[MostlyStable]

"documented, empirical fact"

I won't try to make as strong a claim as the person you are responding to, but unfortunately, the politicized nature of the topic makes research on gun violence, especially as it relates to gun laws in the US, extremely fraught. The vast majority of research articles are plagued with issues. One should not just blanket trust the research (in either direction, and there are definitely peer reviewed journal articles pointing in different directions).

The claim you responded to was too strong, but for similar reasons, yours is also far far too confident.

[ottah]

Same thing with anything in regards to drug use in the United States. Dr Carl Hart talks about how hard it is to get anything that doesn't show harm published https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hart

[mullingitover]

I'm responding to someone making assertions with zero cites, and I cite a source. If anyone has a cite showing that loose gun policies results in lower rates of gun deaths, they're free to present that.

[MostlyStable]

I'm impugning the entire field of research, why would I then provide an opposing citation? My own claim should lead you to not trust it. I'm also not making any particular directional claim that would require such a citation.

I'm arguing that your statement, citation supported or otherwise, was stronger than I believe is warranted. You (correctly) criticized the original comment for making a stronger claim than they were able to support. You then technically did a better job in supporting your own claim (in the sense that you made any attempt to support it at all), but, in my opinion, you still made the same mistake of making a claim that was much stronger than warranted.

[antonvs]

> My own claim should lead you to not trust it.

Your own completely unsupported claim?

No, that's not how it works.

[MostlyStable]

I didn't say it was strong evidence or that one should just accept my claim, but regardless you have to agree it would be weird for me to say "the entire field is untrustworthy....but here is a paper anyways".

[antonvs]

Your entire position is weird. The claim that there isn't a single source worth citing strains credulity. "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

[MostlyStable]

"there isn't a single source worth citing" is not my claim. It's that the field has a very high amount of highly politicized dreck and it can't be _generally_ trusted. I'm sure there are good citations. But one can't know if any particular citation is a good one without diving into the details (probably while having some degree of subject matter expertise), and any randomly selected article is more likely than not to be bad. As such, most people should not take the existence of a citation as proof of very much since it is more likely than not to be borderline useless. Especially given that the worst, most politically motivated articles (again: in both directions) are likely to be the ones that tell the strongest stories and have the least nuance and are therefore likely to be the most often cited.

This is an area where lay people should stay out of it, and should _definitely_ not be making strong claims like "documented, empirical fact" based on a shallow reading of someone else's summary of the literature.

[AngryData]

I would dispute your source just by look at my own state, which has incredibly open gun laws, including free open carry and having had these laws since before anyone here was born, and a massive hunting population, and yet is claimed to be in the top half of strong gun laws. It is ranked significantly above Texas, and yet I know for a fact that my state has way more permissible gun laws than Texas, both historically and currently.

So I already know they are fudging the numbers, presumably because my state usually votes democrat and they want us to look good.

Hell its got Vermont as #17, but it has some of the highest gun ownership rates and most permissive gun laws in the nation.

[15155]

"a source" - You "cited" the most left-leaning, well-funded anti-gun lobby in the United States. Is that who passes for a "source" these days?

[mullingitover]

Attack the source as much as you like, it's not refuting the point in any way.

[ottah]

Isn't the validity and credibility of the source critical to it being supportive of your argument? Seems like a reasonable counter-argument in my opinion.

[mullingitover]

I provided a source, and so far all those who’ve disagreed have only provided opinions. No one has cited anything that contradicts my source, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that the validity and credibility of my source has been impeached. ‘I don’t like it’ is not a valid criticism of a source.

[ottah]

No, you don't want criticism except on your own terms, but that's not the same as convincing people you are correct.

[Brian_K_White]

Not only the source, but the specific repoprting has been refuted already by others.

So you have failed to present an argument, and then continued to fail to support it. So all you have done is express an opinion. Those are fine and allowed, but of no significance to anyone else.