Gun owners in WA have given up

[mjsdwash]

Yea, we also let Sideshow Bob implement an income tax. Then another income tax. We let Sideshow Bob declare the Seattle metropolitan area was not subject to the state constitution. Or state law. Or federal law. I say Sideshow Bob because as we all know The Naked Empower is not really running the show. He's sitting in hiding, ruling by edict as an autocrat, furthering the interest of his successor (for non locals, the Wa state legislator has been in a stupor, and Jay has been in 100% control for years. We have some insane "Emergency authority" laws."

If they don't care about Jay throwing people in prison for asking election question, or being forced to pay fantasy taxes for things that will never happen, then yes, they have given up. I would say the people of WA aren't that dumb, it must be some kind of scam.... but then I would be sent to Gulag by the self declared godking inslee.

 

[mjsdwash]

If your upset about it, its nothing that billions of dollars in freeway salmon art, unfinishable transit scams and murals won't fix. Just mask up and shut up.

The "New Normal".

 

[redcon1]

I suspect the venerable M1911 will rapidly gain popularity in WA.

I'd carry 460 Rowland and carry plenty of spare mags if it came to that. 10 rounds of .44 magnum should get the job done and, if not, magazine changes are super easy.

 

[Will Munny]

sorry, but it isn't meaningless when you're also the state with the strictest gun control laws in the country. Those gun control laws clearly didn't do a gosh darned thing. We see the same thing in Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland and Chicago Illinois. and yeah, we all know what the real problem is but that's irrelevant. they passed gun control laws in order to reduce gun crime and those gun control laws had no discernable effect on gun murders. they CAN NOT say: "look how effective our strict gun control laws are". They can't say it because it isn't true. Disarming law abiding, tax paying working class citizens DOES NOT REDUCE CRIME and you can't show that it does.

Do you really not see the meaning in this?

Nope. Sorry but Texas and Florida have very loose gun laws compared to California and California still beats them in total homicides and total mass shootings. In fact, California has almost as many mass shootings as Florida and Texas combined according to statista and the California population is nowhere near the combined populations of Texas and Florida.
View attachment 1058776



Per capita statistics can be useful but they can be used to deceive just as easily. You know what they say about the three kinds of lies-"lies, damned lies and statistics".

sorry, but it isn't meaningless when you're also the state with the strictest gun control laws in the country
Yes it is. You are talking about some other potentially explanatory variable z, before you have even properly established what your dependent variable y should be, its a very obvious case of determining a conclusion you want to prove and cherry picking data to try and prove it.
When you are trying to decide what it is you are going to be measuring in any statistical analysis, bringing up potentially explanatory variables is putting the cart in front of the horse.

Raw total murders is not relevant regardless of any explanatory variable you propose, for the obvious reason that states vary considerably in their population, with the largest being 80x larger than the smallest. It does not matter what you know about California or don't, comparing its raw total murders to states with barely half its population is statistically invalid.

Those gun control laws clearly didn't do a gosh darned thing.
That is a conclusion you have decided on before you actually looked at any of the evidence. On the basis of per capita murders, which removes the effect of population, CA has a lower homicide rate than FL or TX, which clearly does not support your conclusion.

we see the same thing in Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland and Chicago Illinois. and yeah, we all know what the real problem is but that's irrelevant. they passed gun control laws in order to reduce gun crime and those gun control laws had no discernable effect on gun murders. they CAN NOT say: "look how effective our strict gun control laws are". They can't say it because it isn't true. Disarming law abiding, tax paying working class citizens DOES NOT REDUCE CRIME and you can't show that it does.

This is a rant without any specific numbers attached to it so I don't think there is anything to really address here.

Nope. Sorry but Texas and Florida have very loose gun laws compared to California and California still beats them in total homicides and total mass shootings.
The population of California is nearly double that of Florida, why would we not expect there to be more total murders there? Again, not using per capita numbers here is statistical nonsense, you are comparing two things without bothering to account for the most obvious confounding variable.

