Think we have a higher rate of mass shootings than western Europe does?
Think again.
John Lott writes:
People have been acting for a long time like the United States is the world’s hotbed of mass public shootings.
He gives many examples of statements from public officials—such as, for example, Barack Obama in 2015, after a mass shooting—making that point. It seems pretty clear that it’s a given, an obvious truth, that America leads the way in mass murders by gun. Right?
Wrong:
This belief is constantly used to push for more gun control. If we can only get rid of guns in the United States, we will get rid of these mass public shootings and be more like the rest of the world, gun-control supporters preach…
But America doesn’t lead the world in mass public shootings. We’re not even close.
We’re not even close? How many people would have checked that box in the multiple choice exam on the subject?
The Crime Prevention Research Center, of which [Lott is] president, recently finished updating a list of mass public shootings worldwide. These shootings must claim four or more lives in a public place. Following the FBI definition, the shootings we list are carried out simply with the intention of killing. We exclude gang fights because they tend to be motivated by battles for drug turf. Murders that arise from other crimes are also excluded.
Then there are politically motivated attacks, either by or against governments. Some shootings occur in the course of guerrilla wars for sovereignty. These attacks do not meet our definition. This meant excluding a lot of very deadly shootings such as those in the Russian-Chechen conflict…
Over the course of 18 years, from 1998 to 2015, our list contains 2,354 attacks and at least 4,880 shooters outside the United States and 53 attacks and 57 shooters within this country. By our count, the U.S. makes up 1.49 percent of the murders worldwide, 2.20 percent of the attacks, and less than 1.15 percent of the mass public shooters. All these are much less than America’s 4.6 percent share of the world population.
Of the 97 countries where we identified mass public shootings, the U.S. ranks 64th per capita in its rate of attacks and 65th in fatalities.
That’s pretty astounding. But when I read those numbers, I figured that the first 63 nations were chaotic third- or second-world countries, and that the US came close to leading the pack among the developed countries, especially those of western Europe. Right?
Wrong:
Major European countries, such as Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland and Russia, all have at least 25 percent higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings.
If those figures are correct—and I have no reason to doubt them at this point—they are truly shocking. Shocking in a good way, because although even one mass shooting would be one too many, it’s still good news to hear that there’s nothing especially violent about the USA in that regard.
The left uses every single mass shooting in this country to scream that anyone who doesn’t support stricter gun control doesn’t care about the victims of mass shootings. But the countries of Western Europe mentioned in that list are stricter about gun control than we are (see this for the somewhat special case of Switzerland). And yet they exceed us in mass shootings per capita.
This is, like many if not most of the topics in the news, about narrative. If the facts don’t fit, they will be changed or just not reported. Like the tree falling in a forest where no one is there to hear it, un/miss-reported facts do not exist to most consumers of the dinosaur media. You really have to dig to get the true story.
This is similar to the story on infant mortality. We define live births differently plus we have an inner city population that behaves like a third world country.
Another area is cancer mortality,. I was at a surgery conference about 30 years ago when a British well known cancer surgeon stated that all cases of breast cancer end in death so it is of little concern what therapy is used.
In the days when George Crile Jr was on all the TV shows advocating simple “lumpectomy” for breast cancer, the surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic, which his father founded, all knew that the primary care docs only sent him the smallest cancers to operate on. Thus, his results that he was promoting as “equal” to those for more radical surgery, represented a selected group of patients and should have had better results. Meanwhile, the other surgeons at the Clinic, got the worst cases.
I think of him when I read about Climate Change.
I wish I had more faith in John Lott’s numbers.
Kai Akker @12:05 pm:
The report is linked from the SPRC website. I do not have the expertise to evaluate its methodology, but perhaps you do? In which case, you might find there either support or contradictory evidence for your skepticism. If you do download and review it, please let us know your assessment?
