased since the mid 90's, but firearm violence has gone down. This graph can be spun in almost any direction depending on how you want the outcome to look, but an important point to keep in mind is that the US didn't require background checks for purchasing firearms(even on handguns) until 1993. Any graph that starts or ends in the mid 90's is most likely being used deceptively
Many presentations in favor of more gun control pointed to the number of guns already owned by Americans (more than one per person) and
the rle guns play in of homicides as well as suicides in the US.
The first graph shows fraction of homicides commited using a gun. Crearly US has much higher fracton of gun related homicides than other countries"
Murder rate seems to have clear relationship to the fraction of families owning guns. And US tops the scale signifcantly:
US also dominates meaningful statistics of Firearm homicides per 100,000 people. Look at comparison of US vs UK!
Graphically US stands out clearly
States with the most restrictive gun laws like NJ and NY have lower firearm death rates than countries with
benign laws such as Arkansas and Wyoming.
US domiamates also in terms of number of guns per 100 people
Next image speaks for itself
Countries argument
The next few images show the relationship between suicide and gun prevalence
However in overall sucide rate US is definitely not a leader
Here is some data about self-defence
AGAINST- slides and points made
Main points made in student presentattions here were:
1. Gun laws cannot prevent the flow of illegal guns. In fact most crimes are commited using illegal guns.
2. Concealed guns help to prevent crime. Criminals are less likely to commit a crime knowing that the potential victim may have a gun - i.e we can't help criminals getting guns illegally, thus we should be able to defend ourselves. Data presented inidcated positive effect of gun ownership by law abiding citizens
3. (Questionable) points about that guns are mostly used in self-defense
4. Increase in gun laws did not result in crime decline in places like Chicago
No matter what gun laws are - they cannot stop the illegal flow of guns from less retrictive states to the more restrictive ones.
Switzerland where almost everyone has a gun has very minimal gun violence
This is another example like Switzerland but in Georgia's Kennesaw county
This is an interesting pie chart showing again that nmost often violence is not commiteed by the legal owner of gun
Here are several graphs making a point that while number of guns per person increases, the gun homicide per 100K
decreases.
Another example of case reasoning - this time the case of Florida where licence to carry guns had positive influence - crime decreased
And US first time not topping the scale by right in the middle of homicide rates accross all countries
Graph showing that right to carry concealed weapons works well towards crime reduction - more guns less crime!
More guns less crime again!
And again US not topping the charts - this time in suicides
And finally yet another chart showing, that we are not at the top, it is Brazil, Mexico, Russia and Chile!
Hmm...where did you obtain this pie chart from, Victor? It does not seem to be right.
Notice that differnet part of the pie are 20+ years apart. Besides how do you report self-defense?
Summary and Impact of our discussion
We heard some good legitmate points in favor and againt more gun control. There is a lot of data available on the web which can be interpreted either way. Unfortunately, there are lots of ways of "cooking the data" which was observed by students. One is only showing the data after 1993 - which
ignores time prior to 1993 when gun laws were far more loose and it was much easier to get a gun. Another, exaggarated data about the number of times guns were used in selfdefense . This data seems to be very difficult to obtain and validate. Finally - correlation vs causation was and is always an issue. Crime has been going down in recent years - but is it result of gun laws or other "hidden" variables dealing with socio-economic condtions such as poverty and unemployment? Of course ideal experiment would have been to keep everyting else the same and have perfect study with more and less gun laws in locations which are otheriwse similar socio-economically. It is not clear that such experiment is possible and it is clear that one cannot compare Switzerland and United States and even England and US - at least blindly.
We have polled the audience twice using i-clicker. One poll was taken before our discussion and another, after. Not suprisingly our discussion had
no statistical impact :-) (p-value of 0.15!). well, there was not enough time to discuss at depth and certainly it takes effort and convincing arguments to change minds on such a controversial and often emotional issue. But i hope we all got more informed as result. And we got to hear some evidence in both directions.
Before
For More Gun Control - 52, Against More Gun Control – 29 64%
After
For - More Gun Control 67, Against More Gun Control – 40 62.6%
