WOW! Bugsy, that sure is a great site.
About the only things they didn't factor in were rainfall, the price of petrol and JWH's consumption of carrots.(more on this later, my spies are still digging on the site's creditability)

Meanwhile back in the real world.

Quote
'Appeals Court Strikes Down Washington, D.C. Handgun Ban

Friday, March 09, 2007

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court overturned the District of Columbia's long-standing handgun ban Friday, rejecting the city's argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias.

In a 2-1 decision, the judges held that the activities protected by the Second Amendment "are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued intermittent enrollment in the militia."

A lower-court judge in 2004 had told six residents they did not have a constitutional right to own handguns. The plaintiffs include residents of high-crime neighborhoods who wanted the guns for protection.'
unquote

__________________

That site, Bugsy, says fairly early that it doesn't establish causation. This opens the door to lots of questions: Why would genuine scientists design a study to not establish causation? Establishing relationships and causation with a high degree of certainty is the whole reason for science. Why did they waste money on a study that didn't answer the question? Did they do the study to decide whether to do a deeper study that does answer the question?

Here's a scholarly article that refutes much of what is presented by Miller, Azrael and Hemenway:

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/2007/01/...-hemenway.html

A couple of highlights. They excluded Washington D.C. from their statistics. Why? Perhaps because D.C. has one of the lowest rates of firearm ownership in the US and the highest homicide rate. This skews the results they wanted to get, so they didn't use them.

They use other crime rates to explain the murder rate.

They used data from different years to explain what happened in other years. For example - they correlate the 2000 unemployment rate with the homicide rate, 2001 to 2003

Quote from Lott:
The bottom line is that their results comes from two factors: the exclusion of DC and the use of other crime rates to explain the murder rate. Changing these two factors causes their result to go from positive and significant to negative and significant. I also decided to run these regressions on the robbery rate and doing so produced a statistically significant negative effect whether or not DC was excluded. Using arrest rate data, not shown, also caused the results to be more significantly negative. If I had the necessary panel data handy, my strong presumption is that would also reverse with their result whether or not DC was included.

It is problematic to include the other crime rates in these regressions, particularly since they must believe that guns cause robbery as well as homicide. The results below indicate that more guns mean fewer robberies (again this is using their flawed set up, though I believe that this would continue to be observed with panel data).
Unquote.

Thought I might throw in a bit more.

By 20/05 Washington DC had lost 214,435 residents, almost a third of its 1960 population. Now, we know that the murder rate is the highest in the USA but that can't account for the massive drop, death by natural causes would be a factor but the main factor seems to have been people voting with their feet; "just gettin' th' hell outa there!"

The law banning pistols for self defence was passed in 1976.
The homicide rate for the 16 years prior to the ban was 24.125 per 100,000.
The rate for the 16 years after the ban was 43.456 per 100,000.

Let's just say a 19% increase. Success by any measure?

But that ban is now history and is there anyone happy about it?

'My Fox' based in DC has been running a poll on the Court decision and as at 1615 hrs EDST (Aust.) Sunday 11th March 20/07 it was: 91.80% in favour and only 8.20% against.
The Mayor of Washington DC is running around impersonating Chicken Little and wailing that the world as Washingtonians know it will end.

His citizens fervently hope that it will.

Now could we possibly get back to the original question?

Well, actually if you want to post a blog site of a pro-gun enthuiast, who has written a book entitled "More Guns, Less Crime", which you have obviously read, as you keep repeating it, then fine. If that linked actually worked I might have read it too, so I had to resort to finding more about Lott and his works, and I guess his "creditability".

So allow me to present a blog site which has a critique on his analysis:

http://timlambert.org/guns/lott/

Somehow Washington DC is at the centre of some big mess that proves it for you. But can the question be answered, why is the effect of not valid if Washington DC is excluded? Apparently the statistical power of DC is enough to counteract any generalisation known. What a weird city.

Noone has ever claimed that the Miller et al. study established causation, in fact I would be very wary of many statistical studies that do. But it sure shows a correlation, whether higher crime leads to higher gun ownership, or vice versa cannot be established. But one thing that can be established by this effect is that the "more guns, less crime" mantra is FALSE. That is patently clear.

For the record, books are not peer reviewed, they are only reviewed after publication in public forums. However the American Journal of Public Health, which published the Miller et al. paper IS a highly respected peer reviewed journal. So much for "creditability".

As for the original question, you asked for thoughts. I am giving them to you.

Bugsy,

Thou scrapest the bottom of the barrel when you quote Lambert, still I suppose that you can't get lower.

The study that you confidently put forward was flawed. They were discussing gun crime in America so they left out the place with the most stringent laws and the most crime simply because it upset their case.
You stated that the laws in DC were in answer to the rising crime rate
but for the 30 years that they had the law the murder rate continued to exceed the rate that they had when the law was introduced.

I wonder why the population of Washington DC has declined by a third when the populations of all the surrounding states, states which allow personal protection, have risen?

John Howard ought to ask his mate George why the American people believe in the right to have the means of self defence, and ask himself why he denies the same rights to the citizens of his own country.

Just answer one question honestly.
Would you stand by and watch a fellow citizen be murdered or would you extend to them the means of saving their life?

That's what the great Gun Buy-back was about, disarming the citizens and leaving the weak and the helpless at the mercy of criminals.

Where are the Government's figures for the number of firearms handed in by criminals?
The only figures that they can give are for the law abiding.

So we're back to the moral imperative argument, you're on a real winner with that one....

As stated previously using places like D.C. as a test case is not a good comparison especially since it's 177 square kilometres, surrounded by states with lax gun laws. The laws there are certainly not adequate to succeed in such an environment.

But where does that leave Australia? Since the introduction of the laws: No sprialling crime rates, no mass slayings. In fact there has been an overall improvement in policing resulting in a heroin drought that has lower crime rates across the board. Which gives the TOTAL LIE to the idea that less guns equals more crime.

As for saving the lives of the weak, what is intended is saving the lives of weak and strong alike, across the board. How effective do you think a pistol owned by an 80 year old grandma is anyways? Just point and shoot gran, whoops sorry Mr Postman. But I'm sure Estelle Getty could do better I'm sure.

The way your question is written is quite silly also, I will explain. So, hypothetically I am standing in someones kitchen or something watching a fellow citizen getting stabbed (presumably not shot eh?) and I throw them a gun, how would that work? What about standing on the street, instead of calling the police (the correct response), I yell out here take my 700 rpm double action revolver, that'll save ya!? It's nonsense mate, the best way to prevent crime is removing criminals by better policing. Not by arming everyone who wants a weapon.

There is no evidence to say the buyback has been a failure, except only in the minds of people who didn't like it in the first place. And if you want to talk about scraping barrels, stop quoting blogsites with an axe to grind and stupid records from the 1930s (that are highly dubious to begin with).

And we begin again. You can take it up with the next chump that will bother talking to you about it.