100 homicidal home invasions

[Seth]

Seth

Criminals have guns when guns are available, which they are in the USA.

Guns are available in every society and every nation on the face of the earth.

In other western nations, the vast majority of criminals do not carry guns.

Cherry picking and a flat-out lie.

Here in NZ, official statistics show that less than 1% of crimes are committed by a criminal carrying a gun.

Which means that one percent of crimes are committed with guns, which means that guns are available in NZ, which means that once again you're lying through your teeth. It also means that those one percent of victims of gun crimes needed a gun with which to defend themselves and they got murdered because they didn't have one, and that their blood is on YOUR hands for turning them into a statistic and an acceptable casualty to your idiot agenda of disarming everyone except the criminals.

That is why we have very, very few murders with guns.

But you do have murders with guns, so you're lying. Also, the question of why one society is more prone to gun violence than another is far more complex than merely the number of guns in society, as you have previously admitted.

In the USA, of course, where you are all idiotic enough to make guns readily available, criminals carrying guns are common, and the death toll is high as a result.

All the more reason to arm law abiding citizens for self defense.

[Blind groper]

More guns means more homicides. I have shown no fewer than SEVEN correlations between numbers of guns and numbers of homicides.

Certainly there are other factors also. Prof. Steven Pinker says that in the USA, the enormous and utterly horrendous number of homicides is partly due to a pathological tendency to vigilante "justice". The word "justice" is in inverted commas because most people who commit murder for this reason have a distorted and personal definition of "justice".

However, it is also true that states with fewer guns have fewer murders, and developed western nations with fewer guns have fewer murders also. This is not a lie. It is a simple fact that several solid studies have shown to be true.

My country, for example, has about 0.1 gun murders per 100,000 people per year, compared to roughly 2.3 for the USA. In other words, the USA has 23 TIMES as many gun murders per capita than New Zealand. This is not some werird statistic. It follows directly from the ridiculous number of guns and gun owners in the USA.

[Hermit]

My country, for example, has about 0.1 gun murders per 100,000 people per year, compared to roughly 2.3 for the USA. In other words, the USA has 23 TIMES as many gun murders per capita than New Zealand. This is not some werird statistic. It follows directly from the ridiculous number of guns and gun owners in the USA.

To be fair, New Zealanders, like citizens of many other nations, compensate for the lack of guns by using other implements to commit murder. That brings the ratio down to a bit over four murders in the USA to each one in NZ.

Speaking about your inability to use statistics properly, I'm still waiting for a reply to this example you perpetrated a few days ago in this thread.

[Blind groper]

To be fair, New Zealanders, like citizens of many other nations, compensate for the lack of guns by using other implements to commit murder.

There is some truth in the above assertion. However, the non gun murders in the USA run to approximately 1.5 killings per 100,000 people per year. The non gun murders in NZ run to approximately 0.8 killings per 100,000 per year. The disparity is much less, and shows the big impact so many guns in the USA make.

On the statistics you dispute, Hermit, let me say that you have a point, but only if you ignore the factor of 'violence breeds violence'.

In other words, if you double the number of violent people in the community, the amount of violence committed more than doubles. The impact of the baby boomer generation is more than just the extra young people. It is the impact of a growing youth violence culture as well.

If you dislike this explanation, bear in mind that I did not dream it up myself. It was part of an editorial comment in the New Scientist magazine (written by a Ph. D. qualified science journalist) a few years back.

One violent person may commit X amount of violence. Two will commit 2X amount. But if those two interact, the result is 2X plus Y amount of violence. The young and violent baby boomers did interact and reinforce each other's bad behaviour.

[Hermit]

To be fair, New Zealanders, like citizens of many other nations, compensate for the lack of guns by using other implements to commit murder.

There is some truth in the above assertion..

Yes indeed. "Some" truth is that the murder ratio is USA 4.7 to NZ 0.9 (2012 figures), and that is rather more important than the ratio of 23 to 1 for murder by guns you quoted.

