Notices by Luis M. Rocha (lmrocha@qoto.org)

@freemo that is very silly. Vaccines demonstrably save many lives (with antibiotics the key reason for population explosion in xx century). In contrast there is zero, zilch, nada evidence that guns save lives ---the net effect in killings is demonstrably more death as you acknowledged, while the opposite is true for vaccines. You think they do, but, alas, no demonstration.

This comparison with anti-vaxxers makes no sense at all

@pj @thatguyoverthere @mike805

@freemo

That is just completely false. Compute all statistics you want. Your odds of dying from a gun (suicide or homicide, together or separately) in Europe are lower than in the US. And if your US household has guns, you are much more likely to get shot than if it doesn't (after controlling for income, neighborhood, etc ). Guns don't make you or society safety. They just make you feel that way. But feeling is not science.

Don't bother saying you computed this otherwise in some data savvy way, if you have not published it. And don't insult us with saying we don't know statistics. I have been doing AI and data science professionally since the late 80s with the resume and published work to back that up.

@pj @thatguyoverthere @mike805

@mike805 @freemo the founders were not gods. Their conception of guns, militia, armies, people (who they thought mattered), rights (for those they throughout mattered) bear absolutely no relevance today. All of those have changed dramatically since then.

@freemo @thatguyoverthere @mike805 @pj yes, the statisticians who publish in the new England journal of medicine and lancet areb known to be rookies... #fantasy

@freemo @thatguyoverthere @mike805 @pj I don't have to provide data for what *you* are arguing. That's your job. Go ahead and publish it. I gave you published evidence in strong support of my claim: more guns --> increased mortality. If you have evidence against the current scientific evidence, which can sustain peer-review, by all means publish it. Restating your beliefs without proof (beyond your own mind) is not enough and it is dishonest to claim your belief invalidates current peer-reviewed and replicated studies without demonstration.

@freemo @thatguyoverthere @mike805 @pj that is just patently false. All data points to the opposite. No evidence whatsoever (from all other similar countries) that regulating the use of guns leads to people dying en masse. That's just silly and totally false.

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @freemo @pj I meant: "certainly two swords would not have been enough."

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @freemo @pj there is much context, and prophecy parallelism, in that passage to make that such a simple case. The sermon on the mount is much more relevant to understand Jesus' moral teachings, than confusing/ambiguous (”two swords are enough”) prophetic statements just prior to arrest.

Personally, and this is just me, I read that passage as an indication of the futility of the few arms his disciples could buy from selling their clothes, in the presence of the might of the Roman army. Certainly two swords weird have both been enough... So, I interpret this as as call to focus on what matters about his message, which is the opposite of swords.

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @freemo @pj "be prepared" is not the same as "be armed". I was raised Catholic, and the idea of using a Christian conception of God to defend gun-based self-defense is, frankly, diabolical---especially when we know it leads to incident children being killed over and over again.

@freemo @mike805 you keep talking about those numbers about guns and reducing rape and such, but I'm still waiting for the peer-reviewed analysis of those numbers. Can you send the DOIs?

@freemo @mike805 the papers I sent are not irrelevant. They are precisely on topic, well performed analyses. You just don't like their results. That's a different matter. Hell, I think that gravity is a bitch, but won't waste time arguing against newton and falling apples.

@freemo @mike805 you don't understand, the "professional distinction" you care about is irrelevant for the fact that 1) guns are the leading cause of children death in there USA, and 2) a lot of people make money from that.

Thought experiment: you guys are such believers in the 2A. Surely you think it is of such great importance that we should at least consider that the role of government is to provide guns at cost (no profit) to the population. Do you think that if we removed cost from the equation the NRA would exist and there would be so many guns in the population?

Your are siding with the gun profiteers who value profit over life, not some grand constitutional principle.

@freemo @mike805 alas, science is not based on the criteria *you* set forth. I've sent you a large list of peer-reviewed papers from the best medical journals in the world. You say they don't meet *your* criteria and don't send me any paper that remotely validates your claims. Well, good luck with the Dr.Freemo journal!

@mike805 @freemo the argument for uncontrolled guns access is not logical. It comes from some metaphysical belief in "God given rights” or from "that's what the founding fathers wanted." It is not based on any logical induction from real evidence. You guys claim guns reduce violent crime, but evidence shows exactly the opposite. This is not logic, it's belief. My take is that you have drunk so much Kool aid that you cannot distinguish belief from evidence and also lost empathy for others, even kids in school.

@mike805 @freemo why no rage shootings elsewhere but there USA? Actually, they exist, but when they happen elsewhere laws change and high capacity shootings disappear. It's only the USA where profiteers have been able to engineer a profitable death cult around the second amendment.

@freemo @mike805 yes, but those are not the ones used in school shootings and which the majority of the population wants to regulate. It's they killing machines.

Also, no one, except killing machine profiteering apologists, cares about the distinction between automatic or semi-automatic. The available high capacity, semi-automatic models are automatic enough in their killing design and need to be regulated.

@mike805 @freemo do you think this is how schools l get attacked in the USA today?

@freemo @mike805 what guns are engineered to do is not a matter of opinion.

@freemo @mike805 dude, I'm on several data science study sections at NIH, and on the editorial board of several days science journals.

@freemo @mike805 I'm talking about analysis based on pseudo randomized trials, which you can do comparing the times of introduction of regulations in different locations. You are the one assuming that when we speak of data we mean simple correlations. But again, you cannot underestimate that the gun lobby prevents the gathering of relevant data in the usa. They are not interested in serious data analysis.

At the end of the day, your can justify your toys however you want. But American children are dying from guns much more than children in other rich countries. Taking my kids to school in the USA, everyday there was the ever present fear of a gun attack, with corresponding drills they had to be subjected to (you can only wonder the damage to mental health such insecurity caused them.) I am so happy they decided to go to college in Europe. We never worry about such a situation anymore. And that's how life should be.