{"id":2855,"date":"2016-01-01T20:44:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-02T04:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=2855"},"modified":"2016-01-21T13:48:27","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T21:48:27","slug":"cherry-picking-their-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=2855","title":{"rendered":"Cherry-picking their data"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"560d87c91b00002f00dfe202\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(A version of this column appears in the Jan. 10 edition of Firearms News (previously “Shotgun News.”)<\/em><\/p>\n

In case you didn\u2019t notice, the website \u201cBefore It\u2019s News\u201d reported back in October that an Air Force veteran with a concealed-carry license \u201cwas told to stand down when he offered to help\u201d during a shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.<\/p>\n

John Parker, 36, was at the veterans\u2019 center at the college when he heard about the shooting, which was occurring 200 yards from his location.<\/p>\n

He told Fox News\u2019 Sean Hannity \u201cThere were a few people in the vet center. . . . When we heard the shooting happened, we got up and we were gonna go out and see what we could do.\u201d He added: \u201cImmediately the school staff stopped us and told us to get inside of the building. . . . Essentially the staff wouldn\u2019t let us go to assist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police later swept the campus buildings. \u201cI told the officer about the gun on my hip,\u201d Parker told the Huffington Post. \u201cHe searched me, took the gun, escorted me back to my car and gave me my gun back and told me to have a nice day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ten people including the shooter were killed and nine others wounded by a gunman who had been discharged from the Army in 2008 after a suicide attempt. The gunman went from building to building on the picturesque college campus, reloading without interference, asking Christians to stand up so he could kill them. The shooter finally took his own life moments after being wounded by police — police who, in responding, themselves violated the college\u2019s \u201cno guns\u201d policy.<\/p>\n

In asserting his right to concealed carry, Air Force veteran Parker was knowingly violating a rule which declared the college a \u201cgun-free zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

How \u201cgun free\u201d? A post on the college website made it clear that even water pistols were banned on campus.<\/p>\n

Gee, that sure helped.<\/p>\n

\"whome-300x153\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018Clamp down on the availability . . .\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meantime, also back in October, I hope everyone noticed Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said it\u2019s \u201cworth considering\u201d a nationwide gun ban and \u201cbuyback\u201d program to vastly reduce private gun ownership.<\/p>\n

At an Oct. 16 \u201ctown hall meeting\u201d in Keene, N.H. (a lot more carefully staged and with attendance a lot more strictly limited than at any real New England \u201ctown meeting,\u201d of course) she was asked if it were feasible for the U.S. to confiscate millions of private firearms.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Clinton responded: \u201cYou know, Australia\u2019s a good example, Canada\u2019s a good example, the UK\u2019s a good example. Why? Because each of them had mass killings, Australia had a huge mass killing about 20 or 25 years ago. Canada did as well, so did the UK. In reaction, they passed much stricter gun laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Australian example, as I recall, that was a buyback program. The Australian government as part of trying to clamp down on the availability of . . . weapons offered a good price for buying hundreds of thousands of guns and basically clamped down going forward. . . .<\/p>\n

Clinton mentioned several U.S. cities have tried gun buyback programs and it would be \u201cworth considering on a national level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somehow, she curiously failed to demand that any of her own Secret Service bodyguards come up to the podium and turn in their weapons, \u201cjust to set a good example.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gun-grabbing countries with higher murder rates<\/strong><\/p>\n

But one of the most hopeful signs I\u2019ve seen recently was a post by Ryan McMaken — editor of \u201cMises Daily\u201d and former economist for the Colorado Division of Housing — at www.lewrockwell.com\/2015\/10\/ryan-mcmaken\/gun-lies\/ .<\/p>\n

The piece deals with the way collectivist opponents of the right to keep and bear arms — even at supposedly objective newspapers — manipulate their data to make it appear the United States has much higher firearm murder rates than countries with more repressive \u201cgun control\u201d laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve all seen it many times,\u201d Mr. McMaken notes. \u201cThe United States, with a murder rate of approximately 5 per 100,000, is compared to a variety of Western and Central European countries (also sometimes Japan) with murder rates often below 1 per 100,000. This is, in turn, supposed to fill Americans with a sense of shame and illustrate that the United States should be regarded as some sort of pariah nation because of its murder rate. . . .<\/p>\n