Mass shootings is something of a moving goalpost to the original discussion, but I will say that that data is far less useful statistically for a number of reasons.
First, there are varying definitions of what constitutes a "mass shooting" and many of the official measures are using any shooting of 3 or 5 or more people as a mass shooting, while the general understanding of the term in the minds of the public is usually larger than that.
Second, you have a very small sample size and likely a considerable variance, making drawing any kind of conclusions from the data difficult.
Third, again you are using the total number, which does not remove the confounding effects of the vastly different populations of these states.


Per capita statistics can be useful but they can be used to deceive just as easily. You know what they say about the three kinds of lies-"lies, damned lies and statistics".

Please substantiate this with an actual example or explanation of how "per capita statistics" can be used to deceive.

 

[danez71]

if their gun control laws worked, they should have something more to show for it.

Well, according to your chart they are out pacing the other states in homicide reduction.

That's a fact unless you're saying your chart is wrong.

What good does saying that to people that already know that?

Because it wins arguments.

That makes zero sense.

It's like winning an argument with yourself; utterly meaningless.

 

[lilguy]

As upsetting as this is, the electorate voted for this. If you don’t elect progun politicians this is what happens. We have only ourselves to blame for all our political problems. We are free to make bad decisions every election cycle and eventually throw it all away in the end.

 

[HighRoadRover]

The danger is that the Democrats are starting to make the case -- Mr. Biden is starting to say this -- that what we need to combat the crime wave is to infringe further on the 2A.

The crime wave is the product of a lot of things, but principally the rebelliousness and anti-police sentiment incited by progressives; increases in drugs and thefts to pay for drugs; economic rack and ruin and hopelessness in densely populated, poorly governed urban areas; and probably foremost, the anti-jail, low bail policies put forth by Soros-funded progressive DAs. Guns figure in many of the crimes but there has been an almost endless supply of guns in this country (an estimated 400+ million) for quite some time; this issue is not the availability of guns, and certainly not the availability of guns to law-abiding citizens, but the increasing willingness of criminals to use violence. Do you know what the knockout game is? Driven by social media, it is the popular urban "game" of cold-cocking people on the street, usually older people, frequently Asian people. A variant is pushing innocent people in front of a subway train. Violence for fun.

Is the answer to this societal breakdown and leadership failure to cut the number of rounds in newly purchased magazines from 15 down to 10? None of us thinks so.

The statistical issues being discussed above illustrate how hard it is to determine from crime stats the impact of specific laws and their relationship to either fostering or deterring violence. The real reasons are broadly demographic, cultural, societal, etc., and hard to isolate and assign to specific outcomes. But deep down, people understand the real cause of criminal violence involving guns usually is... the violent and immoral people committing crimes. We just need to keep saying it.

 

[sequins]

I hope it fails in the house. I contacted my reps. Ill buy 100 pmags when it passes I guess though

 

[redcon1]

Raw total murders is not relevant regardless of any explanatory variable you propose, for the obvious reason that states vary considerably in their population, with the largest being 80x larger than the smallest. It does not matter what you know about California or don't, comparing its raw total murders to states with barely half its population is statistically invalid.

I'll argue otherwise all night long. Everything being equal, the state with the highest population should have the highest number of murders but everything is not equal. It is far from equal. Chief among the inequalities are the gun control laws. First of all now, California does in fact have the highest population and, as we would logically expect, they have the highest number of murders but they also have the strictest gun control laws in the country and, if those gun control laws reduced crime as is their purpose, we would expect California to have fewer murders than Texas despite having a larger population. We would expect some measurable improvement but there is, in fact, no measurable improvement. their murder total numbers REMAIN EXACTLY WHERE WE WOULD EXPECT IT. Therefore, California CAN NOT SAY "look how effective our gun control laws are" and I CAN SAY your gun control laws didn't do a danged thing.

Another statistical lie being told here is that gun violence is homogenously distributed throughout a state's population. That is not the case. Murders are concentrated in a handful of counties, cities and neighborhoods in any given state. The state's overall population is irrelevant. look at Baltimore, Maryland for instance. There were 337 homicides in Baltimore in 2019. Baltimore has a population of 609,000. By contrast, the entire state of New Jersey, with a population of almost 9 million, had 329 murders in 2019. New Jersey has a higher population than Baltimore by far and yet, Baltimore has more murders. Also worth noting that both localities have extremely strict gun control laws. I believe Maryland is more strict than NJ however.