On the statistics you dispute, Hermit, let me say that you have a point, but only if you ignore the factor of 'violence breeds violence'.

In other words, if you double the number of violent people in the community, the amount of violence committed more than doubles. The impact of the baby boomer generation is more than just the extra young people. It is the impact of a growing youth violence culture as well.

If you dislike this explanation, bear in mind that I did not dream it up myself. It was part of an editorial comment in the New Scientist magazine (written by a Ph. D. qualified science journalist) a few years back.

One violent person may commit X amount of violence. Two will commit 2X amount. But if those two interact, the result is 2X plus Y amount of violence. The young and violent baby boomers did interact and reinforce each other's bad behaviour.

This is where I agree with you:

1. The baby boomers caused a bulge in the 18 to 30 year age group.
2. People aged between 18 and 30 are more likely to commit violent crimes than others.
3. There is an unfortunate synergy that amplifies the incidence of violent crimes, which you refer to as the Y factor.

My problem with what you are saying is that total violent crimes rose by 474% between 1960 and 1991, and you have not even attempted to quantify how much of that increase is due to the Y factor. I doubt you could provide the data that put most - or even a large part - of the increase down to the synergy caused by baby boomer bulge. The Y factor is more likely to be an also-ran in relation to that increase.

Mind you, at least you try to explain the trend, while Seth simply ignores it because the available data between 1960 and 1991 contradict his "more guns, less crime" mantra.

[Blind groper]

Hermit

I do not disagree with you. I cannot quantify the 'Y' factor, except to say it exists. There may be other ways in which a larger than normal percentage of young people result in a strong increase in violence.

It is worth noting that countries with lots of young people today are much more violent that countries with fewer young people. For example, Syria has large numbers of youths. So does Egypt, and Libya.

[Seth]

More guns means more homicides. I have shown no fewer than SEVEN correlations between numbers of guns and numbers of homicides.

And yet you have admitted previously that the correlation is unrelated to the causes of gun violence. Were you lying then or are you lying now?

Certainly there are other factors also.

Indeed.

Prof. Steven Pinker says that in the USA, the enormous and utterly horrendous number of homicides is partly due to a pathological tendency to vigilante "justice". The word "justice" is in inverted commas because most people who commit murder for this reason have a distorted and personal definition of "justice".

Pinker is full of crap and makes his anti-gun claims merely to enhance his street cred with hoplophobes. He, like you, conflates lawful self defense with "vigilante justice" deliberately and mendaciously when they are two entirely different things. "Vigilante justice" is a criminal act. Self defense is not. That you are unwilling to admit that there is a distinction between self defense and self-administered punishment of someone else for a perceived (but unadjudicated) wrongdoing shows just how desperate you are to try to support your unsupportable arguments.

However, it is also true that states with fewer guns have fewer murders, and developed western nations with fewer guns have fewer murders also. This is not a lie. It is a simple fact that several solid studies have shown to be true.

More cherry picking. You constantly attempt to falsely bolster your arguments by artificially and dishonestly referring to your preferred sub-set of nations. This is blatant data manipulation and is the worst sort of academic fraud, which of course is typical of anti-gun zealots.

My country, for example, has about 0.1 gun murders per 100,000 people per year, compared to roughly 2.3 for the USA. In other words, the USA has 23 TIMES as many gun murders per capita than New Zealand. This is not some werird statistic. It follows directly from the ridiculous number of guns and gun owners in the USA.

Again I point out your intellectually dishonest argumentation. You fraudulently single out "gun murders" so that you can make a (fraudulent) point while simply ignoring every other type of violent crime that results in murder using other weapons. You do this deliberately because you seek to twist the facts in your favor and have always done so, every time, in the various debates seen here. You also ignore the many other factors that affect the number of murders (not gun murders, all murders) as well as the weapons used in those murders to again skew the facts in your favor.


