Remarks by the President on Common-Sense Gun Safety Reform

[Benvolio]

That should read "very sparsely inhabited".

 

[T-Rexx]

We are discussing the map at#164. Areas with high shooting death rates are dark red;those with lower rates are blue. Yet, every sparsely inhabited deserts and forests of the west, including Nevada are dark red while Chicago , Manhattan, Los Angeles and other high crime areas are blue. Apparently this is because it shows deaths per hundred thousand.AND it carves out large areas with a hundred thousand; then one or two death will result in a high "rate". So while it may be technically accurate, it tars some no-crime areas with a dark brush, making it appear that some counties with no deaths have high rates of shootings, which they do not.

You don't seem to understand the concept of a "rate." You need to master the arithmetic concept of division before you can understand rates.

It is probably not possible for us to try to teach arithmetic in this forum.

So T Rexx perversely gloates that all those Republican counties with little and often, no crime, appear to have high rates of shooting, while the high crime democrat areas appear to have low rates. Illinois--indeed, Chicago itself---has more shootings that all of Nevada, but the reverse appears to be true from the map.

But the "very sparsely populated" Republican areas do NOT have "little and often, no crime" as you state. They are, in fact, areas of HIGH crime (at least with regard to gun deaths), as the map clearly shows.

As I said, you need to learn how to divide in order to appreciate what these maps are demonstrating.

 

[Benvolio]

You don't seem to understand the concept of a "rate." You need to master the arithmetic concept of division before you can understand rates.

It is probably not possible for us to try to teach arithmetic in this forum.

§7


But the "very sparsely populated" Republican areas do NOT have "little and often, no crime" as you state. They are, in fact, areas of HIGH crime (at least with regard to gun deaths), as the map clearly shows.

As I said, you need to learn how to divide in order to appreciate what these maps are demonstrating.

Some unsettled areas which have no crime are shown with a high rate of crime by being included with areas of some crime. You yourself have been mislead by the map when you claim that they are "areas ofHIGH crime ...as the map clearly shows".

 

[kallipolis]

We are discussing the map at#164. Areas with high shooting death rates are dark red;those with lower rates are blue. Yet, every sparsely inhabited deserts and forests of the west, including Nevada are dark red while Chicago , Manhattan, Los Angeles and other high crime areas are blue. Apparently this is because it shows deaths per hundred thousand.AND it carves out large areas with a hundred thousand; then one or two death will result in a high "rate". So while it may be technically accurate, it tars some no-crime areas with a dark brush, making it appear that some counties with no deaths have high rates of shootings, which they do not. It should have been done county by county, so that counties with no shooting would be light blue or white, while counties with shootings would be colored to reflect its shootings. So T Rexx perversely gloates that all those Republican counties with little and often, no crime, appear to have high rates of shooting, while the high crime democrat areas appear to have low rates. Illinois--indeed, Chicago itself---has more shootings that all of Nevada, but the reverse appears to be true from the map.

Well noted. I will follow this discussion closely.

 

[T-Rexx]

Some unsettled areas which have no crime...

There is no such thing as an area of "no crime."

Find me a county with no residents or visitors, and I will show you an area of no crime.

You keep equating "low population" with "low crime rate." They are not the same. A dysfunctional couple living on a desert island is just as likely to have a heated argument as a dysfunctional couple living in a Chicago tenement. But, if there are more guns on the desert island than in the tenement, they are more likely to kill each other.

But no, I don't expect you to understand that easier access to guns means that people are more likely to actually use them. That would be crazy!

 

[MakeDigitalLove]

There is no such thing as an area of "no crime."

Find me a county with no residents or visitors, and I will show you an area of no crime.

You keep equating "low population" with "low crime rate." They are not the same. A dysfunctional couple living on a desert island is just as likely to have a heated argument as a dysfunctional couple living in a Chicago tenement. But, if there are more guns on the desert island than in the tenement, they are more likely to kill each other.

But no, I don't expect you to understand that easier access to guns means that people are more likely to actually use them. That would be crazy!

It would be crazy and it would be nothing but witchcraft!

 

[Benvolio]

A map is necessarily misleading when it shows the unsettled desert as high crime areas and Chicago, LA and NY City as low crime.

 

[T-Rexx]

^ Not if the unsettled desert area has a higher crime rate than Chicago, LA, and NY.

 

[Vitamin]

Wow. There's so much bad information coming from both sides in this debate it's difficult to know where to start.