Report link at SSRN:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3289010
CPRC webpage:
https://crimeresearch.org/2018/11/new-cprc-research-mass-public-shootings-are-much-higher-in-the-rest-of-the-world-and-increasing-much-more-quickly/
John Lott was trained in economics, but his book has always been the use of economic reasoning and statistical method in the study of crime. He was at one time on the staff of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. His published research has been sufficiently outre that it killed any possible academic career and for the most part he’s been employed by loci like AEI. Some of his research has in the past been questioned, but the researcher who advanced a case against it (James Lindgren) later retracted the charge when Lott had provided satisfactory explanations for anomalies in his data. (He was also taken to task for commenting under the sock puppet ‘Mary Rosh’). Lott’s an old man who has been at this for nearly 40 years, so it’s a wager he knows what he’s doing. He is, however, quite committed to certain policies, so if there’s slippage, it’s likely to be on one side. Not sure if there are any admissions against interest in his published work. After the last set of controversies (which nearly cost him his job at AEI), I’d wager a platoon of leftoids in the sociology trade went hunting for truffles in his work.
No thanks, ColoComment. I just wish I had more faith in John Lott’s numbers, methodologies, and his online personae. What about you?
Lott is not the only one looking at these type of stats. Defensive gun use is another area that’s received much attention, including in-depth CDC studies that were somewhat buried during the Obama admin. See this.
Home invasion is an area where I’d like to see more stats. I believe it is true that the average robber is loath to invade an occupied U.S. home, whereas it’s the preferred method of robbery in the U.K. The home security alarm system is more likely to be disabled in the U.K. if residents are at home. And obviously, those folks aren’t armed.
it’s the preferred method of robbery in the U.K.
And UK residents who fight back are arrested and charged.
The man is believed to have grabbed a legally owned gun after they were disturbed by the break-in early yesterday.
He is understood to have fired at the intruders who then fled the isolated house at Melton Mowbray, Leics, before calling the police.
Minutes later, an ambulance was called to treat a man with gunshot injuries nearby. It is understood that call was made by one of the suspected burglars.
The arrested man’s mother said: “This is not the first time they have been broken into.
“They have been robbed three or four times. One of them was quite nasty.
“the countries of Western Europe mentioned in that list are stricter about gun control than we are . . . . And yet they exceed us in mass shootings per capita.” [Neo]
Chicago’s strict gun laws also come to mind.
Happened to see a few minutes of Hannity a while back interviewing Piers Morgan. While they were discussing climate change, they touched very briefly on Morgan’s rabid addiction to gun control. Morgan uttered the absurd statement that Britain had seen no school shootings since they banned all guns. That is like saying that there are no longer any highway deaths because automobiles are prohibited. This is, unfortunately, what passes for deep thought and insightful observation on the left.
What he and others on the left fail to recognize or accept is that one very common element in school shootings is that they are all soft targets; no means of self-defense are present there. In fact sometimes these targets are so soft that even with armed police outside there is no attempt to stop a shooter (see Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Fl).
Likewise, Newsweek’s Nina Burleigh (she of offering oral sex to Bill Clinton in return for keeping abortion legal) wrote: “Almost every single person I’ve ever heard of with an AR-15 has been a mass murderer.” Given that there are an estimated 15 million AR-15 type rifles in circulation, it’s fair to say that even Pauline Kael had a greater sense of self-awareness than Nina Burleigh.
Again this passes for intelligent discourse in the Left-o-sphere.
No other country is reported on so much as the US, so everything that happens in the US is known all over. This makes us sound more violent. Also, reporters all over the world can speak English. It is unlikely that CNN will have people following what happens in Finland.
As to the data Lott presents, I don’t have an idea, but it is likely that some nutballs may carry out mass shootings so they can be world famous.
I read just earlier today, that if one were to statistically remove the shootings in the (five?six?seven? can’t/won’t bother to recall) most dangerous USA inner cities, our shooting rate would be quite comparable to that of any first- or second- world nation.
Given that I’m too lazy to find and/or check out the source, do regard this comment as food for thought, rather than as a definitive fact.
