Because among the millions of us there may be a few terrorists, so none of us can ever be trusted. She and her colleagues, on the other hand, are fine upstanding citizens who are completely trustworthy and never do anything wrong.

That would compensate somewhat. Then we would have to continue with /. classic.

They're attempting to exploit our herd mentality in order to hide their weakness; if enough of us can be fooled into thinking that IIS is more popular than it actually is, then more people will switch to it or stick with it for that reason alone.

The last time this subject came up I was quite enthusiastic about it and shared my thoughts about it with a number of people, including my sister who happens to be a veterinarian. Here's what she had to say about it:

That was never my intention. Statistics for firearms-related deaths also include accidents and suicides. This is not just about crime, not should it be.

I disagree with this point. For comparative statistical studies of the kind that I gave so many examples of earlier, no further changes should be made at all to the numbers before they are published. That is in fact of paramount importance. Otherwise those responsible for producing them would be blamed for massaging and manipulating the numbers. Again, the task of explaining the differences should be left to the reader.

Your example of comparing the fuel economy of buses with motorcycles is of little use. Anyone can predict in advance that heavier vehicles consume more fuel, so it's not a statistical study from which we can learn anything. A better example would be a study of snakebite incidents around the world: you'd see that Iceland and New Zeeland have no cases, since no snakes are found in the wild on these Island nations, while India and Brazil have thousands of cases every year due to the many endemic venomous species, as well as other factors such as poverty and people walking barefoot. Yes, the snake species involved are rather different in India and Brazil, but the study is only supposed to show that the chances of snakebite injury in the last two countries is much higher than in the first two. In exactly the same way, the numbers I quoted earlier simply suggest, with no further explanation intended, that people living in the United States are more likely to die from a gunshot wounds than those living in the Netherlands.

The studies we're arguing about here -- snakebite, cancer, road accidents, etc. -- are not apples and oranges comparisons, and under absolutely no circumstances are they supposed to include and "compensation" for any perceived variables. In fact, when done properly, great care is taken to prevent that sort of thing. For example, who would want a statistical study that compares the number of winter coats sold in countries around the world to compensate for the fact that some countries are tropical and others are not not? For a salesman, that would render the study utterly useless.

That would be an assumption on your part and not necessarily true at all. Unless there are well-documented cases of politicians tampering with the numbers for firearms-related deaths, then I see no reason to worry about it.

For a while it was fun debating with you, but now it's starting to look more like this is a religious issue for you. Also, next time try not to use so many statements like "If you really can't grasp little things...", "TOUGH SHIT", " If you wish to have a PRAYER ..." and "End of argument": it may be colloquial, but it's still condescending and thus makes you look weak and insecure. Remaining polite while attempting to use logical, clear and concise arguments is a much more effective way to prove your point.

The so-called French paradox? That would be the result of someone (perhaps supported by the French wine industry) quoting two individual studies -- for heart disease and for red wine consumption -- and then claiming correlation and causation. The conclusion is questionable, but it does not follow that the individual studies cited are unscientific to begin with. That only shoots the messenger, because by themselves the studies don't refer to each other at all; it is only we who mention them together later on in our search for an explanation.

Certainly I was not playing games. This is the first time I've been accused of using a straw man argument, but I suspect you may be correct about it. I always thought that logical fallacies were more of a debating tactic, but now I guess they are usually just made in error. Oops. :-)

Anyway, I think my reasoning and arguments have so far been rather poor, perhaps mostly because I've been flailing around in the fog of my own opinions: something that I'm sure is more likely if you don't put enough effort into listening (or in this case reading) what is actually being said. Again, my bad.

I'll give it another try. In your first reply to me you were very clear and there was no need for me to search for analogies: "Compare parts of the US to parts of the US if you want to talk about the US statistics. You cannot compare states across national lines with any credibility." That was your apples and oranges argument all along and and I should have recognized it immediately. My apologies for the lengthy and unnecessary digression.