 

[Old Dog]

I hope it fails in the house. I contacted my reps. Ill buy 100 pmags when it passes I guess though

Hope is not a strategy.

I've contacted my reps (all Dems) and let them know that they are not representing their constituency.

And your 100 P-mags will all end up unused, sitting in your closet because the final version Jay signs will only allow you to possess them on your own property, not take them anywhere loaded, use them anywhere the state will forbid their use, or use them for self-defense.

 

[Will Munny]

I'll argue otherwise all night long. Everything being equal, the state with the highest population should have the highest number of murders but everything is not equal. It is far from equal. Chief among the inequalities are the gun control laws. First of all now, California does in fact have the highest population and, as we would logically expect, they have the highest number of murders but they also have the strictest gun control laws in the country and, if those gun control laws reduced crime as is their purpose, we would expect California to have fewer murders than Texas despite having a larger population. We would expect some measurable improvement but there is, in fact, no measurable improvement. their murder total numbers REMAIN EXACTLY WHERE WE WOULD EXPECT IT. Therefore, California CAN NOT SAY "look how effective our gun control laws are" and I CAN SAY your gun control laws didn't do a danged thing.

Another statistical lie being told here is that gun violence is homogenously distributed throughout a state's population. That is not the case. Murders are concentrated in a handful of counties, cities and neighborhoods in any given state. The state's overall population is irrelevant. look at Baltimore, Maryland for instance. There were 337 homicides in Baltimore in 2019. Baltimore has a population of 609,000. By contrast, the entire state of New Jersey, with a population of almost 9 million, had 329 murders in 2019. New Jersey has a higher population than Baltimore by far and yet, Baltimore has more murders. Also worth noting that both localities have extremely strict gun control laws. I believe Maryland is more strict than NJ however.

Well I do have to go to bed at some point but...

Everything being equal, the state with the highest population should have the highest number of murders

Ok, so you are agreeing with my basic premise that forms the foundation for using per capita numbers.

but everything is not equal. It is far from equal. Chief among the inequalities are the gun control laws. First of all now, California does in fact have the highest population and, as we would logically expect, they have the highest number of murders but they also have the strictest gun control laws in the country

Gun control laws are the chief inequality? No, of the innumerable differences in the states that have some bearing on crime, that is hardly the most significant factor, important though it might be.
Second, does CA have the strictest laws in the country? Maybe? But on the margin, how much stricter are CA laws than say Maryland or New York or Massachusetts? Its not a straightforward question to answer and there is not a good way to do it quantitatively either.

if those gun control laws reduced crime as is their purpose, we would expect California to have fewer murders than Texas despite having a larger population.
Not necessarily. What you are proposing here is true if the only variables in the model are X, state population, Y, state gun laws, and Z # of homicides. But there is no basis for supposing that there are only 2 input variables here, in reality there are easily dozens if not hundreds that could potentially be used for the regression.

To make this point a bit more clear, let us suppose there is an unknown variable W, which has a very high positive correlation coefficient with homicides.Now, suppose that W is much higher in CA than in TX. So if we were to build out the model of what would happen if CA gun laws (YCA) were the same as TX gun laws (YTX) while retaining the higher W value for CA, we would see much higher homicide rates for CA, due to the impact of its W variable. Now if we re-instate the separate gun laws variables CA homicides fall to their current levels, which are much lower than what they would be without those laws.