*** Hey, the edit function is working again! ***
The veracity of Lott’s research and conclusions will be affirmed by the lack of a challenge his data and report receive. I say that as a political, not scientific observation. His report is so offensive to the keepers of the narrative on gun violence and control that they would be screaming at the top of their lungs if they had good counter-evidence.
As noted above, the CDC defensive gun use analysis was largely buried. That is what happens when there is no evidence of quality to refute the analysis.
I have been involved in multiple situations in which private citizens used guns for self-defense. Notably, in the several incidents combined, not a single shot was fired. Lefties forget that criminals are actually not suicidal idiots, so criminals not only avoid places where citizens are likely to be armed, they often back down without further violence when confronted by an armed citizen. There’s no statistics anywhere on that.
Allowed to have their way, lefties will get a world in which criminals run rampant, since citizens can’t stop them and cops won’t be allowed to stop them. The ones that aren’t ignorant children just expect that they’ll be safe in their gated communities, while the dumb kids will squeal in joy about their “diverse, vibrant” neighborhoods until they learn better.
M J R:
The edit function is its own master and comes and go as it pleases. We are merely its obedient servants.
Snopes.com did an in-depth analysis of Lott’s statistical methods and gave his conclusions a “mixture” rating — which “indicates that a claim has significant elements of both truth and falsity to it such that it could not fairly be described by any other rating”. Here’s an excerpt from the analysis:
The amazing response to ignorance cured is “shocking”
The not amazing response to a knowing person watching is boredom
and low regard for what that admits to without necessarily realizing it
Why carry wrong beliefs because you’re too lazy to look em up
Or refuse to believe from less than public sources? Which really is it?
IF you don’t know this stuff, with all the people saying it and trying to teach it
You really have to go out of your way to avoid, dissimulate, and focus on other things and more to get there!!!
not like no one been not telling you nothing about nothing
It just took this long before the information was put in a way that you would read and accept it
Without that, the door to protect ignorance stays shut. Easier not to have a lock on it and learn
But that’s not what people do, they use mental momentum and resist
Then they are “surprised”
next lesson, below replacement really does mean extinction before they all die out just like the science has known for over 100 years. even the census admits they don’t like the way the victims react to the truth, they said so and then proceeded to change how they report, just to keep the people who are dying out from being upset before they go
Funny.
But for some reason, we think we are immune to the birth laws and demographics rules that are very good predictors and very useful – because we can’t face the horror, we cause the horror, or allow it unopposed
It’s what the left means by “audacity”
That is until its way too late and its not arguable any more.
That’s what everyone is waiting for!! The ability to say without being wrong
can’t prevent what you can’t see
Those who can’t see outnumber those who can, so they win
Which is why nothing is ever prevented
Just like all this stuff. You just ride the handbasket to hell wondering what you could have done to prevent it, ignoring what you didn’t do to even try to prevent it, let alone notice how what one did do was amounted to an erudite excuse to prevent meaningful discussion to avoid it!!!!
What very odd people
I belatedly realized that my comment about CDC gun stats being buried during the Obama admin wasn’t supported by the link. The studies were done in the late 90’s and the results were buried by the Clinton admin. The database was made available publicly, but nobody noticed.
But then Obama put out EO’s in Jan. 2013 tasking the CDC to study gun violence, and their report concludes with generalized estimates of 500K to 2M defensive gun uses per year, while again ignoring the high quality datasets taken in the 90’s by the CDC. A summary of that is here.
As to the “correct” number of defensive gun uses (reminds me of the pres. candidate in The Manchurian Candidate counting communists in the White House) in the U.S. Prof. Kleck after applying adjustment upon adjustment to the CDC data comes up with 900K defensive gun uses per year in the U.S., I think. 1.1M minus 200K if I read it correctly.
There are numerous studies on guns, violence and criminality. Here are three of the major studies that you should read to become knowledgeable on the subject.
(1) Sociologists James Wright and Peter Rossi, “Under the Gun, Crime and Violence in America” (1983) National Institute of Justice
(2) Professor Gary Kleck, “Point Blank, Guns and Violence in America” (1991).
