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Mental Breakdown — 11 Comments

  1. Many mass shootings involve AR15s, but it is not a high percentage of total AR15s. Similarly it would be interesting to see data about what percentage of patients taking SSRIs end up being shooters.

    • Anther response (directly from GunFacts) refutes this assertion.

      I’m really interested in knowing where it came from. Do you have a source, or remember where you heard it?

      • Cross-Border Spillover: U.S. Gun Laws and Violence in Mexico

        What do you all think of this study with claims
        the expiration of the FAWB in 2004 “led to immediate violence increases within areas of Mexico located close to American states where sales of assault weapons became legal. The estimated effects are sizable… the additional homicides stemming from the FAWB expiration represent 21% of all homicides in these municipalities during 2005 and 2006.”

        • We’d have to receive a copy of the study and read it in detail to form a rational opinion. If you can buy us a copy of the study, we’ll have a look.

          That being said:

          1) We did have this observation about Mexico, cartels, revolutionaires and guns – http://www.gunfacts.info/blog/aks-and-ars-real-assault-rifles-vs-mythical-assault-weapons/

          “Drug cartels like AK-47s … a lot. South America is awash in Soviet made AK-47s left over from when the former communist block was exporting their ideology one bullet at a time. I suspect they are as cheap is elsewhere in the world, such as Afghanistan where reports had claimed a functioning military AK-47 can be had for as little as $100.”

          2) This 21st century saw a product shift within the Mexican cartels, focusing less on marijuana and more on opiates. This while various cartels were maneuvering to own the lion’s share of the new trade. Any discussion of violence south of the border needs to take that into account.

          • Thanks, but the Oz paper provided is somewhat defective.

            1) They included the Port Author year as part of the “before” data set. Any proper analysis would have isolated that year as a pivot and excluded it from before and after segments.

            2) They did not compensate for the legislative lag.

            3) They studied only firearm mass homicide, ignoring the substitution of means variable.

            4) Their “model” was inappropriate for such exceedingly rare events.

    • Thanks. Longish paper, so it will be a while before we get to it.

      Q: What are your summaries of the data quality and methodologies in the paper?

      • I’m not too well versed in statistics, so I’m not sure.

        Q: why was the model of the Aussie study inappropriate?

        • Data points are too infrequent for most any model. They said they were using the model for that purpose, but the data is so sparse as to make most models unreliable in terms of variation measurements.

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