8 Comments

"I’ve already admitted more than once that if the Magic Gun Evaporation Fairy were to come down from space and dematerialize all the guns with her Phaser Wand, that gun homicide would go to zero."

And then somewhere between T+2 and T+24 hours, we would have our first post-fairy gun murder, because a completely disarmed populace is ripe for the picking and firearms are 600 year old technology that is trivial to manufacture in the present day.

Never mind the catastrophic increase that a zero gun world would suffer in other violent crimes as all the criminally inclined realize that they're suddenly very unlikely to get shot while engaging what they're already better than most law-abiding in committing: physical violence.

Expand full comment
author

There is definitely a case that crime would increase. I'm generally of the mind that in the Magic Gun Evaporation scenario, USA crime would go up, homicides would go down, suicides in women would stay stable and in men would go down some. I think most of the crime would pivot over to UK methods - nails in baseball bats and such - instead of manufactured guns. Although that could change in the next ten years as 3d printing tech gets better. But that scenario really doesn't matter because it's impossible to get there from here anyway.

https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-magic-gun-evaporation-fairy

Expand full comment

Hey I think there's some confusion. I can't find anyone who reopened the discussion on Twitter today or even in the last year, but it looks like less than an hour ago you just responded to a tweet from 2018. Help?

You're completely right, by the way. I'm just trying to figure out which one of them responded or who brought this conversation back up again after all of this time.

Expand full comment
author

I got a notification today on twitter that drug this up. I think I presumed that's because this tweet was new, when it apparently wasn't:

https://twitter.com/ZippoShark/status/1067827898537713664

Expand full comment
author

It's possible I got a notification of a like instead of a new response. And if so meh. It's still a funny article and a reasonable reason to migrate it.

Expand full comment

Model R^2 is indeed the mischief, and a particular grade of mischief that people with something to hide don't like to talk about. Nicely done.

Expand full comment

Recognizing that you’d probably never get agreement on source data, could you sort through use defensive use of guns data to expand the 1st Cartesian plane to plot “negative” murder rates?

Expand full comment
author

I have never found data on DGU that I trusted, quite honestly. It's very difficult to work with, and is often politicized in both directions. Lott's work, for instance, is sometimes good and sometimes gives me the heebie jeebies, so I generally steer clear of the DGU end of the argument.

I think you can be numerically pro gun without even engaging in it though.

Expand full comment