beej67
[probably less intelligent than you]
freakoutery.com RECOIL Quillette Stormwater engineer in real life
User ID: 1173
beej67
[probably less intelligent than you]
1yr ago
Not sure if this is an original take or simply restating the obvious, but the Israel/Gaza is a Moloch trap with no exit, because the players of the game theory matrix are necessarily hawks, and perpetual violence is a win-win for both parties:
beej67
[probably less intelligent than you]
1yr ago
It was always going to happen. You can't build the cancel-culture machine, use it against a group so voraciously that they learn every detail about how it works, and then expect them not to use it in retribution when they have the opportunity. Expect this sort of dynamic to be the primary feature in the culture war in years to come.
beej67
[probably less intelligent than you]
2yr ago
Hey now, I used the hell out of my Wii. I even wore the CD reader out and had to buy a new one.
beej67
[probably less intelligent than you]
2yr ago
To be honest, the AR-15 platform is literally the best platform for doing what it does, which is standoff gun fights at intermediate ranges. All the other semiauto carbines are functionally inferior in my opinion, and I've shot a lot of them. Other guns really only shine over the AR-15 in specialized circumstances where the AR-15 has a specific disadvantage. Indoors, for instance, a PCC is probably better. At range, a 30 cal of some kind is probably better. Add in the fact that the AR-15 platform is almost infinitely customizable, and gives men the sorts of barbie doll accessorization fix they used to get from tinkering on cars, and it's no surprise they'd be popular. It's really pretty much the best gun you can buy for that particular task. It's just a great gun design.
beej67
[probably less intelligent than you]
2yr ago
I've never been a huge fan of Lott's work. I'm critical of anti-gun bias in a lot of the studies done, and his stuff smells of pro-gun bias. This new thing seems on the level, and it seems as if the methodology can't really be argued with unless they had some questionable sampling procedures.
beej67
[probably less intelligent than you]
2yr ago
It seemed "too perfect for 2A" for me too, but this is the largest and most robust study of this stuff to date, and there has never been any other study that asked these questions in these ways before AFAIK. I don't think it can be refuted unless it turns out that Centiment is a secret 2A front organization and was cooking the sample. If some academic wants to try and replicate it and gets different numbers, the argument is going to be about who's sample set is more representative.
I know of the firearm owners I personally know, almost all own AR-15s. But my personal connections are obviously a very biased sample set. What I will say, though, is that most of the ones I know who own AR-15s never talk about it to their liberal friends. There's a lot of "staying in the closet" about this kind of stuff given the current climate.
There is simply no chance that 44% of black gun owners have used their gun in self defense.
That is one of the statistics which I believe more than any of the others, to be honest. Remember this study is using a very broad definition of DGU, and indicates that by their definition only 18% of DGUs involve firing the gun. That would put the (black gun owner firing a gun in DGU) rate at 8% of black gun owners, projecting and presuming it's the same as other races. And at 25.4% gun ownership rate, that amounts to 2% of (all black people). Also keep in mind this is not an annual rate of DGU, it's a "have you ever" question. He backs his way into his annual rate numbers out of the "have you ever" numbers.
I grew up in an urban environment and went to an urban public school. This rate seems totally reasonable to me. The ratio of black people I know who have fired a gun in self defense, among my own personal pool of contacts, is quite higher than this.
beej67
[probably less intelligent than you]
2yr ago
Visualizing the 2021 National Firearms Survey
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/visualizing-the-2021-national-firearms
tags: [guns][self promotion][data visualization]
Summary:
William English of Georgetown collaborated with Centiment to poll 54,244 people about gun ownership, and develop a detailed picture of what ratio of the country owns guns, what kinds, what ratio of the country has used a gun in self defense, and such. It's the largest and most detailed attempt ever made in this research space as far as I'm aware, and I'm aware of many such attempts by academics. This article graphs a lot of his results, but instead of graphing them within the context of the research, graphs them against other known quantities to put them into wider perspective.
Findings:
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There are 33% more people in the USA who own AR-15 styled rifles than the entire Asian population.
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There are approximately as many people in the USA who own magazines larger than 10 round capacity as there are black people.
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"Assault weapons bans" would generally require 12% of the entire population to register their firearms or be in felonious noncompliance, a number of people roughly equal to the entire population of California
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By ratio, this is equal to 2012 people required to register for every 1 firearm homicide
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There are 19 times more AR-15 owners than the entire active duty rolls of the US military
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There are 410 times more AR-15 owners than there were Taliban fighters at the time the US military lost to the Taliban
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There are 14,000 AR-15 owners for every ATF field agent
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Across all states, between 20% and 44% of gun owners own an AR-15 styled rifle
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For every gun murder in the USA in 2020, there were 86 defensive gun uses. Note that the poll took a broad definition of DGU here, including instances where the firearm was not discharged or potentially even brandished
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44% of black gun owners have used a gun in self defense
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27% of female gun owners have used a gun in self defense
Meta:
Nice site you got here folks! I'm curious whether it can support different forums, so that instead of the CW thread being a thread it could simply be different posts within a separate containment forum.
The second link in the post discusses the ratio of "plastic incineration dust" to "residual left over microplastics" in samples of bottom ash. It's not many but it is some. The mathematics in the post extrapolates those ratios from bottom ash to fly ash, which may not be a good assumption, which is why I was wondering if anyone knew of any studies on microplastics in the fly ash of plastic incinerators.
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