Instead, I should have immediately pointed out to you that I see nothing scientifically wrong with making numerical comparisons like that between countries; something that is in fact done all the time. Here are more than a dozen examples:

• List of countries by HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate
• List of countries by traffic-related death rate
• The 15 Countries With the Highest Smartphone Penetration
• List of countries by electricity production from renewable sources
• Countries with the Highest / Lowest Average IQ
• Obesity country comparison
• Cancer rates: see how countries compare worldwide
• Paid Vacation Around the World
• Average temperature in the countries of the world
• List of countries by rail transport network size
• Highways > Total (per capita) (most recent) by country
• Total Water Use per capita by Country
• List of countries by suicide rate
• List of countries by incarceration rate
• Drug Use Death Rate Per 100,000
• Teenage pregnancy (most recent) by country
• Snakebite in The Americas

Why would it be unscientific to make comparisons like these? As long as the numbers are always collected in the same way, then they are just numbers and don't attempt to explain anything about differences that may be cultural, legal, socioeconomic, etc. In all cases it's left up to the reader to explain the differences ("it's a police state", "it's probably a poor country", "perhaps they eat too much fish", "maybe they have better rights for women", etc). So, if there is nothing wrong in principle with the above comparisons, why take exception to those involving gun ownership and firearms-related deaths?

Please reread my previous response. I first attempted to clarify your position, then wondered if you had a problem in general with statistics as a scientific discipline.

Let me get this straight. Your position seems to be that there are no scientifically valid statistics available to show a clear correlation between gun ownership and gun-related deaths in the United States (or do you have a different source that you do trust?). Therefore we should not even entertain the notion that they are related, let alone take any actions based on that assumption. Correct?

If so, then are there any demographic statistics that you find acceptable? Any statistics at all? Remember, so much of modern science is based on statistics (e.g. it made finding the Higgs boson possible) that I would think we were at least reasonably good at it. And Nate Silver's statistical analysis quite accurately predicted the outcome of the 2012 elections State by State. So I find it curious that you choose not to trust any statistics at all when it comes to the gun control debate.

And since no statistics are available that you approve of, you will not accept that the most common solution to this problem has any merit. Pity.

Sure, there are plenty of cultural and socioeconomic differences between countries around the globe, and even between towns in a single State. And there's always a problem with the statistics. However, if you can admit that America has more handguns per person than any other country in the world, and that it also has an uncomfortably high firearms-related death-rate, then how can you possibly say that reducing the former would not reduce the latter?

When faced with the choice of allowing the civilian population to have handguns or not, the usual approach that governments take is to forbid these weapons by default and then to make a few necessary exceptions. The problem is not that responsible individuals are uncommon -- they are extremely common. The problem is that the law of large numbers dictates that for, say, every 100,000 individuals, 1.) accidents happen and 2.) a few people will always turn out to be less than responsible. It's those people who will always be there to spoil the fun and it is impossible to predict who they will be. And since you will agree that a gun in the wrong hands can have disastrous consequences, the aforementioned approach is considered to be common-sense and has in fact proven to be extremely effective wherever and whenever it has been applied. Fewer guns mean people are less likely to be shot.

So in general, assuming that a nation is not at war (on its own soil) and does not have a law-enforcement problem to begin with, how could taking guns away from a population possibly fail to bring down the firearms-related death rate, especially the rates for mass- and accidental shootings?

You are assuming that you are going to remember that you have a system with data that you will want to access, but that you will forget how to access it. I would have suggested noting your user name and password in a special booklet or something, but then again I suppose you would forget about that as well. In that case you could opt to have your name and password tattooed somewhere on your body, preferably some place generally out of sight, but password changes would be inconvenient.

So you would argue something like, due to differences in demographics, culture, economics, and a dozen other things, that Americans are more likely to kill each at this very high rate whether or not they have so many guns and that therefore, taking their guns away from them would solve nothing, because... they would simply find other, more inventive ways to kill each other at the same rate? Really, are Americans so much more bloodthirsty than everyone else on the planet? I'm afraid that sounds rather myopic and absurd.

