Dear mhaze,

You wrote;

“For example, just because the proportion of black fatherless kids is similar to the proportion of fatherless mass shooters does mean that they are in any way linked. Two similar numbers are often just similar but unrelated numbers. Statistics was never your strong suit, eh?”

Far stronger than yours it seems.

You are trying to make the argument that those from fatherless families are more likely to be involved in mass shootings. My retort was to point out that if this were the case then we would see proportionally more non-Hispanic Blacks involved in mass shootings because of the high rates of fatherless families. This is not the result, in fact the proportional rates are far below those of non-Hispanic whites from fatherless families.

Therefore accounting for fatherless rates whites are vastly more likely to be involved in mass shootings. But not once in your reply did you mention the word white. Why is that?

Of the supposed two predictors, being white is far more indicative than family status.

Dear Is mise,

You wrote;

“But I agreed with you and was glad that you had finally seen the light and that you now though that people with guns were the solution to the immediate problem.”

No all I was doing was seeking what it would take to have you finally see an alternative to arming school teachers. I don't agree with stationing fully armed military personnel at every school but you readily did.

By your logic all police in the UK would be armed, but they are not. Why do you think that is?

This is what your thinking brings.

A 13-year-old girl in Mississippi has died after being shot by her nine-year-old brother during a fight over video games, police say.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/boy-9-shoots-13-year-old-sister-in-fight-over-video-game-controller-20180320-p4z55x.html

"By your logic all police in the UK would be armed, but they are not. Why do you think that is?"

Because the Poms are bloody stupid, one of the worst things tat they ever did was disarming their police.

However, the stupidity doesn't extend to all of the UK because some police are routinely armed.

"This is what your thinking brings.

A 13-year-old girl in Mississippi has died after being shot by her nine-year-old brother during a fight over video games, police say."

That's not what my thinking brings at all, because I'm a staunch advocate of firearms security, all my arms are under lock and key and I'm the only one, apart from my equally licenced son, who knows where the keys are kept.

Steele, a particularly gruesome story, shocking in the extreme. In the past when I have posted similar horrific accounts of gun deaths. Issy and his then dopey forum sidekick on the issue Leoj would berate me for doing so, as they said; unlike them pair of sensitive coyotes I had no respect for the dead, and out of a sense of common decency for the deceased, they would not be commenting on the matter at all.
ex dixit.

SR,

"You are trying to make the argument that those from fatherless families are more likely to be involved in mass shootings. "

Actually, no. I was pointing out that shooters were highly likely to be fatherless at rates far in excess of their representation in the general community.

I suspect you won't get the difference....hence my comment about your understanding of the stats.

In terms of trying to understand the nature of those who resort to mass shooting (always remembering that that term is highly ill-defined) many factors need to be considered. Fatherlessness is one such factor which has been, but is no longer, under appreciated.

//"Posted by Toni Lavis, Thursday, 29 March 2018 11:04:17 AM"

That's how your post's OLO time comes up on my computer, my computer time is 12:46 PM.//

Yeah, it's because of daylight savings. It's an annual event... is this the first time you've noticed it? On 1/4/18 daylight savings ends in NSW, and our clocks will re-synchronise with OLO's. Then on 7/10/18 they'll jump ahead by an hour again, and stay that way until 7/4/19. If it bothers you I suppose you can manually readjust your computer's time to match OLO's, but then your computer will be an hour behind all the other clocks in NSW. Or you can just resign yourself to the fact that banana-benders have backwards views on the subject of daylight savings, and put up with it.

There you go, mystery solved.

So now that we've got that little conundrum cleared up: hilarious puns aside, what's wrong with gun control? We seem to be in agreement - at least I think we're in agreement - that civilians should not be permitted to possess certain types of arms. We simply disagree on the extent to which their access to arms should be limited. You don't want people to be forbidden from having guns but you're quite happy for them to be forbidden from having white phosphorous grenades, right?

Well that sounds like a violation of 2nd Amendment rights if ever I heard one. The Founding Fathers, in their eternal wisdom, never specified which types of arms. The 2nd Amendment is quite clear that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; it says nothing to the effect of 'except for the following list of arms for which it's totally fine to infringe the people's right to keep and bear them, I mean c'mon, have you seen the people? You can't trust half of those mouth-breathers with overly sharp scissors, for heaven's sake'. That bit was cut from the first draft. But they still won't let you have a rocket-propelled grenade. Rotten spoilsports, Is Mise, or sensible and prudent policy makers?