(3) Dr. Charles Wellford; et al, “Firearms and Violence: a Critical review” (2004) National Academy of Sciences.
If you read these studies, you will find there is no evidence that demonstrates the availability of guns has any measurable effect on rates of homicide, suicide, robbery, assault, rape or burglary.
The real contention in the American gun debate is between thinking and emoting. In the face of certain annihilation if they are not tactically and strategically intelligent, Israelis favor arming their citizens. Gun laws have been liberalized (in the true sense of the word) to promote public self defense.
Imagine the insanity of gun-free zones in Israel. No less so here.
“. . . on the rare occasions when mass shootings do take place in European countries, they give rise to a relatively high annual mass shooting death rate in those years because of the comparatively small populations of those countries.” [Ann quoting Snopes @ 3:56 pm]
This is an irrelevant. I would go as far as to say that it intentionally mis-represents what Lott is saying; e.g., Norway’s population (2018) is about 4,722,000; the U.S. population (at 300,000,000) is about 63 times larger than that, yet we still do not have a mass-murder rate 63 times that of Norway. In fact, all U.S. gun deaths usually fall between ~36,000 to ~39,000 (with about 19,000 of those being suicides). That’s about 13 deaths per 100,000 population, and this in a country where some have estimated 600,000,000 firearms held by citizens.
“Between 2009 and 2015, the United States was the only country on that list where someone died every year in a mass shooting. Every other country had at least five out seven years without a death from a mass shooting.” [Ann quoting Snopes @ 3:56 pm]
A specious statistic designed to make the number and frequency of shootings more important that the number of deaths. For example, let’s say that France had a mass shooting where 75 people were killed and another shooting did not occur for 5 years. On the other hand let’s say in the U.S. that there was a mass shooting every year for 5 consecutive years and in each shooting 5 people were killed.
Now the five shootings have a more direct social and cultural impact than one single shooting because their frequency keeps the topic in the public eye for five consecutive years. The multiple shootings seem worse, but ask yourself which is really worse, a single shooting with a death toll of 75 or 5 individual shootings with a total death toll of 25?
I have not read the Snopes article, but I certainly do not trust their logic or their math at first blush; math doesn’t lie but the circumstances to which math is applied are constantly used to push an agenda (lies, damn lies, and statistics).
As Disraeli supposedly said, “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
As has been said, it’s all about ”controlling the narrative” i.e. making sure that the public only gets your version of the story, and that your version is seen and accepted as the only accurate and correct one.
You can carry this off—if the MSM and Academia backs you up—and for the Left, they do.
In the case of statistics used to back up talking points, those on the Left—far more, it appears to me, than those on the Right—pick those statistics most favorable to their case, and any other statistics that might contradict those Leftist pushed statistics are either denigrated—quite often by casting doubt on/trashing the person/organization that collected them, or their methodology—or by simply ignoring, and not reporting those contradictory statistics, or that they even exist.
Here is where MSM and Academic malpractice looms large.
Another approach—sometimes taken by the Federal and other governments, and by various advocacy organizations—is to refuse to collect statistics on a particular subject about whose nature and extent you just don’t want to know—and they certainly don’t want the public to know either (and perhaps judge that there is not a real problem at all or, on the other had, become alarmed at a huge problem).
Or, you don’t collect statistics on a subject because you fear that such statistics will show the truth to be other than what you claim it to be.
A couple of notable instances in which you would think that statistics would be readily available but, it seems, aren’t, are statistics for the number of crimes prevented or thwarted—in part or totally—by the presence or intervention of a lawfully armed citizen.
As far as I am aware, neither the police nationwide, nor Emergency Rooms and hospitals systematically collect such statistics. Why?
Other conspicuously missing statistics are solid statistics for the number of those in the U.S. who are illiterate and who are functionally illiterate. Again, why?
Another missing statistic is a solid, accurate number for the number of homeless in this country.
Then, of course, we have statistics—just revised way upward—for the supposed number of illegal aliens here in the U.S.
Are these statistics accurate? Who knows?