Well, then by that logic there would have to be far more murders per capita in countries like the Netherlands (where gun ownership is highly restricted) than in the United States. But, that is simply not the case. In the Netherlands there were 0.46 firearm-related deaths per 100,000 people in 2010, while in 2011 in the United States that same number stood at 10.3. No European country, or for that matter any other developed country (certainly those for which complete figures are known), even comes close to the US rate.

Perhaps it's because I've lived in Europe for so long, but what I find striking is that so many Americans can't seem to understand the spirit of the 2nd Amendment. People always quote it as saying:

...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

However, that is not the complete sentence. It actually says:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Back in those days America did not have a standing army, so it was necessary to organize people into militia. Now the US has the world's largest army by far and it's probably rare for gun owners to be part of a militia. So, what's the point? The 2nd amendment is an anachronism and no longer does the country any good. No other civilized country has a law like it.

It seems to me that all of the propaganda emanating from the gun industry has been far too effective and has done the country no good at all. I remember when the NRA used to be a gun-safety organization; now they're a lobbying group.

Yes, and lions and hyenas are sworn enemies, but somehow that doesn't matter to you when you're alone on the savannah in the African night.

The fact is that the ideological differences between the two main parties have become increasingly superficial. The problem is that neither of them work for us anymore: they only work for their donors. That's by far the most corrosive influence on US politics these days: big money. Politicians running for Federal office know that they can't get elected without it. Did you know that 94% of the time the candidate running for the House of Representatives wins if they raise more money than their opponents? It's even 95% for the Senate. And Barack Obama, who was so good at raising all those small donations during the 2012 election cycle, still got 70% of his money from the big donors -- corporations and the super rich who give almost equally to both Republicans and Democrats -- the people who in the last three decades have become the de facto rulers of this country. There is so little disagreement between the two main parties on the really important issues (dragnet spying, military spending, Wall Street crime, taxes on the rich, the war on drugs, energy policy, etc.) because their masters want the same things from both of them. This is why, behind the scenes, the Republicans like to refer to Obama I and II as Bush III and IV. And Congress itself is now basically only a farming operation for K Street, where as lobbyists ex-members of Congress can expect to earn 15x as much as before.

There is only one solution to this problem: get big money out of politics.

This would be difficult in any other country with such a thoroughly corrupt political system, but lucky for us the United States Constitution includes Article Five, which describes an alternative process through which the Constitution can be altered: by holding a national convention at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (34) of the country's 50 States. Any proposed amendments must then be ratified by at least three-quarters (38 States).

Is anybody doing this yet? Yes. WOLF-PAC was launched in October 2011 for the purpose of passing a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will end corporate personhood* and publicly finance all elections**. Since then, many volunteers have approached their State Legislators about this idea and their efforts have often been met with unexpected bi-partisan enthusiasm. So far, 50 State Legislators have authored or co-sponsored resolutions to call for a Constitutional Convention to get money out of politics! Notable successes have been in Texas, Idaho and Kentucky.

However, if the State Legislators are also corrupt, why are they helping us? Well, maybe they aren't as corrupt as you think. And even if they are, the important thing is that they seem to be just as fed up with the Federal government as we are -- so much so that they seem quite happy to help out with this effort. After all, it's a pretty simple proposal that speaks to both Democrats and Republicans.

If you think this idea makes sense, you can sign this petition, donate, or even take action by personally contacting your favorite State Legislator and asking for a meeting. It's easier than you might think and as a result we might be able to change this awful situation sooner than you think.

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*) The aim is not to end legal personhood for corporations, but natural personhood. The latter became a problem following the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which grated some of the rights of natural persons to corporations and makes it easier for them to lend financial support to political campaigns.

**) At the State level, more than half of all political campaigns are already publicly financed in some way, so there's nothing strange about doing the same for political campaigns for federal office.