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Emile comments on Gun Control: How would we know? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (167)
Who is "we", white man? ;)
Here in France there seems to be very little public debate around firearm legislation - there probably is some, somewhere, but it gets very little media attention.
The existence of public debate around an issue doesn't seem to be very strong evidence on whether the question can be answered conclusively given the available evidence, since public debate around issues varies from country to country, and in some places there are public debates around issues where anybody with half a brain should be able to tell which side is right. Heck, sometimes there's a lack of public debate because everybody agrees on the wrong conclusion.
Agreed. Presence or absence of debate on an issue gives information about a nation's culture, but very little about how hard it is to discover the facts of the matter. This is especially true in matters of social science, where the available evidence is never going to be strong enough to convince someone who has already made up his mind.
Likewise in the UK, which is otherwise culturally very similar to the US.
Does it provide any interesting evidence that in countries with policy P (available guns) there is a lot of public debate and in countries with policy ~P (restricted guns) there is little to no debate? It would seem to imply that the supposed harms of ~P are either non-existent or insufficiently obvious to reach public debate. (Same appears to apply with public health care, and I'm sure there are other examples for different pairs of countries).
Here in the Netherlands guns are severely controlled, and the only times gun control is discussed at all (after a shooting makes the news), people just say 'Those crazy Americans - of course guns should be controlled!', and go on complaining about the weather. I wonder if gun control is a hot topic Switzerland, where many people have guns.
This kind of argument is what I like to call "motivated majoritarianism". You're essentially assuming that public opinion is rational - something that most LWers would be loath to do in the general case.
I don't assume public opinion is rational, but that it is sufficiently predictable that with an issue where in one case it is discussed very heavily it would be in a contrary case if the benefits were comparable. When what should be a double sided issue is not being discussed you require an explanation for that behaviour.
Or that they are localised. The pro-gun arguments in the US boil down to 1) The constitution -- doesn't apply elesewhere 2) A multitude of armed criminals (ditto).
Maybe stricter gun control would be beneficial in certain countries and harmful in others, depending on all kinds of stuff.