Vigilante

[Seth]

That there have been no school massacres yet does not preclude the potential. The point I'm making is that by disarming virtually anyone who could possibly respond effectively in the short amount of time available to stop or delay a mass shooting...at a school or anywhere else...the Australian government is increasing the probability of high body counts, not reducing it.

Oh, of course. The fact that there were more than a dozen massacres in Australia in the years leading up to the implementation of the gun buyback scheme and none at all in the following years is clear and incontrovertible evidence that you are right once again. This trend proves that the only solution concerning problems with guns is, uhm, more guns. Gotcha.

Only if you can show that it is impossible for a deranged person to get a gun can you say that banning guns makes society safer.

Alternatively, one can go by actual results rather than speculating what will happen in the future. Your prognostication about the probability of high body counts is not borne out by facts. In the 17 years since the buyback scheme was introduced the count due to massacres stands at exactly 0. In the 12 years leading up to it it was 80.

Once again, for the cognitively impaired, past performance is no indicator of future performance. The issue I addressed is not whether the number of mass shootings has been reduced by the gun ban, it's what the effect of gun bans have on the survivability of a mass shooting. If the cognitively impaired don't think that Islamic extremists armed with fully-automatic AK-47s and hand grenades can't do in Brisbane or Sidney what they did in Nairobi, Kenya they're hopelessly stupid.

Guess who saved many people in that debacle? Off duty policemen with guns. Guess who is likely responsible for killing most of the rest? The Kenyan military, which fired artillery shells into the mall trying to kill the terrorists. And evidently missed.

If vastly more people in that mall had been armed to begin with, as is the case in Israel, where people openly carry fully-automatic rifles and submachine guns as well as pistols, the small number of terrorists would have been engaged by those present, which if nothing else would have given others the opportunity to escape. Go look up some stories of Islamic terrorists who try to shoot up crowds and schools in Israel. They don't last long enough to kill more than a few people because armed citizens pull their guns and shoot them dead.

So enjoy your good fortune of not having a mass shooting recently, but temper that with the fact that when the next mass shooting DOES come around, it'll be much worse than it needed to be because of Australia's idiotic gun policies, as the Port Arthur massacre itself proved conclusively.

[Hermit]

That there have been no school massacres yet does not preclude the potential. The point I'm making is that by disarming virtually anyone who could possibly respond effectively in the short amount of time available to stop or delay a mass shooting...at a school or anywhere else...the Australian government is increasing the probability of high body counts, not reducing it.

Oh, of course. The fact that there were more than a dozen massacres in Australia in the years leading up to the implementation of the gun buyback scheme and none at all in the following years is clear and incontrovertible evidence that you are right once again. This trend proves that the only solution concerning problems with guns is, uhm, more guns. Gotcha.

Only if you can show that it is impossible for a deranged person to get a gun can you say that banning guns makes society safer.

Alternatively, one can go by actual results rather than speculating what will happen in the future. Your prognostication about the probability of high body counts is not borne out by facts. In the 17 years since the buyback scheme was introduced the count due to massacres stands at exactly 0. In the 12 years leading up to it it was 80.

Once again, for the cognitively impaired, past performance is no indicator of future performance.

News flash: I compared the past performance of post gun buyback years with the past performance of pre gun buyback years. Ironically, it is you who keeps speculating about what may happen in the future. If you are looking for the cognitively impaired you could do a lot worse than recognising one while having a shave.

[Seth]

News flash: I compared the past performance of post gun buyback years with the past performance of pre gun buyback years. Ironically, it is you who keeps speculating about what may happen in the future. If you are looking for the cognitively impaired you could do a lot worse than recognising one while having a shave.

You're speaking from experience I presume...

Anyhoo, dearie, the past is past, or is that too complex for you to understand? You'd make a great mark for the Vegas casinos because you, like many who gamble there, think that data from a past event has an effect on events in the future. Take roulette for example. The odds of winning a red/black, even/odd, high/low bet in Vegas are 47.37% for each and every separate spin of the ball! It doesn't matter at all that the previous 10 spins have gone red, the odds are still 47.37% for every spin.

Now it may be that banning guns in Australia has reduced the probability of a mass shooting by making it somewhat more difficult for a deranged individual (or a terrorist) to get an adequate weapon, but the odds that someone in a mall (or at a Tasmanian resort) where a deranged killer has appeared and started killing people is in mortal danger are 100%. The odds that a person involved in such an event will be killed or injured are impossible to predict with any accuracy, but what can be said is that unarmed persons have a higher probability of being killed or injured than armed persons do when they are subjected to violent attack.. (Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, Northwestern University School of Law, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 86, issue 1, 1995, Tough Targets - When Criminals Face Resistance from Armed Citizens, Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett, Cato Institute 2012, http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/file ... argets.pdf)

Two rational conclusions may be drawn from this information: First, a lack of shootings in the past is no guarantee that such a shooting will not occur in the future; and when (not if) such a shooting occurs, Australian citizens will be at higher risk of injury or death because of the severe restrictions on firearms that affect not just the civilian population but the police force itself, as demonstrated by the Port Arthur massacre that triggered the gun ban.

