{"id":61588,"date":"2015-08-28T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-08-28T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=61588"},"modified":"2015-08-28T07:44:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T11:44:10","slug":"washington-post-when-numbers-dont-work-change-the-parameters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61588","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post; when statistics don’t work, change the parameters"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s an article in the Washington Post<\/a> 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? <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Ingraham likes these measures much more, because he can count a mass shooting every day for this year.<\/p>\n

But the broader definition is nonetheless a useful one, because it captures many high-profile instances of violence \u2014 like the recent Lafayette theater shootings \u2014 that don’t meet the FBI’s criteria.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Here’s another one – a Tuskegee <\/a>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.<\/p>\n

In January, at a Chris Brown concert, in San Jose, California<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

In Syracuse, New York<\/a>, 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?<\/p>\n

Four people were shot in Chicago<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Here’s one with four victims in Pine Hills, Florida<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an article in the Washington Post in which Christopher Ingraham claims that there have been … Washington Post; when statistics don’t work, change the parameters<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gun-grabbing-fascists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}