Washington Post; when statistics don’t work, change the parameters
There’s an article in the Washington Post in which Christopher Ingraham claims that there have been at least one mass shooting every day of 2015. You’d think that you would have heard about that somewhere before now, wouldn’t you?
Well, you haven’t because those “figures” (247 “mass shootings” for 2015) comes from a subReddit group (don’t get me started on Reddit members) which has changed the parameters of what constitutes a “mass shooting”. The FBI classifies a mass shooting as one in which at least three people are killed. The GunsAreCool subreddit groups counts those incidents in which four people are shot (not killed) including the gunman.
Ingraham likes these measures much more, because he can count a mass shooting every day for this year.
But the broader definition is nonetheless a useful one, because it captures many high-profile instances of violence — like the recent Lafayette theater shootings — that don’t meet the FBI’s criteria.
[…]
A more expansive definition of “mass shooting” underscores the extent to which firearms make it relatively easy to hurt large numbers of people in a very short time. With a gun, you’re able to inflict bodily harm on a person once they’re in your line of sight. With something like a knife or your hands, you need to get right up close to a person.
Yeah, well, the whole point of keeping track of the numbers is to craft legislation that will prevent gun violence. The Reddit method doesn’t help in that regard. Take, for example, the shooting the other day in a home invasion in Minnesota where four people were shot by criminals. All of the victims all have non-life-threatening wounds. But they make the Reddit group’s list. It was a random crime, not an intentional plan to murder large groups of people and cause shock in the community like a typical mass shooting, it was just to make a getaway.
Of course, the new parameters of “mass shootings” includes the shooting earlier this week of a news crew because the total of people shot was four, if you include the gunman and the wounded woman. You know, even though the gunman only intended to shoot the two who died, and, presumably, himself. Not your typical mass shooting scenario.
Here’s another one – a Tuskegee student shot four people at a party after a verbal altercation, back in January, none of the victims died. The Reddit robots counted that one.
In January, at a Chris Brown concert, in San Jose, California, five were shot, none died. It was probably the first time anyone decided to shoot-up a rap concert, huh? Reddit counted that one, too.
In Syracuse, New York, six people were shot by 22-year-old Michael Morris a recent parolee who kidnapped his ex-girlfriend and then went and shot up a birthday party at a local tavern and sent six people to the hospital. None died. So how does that case help in the gun control conversation? He was a parolee and forbidden to possess a gun, so we should write more laws forbidding parolees from having guns?
Four people were shot in Chicago, a 23-year-old man and his friends were hanging out at a playground with his friends when he was killed. I wonder what a 23-year-old was doing at a playground just hanging out at 10:30 in the morning with 15 or 20 of his friends (according to witnesses). He was just one of ten shooting victims in Chicago on Wednesday night. You know, the gun free zone of the Mid-West. Reddit counted that one, too.
Here’s one with four victims in Pine Hills, Florida, all survived, but the story was one of our feel good stories earlier and the four wounded people had all tried to rob a homeowner who blasted away at them until they ran down to the local gas station looking for medical help. Reddit counted that one as a mass shooting.
Anyone scrolling through our Feel Good Stories would get a better sense of the fact that firearms in this country do a lot more good than harm. We have had at least one incident everyday for the last three years that we’ve been keeping track of homeowners and store clerks who protect themselves from murderous criminals.
The Reddit headline readers and the Washington Post are trying to scare Americans into backing more useless legislation that won’t impact violent crime a whit. Their ultimate goal, of course, is to make us all defenseless victims dependent on an unresponsive government. The problem isn’t with the volumes of laws, it’s a government which doesn’t enforce the laws that they’ve already written – because it’s easier to write more laws, strip rights away from law-abiding citizens, than it is to enforce the laws they’ve already written.
Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists
If Reddit had a brain in the first place….
Wait – I should not start that way. No fantasy stories this early in the day.
Every driveby shooting on the south side of Chicago is a mass shooting, whether it’s on the Dan Ryan or some neighborhood where the gangbangers still think they own the turf.
What do expect from people who are so afraid of guns that they’ll go to a movie full of gun violence and then go home and whine about gun violence? The disconnect just boggles the mind.
It would be much more to the point to require passing a gun safety class and self-defense course for everyone applying for a driver’s license or registering to vote. And make them take a gunwearer’s oath, too.
Reddit is filled with fucking morons whining about all sorts of idiocy. Two minutes reviewing sub reddits indicates the complete lack of sophistication so prevalent in our society. We are now a nation of imbeciles who worship the dumbest groups of people in the history of mankind.
