exactly HOW MANY PEOPLE DIED FROM FIREARMS IN 2015?
I'm guessing it depends on whose statistics you like.
(You know the Mantra: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics! Don't forget that.)
So, just as an EXERCISE, I'm going to survey the top THREE statistical results from Google, and report them here.
I'll let YOU decide who you believe. Okay?
First question: how do we qualify the statics?
- Deaths by Firearms
- Homicide by Firearms
- Death from Gun Violence
Here are MY (entirely amateur, not affiliated with anyone who claims to know what he's talking about) definitions:
DEATH BY FIREARM:
"ANY DEATH where a Firearm is determined to be the ultimate instrument of termination-of-life will be defined as Death By Firearm; death at the hand of a Law Enforcement Officer; Death at the hands of Serving Military within or without the Continental United States are included. Also included; suicide, accidental death, including those deaths of 'innocent bystanders' in a situation which, lacking intent to murder, would be considered a Homicide .. as specifically included here. It may seen redundant, but to be clear: the categories "HOMOCIDE BY FIREARMS" and "DEATH FROM GUN VIOLENCE" are specifically included here.Homicide by Firearms:
"ANY DEATH where a Firearm is determined to be the ultimate instrument of termination of life, and which cannot be defined as "accidental" or "suicide" or "justifiable" (including "killed by a Law Enforcement Office", but rather is defined as "death by firearm at the intentional hand of another person", is defined as a HOMICIDE by FIREARM.
The intention to kill another person is specifically included here.
Death from Gun Violence is specifically NOT included here, unless the determination to kill is a primary OR SECONDARY motivation to shoot a living person during a "Shooting Incident".
. Note that "homocide" defines intent. Note also that 'accidental shootings" may fall under this vaguely defined category, if there is no clear determination of intent, but the circumstances have not been adjudicated as "other than intentional". Thus, the numbers in this category may change hourly as new decisions are made and new judges are seated..
Death from Gun Violence:
A death where a firearm is determined to be the primary instrument of termination of life will be defined as "Death From Gun Violence", as long as the following limitations are observed:
- The person wielding the firearm MAY BE the person who dies: which is to say, suicides are specifically included in this count.
- For the specific purpose of this survey, death by a Law Enforcement Officer and death by a private citizen who fires to terminate a murder or violent crime (which itself involves a gun, and therefore is Ipso Facto a potential "death by gun violence" situation) are two specific instances where "death by gun" are not included.
Okay, here are the results!:
I have no idea.
NO, honestly. This is not a joke. This is the truth .. hey, didn't I promise you to be HONEST?Crap, I made these definitions up as I went along; did you really believe I knew what I was talking about? What, am I a paid minion of The Brady Campaign?
I don't know what the actual TRUE and HONEST and COMPLETELY Last and Best summary of Firearms Deaths might be. I have no answers. I'm as clueless as you are.
Of course, I have my suspicions; and I have 'opinions'.
But opinions are like ... well, you may have already heard; everyone has one.
REALLY!
And anyone who tells you different is
(a) a VERY GOOD and diligent statistician (aka: John Lott);
(b) making it up as he goes along (aka: Arthur Kellerman); or
(c) distorting their (insignificant data) to make a political statement (aka: CDC or Brady)
Perhaps some one has done a county-by-county evaluation which neatly slots death by guns into these three convenient categories.
John Lott is my best guess, but I don't expect that his definitions are of these three categories dirctly align with minl.
The fact is, EVERYONE who tries to quantify the statistics of Death By Firearms has their own categorical definitions; EVERYONE has his own sources; EVERYONE has his own personal bias which might 'conveniently' switch one death to a different category of his own definition.
And in fact, EVERYONE has different sources, so the numbers you get from (for example) John Lott are different from those compiled by (for example) The Brady Campaign.
If YOU expect statistics to prove or disprove your personal favorite Source, Statistician or Source, then your numbers will vary WILDLY from mine! And your methods of 'milking' the statistics to provide specific "tellers" will vary ... if you don't like one method of evaluating the numbers, you might choose another. And I, and my friends, will NEVER KNOW!
(Although, to tell the truth, I'm more inclined to believe the data, the analysis, and the evaluation of John Lott; any man who prefaces most sentences with the preposition "if you are going to go and ..." simply MUST be an honest man. He's the Abraham Lincoln of Statistics, because he knows no other way to express himself other than the simple, home-spun speech pattern her learned as a child.
I trust him, and I hope he never, EVER changes the way in which he expresses himself. When/if he does, I'll begin to wonder whether he is uncertain about his facts.
CONCLUSION:
I don't know what the numbers are.
You don't know, either.
John Lott THINKS he knows, and perhaps he is right. (Or not .. who is there to refute him?)
The Center for Disease Control can't even sneak bogus numbers under the nose of CONGRESS! I ask you ... if you can't fool Congress .. can you fool ANYONE?
The Brady Campaign doesn't know .. hell , they make the numbers up as they go along; they don't know TODAY what numbers they publicized YESTERDAY .. but that's okay, because SMURFS!
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