Re: Shootings at VA Tech, sanjian et. al. status?

SpaceGirl <nothespacegirlspam@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Firstly, you can't quote wikipedia for anything... it's an invalid
source.

Firstly, you don't know what you're talking about. If you'd bothered
following the link, you'd have found the graph was created from stats
provided by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, not made up from
whole cloth. Secondly, Wikipedia *is* citeable in a non-academic
argument; you may choose to ignore it, but you need a reason to do so,
and "it's Wikipedia" isn't one. The fact that you can't cite it in an
academic paper sounds nice, but is irrelevant; you can't cite the
Encyclopedia Britannica either, but nobody bothers to mention that.

Wikipedia provides easy-to-follow links that support the information
on the site-- and if you had bothered to click on the link just below
the graph, you'd have been taking to a BJS page which shows
substantially the same chart, except the one on Wikipedia looks a lot
better (the BJS graph looks like a grade-schooler did it with crayon).

Secondly; well you may be right. I don't know. People with
invested interests tend to gather these figures, and as always
statistics can be manipulated. In either direction.

So, what invested interests do you think the US Bureau of Justice
Statistics has here? How do you believe the data was manipulated?
Why? If you have a reason to believe that's the case, then please,
state it openly, instead of relying on innuendo and implication. Do
you believe the chart I referenced in any way does not represent the
truth?

I think... the one of the hardest parts of this is... setting
president. It's like a line has been crossed, again. Each time
something horrific like this happens, it almost sets up permission to
go a step further again. Because before today, it may not have crossed
the mind of a desperate soul in need to help to go this far.

Your line of reasoning is specious and offensive. While large-scale
shootings like this are horrific and correspondingly garner a great
deal of attention, they are also extremely rare. Have you never heard
the phrase "Hard cases make bad law"?

So, maybe you allow all kids to carry weapons, to defend
themselves. But then the chances are that you are far more likely to
put a weapon in the hands of someone who is not mentally fit to carry
a weapon.

And yet, the numbers say you're wrong. How do you reconcile that? By
all accounts, a person with a concealed carry permit is vastly less
likely than the general population to commit a crime with a gun. When
Florida nearly doubled the number of concealed carry permit holders
after changing from a 'may issue' state to a 'shall issue' one, gun
crimes by permit holders actually went down in absolute numbers. Do
you have any information that supports your premise that increasing
the number of people *legally* carrying guns on a campus is likely to
increase gun-related crime?

If you're going to snap, having a gun in your bag is to
tempting... it makes the instant gratification of ending the object
of your pain (in this case, ex-lover) to easy.

That sound so reasonable and sensible, until you look at the numbers
and realize that just plain does not happen. If the facts don't
accord with your view of the world, you can ignore the facts or change
your view. I generally prefer the latter course of action.

I don't have an answer. Some of my early posts were emotional and far
to heated, rather than thought out. I'm sorry for that.

I'm sorry I rose to the bait as well, inadvertantly placed as it was.
The quote below, I think, summarizes why I was offended by your
initial remarks:

Is it so hard to let the dead lie in peace for a few days, to
reflect quietly and somberly on the horror and pain of it? Do
we have to domesticate every event into the simple-mindedness
of single-cause arguments, master the meaninglessness that
sometimes comes with being human with the jabber of the
punditocracy? Can't we just reach out collectively to put a
quiet hand on the shoulder of those who have lost friends,
family and colleagues?

-- Prof. Tim Burke, History, Swarthmore.
http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=362

Followups are set to Poster; this has nothing to do with anime, and
even less to do with sanjian at the moment.

-=Eric
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: copyright for combinatorial entities
    ... >graph, if for no other reason than doing so would fly in the ... >face of the reason for having copyright in the first place, ... Copyright law cares not a bit what your purpose was for creating ... >blocking the publication of an adjacency matrix ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: Using vi
    ... for no particularly good reason. ... One problem is that mutt truncates these lines ... Tedious, but worth it. ... One thing bothers me: a lot of ...
    (comp.unix.sco.misc)
  • Re: copyright for combinatorial entities
    ... graph, if for no other reason than doing so would fly in the ... face of the reason for having copyright in the first place, ... blocking the publication of an adjacency matrix ... isomorphism is another issue. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: The Mini Ice Age Starts Here
    ... Do you always ask rhetorical question, ... about how much I value the graph - I gave my reason. ... And I would point out that the evidence and data does not exist in a ...
    (rec.sport.football.college)
  • Re: Evidence persuades many to reject the molecules to man version
    ... I do not quite understand why one bothers to throw ... reason at such a person. ... There is no intention to debate or learn. ... fossil record supports creation by design????? ...
    (talk.origins)