But, because we don’t have a number of presumably objective organizations interested in collecting such statistics, they are the only apparently legitimate statistics out there.
I am not counting as objective and likely accurate those statistics published by various advocacy organizations and NGOs, other organizations (or even governments) that have a stake in seeing that the statistics they collect back up their version of the truth of a situation—i.e. a lot or a little of something or some situation.
You also need to be very wary of and carefully look at and consider what the parameters might be for the collecting, measuring, and displaying of statistics i.e. what kind of filtering—if any—are those that are collecting the statistics doing?
So, for instance, what particular group of people and how many of them make up the group being studied? How are the results being tabulated (and, perhaps, being manipulated in the process) and, even displayed?
Because, you can also manipulate the results by how you count them, and, as well, by how you display, and characterize them i.e. what do the statistics you gathered actually say, what is their meaning, and significance?
Take a very illuminating look sometime at the actual vs. the claimed composition of the group of people who renowned Dr. Alfred Kinsey surveyed in gathering the data that he claimed led him to the conclusions he published about what normal sexuality and normal sexual practices here in the U.S. were. See “Alfred D. Kensey: A Life”—by James H. Jones
Now there were some (highly skewed, manipulated, and deceptive) statistics that had—and continue to have—a massive social and cultural impact!
From Lott’s Examiner article continued:
“The national media tend to ignore case after case of mass public shootings being stopped by armed private citizens. Just a couple of days before the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh a concealed handgun permit holder stopped an alleged killer who was shooting blacks at a Kroger grocery store in Louisville, Ky.
National media outlets such as ABC and NBC covered the attack, noting that the alleged gunman told another white man that: “Whites don’t kill whites.” It sounded as if the gunman was merely reassuring a bystander that he had nothing to worry about. But reporters left out the crucial first part of the quote. The killer said: “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.” The other white person was pointing a permitted concealed handgun at the killer.”
* * *
Democracy dies in darkness, aka lying by omission.
Kai Akker on November 27, 2018 at 1:16 pm at 1:16 pm said:
No thanks, ColoComment. I just wish I had more faith in John Lott’s numbers, methodologies, and his online personae. What about you?
***********************************************
I am agnostic: as I explained in my initial comment, I have neither the knowledge or expertise to believe, or not to believe. I was hoping to learn from you the basis for your skepticism.
That’s all…..
“Allowed to have their way, lefties will get a world in which criminals run rampant, since citizens can’t stop them and cops won’t be allowed to stop them.” KyndyllG
It’s already here, that perfectly describes the situation in London.
Ann,
“Between 2009 and 2015, the United States was the only country on that list where someone died every year in a mass shooting.”
You imply that the availability of guns is responsible for that statistic. Idaho has the highest rate of gun ownership in the US. It hasn’t had a mass shooting since Wounded Knee. Which is why Ray is correct when he states that, “there is no evidence that demonstrates the availability of guns has any measurable effect on rates of homicide”.
“we have an inner city population that behaves like a third world country.” MikeK
Idaho has the highest level of gun ownership and the highest percentage of whites with the lowest gun homicide rate. Wash. D.C. has the lowest level of gun ownership with the highest gun homicide rate… and, the highest percentage of blacks.
Nor is it the color of skin, Americans of Asian ancestry have lower levels of gun violence than whites.
It’s the cultural values embraced, neglected and/or rejected… stupid. Not the guns, which are simply a tool. A hammer can build a house or cave in a skull. It’s the individual’s intent in wielding a tool that determines its use.
I am surprised that the US is so far down on the list, but not at all surprised that mass shootings is an all too common occurrence in other countries including ones that are considered the safest.
Several years ago, when I was living in Finland, they experienced a school shooting. In following the news of this tragedy, I learned that Finland had had two more such shootings in the previous decade. This was in a country of three million people!
This led me to suspect that the MSM in the U.S. was not telling us the whole story. I went on to read up on the phenomena in other countries. (FYI: This was casual research, not academically rigorous.) However, I had two takeaways from my investigation:
1. In Europe and the Americas, there appeared to be a north-south axis of occurrences. By this I mean that there are more shootings (per capita) in the Nordic countries than in the Mediterranean ones. There are more shootings in the U.S. and Canada than in Latin America.
