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Interest groups lying with statistics is a specific example of confirmation bias. It's sadly so prevalent that I generally assume that any statistics I find are
by aftbit 11y ago
Interest groups lying with statistics is a specific example of confirmation bias. It's sadly so prevalent that I generally assume that any statistics I find are intended to lead me in a particular direction.
I am skeptical of the final implication of the blog entry, that improved gun-safety legislation would solve this issue. For someone taking such a strong approach to statistics, it's a shame that they focus on only one facet of such a complicated situation. American culture, mental health treatments, social programs, and gun laws are all different from most other countries on their list - it seems disingenuous to mention only the last.
- ta92929 11y agoI know this is just pissing in the wind (and you just used the term from the article), but "gun safety" already means something. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_safety> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_safety> This type of language engineering annoys me.
- apolretom 11y ago"This article disagrees with my priors, therefore it is wrong."
- vanderZwan 11y agoThe blog concludes that the abuse of statistics is politically motivated by a vested interest in keeping gun-safete legislation minimal. This is not the same as implying that there should be more gun-safety legistation.
- kromem 11y agoYour comment is actually a perfect example of why I have issues with using per capita as the basis of the analysis. I adjusted the OCED numbers to be on a per-gun basis as opposed to a per capita basis and non US OCED countries combined were more likely to have rampage shootings per gun than the US. There are not issues in the US with social programs, mental health, etc as compared with other countries when looking at mass shootings. The only number that plays any significance is the number of guns per capita to influence the number of shootings per capita. If other countries had as many guns per person as the US, the data indicates they'd proportionally have the same amount of shootings per person or more.
- lagadu 11y agoThe problem here is that you're assuming there's a correlation between guns per capita and shootings per capita, which is similar to the (potential) fallacy that the OP made: that there's a correlation between gun restriction laws and shootings per capita.
- res0nat0r 11y agoWhy is the USA then the extreme outlier then when it comes to the sheer number of shootings also highest concentration of guns anywhere in the developed world?
- tedunangst 11y agoPerhaps people afraid of being the next shooting victim buy lots of guns.
- LyndsySimon 11y agoI have a lot of guns, and I know lots of people with lots of guns. None of us buy them beause we're "afraid of being the next shooting victim".
- tedunangst 11y agoAh, so per resonators comment, you must have bought them because you want to be the the next shooting perpetrator.
- hga 11y agoCorrelation does not imply causation. As noted elsewhere in this discussion, there are plenty of other potentially relevant correlations, and as also noted, if you cast the net wider than the ODEC we no longer are an "extreme outlier".
- res0nat0r 11y ago
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoUnless social programs turn out to be unexpectedly cheap or gun law enforcement unexpectedly expensive, gun laws are probably the cheapest, smallest-delta intervention against mass shootings.
- hga 11y agoGun control cost the Democratic party control of the Congress in 1994 and the Presidency in 2000. That's about as "expensive" as policies get in the US.... And as noted in this discussion, any attempt to squeeze tight enough that there might actually be an effect on mass shootings of the current type would replace them with fantastically more "mass" shootings of the civil war type, which tend to be only exceeded by foreign invasions as "expensive".