As to your false claim that "It follows directly from the ridiculous number of guns and gun owners in the USA", you were lying before when you said it wasn't, and you're lying now when you say it is. I get it, you're like Hillary Clinton; we know that when she opens her mouth she's lying, and so are you.

[Seth]

To be fair, New Zealanders, like citizens of many other nations, compensate for the lack of guns by using other implements to commit murder.

There is some truth in the above assertion.

"Some truth?" Well, that's something I suppose. I'm betting you were retching and vomiting at the prospect of having to admit even that small truth.

However, the non gun murders in the USA run to approximately 1.5 killings per 100,000 people per year. The non gun murders in NZ run to approximately 0.8 killings per 100,000 per year. The disparity is much less, and shows the big impact so many guns in the USA make.

There you go again with your deliberate misapprehension of statistics.

On the statistics you dispute, Hermit, let me say that you have a point, but only if you ignore the factor of 'violence breeds violence'.

Er, self defense isn't "violence" it's a defensive response to violence. What you seem to be suggesting is that the victim of a rape should lay back and enjoy it. Disgusting.

In other words, if you double the number of violent people in the community, the amount of violence committed more than doubles. The impact of the baby boomer generation is more than just the extra young people. It is the impact of a growing youth violence culture as well.

This may be true, but it doesn't diminish the justification for law abiding persons to be armed when it comes to the right of the individual to effective tools of self defense, it substantially enhances it.

If you dislike this explanation, bear in mind that I did not dream it up myself. It was part of an editorial comment in the New Scientist magazine (written by a Ph. D. qualified science journalist) a few years back.

One violent person may commit X amount of violence. Two will commit 2X amount. But if those two interact, the result is 2X plus Y amount of violence. The young and violent baby boomers did interact and reinforce each other's bad behaviour.

All the more reason for law abiding citizens to be armed to suppress the added amount of violence caused by criminal association and interaction.

[Seth]

To be fair, New Zealanders, like citizens of many other nations, compensate for the lack of guns by using other implements to commit murder.

There is some truth in the above assertion..

Yes indeed. "Some" truth is that the murder ratio is USA 4.7 to NZ 0.9 (2012 figures), and that is rather more important than the ratio of 23 to 1 for murder by guns you quoted.

On the statistics you dispute, Hermit, let me say that you have a point, but only if you ignore the factor of 'violence breeds violence'.

In other words, if you double the number of violent people in the community, the amount of violence committed more than doubles. The impact of the baby boomer generation is more than just the extra young people. It is the impact of a growing youth violence culture as well.

If you dislike this explanation, bear in mind that I did not dream it up myself. It was part of an editorial comment in the New Scientist magazine (written by a Ph. D. qualified science journalist) a few years back.

One violent person may commit X amount of violence. Two will commit 2X amount. But if those two interact, the result is 2X plus Y amount of violence. The young and violent baby boomers did interact and reinforce each other's bad behaviour.

This is where I agree with you:

1. The baby boomers caused a bulge in the 18 to 30 year age group.
2. People aged between 18 and 30 are more likely to commit violent crimes than others.
3. There is an unfortunate synergy that amplifies the incidence of violent crimes, which you refer to as the Y factor.

My problem with what you are saying is that total violent crimes rose by 474% between 1960 and 1991, and you have not even attempted to quantify how much of that increase is due to the Y factor. I doubt you could provide the data that put most - or even a large part - of the increase down to the synergy caused by baby boomer bulge. The Y factor is more likely to be an also-ran in relation to that increase.

Mind you, at least you try to explain the trend, while Seth simply ignores it because the available data between 1960 and 1991 contradict his "more guns, less crime" mantra.