First of all, the map was NOT put out by the FBI, and their collections of gun crime were not used to put it together. What the map does show is a collection of gun related deaths as found by the Center for Disease Control between the years of 2004 and 2010. That would presumably include not just gun homicides, but suicides and accidents. It would also not include those who were shot, but survived regardless of their circumstance.

Secondly, the map does not even come close to reflecting a results-by-county map of a Presidential election. Those are overwhelming red no matter who wins the White House. Take the 2008 results, for example which of course resulted in the election of Barrack Obama:




Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008#

 

[Vitamin]

Also, the CDC's map show results per 1,000 people by county. There is no reason to assume it's inaccurate if you use simple division.

 

[rareboy]

Some unsettled areas which have no crime are shown with a high rate of crime by being included with areas of some crime. You yourself have been mislead by the map when you claim that they are "areas ofHIGH crime ...as the map clearly shows".

Oh my sweet Jesus Christ.

It isn't about rates of crime.

It is about gun deaths per 100000 people.

What is so fucking hard for people to understand about this?

 

[T-Rexx]

Wow. There's so much bad information coming from both sides in this debate it's difficult to know where to start.

First of all, the map was NOT put out by the FBI, and their collections of gun crime were not used to put it together. What the map does show is a collection of gun related deaths as found by the Center for Disease Control between the years of 2004 and 2010. That would presumably include not just gun homicides, but suicides and accidents. It would also not include those who were shot, but survived regardless of their circumstance.

Secondly, the map does not even come close to reflecting a results-by-county map of a Presidential election. Those are overwhelming red no matter who wins the White House. Take the 2008 results, for example which of course resulted in the election of Barrack Obama:






Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008#

But your map looks like the other one.

Republican areas (primarily south and west) have higher gun death rates. Democratic areas (West coast, upper Midwest, and New England) have lower rates.

 

[Benvolio]

What it really shows is that local incidents or small pockets of several shootings are used to smear very large areas red.

 

[rareboy]

^ And still....all you are worried about is the political optics of your own mis-perception of what the map is actually saying.

There is no hope at all.

 

[Kabluey]

What it really shows is that local incidents or small pockets of several shootings are used to smear very large areas red.

It appears that similar incidents are even rarer in the cities.
You're keen to paint all Chicago, for example, as murder central, despite the crime rate varying from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.
On average, it appears the countryside is a more dangerous place to be.

 

[Benvolio]

It appears that similar incidents are even rarer in the cities.
You're keen to paint all Chicago, for example, as murder central, despite the crime rate varying from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.
On average, it appears the countryside is a more dangerous place to be.

Nonsense..........

 

[Kabluey]

Nonsense..........

How could it not be... the homicide rate for Chicago is 15.1 per hundred thousand people, much higher than New York at 4.1...

But if there's been one or two isolated incidents in a small town, and there continue to be one or two isolated incidents each year, at some point you have to acknowledge that they're not isolated.

You've seized on uninhabited areas, while ignoring lightly populated regions with elevated homicide rates.

 

[opinterph]

Also, the CDC's map show results per 1,000 people by county. There is no reason to assume it's inaccurate if you use simple division.

The maps are published by The Oregonian and claim to be based upon data from the CDC. The results are shown per 100,000 residents for each county – with some counties displayed as grey “because the numbers were small.”

What it really shows is that local incidents or small pockets of several shootings are used to smear very large areas red.

Or, in other words, some counties consist of larger geographic areas than others.

The relative size of the counties is less informative than the pattern of distribution, which demonstrates the relative frequency of incidents as compared to a common variable – in this case a standardized population value.

The best way to illustrate the point you appear to be attempting to make is to produce a map that shows the number of incidents per geographic area irrespective of the population variable.

 

[Benvolio]

Alas, the method used more complicated than it seems at face value. We are told that the Oregonian used the AVERAGE number of gun deaths per 100,000 county residents. BUT then they are SMOOTHED. The smoothing method is described: "Geospatial smoothing can be applied to national, regional, or state maps showing county-level detail. When a county-level map indicates many unstable (or undefined) rates, geographic patterns can sometimes be clarified by displaying smoothed rates. For a given county, the smoothed rate is calculated by using the data for that county plus the data from counties that border it. The result is a rate that represents the county “neighborhood”.

All this is being done by an anti gun or pro gun control publication.

 

[T-Rexx]

^ I still don't understand your complaint.

How is "smoothing" of data objectionable? (It is routine in science, because it helps to illustrate trends that the data are showing).

And why are you so obsessed with having gun deaths presented on a per acre basis, rather than per capita? Of what use could one make of such a statistic?