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Daniel_Burfoot comments on What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong? - Less Wrong Discussion
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There's an interesting argument in favor of gun rights that the Reds rarely make, because it requires an appeal to concepts from evolutionary psychology and morality. It turns out that humans are much more egalitarian than other primates, who generally organize themselves into strict dominance hierarchies. The explanation for this (according to Jonathan Haidt) is that early humans developed weapons like spears and axes, which made it easier to kill other humans. So it is relatively easy for a larger, stronger alpha male chimp or ape to dominate weaker males, but a human alpha male bully would often end up getting speared by a lower status rival.
Oh, but they do. “God made every man different; Sam Colt made them equal."
Haha, I stand corrected.
That sounds pretty similar to the argument that high gun ownership makes makes it more difficult for the government to become tyrannical.
Interesting.
One of my (many) irrational iterations of thinking about gun control had me convinced Republicans held such a staunch line on defending gun rights (in part) in order to keep the argument not about economic inequality as a causal driver for all sorts of violence, including guns.
As long as the argument was about he 2nd amendment, assault rifle bans and school shootings, no one would pay attention to the numbers showing strong correlation between gun violence (and violent crime) and disparity in income, and thus no deeper discussion about fiscal/social policy would need to occur.
I don't know about this any more. I want it to be true, because of my Blue team affiliations, but it seems a bit too conspiracy-ish for my liking. (I'm also part of the Anti-Conspiracy Team...which wears a mustard yellow uniform.)
I don't think this is true. Gun violence is not just correlated with poverty, it's also correlated with race. And while it may be disadvantageous to Republicans to emphasize how poverty is bad, it may be advantageous to Republicans to emphasize how blacks and Hispanics are bad.
Race is correlated with poverty, so that's expected. Is there a strong correlation beyond that?
There seems to be, although the studies that I've found with a quick search discuss this in terms of poverty having strong predictive value even after controlling for race (which is probably a less politically charged claim.) However, there are a lot of confounders that are not easy to adjust out of such an analysis.
Conversely, race also has strong predictive value after controlling for poverty.
I've heard a theory that violence in the US is correlated being Southern, not with race. Anyone know whether there's anything to this?
violence is correlated with temperature.
Relevant article. Less technical summary by the authors of that paper here. There is some controversy about what the underlying causal mechanism is. See this article.
Given that a lot of people suspect Republicans of being racist, it would be extremely disadvantageous for them to openly say bad things about blacks and Hispanics.
It may, however, be advantageous for them to do so subtly.
Isn't poverty correlated with race in the U.S.?