2. I formulated my own theory that the mass shooting phenomena bears positive correlation to privacy rights, by both law and custom. Where privacy rights are most valued and protected, there are more shootings. We all know the story… when interviewed the neighbors say, “Well, I really didn’t know him very well. He kept to himself.” And when the follow-up investigation reveals that the guy was a bullied loner with no emotional support everyone recognises that the signs were there to see. But, no one did anything, because they were respecting his privacy. In the Latino and Mediterranean cultures, people are more inclined to meddle and not respect people’s privacy.
So, I sort of think that a large part of the cause of these incidents is too much privacy. I don’t think that is a natural condition for humans.
Another statistic commonly quoted in the MSM to carefully examine and dissect–the number of school shootings in the U.S.
As an example of the misuse of statistics in the service of ideology–this time anti-gun ideology, there was the case of Emory History Professor Michael A. Bellesiles who, in his initially widely praised 2000 book**, “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture,” supposedly presented groundbreaking research and statistics that showed that “gun culture” in American did not have it’s roots in the American experience in the Colonial and early National and Antebellum periods, but that it actually began around the time of the Civil War– when guns became much more plentiful, more accurate, and lower in price–and that the Militia was, throughout American history, always an ineffective force, that guns were very scarce in America before 1840, that guns were uncommon and seldom used, that Americans were not very proficient in their use of guns, and that Americans rarely hunted for food.
However, when the sources he cited for these claims were carefully examined, it turned out that Professor Bellesiles had deliberately misquoted many of them, deliberately misinterpreted others, and some supposed sources he apparently just flat out made up.
Investigated by Emory, which brought in a group of three outside academic Historians to examine Bellesiles’ scholarship and his book, and asked to back up his research by providing his research notes, Bellesiles claimed that “all his notes were destroyed in a flood”–the old the dog ate my homework defense.
In 2002 Bellesiles resigned from the faculty of Emory.
Initially awarded the prestigious 2001 Bancroft Prize for historical writing, when the fraudulent nature of his research and book was discovered, for the first time in it’s existence, this award was withdrawn, and his publisher Knopf did not renew his contract and the National Endowment for the Humanities withdrew it’s name from a fellowship that Bellesiles had been granted by the Newberry Library.
**To quote the article on this subject in Wiki, a review of Bellesiles’ book in the “Journal of American History” by Roger Lane said that the research in Bellesiles’ book was, “meticulous and thorough,” and Lane went on to declare that Bellesiles’ evidence (for his thesis) “was so formidable that if the subject were open to rational argument, the debate (about the issues of gun control and gun rights, and the NRA’s interpretation of the meaning of the Second Amendment) would be over.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America .
Speaking about guns and gun control, take a gander as this bill just introduced by New York State Senator Kevin Parker, which would deny gun licenses and also revoke already issued licenses if, after the State ransacked all of your Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and other social media accounts, and in addition your search history and activities (which you would be forced to provide to them, along with your screen names and passwords) and they found anything that they deemed offensive, abusive, or somehow indicative of terrorism.
From the text of the proposed bill:
“…Applicants would be required to provide police with “any log-in name, password, or other means for accessing a personal account, service, or electronic communications device necessary to review such applicant’s social media accounts and search engine history.”
“…In order to ascertain whether any social media account or search engine history of an applicant presents any good cause for the denial of a license, the investigating officer shall… review an applicant’s social media accounts for the previous three years and search engine history for the previous year and investigate an applicant’s posts or searches related to (I) commonly known profane slurs or biased language used to describe the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person; (II) threatening the health or safety of another person; (III) an act of terrorism; or (IV) any other issue deemed necessary by the investigating officer.”
See https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/11/27/new-york-considers-bill-that-would-not-only-deny-but-revoke-gun-licenses-over-slurs-and-biased-language-697259
And what, pray tell, would be the New York State legislature’s definition of “biased language.”
