The development of an-anti gun "fact"

[wboggs]

Telling the Truth About Damned Lies and Statistics

Original Article, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4 May 2001, by Joel Best;
Formatting and Emphasis by R. Adam Molnar

The dissertation prospectus began by quoting a statistic -- a "grabber" meant to capture the reader's attention. The graduate student who wrote this prospectus undoubtedly wanted to seem scholarly to the professors who would read it; they would be supervising the proposed research. And what could be more scholarly than a nice, authoritative statistic, quoted from a professional journal in the student's field?

So the prospectus began with this (carefully footnoted) quotation: "Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled." I had been invited to serve on the student's dissertation committee. When I read the quotation, I assumed the student had made an error in copying it. I went to the library and looked up the article the student had cited. There, in the journal's 1995 volume, was exactly the same sentence: "Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled."

This quotation is my nomination for a dubious distinction: I think it may be the worst -- that is, the most inaccurate -- social statistic ever.

What makes this statistic so bad? Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that "the number of American children gunned down" in 1950 was one. If the number doubled each year, there must have been two children gunned down in 1951, four in 1952, eight in 1953, and so on. By 1960, the number would have been 1,024. By 1965, it would have been 32,768 (in 1965, the F.B.I. identified only 9,960 criminal homicides in the entire country, including adult as well as child victims). By 1970, the number would have passed one million; by 1980, one billion (more than four times the total U.S. population in that year). Only three years later, in 1983, the number of American children gunned down would have been 8.6 billion (nearly twice the earth's population at the time). Another milestone would have been passed in 1987, when the number of gunned-down American children (137 billion) would have surpassed the best estimates for the total human population throughout history (110 billion). By 1995, when the article was published, the annual number of victims would have been over 35 trillion -- a really big number, of a magnitude you rarely encounter outside economics or astronomy.

Thus my nomination: estimating the number of American child gunshot victims in 1995 at 35 trillion must be as far off -- as hilariously, wildly wrong -- as a social statistic can be. (If anyone spots a more inaccurate social statistic, I'd love to hear about it.)

Where did the article's author get this statistic? I wrote the author, who responded that the statistic came from the Children's Defense Fund, a well-known advocacy group for children. The C.D.F.'s The State of America's Children Yearbook 1994 does state: "The number of American children killed each year by guns has doubled since 1950." Note the difference in the wording -- the C.D.F. claimed there were twice as many deaths in 1994 as in 1950; the article's author reworded that claim and created a very different meaning.

This article continues at: http://galton.uchicago.edu/~molnar/lies.html

[Tackdriver]

The children's defense fund cites the US government in their web site yet their numbers are a factor higher than the US Government data! And they consider a 20 yr old to be a child!

OK, moving on, most people consider a 'child' to be someone under about, say 15 years of age. Considering the issue most immune to socioeconomic influences includes only accident, suicide, and for the sake of argument 'undetermined intent', there were 142 deaths by guns of children in 2003 under the age of 15.

Taking only the number of children in the USA (~61.5M in 2000 per us census under 15), this would be a 1 in 433,098 chance a child will be killed by a gun!

When we look at the whole population (cause it is easier to get the data), there were 789 accidental firearms deaths vs 2653 deaths due to surgical error, or a 3.36 fold difference!

So, the solution using the gun control argument is to ban surgeons! We could save 2653 people a year using the liberal logic! That's a prevention of a 9/11 attack each year! I can see the commentary now, "Don't you care about those poor patients? Isn't it worth 2653 lives by simply making it impossible to go to the doctor? "

my 0.02
and Obama does hate America, Hillary is a crook, fact not fiction.

[wboggs]

Actually I'm pretty sure the article considered up to age 25 as a child. But the part I liked best is "Another milestone would have been passed in 1987, when the number of gunned-down American children (137 billion) would have surpassed the best estimates for the total human population throughout history (110 billion). By 1995, when the article was published, the annual number of victims would have been over 35 trillion -- a really big number, of a magnitude you rarely encounter outside economics or astronomy." When the number of children accidentally shot became more than three thousand times the Worlds population. Are my numbers right?

Reminds me when I herd Nancy Pelocy saying Global temperatures haven't been this high in 265,000 years to which I ask; just how much dust did she have to clean off those record books so she could quote their contents?