I'm not ignoring it, I'm simply stating that it's irrelevant to the need for law abiding citizens to be armed for self defense and the false claim that an armed citizenry is responsible in any way for higher rates of criminality, which is nonsense. One could argue, using that dubious logic, that the best way to reduce not just violent crime, but all crime, is to ask all citizens to voluntarily line up to be gassed to death. That would solve the "crime problem" absolutely. But that notion is of course ridiculous. The analogy involved however is the notion that the activities or property of law abiding citizens is either causally related to levels of violent crime or should be the target of regulation in order to reduce violent crime is just as ridiculous.

As I said before, and which BG just ignores, is that the same logic he uses of "ban guns for law abiding citizens so that criminals have a harder time getting them to use while committing crimes" is exactly the same as saying "ban jewelry, TV sets, stereos, cellphones and all other forms of visible wealth so that criminals will not be tempted to engage in criminal activity because no one will have anything worth stealing."

This is outright blaming the victim, and we all know what an asinine argument that is.

Whether the lawful activities of the citizenry creates opportunities for criminals to predate upon others or not is entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is whether or not guns should be taken out of the hands of potential victims of violent crime in a vain and morally repugnant attempt to reduce crime by rendering victims both helpless and worthless.

You may argue Orwellian schemes to prevent crime all you like, but that doesn't mean it's a useful idea.

Some simple truths must be acknowledged as a priori facts in any sort of rational discussion about crime and how to suppress it. The first principle that simply cannot be disputed is that each and every individual has an absolute and unalienable right to be utterly and completely free from criminal victimization of any kind whatsoever. This right must always supersede any claimed "rights" of criminals to their criminality because it is simply unconscionable to say to anyone "you must submit to being the victim of crime in the interests of public safety." The safety of the public can never trump the individual right to not be victimized by criminals. To say otherwise is to capitulate to the criminals and give them a right to predate upon others, and that is something no civilized society can ever do.

The next simple truth is that as a function of their right to be free from criminal victimization, all persons have the right to use reasonable and necessary force to defend themselves against such victimization. The degree of force, and the tools and methods of applying it vary with the nature of the crime being attempted, and the level of force must be congruent with the level of force threatened. Therefore restraints on the use of physical force in self defense are both reasonable and appropriate. However, the most precious and indispensible part of any human being's life is life itself. Once taken away, nothing can compensate for that loss and so the prohibition on killing another without justification is pretty much absolute, and the degree of force that is permitted as self defense against potentially lethal threats is, quite naturally and reasonably, any degree of physical force up to and including deadly force that is necessary to prevent the victim from being unlawfully killed.

Therefore, any law or constraint on the ability or right of an individual being unlawfully threatened with death that interferes with that victim's ability to thwart the crime and survive the attack is inherently morally and ethical wrong and unconscionable by any civilized society.

It is from these two essential truths that all the rest of the debate devolves.

My argument is that given those two truths, it is the right of every individual to carry whatever personal arms that person feels are reasonable and necessary to their personal safety and effective self defense, with the proviso that such arms can only actually be use to project physical force in a reasonable and appropriate manner based on the necessities of the instant situation for the use of force in self defense. So long as the individual does not misuse his or her defensive arms, the right to keep and bear them cannot be infringed or denied, particularly based on some statistical argument that their doing so might pose an increased risk that their defensive arms may be taken and used by a violent criminal. That is a risk that society must accept in order to respect the absolute right of the individual to absolute and unqualified personal safety against crime.

BG's argument is that because someone's gun might be stolen by a criminal everyone (other than the criminal of course) must be debarred the possession of arms for self defense, which violates these basic truths by disparaging and denying the right of the individual to be free of crime and armed for self defense because crime is inevitable, even in a "disarmed" society because, of course, criminals can always procure some sort of deadly weapon to use to victimize others, be it a handgun or a rock or anything in between.

BG's argument makes no sense at all and is nothing more than a manifestation of a deep fear of an armed citizenry and a deep and abiding disrespect for the rights of others not to be victimized. His agenda is a broader social one that cares only for the aggregate levels of crime and cares nothing whatsoever for the individuals who are actually victimized because they have been denied their rights by people like him.