The point here is to make an argument that California murders should be lower than TX due to gun laws ignores
A) the possibility of other confounding variables, which make CA have a higher "baseline" homicide rate than TX irrespective of gun laws and
B) the fact that per capita homicides in CA are lower than TX, which even in the 2 variable world you propose cuts directly against your theory

We would expect some measurable improvement but there is, in fact, no measurable improvement. their murder total numbers REMAIN EXACTLY WHERE WE WOULD EXPECT IT. Therefore, California CAN NOT SAY "look how effective our gun control laws are" and I CAN SAY your gun control laws didn't do a danged thing.
No, you cannot really reach that conclusion either. It sounds like what you are proposing is a time series analysis of just CA laws where you examine the impact of laws being added over time and demonstrate that crime did not fall as a result. This is more statistically sound than your prior argument, but still suffers from the fact that other variables can change over time as well, so the comparison would need to control for those.

Another statistical lie being told here is that gun violence is homogenously distributed throughout a state's population. That is not the case.

I ask you to quote anyone here that said gun violence is homogeneously distributed. While not addressed specifically, my above comment on why states like Illinois and Pennsylvania are above NY basically speaks to that specific issue. But I don't think anyone is claiming that there is a uniform distribution.

 

[Jackiesman]

Liars figure, and figures lie. If you play with numbers long enough you can make them do almost anything you want. Statistical manipulation is an art form.

 

[Will Munny]

Liars figure, and figures lie. If you play with numbers long enough you can make them do almost anything you want. Statistical manipulation is an art form.

No, good statistics is like any science, verifiable, repeatable, falsifiable, and refutable. The fact that people lie with statistics no more invalidates it as a discipline than acupuncture invalidates chemotherapy.
Saying "statistics are all lies" will do little to nothing to convince moderates and those open to being convinced, especially when the other side is more than willing to use, and abuse, statistics for their own agenda.

 

[JohnKSa]

Here are the figures per capita for the various states and U.S. territories for the past few years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_intentional_homicide_rate

California is 29th on the list for 2020.

According to this website, AZ, ID, AK, KS and OK are the top 5 gun friendly states.

https://www.aerlawgroup.com/blog/the-best-states-for-responsible-gun-owners/

Unfortunately AZ, AK and OK all rank higher than CA for per capita homicides. KS and ID, on the other hand, rank much lower in per capita homicides than CA. Clearly there's something more involved in the homicide rates than just whether a state is gun friendly or not.

 

[danez71]

We would expect some measurable improvement but there is, in fact, no measurable improvement.

Your own chart shows measurable improvement.

That you fail to acknowledge it or deam it not sufficient for your standard doesn't make it undermine your position any less.


You'd do better to explain why the data on the chart is flawed.

But, as they say, you do you.

 

[Anchorite]

Many of the Dems in the swing districts are up for reelection. One suspects a lot of the Dems East of the Cascades will go down. But it'll be too late.
But that never helps. I lived in California once, but I'm not gonna insult those left there by saying, "I told you so."

Washington State was, when I moved here, a state with some of the best -- and the best lack of -- gun laws in the country. In the past eight years, thanks to the ridiculous initiative process and the huge growth in the left-leaning population on the left side of the state, we've lost a hundred years of a formerly awesome gun culture here.

I keep hearing that ol' Jimmy Rodgers song that goes, "T for Texas, T for Tennessee" in my head...

Come to ‘Ol Dixie. Settle on the Redneck Riviera (aka Alabama gulf coast). We’re as blood-red as it gets.

 

[AlexanderA]

And your 100 P-mags will all end up unused, sitting in your closet because the final version Jay signs will only allow you to possess them on your own property, not take them anywhere loaded, use them anywhere the state will forbid their use, or use them for self-defense.

I don't see that anywhere in the legislative language of the bill.

From reading it, it seems to me that there are pro-gun "moles" in the legislature working to weaken this bill. As it stands, it's toothless. It could have been a lot worse.

Same thing happened in Virginia in 2020. Three Democratic senators killed Northam's assault weapon ban bill.

 

[Old Dog]

I don't see that anywhere in the legislative language of the bill.

From reading it, it seems to me that there are pro-gun "moles" in the legislature working to weaken this bill. As it stands, it's toothless. It could have been a lot worse.

Same thing happened in Virginia in 2020. Three Democratic senators killed Northam's assault weapon ban bill.

It's in the original bill -- which also stipulated 17 rounds as the maximum -- and we're not holding our breath about what the final version can look like. But yeah, we do have a handful of pro-gun Dems, but our state house is like sharks smelling blood in the water.

