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A quick search says that 71 people were shot or killed in the massacre. If a gunman were to go out every day and shoot up a movie theater of say, 110 people, f

A quick search says that 71 people were shot or killed in the massacre. If a gunman were to go out every day and shoot up a movie theater of say, 110 people, for the next century; the death toll[2] would be: (110 * 365) * 100 = 4015000 Which is a little more than 4/5ths of double the annual fatalities in 2009. [0] [0]: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm [1]: Of course, if our hypothetical gunman only targeted movie theaters, going to any single movie theater on a given day might be a risky proposition. If someone can find the number of people who see a movie every day in the US I'd love to know. [2]: Actually, shot != death; so the death toll would be lower. Of course then you have to think about things like permanent debilitation and traumatic memories, not to mention healthcare costs. According to this table: http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/wv8t1/comprehensive_timeline_aurora_massacre http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/wv8t1/comprehensive_ti... There were 60 victims, and 38 have been released from the hospital. 8 are still in critical condition, so we can't know if they'll live or die. I'm going to assume, just for the sake of being on the pessimistic side of estimations (I don't actually believe this.), that everyone in critical care dies. So presumably that would mean: 60 - 38 = 22. Depending on the lethality of the shooter and random chance, the death toll may be as much as 2/3rds lower than the total number of those injured. EDIT: This post originally said: Which is still lower than the amount of people killed by heart disease in a single year here in the US. [0][1] At the first citation.

