My point is that the UK's lower homicide rate isn't a relevant fact unless you can make a case that it's due to gun regulation laws (which I find dubious).
The UK's change in homicide rate before and since handguns were criminalised is at least a relevant statistic, even though it does still require careful interpretation (and needs to be combined with similar legal changes in other nations if we want to establish a trend),
Also; when it comes to statistics, I think we should be careful about criticising people for 'explaining away' inconvenient statistics. It is what you essentially did in response to the statistic that madscience. It's unfortunate that people's interpretation tends to be biased towards their pre-existing political beliefs and attitudes, but we're all engage in interpretation whenever we interact with statistics (or at least we should be... we shouldn't be taking them at face value)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-03-25 12:14 am (UTC)The UK's change in homicide rate before and since handguns were criminalised is at least a relevant statistic, even though it does still require careful interpretation (and needs to be combined with similar legal changes in other nations if we want to establish a trend),
Also; when it comes to statistics, I think we should be careful about criticising people for 'explaining away' inconvenient statistics. It is what you essentially did in response to the statistic that madscience. It's unfortunate that people's interpretation tends to be biased towards their pre-existing political beliefs and attitudes, but we're all engage in interpretation whenever we interact with statistics (or at least we should be... we shouldn't be taking them at face value)