Re: "It is erroneous. There is no doubt about that. He said he took a 22 month period. That's almost two years."
No, you don't know it's erroneous. He DID say he took a 22 month period.
Re: "I looked at the annual data for Washington DC, and he's absolutely wrong about it"
He didn't write of an annual rate, he took a 22 month period. That's nearly 2 years as I've noted to you before. You must nearly Double your D.C. data, and add in accidental firearm deaths(if not many of those) and suicides by firearm. Suddenly I see he may be very close to correct indeed, don't you? Hell, he probably is.
Re: "Now we don't know where he got his data on the troops in Iraq, but it's pretty clear that it's wrong too."
Why is that clear? Certainly not from anything you've offered, it isn't. I've searched now, and found that apparantly, there was an e-mail going around which included the guts of this blurb, and more. So I read into some discussion of it and find this as a last word on the subject:
"The rate arrived at for firearm deaths in Iraq was figured by taking the number of deaths due to hostile fire(88), which is much lower than the actual number of deaths (2166). The originator did not include the other deaths because they were caused by incidents other than hostile gunfire i.e. vehicle accidents, IED's, workplace accidents, and heath conditions. So while the figures are accurate for the comparison of the number of deaths attributed to firearms, they do not represent what most would consider to be a fair comparison."
answers.google.com
For my money, anyone who thought the blurb implied Iraq was overall safer, was not thinking clearly. For my money, at this point, the numbers were almost certainly fairly accurate, save the percentage problem noted earlier. For my money, all too many folks refuse to really think, and assume that somehow the blurb said something it simply did not. For my money, there is nothing unfair in the comparison at all if we are bright enough to understand its meaning, save the following: The conclusion that we should pull out of D.C. is a meaningless illogical notion, and yes, the pointed and obvious implication that there is something in this comparison that indicates we should't pull out of Iraq - just as we shouldn't pull out of D.C. - simply doesn't follow.
From a liberal lover of peace and a freedom believer, to you, a self-described "conservative redneck" I bid you a good night.
Dan B. |