[mistermack]

Isn't it strange, I get in my car, and it performs exactly the same today as it did yesterday.
I put my foot down, and get an identical response.
And when I brake, I know instinctively how the pressure I put on the pedal will affect my speed.

I must have a weird car. It's past performance gives me a very good idea of what it will do next time.

The same goes for my cooker, my cat, my dick, in fact virtually everything I come across.
In a world where past performance gives no indication of future performance, I must be incredibly lucky.
And these idiots in business, who do trial runs and studies, to project future sales and profits, should listen to Seth. The fuckin loonies are just pissing their money against the wall. What do they know, anyway?

[Hermit]

Two rational conclusions may be drawn from this information: First, a lack of shootings in the past is no guarantee that such a shooting will not occur in the future; and when (not if) such a shooting occurs, Australian citizens will be at higher risk of injury or death because of the severe restrictions on firearms

True and true. However, the net results since the gun restrictions in Australia 14 years ago remain this: Fewer deaths and injuries not only in homicides on a per capita basis, but also a reduction to zero in massacres. By those measures it is a simple arithmetic exercise to work out which scenario is preferable.

As to your harping on about prognostications regarding future events: You keep making them. I don't.

Now to probability.

1. My views on it is not what you claim. For instance, I have bought my first car from the proceeds of about 10 sessions playing roulette when I was still going to school. It didn't take me long to realise that I was just lucky at the time; no matter how many times in a row a tossed coin turns up heads, the chance of it turning up tails the next time is still 50%.

2. The issue of gun control is not at all analogous to a game of toss-the-coin. We are dealing with two separate sets of rules.

In closing, let me remind you that I have not been a supporter of the 1996 laws for about five years now. I just like to test the bullshit that both you and Blind Groper attempt to pass off as an argument. Speaking in the Australian context only at any rate, each of the opposing claims regarding the desirability of strict gun control lack the sort of empirical backup required to establish a correlative, let alone a causal relationship.

[JimC]

In any case, the only question of real importance about the current Australian situation is whether there would be significant public support for a shift in firearm regulation towards the US model.

Without a poll precisely asking that question, it is hard to be definitive. However, there have been no public appeals or lobbying that I am aware of for Oz to go in that direction; in fact, most of the public comment on the issue has been from those who want even tighter gun controls (which I would not support, although I would like penalties for criminal use of firearms toughened). I'm fairly certain that public opinion here is not in favour of more access to private ownership of hand-guns.

[Hermit]

In any case, the only question of real importance about the current Australian situation is whether there would be significant public support for a shift in firearm regulation towards the US model.

Without a poll precisely asking that question, it is hard to be definitive. However, there have been no public appeals or lobbying that I am aware of for Oz to go in that direction; in fact, most of the public comment on the issue has been from those who want even tighter gun controls

Not sure if an appeal to popularity has a bearing on the issue of gun control, and there is sufficient appeal to relax gun laws for the Shooters and Fishers Party to get two of their representatives elected to the upper house of the Parliament of New South Wales and one in that of Western Australia, but yes, the gun lobby here has nowhere near the power, leverage or popularity as the NFL in the USA.

[FBM]

Just wondering how many might see the US gun laws as an example of a tyranny of the majority.

[JimC]

In any case, the only question of real importance about the current Australian situation is whether there would be significant public support for a shift in firearm regulation towards the US model.

Without a poll precisely asking that question, it is hard to be definitive. However, there have been no public appeals or lobbying that I am aware of for Oz to go in that direction; in fact, most of the public comment on the issue has been from those who want even tighter gun controls

Not sure if an appeal to popularity has a bearing on the issue of gun control, and there is sufficient appeal to relax gun laws for the Shooters and Fishers Party to get two of their representatives elected to the upper house of the Parliament of New South Wales and one in that of Western Australia, but yes, the gun lobby here has nowhere near the power, leverage or popularity as the NFL in the USA.

The bearing it has is political: even if elements in the coalition government, and recent single issue elected representatives are in favour of relaxing gun laws, I think it would be opposed by a strong majority, and is politically very unlikely to occur.

For somewhat different reasons, it seems that change in the tightening direction is very unlikely in the US.

That is the political reality in both cases, and that is why the country vs country arguments in this and other threads are ultimately sterile...