No law abiding citizen, or the property he owns, is responsible for the acts of a criminal and the right of the individual to be effectively armed for self defense cannot be infringed upon based on the specious notion that by doing so criminals will have a more difficult time coming up with weapons with which to victimize others.

[Seth]

Hermit

I do not disagree with you. I cannot quantify the 'Y' factor, except to say it exists. There may be other ways in which a larger than normal percentage of young people result in a strong increase in violence.

It is worth noting that countries with lots of young people today are much more violent that countries with fewer young people. For example, Syria has large numbers of youths. So does Egypt, and Libya.

So, let's just kill all the young people. That would be a much more effective way to combat crime, according to you.

Nothing you say militates for disarming those who are not violent criminals.

[Hermit]

Mind you, at least you try to explain the trend, while Seth simply ignores it because the available data between 1960 and 1991 contradict his "more guns, less crime" mantra.

I'm not ignoring it, I'm simply stating that it's irrelevant to the need for law abiding citizens to be armed for self defense...

So just let go of your "more guns, less crime" mantra already.

[Seth]

Mind you, at least you try to explain the trend, while Seth simply ignores it because the available data between 1960 and 1991 contradict his "more guns, less crime" mantra.

I'm not ignoring it, I'm simply stating that it's irrelevant to the need for law abiding citizens to be armed for self defense...

So just let go of your "more guns, less crime" mantra already.

Why? It's true. What happened prior to the 1990s is not relevant to what's happening today: More guns, less crime.

[Hermit]

What happened prior to the 1990s is not relevant to what's happening today: More guns, less crime.

In short, "more guns, less crime" is true, except when it isn't. Therefore it is true? Curious concept.

[Seth]

What happened prior to the 1990s is not relevant to what's happening today: More guns, less crime.

In short, "more guns, less crime" is true, except when it isn't. Therefore it is true? Curious concept.

Well, sort of. Remember we're discussing a timeline here, and the social history of the country is an important factor in analyzing the causes of, and cures for, violent crime.

As I said before, prior to about 1990 (which I will set as a general point of demarcation for ease of use), and from 1960 to 1990, several factors affected violent crime rates including the establishment of the welfare state and the concentration of the poor in urban slums which decayed over time, the crack cocaine epidemic, the civil rights conflict and other historical factors that also affected how and where crime was concentrated, which was, and still is, primarily in the inner-city minority areas.

During that period, while gun ownership increased with population increases, because of widespread laws against carrying in public the effect of this increase was mostly muted and limited to areas outside of the high-crime cities, which all but universally stringently banned guns and almost completely banned concealed carry.

When crime peaked in the 1990s, state legislatures began examining Florida's experiment with shall-issue concealed carry and saw the obvious benefits and lack of negative impacts and began expanding their own programs. This coincided with radical and ongoing drops in violent crime rates...and in fact all categories of crime with some exceptions in the property crime category. During the same period, with the liberalization of both concealed carry laws and the concurrent loosening of restrictions on urban residents obtaining firearms lawfully, except for places like NYC, Chicago, Detroit and LA, there was no evidence of an increase in gun crime, gun accidents or misbehavior by licensed persons, so the expansion spread and now covers all 50 states to one degree or another. This lack of negative consequences and self-evident positive consequences of liberalizing CCW was so compelling that it persuaded the Supreme Court in the McDonald case, to declare that Chicago's absolute ban on handguns, even in the home, to be unconstitutional. As Chicago tried to defy the forces of history, the Court said specifically that because Chicago could not substantiate ANY of it's claims about a link between lawful gun ownership and violent crime, its laws violated the constitutional rights of Mr. McDonald, a poor black man who had applied for a handgun permit so he could keep a handgun in his home for self defense.

