The trouble is of course, that selective use of data does create knowingly false conclusion.
The NRA are past masters of it.
(as indeed were the tobacco lobby and corn lobby before them)
There is a statistic sometimes used of a town in the US where guns became compulsory, and from that year gun crime, they claim, dropped a big percentage. So says gun lobby, there is the proof.
They decline to tell you that the year it was instituted was a complete outlier. A statistical freak. An exceptionally high amount of gun crime, way above the norm, so that it is hardly surprising it reduced anyway.. Averages for before and after show no such correlation with the rhetoric of gun lobby.
Yet gun lobby claims such evidence is "science" where all who disagree with gun lobby use "pseudoscience" and have a "hidden agenda". Whilst NRA actively prevent research by any public body. Because NRA knows what the conclusion is likely to be.
It is not the numbers that lie. Crime in that case did reduce. Just not in a causal way. It is the interpreters of numbers that lie!
There is also an oft quoted stat from a survey on the amount of times that guns have provided adequate self defence to prevent a crime, which is then extrapolated from very small numbers polled to say that a quarter of a million crimes were averted.
What they fail to tell you is that it is not a survey at all. It did not calculate from recorded victims of potential crime averted or not. It was simply a question asked of a group of respondents with guns.
Actual crime reports imply the figures of weapons used in self defence to avert a crime, are dramatically lower, almost non existent.
So how was it done? Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer!
If you are a gun owner determined to keep second amendment "rights" however many people get killed and you are given a multiple choice question.
-Has my gun been useful for self defence.
-Or has it been useless in any realistic sense.
Which answer do you think they will give? It only took 1-2 percent to lie, to make stats that were so big they were clearly bogus, and bore no relation to actual crime. Again that is "science" according to gun lobby. They must think we are all stupid!
I can cure all the medical emergencies in America.
How do I do it ..easy!
Made up figures but you get the point....
In the year 1950 there were 100000 emergencies and 20000 ambulances
In the year 2000 there were 200000 emergencies and 40000 ambulances.
Perfect correlation! So all I have to do , is get rid of 20000 ambulances and I will half the number of emergencies. The example is ridiculous, but you would be appalled at how many times correlations are falsely used as causation - buried in statistical studies in all sorts of fields - and the false causation used to set policy.
I agree with you dgi! - it should be made a felony to knowingly mislead the public.
Numbers and data EVER lie. Please understand that.
Clever humans can manipulate, obfuscate, twist, and contort the truth to make it "seem" like the numbers are on their side, but the numbers in and of themselves never ever lie.
I feel that you just don't understand that. In fact, you just did a form of that, you just twisted the numbers to make it seem like they lie when you say
SO notice how you are attempting to correlate gun deaths with strict gun control. That is really bad logic and science. The real question would be "if you removed gun control from these areas, would gun correlated deaths decrease?" Another real question would be "has the gun control in these areas led to a decrease in gun related deaths".
You have 3 areas, Area X, Y, and Z.
Area X has 100 gun deaths per year
Area Y has 25 gun deaths per year
Area Z has 5 gun deaths per year.
Now, we institute "gun control" in area X. Area X has a reduction of gun deaths from 100 per year to 50 per year. Area X still has the most gun deaths per year. So, can we then use your argument "...the most deaths are in areas with strict gun control.."? Is your argument valid? No, not it is not. The data shows that gun control reduces death.
Now, if we institute "gun control" in all 3 areas and if the following results:
Area X has 125 gun deaths per year
Area Y has 43 gun deaths per year
Area Z has 22 gun deaths per year.
then we can conclude with a fair degree of confidence that gun control does make things worse...
this will be my last post on this matter with you. I'm getting into basis statistics and logic 101 and this is something that if you can't grasp then you will probably never be able to grasp.
data and numbers never ever EVER lie. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because "some" people can manipulate and misuse data and numbers is "not" the same thing as the actual data and numbers being a lie. Learn to distinguish between the two...