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Why single out "NRA-backed politicians"? This is common in politics. The Obama justice department, for example, stopped publishing other potentially relevant ch
by yummyfajitas 10y ago
Why single out "NRA-backed politicians"? This is common in politics. The Obama justice department, for example, stopped publishing other potentially relevant characteristics of the people doing the shooting.
http://gotnews.com/breaking-obamas-justice-dept-limits-publication-of-interracial-crime-stats/ http://gotnews.com/breaking-obamas-justice-dept-limits-publi...
(I'm aware that the author of that piece is a known racist and not particularly accurate in general. But his facts - which are obtained mainly by reading a specific BJS webpage - check out: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2173 https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2173 )
Like it or not, whoever controls the government will try to prevent facts inconvenient to their narrative from being published.
- mikeash 10y agoThat seems rather weak. The info is still available, you just have to put together your own summary. I'd wager there's a good chance this summary was removed for more mundane reasons, too. That 2010 table they link to only counts two possible victim races, white and black, and the only options for the offender are white, black, other, and unknown. That's awfully limited given the wide spectrum of humanity we actually have, and maybe they just didn't want to build a gigantic and unreadable table accounting for all the various possibilities.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoThe census has 6 racial categories. A 7x7 table wouldn't be hard to do. And realistically, the current table is good enough since the vast majority of crime is committed by the two racial categories you mention. Hide all the information because a table might be grow from 3x3 to 7x7? Will we run out of pixels in a pdf file?
- mikeash 10y agoThe 2010 census questionnaire includes 15 races, and it's multiple choice, so there are 32,767 possibilities. Then there's a "hispanic origin" question which has 5 choices, for a total of about 160,000 categories. I'm sure the classifications for crimes are somewhat more coarse.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoHow much are you willing to bet that if I dig up the microdata, I can construct a useful table?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 10y agoI bet you can do it, but that would only prove my other point, that the info is still available and changing what they summarize isn't a big deal.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoI suppose you'd have no problem at all if the Trump EPA made raw climate measurements available, but told the EPA they can't summarize it for laypeople and innumerate reporters?
- mikeash 10y agoI might criticize it a bit, but it wouldn't be a big deal.