[Hermit]

Just wondering how many might see the US gun laws as an example of a tyranny of the majority.

Bullshit, horseshit and pettyfoggery. The "tyranny of the majority" only fits when it suits my views. It is irrelevant here because it doesn't. You see, the freedom to prance around with loaded firearms in schools, shopping centres, offices and suchlike is a matter of Inalienable Rights as enshrined in the Second Amendment by our Founding Fathers.

Oops. Sorry about that. I was channelling a broken record of a cognitively impaired "member".

[FBM]

You had me going there for a minute.

[Blind groper]

Seth has repeatedly shown a lack of understanding of statistics and probability.

His statement that past performance cannot be used to predict future performance shows he has no understanding of what 'random' and 'non random' mean.

If you are dealing with purely random events, then past performance cannot be used to predict future, and Seth is correct. However, we are not dealing with random events, and this means past can be used to predict future. I know, for example, that here in NZ we have about 300 fatal car accidents every year, plus or minus 50. I predict, with total confidence, that the number of lethal car accidents this year in NZ will be 300 plus or minus 50. That is because the past can, in fact, be used to predict the future, for non random matters. I also predict that mass shootings in Australia will remain less than the pre-gun law period of 13 in 18 years.

Australia will, inevitably, have another mass shooting. But it will not be 13 in 18 years, or anything near that number. Because the gun control laws are working.

[Hermit]

You ain't seen nothin' yet. The collection of broken records is extensive. Just you wait until I play the ones titled The Marxist Obama and his Coterie of Useful Idiots. Or The Billions of Wilfully Unemployed. Or Taxation as Theft. Or Private Property as an Absolute and Inviolable Right. Or The Girlfriend who turned out to be an Utter Nutcase. Or...

[Seth]

Isn't it strange, I get in my car, and it performs exactly the same today as it did yesterday.
I put my foot down, and get an identical response.
And when I brake, I know instinctively how the pressure I put on the pedal will affect my speed.

I must have a weird car. It's past performance gives me a very good idea of what it will do next time.

The same goes for my cooker, my cat, my dick, in fact virtually everything I come across.
In a world where past performance gives no indication of future performance, I must be incredibly lucky.
And these idiots in business, who do trial runs and studies, to project future sales and profits, should listen to Seth. The fuckin loonies are just pissing their money against the wall. What do they know, anyway?

Er, one small change in circumstances and neither your car, your cooker, your cat or your dick will work. You may make assumptions based on past behavior but past behavior does not control or obstruct future behavior. That's a simple fact of physics.

That's the point. Just because your car started yesterday doesn't prove that it's going to start tomorrow. If someone disconnects your battery cable, you're fucked.

Likewise, all someone has to do is find a gun and resolve to use it to commit mass murder and all the gun bans on earth will not prevent it. Only someone else with a gun, or fatigue on the part of the murderer, is going to put a stop to the killing, and the chances that someone present will have a gun and therefore might have a chance, no matter how slim, to stop the killing is approximately zero in Australia, as the victims at Port Arthur discovered.

[Seth]

Two rational conclusions may be drawn from this information: First, a lack of shootings in the past is no guarantee that such a shooting will not occur in the future; and when (not if) such a shooting occurs, Australian citizens will be at higher risk of injury or death because of the severe restrictions on firearms

True and true. However, the net results since the gun restrictions in Australia 14 years ago remain this: Fewer deaths and injuries not only in homicides on a per capita basis, but also a reduction to zero in massacres. By those measures it is a simple arithmetic exercise to work out which scenario is preferable.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you haven't had any mass shootings, but that's not the point.

As to your harping on about prognostications regarding future events: You keep making them. I don't.

I understand human nature and physics. Evidently you do not.

Now to probability.

1. My views on it is not what you claim. For instance, I have bought my first car from the proceeds of about 10 sessions playing roulette when I was still going to school. It didn't take me long to realise that I was just lucky at the time; no matter how many times in a row a tossed coin turns up heads, the chance of it turning up tails the next time is still 50%.

2. The issue of gun control is not at all analogous to a game of toss-the-coin. We are dealing with two separate sets of rules.

In closing, let me remind you that I have not been a supporter of the 1996 laws for about five years now. I just like to test the bullshit that both you and Blind Groper attempt to pass off as an argument. Speaking in the Australian context only at any rate, each of the opposing claims regarding the desirability of strict gun control lack the sort of empirical backup required to establish a correlative, let alone a causal relationship.

Let's make it extremely simple: You are standing in your living room and a thug breaks down the door, grabs your 10 year old daughter, points a gun at you and tells you to sit down, which you do, and he then begins brutally beating and raping your daughter. Beside the cushion of the chair you're sitting in is a loaded handgun. Would you use that handgun to save your daughter or not?