Thread: Yet another shooting incident in the states

Originally Posted by Sidney

No its actually 1.something - and you should have said "statistically less than 2"...

If you understood anything about probability you might be able to draw some conclusions about an almost 50% drop in serious gun crime over 20 years. If you bothered to check the sources of the information, you might find out they are reputable. And clearly your opinions seem to be based on popular media.... I think that I would rather use statistics.

You are obviously unaware that much of the states has cool off periods, vetting and checking and waiting periods before people can acquire guns. But don't let me stop you from recycling popular opinion...

You also fail to understand that criminals don't bother with these sort of proceedures... So how many people are you going to save by making more rules - give me some statistics.... had enough of the opinion.

The irony of that is that I got a distinction in the statistics and mathematical probability topic I did at uni. I never said the report was wrong, I simply stated that I am hesitant in believing statistics that are thrown at me because I have seen how they can be easily manipulated. I also don't recall saying that gun ownership or the increase of it will necessarily increase gun crime - that would be a bold statement. When you don't put basic control measures of who can own a semi automatic military weapon though I do believe you are playing with fire. The issue with gun crime is that a higher proportion of people involved in gun crime are fatally wounded in comparison to other weapons.

And yes gun crime may have decreased over the past few years but so has every other type of violent crime leading to murder. It just means that you have less of a chance to die in general; you still have a proportionately similar chance to die from a gun now than you did in 1993.

There are a lot of questions you can ask about statistics and for me the most blatant one is why did they choose 1993 as the benchmark to compare today’s violence?
I haven't looked it up but I'd be fairly confident you will find that it was the highest peak in US gun crime and anything deviating down from that will give you a much higher perceived percentage drop. It does look impressive I agree, I myself have seen it first hand at uni when we were "fortunate enough" to have a lecture from one of Australia's top "Climate Change Experts". He showed us this damning graph with a huge percentage decrease in rainfall for Australia from 1970 to 2011 which conclusively proved the effects were so disastrous already that more money had to be invested into climate change research and this and that. He then went on quoting that high percentage increase to talk about global warming over the past 100 years. Why 1970s? And why to 2011 when talking about a century of change, why not start your graph from a century ago?
1970s in Australia is the wettest recorded decade over the past 110 years included in his argument. He then linked this to the most recent decade which was the driest, thus giving a exasperated percentage which in no way represented the real difference over the past century – which was around a quarter of the percentage he gave. It may pay to note that I believe in global warming and advocate strongly that we address it, just with genuine fact not twisted stats.
My point is that despite the fact that you believe I am a follower of mainstream media (which I take offense to), I, apparently unlike yourself do not readily accept things that are put in front of me just because they suit my ideals. I also feel compelled to question why because through my naivety of the past have learnt it is dangerous not to do so. It may surprise some that people from politicians to climate change experts and even the humble FBI have their own agendas and will make sure that their best interests are kept in check.
Personally if I were Robert Mueller I too would feel compelled to show a report or some statistics to justify my $8.1 billion annual budget (from 2012).
Lastly for you to attempt to correct my informal syntax on a forum like this is a clear indication that you are trying very hard to assert your intellectual dominance over me; I won’t fight you for it, I just wanted to give my opinion.
Cheers,
BH