P.S. And the final phrase”…and any other issue deemed necessary by the investigating officer.” leaves the field wide open for the State to investigate and critique anything and everything you have ever said or done online.
To add to discussion of the cultural aspects of gun violence, just over 25 years ago David Kopel wrote “The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy,” in which he examines the origins, the cultures, and the social mores of these disparate countries of Japan, Canada, and the U.S.
http://a.co/d/9XhL3PJ
I wish he’d do an update.
So sorry, but this is old news. We deplorable bitter clingers recognized the fake news many decades ago. Disclaimer, life time NRA member for 40+ years. Take a hard look at ‘school shootings’. Same old BS.
Ok, a bit of reality… gun violence??? Really? A gun, a rock, a baseball bat, etc is an object possessing no consciousness. People possess free will, even if they are too dumb to realize it, and have choices. There is no such thing as gun violence or rock violence or baseball bat violence or fist/feet violence. When you surrender language you lose. When you deny each of us has free will, you agree we are all savages without a cerebral cortex. Not a very sun shining path to choose.
“And what, pray tell, would be the New York State legislature’s definition of “biased language.” ” — Snow
Probably something like this.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2018/11/26/twitter-bans-another-conservative/
Europe has already mastered the “create a crisis emergency and take advantage of it by suppressing the slave human livestock using gun control” thing. America is catching up however with the recent shootings and of course the various operations of Fast and Furious and DEA and ATF and Waco 1 and Waco 2.
Americans were easy and comfortable when it was a bunch of complex nutcase religionists that they thought the feds were “getting”, but now it is you under the gunsights. Enjoy the peace while it lasted.
As for whether the shootings have to be real or not… Crisis Burnings are always more effective when it is real. Reichstag fire. DC anthrax mailing that came from a US funded/controlled military lab.
Whether an event is real or whether the event is as the media propaganda main sewer volks have told you, are two different issues.
As Disraeli supposedly said, “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
Samuel Clemens… Mark Twain… not Disraeli
Same as Ask not what your country can do…
wasn’t really Kennedy… it was Pericles..
Forget the past, and you give the wrong people credit and cache AND POWER
You do the work for the Stalinist’s without knowledge or pay and against your own
So, for instance, what particular group of people and how many of them make up the group being studied? How are the results being tabulated (and, perhaps, being manipulated in the process) and, even displayed? –Snow on Pine
And did the dog eat the data?
From Wikipedia: “In the course of a dispute with Otis Dudley Duncan in 1999–2000,[61][62] Lott claimed to have undertaken a national survey of 2,424 respondents in 1997, the results of which were the source for claims he had made beginning in 1997.[62] However, in 2000 Lott was unable to produce the data or any records showing that the survey had been undertaken. He said the 1997 hard drive crash that had affected several projects with co-authors had destroyed his survey data set,[63] the original tally sheets had been abandoned with other personal property in his move from Chicago to Yale, and he could not recall the names of any of the students who he said had worked on it. Critics alleged that the survey had never taken place,[64] but Lott defends the survey’s existence and accuracy, quoting on his website colleagues who lost data in the hard drive crash.[65]”
Yecch. Believe Lott’s assertions if you want to, but it takes a huge degree of credulousness, IMO. And who was Otis Dudley Duncan, whose lengthy discussion and questioning of Lott’s shifting numbers caused Lott to cite the “missing” survey data? (Available via link in a footnote on Wikipedia’s article for John Lott.)
Also from Wikipedia: “Otis Dudley Duncan (December 2, 1921 in Nocona, Texas – November 16, 2004, in Santa Barbara, California) was “the most important quantitative sociologist in the world in the latter half of the 20th century”, according to sociologist Leo Goodman.[1] His book The American Occupational Structure, which received the American Sociological Association’s Sorokin Award, documented how parents transmit their societal status to their children. Duncan compiled his thoughts on the major issues of the field into Notes on Social Measurement, which he considered his greatest work.”
FYI for ColoComment, Neo, and whoever else cares.
BTW, Snow on Pine, thanks for the reference to the Bellesiles case. I had not run across that before and it made for some interesting reading today.
I was hoping to learn from you the basis for your skepticism. That’s all….. –ColoComment
His past behavior; see above.
Fake news is fake no matter which side a faker favors. And favors fronted by fakers make us unfavored by fake news makers. Leave the faker but take the favor from the makers on the right side.
Kai Akker – that information about Lott’s data is troubling, but not dispositive. His other data seems to check out – there are criticisms, but not more than one would expect in controversial work (on either side). You also cherry picked the worst from the Wiki, and well…Wiki. I was suspicious when you played your Iago routine with your first two comments. You like to sneer. You should know that this has diminished your further credibility with me. That would not have been the case had you taken more care with your tone.
We have gotten somewhat astray, talking about gun crime in general, when we started with mass shootings. Norway’s high number comes from a single horrendous event, I believe. But the comment that population size and greater attention to our own media contributes to the impression is true. For such purposes, it is best to look at Europe as a whole as of comparable size to the US. It is also wiser to compare mass killing to mass killing and leave the shooting out of it. I have had a few murderers and attempted murderers on my caseload over the years, and not one of them shot the person.
@T – statistics will tell the truth if you shove them up against the wall and make them tell you who their friends are.
“He said the 1997 hard drive crash that had affected several projects with co-authors had destroyed his survey data set,”
That’s not very convincing. Where I worked our server crashed just before Christmas. The IT people sent the entire server off to Ontrack data recovery and they recovered our data in about 2 weeks. Since this happened at Christmas vacation it wasn’t a big inconvenience. The same thing happened to my PC and I bought some file recovery software that retrieved the files I wanted. Just because the HD crashes doesn’t mean the data is destroyed.
That is not somewhat astray but completely off the topic of mass shootings.
You like to sneer. –Assistant Village Idiot
How would you know what tone I am using in my head as I write? I wish I could have more faith in John Lott’s numbers because I would like to believe in this claim!
Sneer or no sneer, AVI? Or do you like to make judgments based on your own prejudices in the absence of evidence?
Ray, it was the not knowing the names of any of the students that finished that one off for me. And I have read Lott’s articles and other references to him for a long time now. I wish I could have more faith in his numbers and his methodologies.
That’s not very convincing.
His co-authors corroborated his account. And it was 21 years ago. What was possible with the technology that AEI was likely to have in its offices at that time? Again, James Lindgren had a detailed and sophisticated critic of his data and method and was subsequently satisfied with Lott’s responses. (And much of the controversy consisted of a complaints over a brief aside in one of Lott’s book; in Bellesile’s case, it was the entire thesis of the book which was disputed; Lindgren’s work was crucial in discrediting Bellesiles).
Yecch. Believe Lott’s assertions if you want to, but it takes a huge degree of credulousness,
No, you believe them because he has no history of fraud (and he is very extensively published on controversial topics), others corroborated his account, and the complaint concerned a passing reference in one of his books. All of this was investigated and laid to rest more than 15 years ago.
I don’t believe there were any co-authors, Art Deco. I don’t believe your facts are correct on this matter. You can believe his assertions then or now if you want to, and clearly you want to. Stating your faith as a fact does not make it one, however. If we start to hear cavils about this latest claim, new shadings of the data, shifting estimates or other reconsiderations, it would not surprise me, unfortunately.
I don’t believe there were any co-authors, Art Deco.
He does collaborative work with lots of people, some of whom confirmed that they lost data in the computer crash he referenced.
if you want to, and clearly you want to.
You’re projecting. Your deficit of integrity is not my problem.
Those co-authors had nothing to do with the missing survey, though, so while the loss of someone’s data is a fact, the question is whether the survey for which Lott had neither any backup paperwork nor the names of any assistants–whether that survey existed and was also lost in that crash.
Now, onto my “deficit of integrity.” LOL. I am “projecting”? Hmm, it certainly does seem that someone is projecting here!