\u201cNote, however, that these comparisons always employ a carefully selected list of countries, most of which are very unlike the United States. They are countries that were settled long ago by the dominant ethnic group, they are ethnically non-diverse today, they are frequently very small countries (such as Norway, with a population of 5 million.) . . . Politically, historically, and demographically, the U.S. has little in common with Europe or Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n

So with whom should we be compared?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the criteria for deciding that the United States shall be compared to Luxembourg but not to Mexico, which has far more in common with the U.S. than Luxembourg in terms of size, history, ethnic diversity, and geography?\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of this stems from outdated, preconceived notions about the \u201cThird World,\u201d McMaken says, assuming \u201cwe\u201d are the special \u201cdeveloped\u201d countries where people are happy healthy and live long lives, while \u201cthey\u201d are the Third World \u201cwhere people live in war-torn squalor and lives there are nasty, brutish, and short.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, there is no such sharp dividing line, the author argues. If instead we were allowed to compare the U.S. to middle-income countries like Uruguay, Russia, or Mexico, that would show the U.S. \u201cis actually a remarkably safe place in global terms — on top of having many more legally owned guns than those countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Capture12\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. McMaken cites a 2012 Washington Post story by Max Fisher headlined \u201cChart: The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the usual sample of \u201cdeveloped\u201d countries which are currently between genocides (like Germany and Japan) Mr. Fisher \u201cproceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Specifically, Mr. Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile. He still ends with a chart showing the U.S. with by far the most \u201cfirearm homicides per 100,000 people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Apparently because they\u2019re members of the OECD. \u201cBut if you\u2019re familiar with the OECD, you\u2019ll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses,\u201d McMaken points out. \u201cMexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?\u201d Clearly, Mexico is excluded because its higher murder rate would mess up the pre-determined result, which is that the United States always has to come our \u201cworst.\u201d<\/p>\n

Breaking out \u2018state\u2019 murder rates<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the time, Mr. Fisher explained his omission was because Mexico \u201chas about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the U.S. from the list,\u201d Mr. McMaken smiles.<\/p>\n

Why not use the U.N.\u2019s human development index to choose comparison countries, McMaken asks? The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia have HDI numbers equal to or greater than those of Turkey and Mexico.<\/p>\n

But if we include those, we find the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different, of course.<\/p>\n

\"341\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. McMaken proceeds to offer a chart showing that — while the U.S. has a higher murder rate than Canada or Bulgaria — its murder rate is about half that of Russia\u2019s, less than half as high as those of Panama and Mexico, and a minuscule 10 percent of the murder rate in Venezuela -\u2013 all ethnically diverse countries settled around the same time as the U.S.<\/p>\n

And things get even more interesting if we separate out American states with low murder rates, he points out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the \u2018U.S. murder rate\u2019 The U.S. is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. . . . The U.S. murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let\u2019s just leave those states out, and look at some of the low-crime ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"56\"<\/a><\/p>\n

His result, of course, shows that murder rates in states like New Hampshire, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming and Utah — precisely those states with the most \u201clax\u201d gun laws and the highest rates of peaceful citizens actually walking around with guns — are among the lowest in the world.<\/p>\n

“We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado,” Mr. McMaken notes. “Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado\u2019s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.”<\/p>\n

Bookmark Mr. McMaken\u2019s well-researched work. It\u2019s time to stop the gun-grabbers from corrupting our public debate with misleading, cherry-picked data.<\/p>\n

A version of this column appears in the January, 2016 issue of “Firearms News” (previously “Shotgun News.”)
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(A version of this column appears in the Jan. 10 edition of Firearms News (previously “Shotgun News.”) In case you didn\u2019t notice, the website \u201cBefore It\u2019s News\u201d reported back in October that an Air Force veteran with a concealed-carry license \u201cwas told to stand down when he offered to help\u201d during a shooting at Umpqua […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,8,17,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-election","category-2nd-amendment","category-big-brother","category-self-defense"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-K3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2855"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2864,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855\/revisions\/2864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}