The point is that the correlation of more guns and less crime is specifically related to not the raw number of guns in society, but to who specifically possesses them and where they may do so. It was the liberalization of the laws regarding carrying concealed handguns in public rather than just in one's home (as the McDonald Court held) that is largely correlated with, and I would even go so far as to say caused the precipitous drops in violent crime, especially street crime, as criminals came to learn that their intended victims were no longer rendered completely defenseless by the government but might actually be armed and prepared to kill their attackers if necessary.

It's hardly irrational to conclude that this link between armed potential victims and criminals deciding to find ways to fund their needs other than increasingly risky and potentially fatal street crime is the more or less direct result of a larger pool of armed citizens. Most criminals aren't in it just to be violent, they use violence as a deterrent to resistance and usually only as a threat, and their intent is to acquire the boodle without getting hurt or killed themselves. Anti-concealed carry laws that prevailed until the 1990s gave criminals the green light by helping to ensure that their potential victims would not be armed and would not therefore be able to effectively resist them, much less kill them.

That all changed in 1990 and the results are perfectly clear: More guns (carried concealed in public by law abiding citizens) means less crime (by cowardly street thugs who just want to get high, not killed). This link is also suggested by the small increase in property crimes, as opposed to personal crimes, that has occurred in some places as well. When street robbery became less safe, criminals turned to the safer trade of property crimes like burglary and auto theft where no potentially armed victims are around who might kill them.

So, to be perfectly correct, we should say "More guns carried concealed in public by permitted, law-abiding citizens, less crime, particularly crimes of personal violence such as armed robbery and street muggings." But that's a mouthful, so the shortened version "more guns, less crime" is perfectly appropriate because it's true, if somewhat abbreviated.

What we know with certainty from the statistics associated with the period from 1990 to now is that there has been no increase in gun-related crime or gun accidents, much less legions of police officers killed by law-abiding citizens legally carrying their personal defense weapons as was and is predicted by the anti-gun hysterics and hoplophobes every time the issue comes up.

Since at the very worst the presence of more guns in society has not been the cause of, or even correlated with an increase in crime or gun-related accidents, there doesn't seem to be a rational reason to further restrict or ban the lawful possession of firearms of any kind.

So no, it's always been "more guns, less crime" although this correlation may have been masked by massive increases in crime caused by social factors other than guns.

[Hermit]

What happened prior to the 1990s is not relevant to what's happening today: More guns, less crime.

In short, "more guns, less crime" is true, except when it isn't. Therefore it is true? Curious concept.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

Well, sort of. Remember we're discussing a timeline here, and the social history of the country is an important factor in analyzing the causes of, and cures for, violent crime.

As I said before, prior to about 1990 (which I will set as a general point of demarcation for ease of use), and from 1960 to 1990, several factors affected violent crime rates including the establishment of the welfare state and the concentration of the poor in urban slums which decayed over time, the crack cocaine epidemic, the civil rights conflict and other historical factors that also affected how and where crime was concentrated, which was, and still is, primarily in the inner-city minority areas.

During that period, while gun ownership increased with population increases, because of widespread laws against carrying in public the effect of this increase was mostly muted and limited to areas outside of the high-crime cities, which all but universally stringently banned guns and almost completely banned concealed carry.

When crime peaked in the 1990s, state legislatures began examining Florida's experiment with shall-issue concealed carry and saw the obvious benefits and lack of negative impacts and began expanding their own programs. This coincided with radical and ongoing drops in violent crime rates...and in fact all categories of crime with some exceptions in the property crime category. During the same period, with the liberalization of both concealed carry laws and the concurrent loosening of restrictions on urban residents obtaining firearms lawfully, except for places like NYC, Chicago, Detroit and LA, there was no evidence of an increase in gun crime, gun accidents or misbehavior by licensed persons, so the expansion spread and now covers all 50 states to one degree or another. This lack of negative consequences and self-evident positive consequences of liberalizing CCW was so compelling that it persuaded the Supreme Court in the McDonald case, to declare that Chicago's absolute ban on handguns, even in the home, to be unconstitutional. As Chicago tried to defy the forces of history, the Court said specifically that because Chicago could not substantiate ANY of it's claims about a link between lawful gun ownership and violent crime, its laws violated the constitutional rights of Mr. McDonald, a poor black man who had applied for a handgun permit so he could keep a handgun in his home for self defense.