prawn 14y ago
That's a creepy username in the context of your post! (BTW, your century of gunmen racks up four million. Heart disease in one US year gets to about 600k.)
- unimpressive 14y ago
  >(BTW, your century of gunmen racks up four million. Heart disease in one US year gets to about 600k.) Oh, my eyes missed a zero.
morsch 14y ago
You're only making half an argument there. Yes, heart disease is a bigger cause of death than crazed gunmen ever could be in a functioning society. Ergo... what?
- unimpressive 14y ago
  >You're only making half an argument there. Yes, heart disease is a bigger cause of death than crazed gunmen ever could in a functioning society. Actually that was a mistake, see edit above. And post below. > Ergo... what? At the rate that this actually happens, you shouldn't worry about it. Is it scary? Yes. Is it tragic? Yes. Is it a probable threat to you or your loved ones? Not really.
  - morsch 14y ago
    Ah. So your argument is, we should only be looking to prevent probable threats -- whatever that means, exactly. I think that's pretty silly. If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y because X isn't a meaningful threat to any single person? I think the answer should be: it depends. It depends on the costs associated with Y (not just the monetary ones). If it costs multiple billions that would otherwise have gone to, say, cancer research it's probably not worth it. If implementing Y involves installing a 10 PM mandatory curfew for everyone, it's probably not worth it. On the other extreme, if it costs nothing, you'd be negligent to not implement Y. The point is, your argument is not valid if you don't consider the downsides. Arguably, there is a minimum threshold that needs to be exceeded in order to even make these evaluations, ie. if X only caused 1 death per decade, it might not be worth talking about it, even if it'd cost us almost nothing to implement Y. But I think that threshold should be really low and it really does not apply here.
    - unimpressive 14y ago
      >If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y because X isn't a meaningful threat to any single person? Well that's a hard question to answer, we still don't know how to evaluate the value of a human life. So in the general case I would say no I would, if it wasn't prohibitively expensive. (Relative to the number of actual damages caused.) > I think the answer should be: it depends. Okay. I didn't cover the kinds of issues you talk about in the following paragraph because in context everyone reading should know about them by this point. I could go on about the civil costs of gun control, the material costs, weighed alternative options like better mental health treatment, or not naming the shooter on national TV; etc. But all that stuff could fit into a form letter. [0] [0]: http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt EDIT: I accidentally said "yes" when I meant "no" in the first response paragraph. That is, in the general case; no I would implement countermeasure Y to prevent 5 annual deaths.
statictype 14y ago
I don't know, these exercises seem pointless to me. If you find that kids in a certain school district have a high rate of death by self-inflicted gun shot, you don't ignore it and say "Well, that's statistically insignificant compared to the number of people who die of cancer every year". It's still a problem and still needs to be looked at and solved.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  That's not what people are doing though. They aren't looking at a local issue and trying to figure out what to do to heal the community. They're looking at a shooting in Aurora and asking what to do about our national gun laws. And our national security infrastructure. And the answer is, largely nothing. Because this is nationally statistical noise. (And on the subject of noise, giving crazed gun men this level of attention I would think is probably one of, if not the; largest factor in causing these incidents to happen.)
  - dasil003 14y ago
    Statistically don't these things happen way more in the US than anywhere else though? Or is that just a media bias?
    - rustynails 14y ago
      Correct. The us has a homicide rate over 400x (ie. not 400%, but 400 times) the gun related homicide rate of Australia, where there are far tougher gun laws in Australia. Some may consider that acceptable, or say that knifings in Australia are significantly higher (which is not true), but the fact is that the US has a poor record of gun related homicides.
      - einhverfr 14y ago
        On the other hand, if we interpret the right to keep and bear arms out of our Constitution because it is inconvenient, it will just make it easier to do the same with due process, which is already on its last legs in the US.
thatsnotright 14y ago
I stopped reading as soon as you said "4/5th of double." Thank you for letting me know you have no idea what you're talking about.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  Um, yes it is? [0] If it's not, I would love for you to correct me. [0]: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/calculate-percentages-HP001141712.aspx https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/calculate-perc... total = 4874326 amount = 4015000 4015000 ÷ 4874326 = 0.823703626 1/5 = 0.2 4/5 = 0.8 Unless you mean it's an awkward phrasing, in which case you would be right. (No, I haven't taken a statistics course, but the percentage algorithm is taught in like 5th grade, and I don't really need anything more complex than that here.) (I would also like to note that if I have said something stupid/I said what I wanted to say in a stupid way, theres no way to fix it now even if I wanted to.)
  - bullfroge 14y ago
    I didn't care for the phrasing at all. By using 4/5, that implies lower, and stands out far more than the word double. The conclusion drawn by most would be "less than", which is quite misleading from the actual data of "almost double". Edit: There is also an edit button if you wanted to fix your wording.
    - unimpressive 14y ago
      >I didn't care for the phrasing at all. By using 4/5, that implies lower, and stands out far more than the word double. The conclusion drawn by most would be "less than", which is quite misleading from the actual data of "almost double". That's understandable. >Edit: There is also an edit button if you wanted to fix your wording. You can't edit a post after it's been unchanged for more than an hour. (Or somewhere in that vicinity.)

prawn 14y ago

That's a creepy username in the context of your post! (BTW, your century of gunmen racks up four million. Heart disease in one US year gets to about 600k.)

unimpressive 14y ago
>(BTW, your century of gunmen racks up four million. Heart disease in one US year gets to about 600k.) Oh, my eyes missed a zero.

morsch 14y ago

You're only making half an argument there. Yes, heart disease is a bigger cause of death than crazed gunmen ever could be in a functioning society. Ergo... what?