 

[Steve S.]

They will keep coming and coming and coming until they are stopped. The psychology of firearms is that they embolden people (if pushed hard enough) to stand their ground. They cannot complete their political implementation until we have no means to stand our ground. All you have to do is understand the history of the indigenous people of the U.S. Their land was stolen and their culture destroyed by our government AND guess what, that action was supported by the majority of the U.S. citizenry. Look at slavery, supported and endorsed for hundreds of years by (again) the government and supported by a majority of the citizenry.
Study your history and then determine what history says about government atrocities and how those atrocities were resisted and/ or corrected. Once you determine that process, those means, then it may sink in that it takes just a teeny-weeny bit more commitment to freedom than calling your representative or sending dues to the NRA or even tough typing on a gun forum. Then read the 2A and try to understand what it is really saying - it does not say anything about the right to talk your oppressors to death.

 

[WiTom]

Communist playbook is playing out right down the list. Why would you think gun control would not be next up? And when 10 round mags bills go through, do you think that is it and they are all done? Yea right, keep dreaming. They just check that off the list, and move to the next.

 

[redcon1]

Ok, so you are agreeing with my basic premise that forms the foundation for using per capita numbers.

No, I'm saying that per state capita homicide rates are less meaningful than total homicides given that homicides are not homogenously distributed throughout any state's population. Per capita homicide rates are a deception used by people like the Gifford's Law Center to justify more gun control. Murders are not evenly distributed throughout a state, they are concentrated in first counties, then further in cities and then yet again in neighborhoods.

Gun control laws are the chief inequality? No, of the innumerable differences in the states that have some bearing on crime, that is hardly the most significant factor, important though it might be.

That would be true generally but when we're only assessing the effect of gun control laws, it is the only significant factor. Think of it as an experimental group versus a control group. If we have one group of 100 hypertensive people testing a new blood pressure pill, we compare their blood pressure numbers against another group of 100 people that didn't take the blood pressure pill in order to determine what effect the new medication had. We hypothesize that the 100 people who took the blood pressure pill will have lower blood pressure numbers than the 100 people who didn't. If that turns out to not be the case, we can conclude that the blood pressure medicine was ineffective, that it does not lower blood pressure.

So with that analogy in mind, let's compare the experimental/strong gun control group/city of Oakland, California with its 440,646 people with the control group/lax gun control city of Miami, Florida with its population of 442,241 people.

Oakland had 75 murders in 2018. Miami Florida had 51 murders in 2018. For purposes of evaluating the effect of gun control on homicide, this is a straight forward apples to apples comparison. Two different cities of nearly identical size. One city is in a state that is ranked as having the strictest gun control in the country. The other city is in a state ranked as having the 24th strongest gun control laws in America. The fact that the city of Miami had significantly fewer murders is evidence that A) California's gun control laws don't work and B) per state capita comparisons are meaningless.

Second, does CA have the strictest laws in the country? Maybe? But on the margin, how much stricter are CA laws than say Maryland or New York or Massachusetts? Its not a straightforward question to answer and there is not a good way to do it quantitatively either.

All ranking is done by the Gifford's law center. California is ranked as having the toughest gun control laws in America. Maryland is ranked #6. New Jersey is ranked #2.

 

[Will Munny]

No, I'm saying that per state capita homicide rates are less meaningful than total homicides given that homicides are not homogenously distributed throughout any state's population. Per capita homicide rates are a deception used by people like the Gifford's Law Center to justify more gun control. Murders are not evenly distributed throughout a state, they are concentrated in first counties, then further in cities and then yet again in neighborhoods.


That would be true generally but when we're only assessing the effect of gun control laws, it is the only significant factor. Think of it as an experimental group versus a control group. If we have one group of 100 hypertensive people testing a new blood pressure pill, we compare their blood pressure numbers against another group of 100 people that didn't take the blood pressure pill in order to determine what effect the new medication had. We hypothesize that the 100 people who took the blood pressure pill will have lower blood pressure numbers than the 100 people who didn't. If that turns out to not be the case, we can conclude that the blood pressure medicine was ineffective, that it does not lower blood pressure.

