The bradys choose their...terminology...very carefully.

[beevul]

"But, in fact, rural, high-gun ownership states like Montana and Mississippi have firearm death rates three times higher than urbanized states like New Jersey and New York. Why? Because the gun suicide problem in rural areas is as significant as the gun homicide problem in major cities."

Death RATES.

I live near a small town we'll just call bumfuck, for sake of discussion.

"Bumfuck" has a real, factual and true population of 34 people.


If someone commits suicide in "Bumfuck" with a gun, thats 1 in 34.


Thats a RATE of 2941 per 100k. If one were to look ONLY at that rate, it would seem bumfuck has a suicide epidemic of monumental proportions on their hands, wouldn't it? Gee, is there something in their water or what? :eyes:

What the brady bunch does, is to note places like Montana and other states/places with a small population, and then use a rate based on that small population.

On the other side of the coin, a larger population example of say 20 million, with the same rate, would have 1188200 hypothetical suicides. For sake of discussion, well call it "megaville".

So say this hypothetical city of megaville DOES have a gun suicide epidemic. Say 100000 commit suicide with guns. Thats 200 per 100k. A rate roughly 14.5 times Roughly lower that Bumfuck. Without looking at the exact numbers, it sure looks like bumfuck has a huge problem on their hands, compared to megaville, doesnt it?



Of course, its misleading beyond the pale, but then, coming from the folks that more or less invented "the choice of criminals and gangbangers", and "a danger to airliners", is anyone really going to be all that surprised by this? They're known to use this exact formulation in comparing high population cities to low population states...Arizona comes to mind, I'll have to dig and see if I can find the thread. They removed DC from their "state grades", and always use Illinios in comparisons, and never, as far as I can remember, have they ever used Chicago.

If one were interested in accuracy, one would target the places where violence actually happened by and large, and compare them to similar places. Of course, they aren't having any of that, it would throw their rate comparisons way out of whack. :eyes: