Should Guns be Allowed on Planes?

[shanek]

Hit a nerve, did I? Obviously, the bits about 'statistical significance' and 'providing your sources' weren't essential to passing the course. I note, with interest, that it was a Prebyterian college you went to. Did you just have to say, "this is true because God wills it" at the end of your papers? It would explain a lot about you.

More of your bigotry and ad hominems. Although we had religious studies, they were balanced against the world religions and we weren't preached to about any one of them. I had teachers who were Buddhist, Mormon, Muslim, Taoist, and even atheist.

And yes, we did learn about "statistical significance" and citing our sources, and I have done both here. Why don't you talk to others who are ignoring a clear statistical anomaly about "statistical significance"? Just because they agree with you?

On a related topic- you didn't provide your data with your latest graph.

Same data, same site, as I said several times, liar.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

More of your bigotry and ad hominems. Although we had religious studies, they were balanced against the world religions and we weren't preached to about any one of them. I had teachers who were Buddhist, Mormon, Muslim, Taoist, and even atheist.

And yes, we did learn about "statistical significance" and citing our sources, and I have done both here. Why don't you talk to others who are ignoring a clear statistical anomaly about "statistical significance"? Just because they agree with you?

I don't give a toss about the anomoly, and I don't think they really do, either. I think they're more interested in the trend downwards to nil. They've just been side-tracked by your usual debating tactics.

Same data, same site, as I said several times, liar.

I find it hard to believe that you graduated, yet you don't know what I mean when I say that you haven't provided your data. What did you use for 1980, for example? Did you pick instances of hijackings that occurred in the US? Were guns used (or could reasonably have been thought to have been used)? Are they situations that armed passengers could have affected?

Maybe you don't want to provide that info because you realise you can't use the graph to support your case. Don't worry- you can always get a job as Lott's research assistant.

 

[shanek]

I don't give a toss about the anomoly, and I don't think they really do, either. I think they're more interested in the trend downwards to nil.

Why was there not such a trend for at least ten years after the gun ban? Why did it go up?

What did you use for 1980, for example?

If you go to the site and go to their database, you will see all of the years their database covers listed. If you click on 1980, at the top you will see the different categories, which include Hijackings. Click on Hijackings and you will see all of the hijackings for that year. I clicked on each one individually and counted the ones where both the departure point and the destination were in the US, meaning a US domestic flight.

Maybe you don't want to provide that info

I have provided it several times, liar.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

Why was there not such a trend for at least ten years after the gun ban? Why did it go up?

Probably to iron out the kinks in the system. If you knew anything about statistics, you'd know it takes a while for new things to take effect.

If you go to the site and go to their database, you will see all of the years their database covers listed. If you click on 1980, at the top you will see the different categories, which include Hijackings. Click on Hijackings and you will see all of the hijackings for that year. I clicked on each one individually and counted the ones where both the departure point and the destination were in the US, meaning a US domestic flight.



I have provided it several times, liar.

Keep stalling.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

Oh- better post this again, since you seem to have overlooked it. I'll put it down to the fact that a lot of issues are being discussed at once, and not because you don't like to take on the hard questions:

While you're on, I'll let you have the 'guns won't solve everything' argument. So we'll just let those passengers on planes with bombs- or passengers who think they're on a plane with a bomb- crash and burn. The right to carry guns on planes is more important than their lives. We must sacrifice some fingers to save the hand, after all.

Now, what happens if a team of hijackers -fully armed- are aboard a plane? What then? Do the armed passengers just take them all out?

 

[Luke T.]

Do you have any actual evidence for any of this?

For what? Your lack of a sense of humor?

??? !!!

Oh, man, that's just beyond anything reasonable...

Yes. It is certainly unreasonable to figure it would be better for people to be armed on passenger planes and have to defend themselves rather than stick with the current method which is so effective that hijackings are at zero. Even with 9/11, they had to use box cutters.

Ah, I get it! Because there were no philandering Presidents (JFK) before 1968, that indicates a change (JFK) in society that indicates (JFK) that it is less in control (JFK) of itself than it used to be (JFK). Makes perfect sense.

(Oh, and by the way: FDR, Eisenhower, Gover Cleveland, Warren G. Harding, James Garfield, Thomas Jefferson,...)

Yes. They all had mistresses, but weren't impeached or making headlines around the world for it. Except maybe Jefferson. He had a very public sex scandal, I believe.

You missed my point(s).

edited to add points: 1) The world was a different place in the 50s and 60s. A lot different. And so was crime reporting. Not just cheating presidents, but rape, lynching, DUI, and drunken brawls on airplanes.

2) When I look at the big picture, I see that ALL Americans have far, far more rights than they had even 30 years ago. So complaints that our rights are disappearing just don't ring true to me.

 

[CFLarsen]

shanek,

You are faking your data. I gave you the benefit of the doubt the first time, but not twice in a row.

The huge spike in the period between 1968-1973 is dismissed by you as an "anomaly". In that period, it was discovered that it was fairly easy to bring a gun to hijack a plane - it became "fashionable", if you like.

But you can't just throw away the data like that. That data is the reason why they ban guns altogether. You can't just remove a section of the data because it doesn't fit your idea, and then claim that since it is an "anomaly", we can disregard it, and then, you are right.

That is not merely wrong, it is dishonest. As well as incredibly naive.

As Luke said, the cat's out of the bag. You can not go back in time. You can not have those imaginary rosy glory days of yonder. We learned in those crazy days of frequent hijackings, that guns aboard planes was a bad idea.

The second guns are banned, the number of hijackings plummets. It doesn't just drop, it plummets!

So, your wish to "determine whether or not the number of hijackings went down as a result of the gun ban" would seem to have a very clear answer:

It did. The answer is extremely clear. Let's take it again:

According to your own data, the number of hijackings went down as a result of the gun ban.

You can go on claiming that you are right, of course. But you shouldn't have to argue from clear data, should you? The data is there, not to be argued with, right?

....so why do you?

 

[Luke T.]

You're just bringing this up NOW???

You have a fascinating blind spot. I brought it up on page 3 of this topic. The U.S. Senate numbers. And on page 2 of this topic with my first sources. But you chose to go on and ignore them and say there was only one hijacking in 1968 and 1969.

Why not ask why I started at 1958? Because that is ten years before Congress made carrying a concealed weapon on a plane a felony, and ten years after the total gun ban, as I said initially.

If you go more than ten years, you're more liable to bring in other factors that didn't have anything at all to do with the gun ban. So the further you get away from it, the less likely it is responsible.

I am amazed at your capacity to ignore the way the world was in the 1960s.

I suppose what you are trying to say in an incredibly roundabout way is that because guns were banned and law-abiding citizens obeyed the gun ban, hijackers no longer felt deterred from hijackings and went on a great big binge. And so we should bring back gun-toting passengers and this will eliminate hijackings altogether, despite that between 1984 and 2000, there was a grand total of 18 hijackings in that 17 year period. And a nine year period of no hijackings at all.

Then why do they fit a perfect growth curve?

Because you stopped your graph where it was convenient to you instead of going all the way.

Hijackings didn't occur because people no longer carried guns. Hijackings occurred because the airline industry was growing, the world was changing, and it was a novelty no one had thought of as a tool before. I'm sure that 20 years from now, we will be looking at some new criminal phenomena and someone will think it wasn't committed before now because of some deterring factor, when it simply is a matter of nobody thought of it before until the time was ripe.

Why has the virus problem exploded in the last few years? Computers have been around for, what, 60 years? Edited to add: There certainly wasn't anything to deter people from writing viruses.

 

[Luke T.]

The answer to my pop quiz question is El Al airlines. Israel's airline. In 1968, they had a hijacking. Afterwards, they immediately installed armored doors on all cockpits and the pilots won't open them even for Monica Lewinsky.

They also carry heavily armed soldiers on their flights, because there is a five year waiting list of virgin-hungry fanatical Middle Easterners who would like the opportunity to take down an Israeli plane.

Passengers are heavily screened, interrogated and subjected to all sorts of humiliation short of a cavity search. No guns!

 

[shanek]

Yes. They all had mistresses, but weren't impeached or making headlines around the world for it.

Alexander Hamilton was impeached (or was going to be impeached, something like that) for having an affair and trying to cover it up with bribery.

edited to add points: 1) The world was a different place in the 50s and 60s. A lot different.

You haven't shown this at all. And to do so, you'll have to do a lot better than "Where are the philandering Presidents?"

And so was crime reporting. Not just cheating presidents, but rape, lynching, DUI, and drunken brawls on airplanes.

Are you saying these things are okay as long as people don't know about them?

2) When I look at the big picture, I see that ALL Americans have far, far more rights than they had even 30 years ago.

Really? Even with the realization that the government can just take you away without charging you with a crime, letting you have counsel, and detain and interrogate you indefinitely, all they have to do is declare you an "enemy combatant" or a "person of interest"? And that they will continue to do so even if a Federal judge orders them to do otherwise? Because if they can do that, I really have to wonder how many rights we have anymore.

 

[shanek]

The huge spike in the period between 1968-1973 is dismissed by you as an "anomaly".

It is obviously an anomaly! No reasonable person could possibly attribute that spike to gun legislation one way or the other! I could easily say that the spike occured after Congress banned concealed weapons on airplanes, which it did—if anything it proves my point! But unlike some other people here, I'm not going to resort to blatant dishonesty to make my point.

In that period, it was discovered that it was fairly easy to bring a gun to hijack a plane

Even though they had been banned?

- it became "fashionable", if you like.

Oh, so hijacking is a fashion? It didn't have anything to do with the rates of prison escapes (a problem fixed in 1973, there's a coincidence for you) or the changes in extradition laws (also 1973, another coincedence) meant that there were a) fewer escaping prisoners and b) fewer options for the prisoners who did escape?

Naaaah...must be those vicious, awful, terrible guns, and how the 1973 gun ban did what the 1968 gun ban apparently failed miserably to do.