The point is that the correlation of more guns and less crime is specifically related to not the raw number of guns in society, but to who specifically possesses them and where they may do so. It was the liberalization of the laws regarding carrying concealed handguns in public rather than just in one's home (as the McDonald Court held) that is largely correlated with, and I would even go so far as to say caused the precipitous drops in violent crime, especially street crime, as criminals came to learn that their intended victims were no longer rendered completely defenseless by the government but might actually be armed and prepared to kill their attackers if necessary.

It's hardly irrational to conclude that this link between armed potential victims and criminals deciding to find ways to fund their needs other than increasingly risky and potentially fatal street crime is the more or less direct result of a larger pool of armed citizens. Most criminals aren't in it just to be violent, they use violence as a deterrent to resistance and usually only as a threat, and their intent is to acquire the boodle without getting hurt or killed themselves. Anti-concealed carry laws that prevailed until the 1990s gave criminals the green light by helping to ensure that their potential victims would not be armed and would not therefore be able to effectively resist them, much less kill them.

That all changed in 1990 and the results are perfectly clear: More guns (carried concealed in public by law abiding citizens) means less crime (by cowardly street thugs who just want to get high, not killed). This link is also suggested by the small increase in property crimes, as opposed to personal crimes, that has occurred in some places as well. When street robbery became less safe, criminals turned to the safer trade of property crimes like burglary and auto theft where no potentially armed victims are around who might kill them.

So, to be perfectly correct, we should say "More guns carried concealed in public by permitted, law-abiding citizens, less crime, particularly crimes of personal violence such as armed robbery and street muggings." But that's a mouthful, so the shortened version "more guns, less crime" is perfectly appropriate because it's true, if somewhat abbreviated.

What we know with certainty from the statistics associated with the period from 1990 to now is that there has been no increase in gun-related crime or gun accidents, much less legions of police officers killed by law-abiding citizens legally carrying their personal defense weapons as was and is predicted by the anti-gun hysterics and hoplophobes every time the issue comes up.

Since at the very worst the presence of more guns in society has not been the cause of, or even correlated with an increase in crime or gun-related accidents, there doesn't seem to be a rational reason to further restrict or ban the lawful possession of firearms of any kind.

So no, it's always been "more guns, less crime" although this correlation may have been masked by massive increases in crime caused by social factors other than guns.

That's an impressive list of ad hoc arguments.

Is it fair comment to say you changed your "more guns, less crime" mantra to "more liberal concealed carry permits, less crime" to make your thesis more accurate? If so, let's have a look at it.

The first difficulty with it is the inability to explain why the violent crime rate in 1960 was less than half than in 2014. I don't think you would want to argue that concealed carry was twice as common then, and no, an appeal to latency won't wash.

Next, murder rates have decreased in many countries. To cite one example I am familiar with, Australia, it halved in the past 15 years, and as you are most likely aware we have no concealed carry permits worth speaking of.

Then there are your various states to consider. Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Montana and Idaho have "Shall issue" policies. The murder rate in all of them is higher in 2012 than in 2000. Two more states, which have "May issue" policies in law but will issue in practice likewise have a higher murder rate in the same time frame. They are Connecticut and Delaware. In the latter case the rate has come within a whisker of doubling.

In the District of Columbia, which has probably the most restrictive gun controls in your nation, on the other hand, the murder rate has decreased to 25% in 2012 from its level in 2000.

So, no, I don't think all that highly of your revised thesis either. You'll just have to continue backpedalling. Here's a suggestion, abandon that shit altogether and cover your retreat by saying it's all irrelevant anyway because the only thing that matters is the threat of your tyrannous government to its freedom and peace loving citizens. That's really all you have left to go to.