[extropy-chat] Guns

[Darin Sunley]

Any of us who've been around here long enough to remember the last big gun
flamefest have seen all of this rhetoric, on both sides, before. But there
is a new and intriguing element this time around.

The previous flamewar emerged from the standard, familiar dynamics of
text-based communications. Lack of face-to-face communication erodes the
standard social cognitive feedback loops that generate civil behavior in
most well-socialized adults. As is common in these situations, neither party
had any particular formal training in the subject area, just the informed
interest of a passionate layman. Neither party claimed to represent any
organization larger than themselves, and therefore all flames were strictly
personal. The participants could damage their own credibility, and sometimes
even that of their opponents, but no one else's.

This time however, the scale of the conflict is slightly larger. Dirk claims
to be representing a new political party and, one assumes, has aspirations
to eventually run as a candidate himself, or to speak for candidates running
in local elections in the UK.

Dirk, as fun as this petulant sniping and blatant stereotyping must be for
you, and as much as it must seem that Mr. Lorrey started it and that honour
must be satisfied, you MUST hold yourself to a higher standard of public
behavior. This list is archived publically. As a citizen of the UK you must
surely be famliar with the less savoury elements of your local media. The
publishing of this, frankly petty, flamefest  would, if spun appropriately,
do serious damage to your long term credibility as a member of the British
political community.

Do yourself a huge favour and rise above the petty flamefests that
characterize these kind of online debates. Tossing statistics of
indeterminate credibility, tidbits of sarcasm and mediocre wit, and
stereotypes constituting viscious insults won't win you the support of the
average cocktail party, let alone a parliamentary riding where your clear
passion for the issues might have some actual influence on public debate.

To summarize, Dirk, this is not the time, not the place, and it is certainly
not the manner in which to have this debate.

Darin Sunley,
dsunley at shaw.ca


----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Burch" <gregburch at gregburch.net>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>; "Damien Broderick"
<thespike at earthlink.net>
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 6:45 PM
Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Guns


>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Mike Lorrey
> > Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 6:25 PM
> >
> > --- Damien Broderick <thespike at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > As I pointed out last time this comical factoid came around, the
> > > figures in question were as follows:
> > >
> > > http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/australiaguns.html
> > >
> > > Victoria (population circa 5 million) recorded 7 firearm-related
> > > homicides in 1996, and 19 firearm-related homicides in 1997. That
> > > number has now fallen.
> > >
> > > 1996 - 7
> > > 1997 - 19 (171.4% increase from 1996 to 1997)
> > > 1998 - 17 (10.5% decrease from 1997 to 1998).
> > > 1999 - 14 (17.6% decrease from 1998 to 1999).
> > >
> > > =============
> > >
> > > Why keep citing this preposterous silliness, Mike?
> >
> > Lets see, you say a doubling of murders in a three year time span is a
> > decrease???? Did you write copy for the Clinton White House? This is
> > the ultimate in Orwellian spin doctoring...
>
> For crying out loud, Mike, that's *NOT* what Damien is saying.  He's
saying the numbers are so small in absolute terms that expressing increases
in terms of percentages from one year to the next is meaningless.  If you
must apply a percentage to these statistics, it would seem to be more
meaningful to express them in terms of the percentage of the population
killed by firearms:
>
> 1996: 0.00014%
> 1997: 0.00038%
> 1998: 0.00034%
> 1999: 0.00028%
>
> All of which is statistically almost meaningless -- the numbers are just
too small.
>
> GB
> http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html
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