The second guns are banned, the number of hijackings plummets. It doesn't just drop, it plummets!

Which in and of itself should make you suspicious of the data. Normally these things take years to normalize.

And why do you ignore the INCREASE in hijackings during the 10-year period after the 1973 gun ban? If it worked so well, why the increase?

No, there is just no reason at all to believe that banning guns had anything to do with the rates of hijackings.

 

[shanek]

Why has the virus problem exploded in the last few years? Computers have been around for, what, 60 years? Edited to add: There certainly wasn't anything to deter people from writing viruses.

I'm ignoring the rest of your rubbish, but I just have to comment on this one as it is especially egregious.

Viruses are IN NO WAY like hijackings. Hijackings require a physical person (the hijacker) to take possession of a physical resource (like an airplane). Viruses are virtual; they make copies of themselves so there's more than one. Hijackers don't do that. Also, since the resources are virtual, these copies can hop from one to the other as they copy it. The virus writer does not have to touch any of the infected systems ore ven know what they are. If hijackers could spontaneously clone themselves and instantly transport themselves from one plane to another, then this might be a valid comparison. As it is, it is just so far removed from reality as to show how muddled your thinking is in this area.

 

[shanek]

The answer to my pop quiz question is El Al airlines. Israel's airline. In 1968, they had a hijacking. Afterwards, they immediately installed armored doors on all cockpits and the pilots won't open them even for Monica Lewinsky.

They also carry heavily armed soldiers on their flights, because there is a five year waiting list of virgin-hungry fanatical Middle Easterners who would like the opportunity to take down an Israeli plane.

Passengers are heavily screened, interrogated and subjected to all sorts of humiliation short of a cavity search. No guns!

That is NOT true. Passengers with a permit may carry guns on El Al domestic flights. Amazing how you left that part out...

 

[Luke T.]

Alexander Hamilton was impeached (or was going to be impeached, something like that) for having an affair and trying to cover it up with bribery.

I was thinking maybe it was Hamilton after i posted. I remember Hal saying something about it once.

You haven't shown this at all. And to do so, you'll have to do a lot better than "Where are the philandering Presidents?"

I haven't shown that things were different back then? You mean you don't know about the way things were then and need someone to explain it to you?

Are you saying these things are okay as long as people don't know about them?

I am saying they occurred and people either didn't know, didn't care, or actually supported them. And, no, none of these things were OK.

Really? Even with the realization that the government can just take you away without charging you with a crime, letting you have counsel, and detain and interrogate you indefinitely, all they have to do is declare you an "enemy combatant" or a "person of interest"? And that they will continue to do so even if a Federal judge orders them to do otherwise? Because if they can do that, I really have to wonder how many rights we have anymore.

If this were the 50s, or even the 60s in Alabama, I could take a black man away for looking at a white woman, hang him from a tree, get my picture taken next to the corpse, and win votes to be mayor.

I don't have the freedom to do that these days. So maybe you are right.

 

[shanek]

I haven't shown that things were different back then?

No, you havent; not enough to show that armed passngers, who were very peaceful, now today are this big danger.

I am saying they occurred and people either didn't know, didn't care, or actually supported them. And, no, none of these things were OK.

Then what's your point? Seems to me the only difference is that there's more information out there than there was, which can only be a good thing!

If this were the 50s, or even the 60s in Alabama, I could take a black man away for looking at a white woman, hang him from a tree, get my picture taken next to the corpse, and win votes to be mayor.

That is a very bigoted and untrue statement. You're turning into EvilYeti.

 

[Luke T.]

We shall overcome...

(edited due to the concern of a forum member that the attached photos may be too shocking and may violate forum rules. I will attach the URL address instead with a warning that the link leads to graphic photo of a lynching.)

http://www.musarium.com:16080/withoutsanctuary/pics_15.html

 

[Luke T.]

WE SHALL OVERCOOOOOOME....

http://www.musarium.com:16080/withoutsanctuary/pics_22.html

Warning: link to graphic photo of a lynching

 

[Jocko]

No, you havent; not enough to show that armed passngers, who were very peaceful, now today are this big danger.

No one's calling them a danger. It's just been observed that they're not a solution, either. Must you read insult and threat into every response?

That is a very bigoted and untrue statement. You're turning into EvilYeti.

Absolutely correct. It wasn't just in the 50's and 60's. Hell, you could probably get away with that even today. And before anyone tries to convince me how far the south has come, let me say I speak from firsthand experience in Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

 

[Luke T.]

Somedayyyyyy....

http://www.musarium.com:16080/withoutsanctuary/pics_24.html

Warning: link to graphic photo of a lynching.

 

[CFLarsen]

shanek,

I can't argue with someone as blatantly dishonest and wilfully ignorant as you. It's simply a waste of my time.

That you select your data twice to prove your point is one thing. But that you ignore an immediate drop in hijackings the moment guns are gone is only testament of your immense stupidity.

You want to be right. Damn the facts. Damn the arguments.