So with that analogy in mind, let's compare the experimental/strong gun control group/city of Oakland, California with its 440,646 people with the control group/lax gun control city of Miami, Florida with its population of 442,241 people.

Oakland had 75 murders in 2018. Miami Florida had 51 murders in 2018. For purposes of evaluating the effect of gun control on homicide, this is a straight forward apples to apples comparison. Two different cities of nearly identical size. One city is in a state that is ranked as having the strictest gun control in the country. The other city is in a state ranked as having the 24th strongest gun control laws in America. The fact that the city of Miami had significantly fewer murders is evidence that A) California's gun control laws don't work and B) per state capita comparisons are meaningless.


All ranking is done by the Gifford's law center. California is ranked as having the toughest gun control laws in America. Maryland is ranked #6. New Jersey is ranked #2.

No, I'm saying that per state capita homicide rates are less meaningful than total homicides given that homicides are not homogenously distributed throughout any state's population.
Why does distribution have anything to do with using a per capita measure? Why does that same argument not apply total numbers as well? You do not have to have a uniform distribution of anything to make per capita numbers meaningful. And certainly, whatever shortcomings per capita numbers have in describing crime (or anything else) because they mask distribution effects is 100% true of just using the total of anything as well.

Example. GDP per capita vs GDP. China has the world's largest GDP, but the US has a higher GDP per Capita. Which one correctly measures the wealth of the average citizen? Clearly GDP per capita. And that does not change even though there are plenty of people in China who are richer than some people in the US.

Per capita homicide rates are a deception used by people like the Gifford's Law Center to justify more gun control.
This is known as the genetic fallacy. The fact that other institutions you disagree with use that statistical measure does not make the measure itself invalid. Plenty of other scholars have used per capita numbers to argue against stricter gun control.

Murders are not evenly distributed throughout a state, they are concentrated in first counties, then further in cities and then yet again in neighborhoods.
No one is disagreeing with that from what I can see, but it has nothing to do with the choice of how to measure homicides. How would taking the total number, which includes no information about distribution, in any way solve for this issue?

we're only assessing the effect of gun control laws, it is the only significant factor. Think of it as an experimental group versus a control group. If we have one group of 100 hypertensive people testing a new blood pressure pill, we compare their blood pressure numbers against another group of 100 people that didn't take the blood pressure pill in order to determine what effect the new medication had. We hypothesize that the 100 people who took the blood pressure pill will have lower blood pressure numbers than the 100 people who didn't. If that turns out to not be the case, we can conclude that the blood pressure medicine was ineffective, that it does not lower blood pressure.
No, that is not how statistical analysis works. Just because it is what you are trying to investigate, does not make it the only significant factor. Any factor which may effect the dependent variable is significant, and needs to be controlled for as much as possible.

To use your example of the drug testing, in the real world when a study like that is done a great deal of information must be collected on both groups. Because you cannot recruit 200 human clones and keep them in the same environment to eliminate confounding variables, statistics would be used to control for the effects of outside variables. Failing to do this would render your study invalid. For example, if the people who take the new medication are on average older, heavier smokers, and heavier drinkers than the control group you would need to control for that in the analysis.

Furthermore, I will add that comparing states is far less straightforward than your clinical trial example. There are relatively large differences between the states, on top of the fact that the sample size is extremely small.

So with that analogy in mind, let's compare the experimental/strong gun control group/city of Oakland, California with its 440,646 people with the control group/lax gun control city of Miami, Florida with its population of 442,241 people.

Oakland had 75 murders in 2018. Miami Florida had 51 murders in 2018. For purposes of evaluating the effect of gun control on homicide, this is a straight forward apples to apples comparison. Two different cities of nearly identical size. One city is in a state that is ranked as having the strictest gun control in the country. The other city is in a state ranked as having the 24th strongest gun control laws in America. The fact that the city of Miami had significantly fewer murders is evidence that A) California's gun control laws don't work and B) per state capita comparisons are meaningless.