unimpressive 14y ago
>You're only making half an argument there. Yes, heart disease is a bigger cause of death than crazed gunmen ever could in a functioning society. Actually that was a mistake, see edit above. And post below. > Ergo... what? At the rate that this actually happens, you shouldn't worry about it. Is it scary? Yes. Is it tragic? Yes. Is it a probable threat to you or your loved ones? Not really.
- morsch 14y ago
  Ah. So your argument is, we should only be looking to prevent probable threats -- whatever that means, exactly. I think that's pretty silly. If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y because X isn't a meaningful threat to any single person? I think the answer should be: it depends. It depends on the costs associated with Y (not just the monetary ones). If it costs multiple billions that would otherwise have gone to, say, cancer research it's probably not worth it. If implementing Y involves installing a 10 PM mandatory curfew for everyone, it's probably not worth it. On the other extreme, if it costs nothing, you'd be negligent to not implement Y. The point is, your argument is not valid if you don't consider the downsides. Arguably, there is a minimum threshold that needs to be exceeded in order to even make these evaluations, ie. if X only caused 1 death per decade, it might not be worth talking about it, even if it'd cost us almost nothing to implement Y. But I think that threshold should be really low and it really does not apply here.
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    >If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y because X isn't a meaningful threat to any single person? Well that's a hard question to answer, we still don't know how to evaluate the value of a human life. So in the general case I would say no I would, if it wasn't prohibitively expensive. (Relative to the number of actual damages caused.) > I think the answer should be: it depends. Okay. I didn't cover the kinds of issues you talk about in the following paragraph because in context everyone reading should know about them by this point. I could go on about the civil costs of gun control, the material costs, weighed alternative options like better mental health treatment, or not naming the shooter on national TV; etc. But all that stuff could fit into a form letter. [0] [0]: http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt EDIT: I accidentally said "yes" when I meant "no" in the first response paragraph. That is, in the general case; no I would implement countermeasure Y to prevent 5 annual deaths.

statictype 14y ago

I don't know, these exercises seem pointless to me. If you find that kids in a certain school district have a high rate of death by self-inflicted gun shot, you don't ignore it and say "Well, that's statistically insignificant compared to the number of people who die of cancer every year". It's still a problem and still needs to be looked at and solved.

unimpressive 14y ago
That's not what people are doing though. They aren't looking at a local issue and trying to figure out what to do to heal the community. They're looking at a shooting in Aurora and asking what to do about our national gun laws. And our national security infrastructure. And the answer is, largely nothing. Because this is nationally statistical noise. (And on the subject of noise, giving crazed gun men this level of attention I would think is probably one of, if not the; largest factor in causing these incidents to happen.)
- dasil003 14y ago
  Statistically don't these things happen way more in the US than anywhere else though? Or is that just a media bias?
  - rustynails 14y ago
    Correct. The us has a homicide rate over 400x (ie. not 400%, but 400 times) the gun related homicide rate of Australia, where there are far tougher gun laws in Australia. Some may consider that acceptable, or say that knifings in Australia are significantly higher (which is not true), but the fact is that the US has a poor record of gun related homicides.
    - einhverfr 14y ago
      On the other hand, if we interpret the right to keep and bear arms out of our Constitution because it is inconvenient, it will just make it easier to do the same with due process, which is already on its last legs in the US.

thatsnotright 14y ago

I stopped reading as soon as you said "4/5th of double." Thank you for letting me know you have no idea what you're talking about.

unimpressive 14y ago
Um, yes it is? [0] If it's not, I would love for you to correct me. [0]: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/calculate-percentages-HP001141712.aspx https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/calculate-perc... total = 4874326 amount = 4015000 4015000 ÷ 4874326 = 0.823703626 1/5 = 0.2 4/5 = 0.8 Unless you mean it's an awkward phrasing, in which case you would be right. (No, I haven't taken a statistics course, but the percentage algorithm is taught in like 5th grade, and I don't really need anything more complex than that here.) (I would also like to note that if I have said something stupid/I said what I wanted to say in a stupid way, theres no way to fix it now even if I wanted to.)
- bullfroge 14y ago
  I didn't care for the phrasing at all. By using 4/5, that implies lower, and stands out far more than the word double. The conclusion drawn by most would be "less than", which is quite misleading from the actual data of "almost double". Edit: There is also an edit button if you wanted to fix your wording.
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    >I didn't care for the phrasing at all. By using 4/5, that implies lower, and stands out far more than the word double. The conclusion drawn by most would be "less than", which is quite misleading from the actual data of "almost double". That's understandable. >Edit: There is also an edit button if you wanted to fix your wording. You can't edit a post after it's been unchanged for more than an hour. (Or somewhere in that vicinity.)