When the Kardashians draw more respect than Patti Maes and Pranav Mistry I believe we’ve passed the second sign of the apocalypse. When drunken or drug addicted actors are more respected than the people doing actual research and development work that will benefit all of our people we are able to see the benefit of a society that worships lies and stupidity.
Reddit is filled with these people, liars preaching to the stupid and the stupid are too fucking stupid to realize they are being lied to regularly.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics….indeed.
Thank you.
The fact that Reddit picked Ellen Pao as CEO, a political correctness decision so clueless that not even Reddit could cope with it for long, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the company.
Which is neither here nor there.
The more interesting question is that if Washington Post columnists are now basing decisions on the source of self-appointed experts among the Reddit hive mind, it can make you wonder why there’s any need for Washington Post columnists at all.
VOV, in the current situation (perhaps I should have said, “under the current administration” but I think that the problem is broader than that) there is almost no penalty for being stupid or irresponsible. Idiocy should be a non-adaptive behavior but it isn’t. Irresponsibility should be a non-adaptive behavior but it isn’t.
Let me be more specific and/or direct. In a Darwinian world, idiots and irresponsible people would be culled out by the more vicious and/or more intelligent.
I think that Darwinian rules apply more often in other places in the world – like Syria.
I think (I hope that “I think” is an accurate statement) that liberalism seeks to protect children and fools from Darwin and I am not altogether sure that this is a good idea.
A comment I saw last night best sums up the liberal frame of mind. When a white guy kills blacks in a church (SC) it’s blamed on racial hate. When a black guy kills two whites, it’s blamed on guns. How does this make sense?
BmrSnr991…Careful bother, you’re getting dangerously close to the truth, otherwise known as profiling to protect minorities.
And you left out that he was a black guy hoping to instigate a race war. No hate crime there nosiree.
Whatever parameters and definitions they want to use, the point remains that bad guys with guns commit almost every shooting which occurs in the country. Bad guys, most of whom are already violating some law by being in possession of a firearm, who demonstrate a willingness to violate various laws using a firearm as a tool to commit a crime.
What is the old adage, “Figures don’t lie but liars figure.”
Truth, facts, and common sense are to liberals like garlic, Holy Water and oak stakes are to Vampires!
” … because it’s easier to write more laws, strip rights away from law-abiding citizens, than it is to enforce the laws they’ve already written.”
Thus, giving the the Big Government Leftists a twofer: Continued pressure to make the Second Amendment irrelevant, while at the same time giving the appearance of “doing something.” And as VOV pointed out, WAY too many just swallow it. Hook, line, and sinker.
Alas …
By that definition, what percentage of Hollywood movies feature a mass shooting?
I can maybe accede to the mass shooting if they also flag them committed in the course of other crimes (eg. the home invasions) and justified (when the homeowner shoots the home invaders.) Bet their stats would turn into something akin to 300 shootings, 250 criminal, 45 justified defense shootings, and 5 sick bastards out of our over 320,000,000 population who went off the rails.
Seeing as how we just sent a kid to jail for cutting something like 18 people on a Houston Community College campus, this is kind of amusing when it states you can only damage lots of people in a short time with a gun. Most of those cut said due to the lack of muzzle blasts etc. they were totally unaware of any danger.
They like to throw out the big numbers and tell us that means one mass shooting a day but will never put the shootings in context. The examples you posted end up being local news with a very short half-life. The details disappear but the numbers live on as twistable statistics.
ban Scary Black Guns…..
🙂
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I wish somebody would start getting to these crazies and have them use propane tanks instead. That way people would back off of guns… If somebody wants to kill a bunch of people, they will find a way. Car on a sidewalk would be easy enough.
As to Reddit – there are many conservatives on Reddit – no we are not in the majority, but we are there trying to point out the stupidity as much as we can – and there is a ton of good stuff out there too.
So mass shooting of bad guys is a bad thing now?
Liberals please!
No better friend to criminal scum than a liberal.
Having “Crime Hills” in any gun study will f-up the results. There is a shooting almost daily there and it’s surrounding areas. Bad ju-ju there I tell ya.
VA Gov. McAuliffe was on the news right away calling for universal background checks to tighten loopholes. Obviously, the governor means well. Equally obviously, he is as ignorant and uninformed as you can get.
Hey! McAuliffe, you MORON!
WE ALREADY HAVE UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS IN PLACE, YOU JACKASS!
Oh, yes – Vester the Festering clodpole had some disguise stuff, like a black wig and a shawl, in his car when he was cornered. He also had a ‘TO DO’ list which has not been released to the public media.
This guy was a sick bastard. That’s the reason he went on a rampage. He’d have found a way to do the same thing, even if he couldn’t get his greasy paws on a weapon.