Except it is not that straightforward. You have only controlled for population, nothing else. It is not a straight forward "apples to apples" comparison, all you have is two fruit that are the same weight, not the same species.
There are many other differences between the cities. Demographically, they are not comparable, Miami is more homogeneous while Oakland is more diverse. Miami is also older, by almost 4 years on average, than Oakland.
And finally, even to the extent we find a difference between the two cities, we cannot attribute that automatically to firearms laws. Again, a robust analysis would try to first answer the question of what the homicide rate in Oakland would be without those laws in place.

All ranking is done by the Gifford's law center. California is ranked as having the toughest gun control laws in America. Maryland is ranked #6. New Jersey is ranked #2.
Which is fine, but my point is that their methodology is not the only one that could be used, nor inherently the best.

 

[redcon1]

To use your example of the drug testing, in the real world when a study like that is done a great deal of information must be collected on both groups. Because you cannot recruit 200 human clones and keep them in the same environment to eliminate confounding variables, statistics would be used to control for the effects of outside variables. Failing to do this would render your study invalid. For example, if the people who take the new medication are on average older, heavier smokers, and heavier drinkers than the control group you would need to control for that in the analysis.

when assessing the effectiveness of gun control laws, it is not necessary to evaluate any other variable beyond the gun control laws themselves. In fact, doing so only confuses any conclusion.

Except it is not that straightforward. You have only controlled for population, nothing else. It is not a straight forward "apples to apples" comparison, all you have is two fruit that are the same weight, not the same species.

Nothing else needs to be controlled for. We are not assessing the effect of gun control laws on blacks versus hispanics, we are assessing the effect of gun control period. You're attempting to obfuscate the study by adding unnecessary controls.

And finally, even to the extent we find a difference between the two cities, we cannot attribute that automatically to firearms laws.

Again, you are obfuscating the study and the conclusion. I am not trying to attribute anything to anything, I am only trying to determine if strict gun control laws decreased homicides. Based on the evidence of this study, you can not say that California's strictest in the nation gun control laws resulted in fewer homicides.

 

[AlexanderA]

It's in the original bill -- which also stipulated 17 rounds as the maximum -- and we're not holding our breath about what the final version can look like. But yeah, we do have a handful of pro-gun Dems, but our state house is like sharks smelling blood in the water.

What's going on with the legislative history of this bill in WA might be an indication that the most effective pro-gun activism is behind the scenes, with one-on-one negotiations with legislators, away from the limelight. Gutting the effectiveness of this bill by deleting "possession" as an offense, is a prime example. The problem with such negotiations is that anyone openly taking part will be labeled a "Quisling" by the gun community. More importantly, quiet, behind-the-scenes lobbying does not engender lots of contributions. The gun community loves grandstanding, even though it's sometimes counterproductive.

I keep thinking back to the role of Dallas arms dealer "Red" Jackson in the runup to the Gun Control Act of 1968. It was his lobbying that gave us the 1898 cutoff date for antique arms, and exempted anything made before 1899. Without that, early cartridge guns would have been treated the same as modern guns. His work wasn't fully appreciated at the time.

 

[GEM]

https://www.bellinghamherald.com/new...258274788.html

Gun rights activists gather in Olympia to oppose gun bill passed Wednesday night in Senate

Sharyn Hinchcliffe, a civil rights advocate, was at the rally to represent the nonpartisan Seattle and Tacoma “Pink Pistols” Chapter. The organization started as a group to train those in the LGBTQ community to learn how to shoot guns, as well as raise awareness that people in those communities are able and trained to shoot. The all-inclusive organization now provides safety information and firearms training for anyone who wants it. Hinchcliffe said she is opposed to the legislation that passed Wednesday, and other firearms legislation because the enforcement of such bills are “unequally enforced in marginalized and minority communities.”

Read more at: https://www.bellinghamherald.com/new...#storylink=cpy
Hint for Wayne who wanted to tie the NRA to the culture wars. We are seeing such statements all over, NY just had such briefs in the NYSPRA briefs.