4thTimeLucky

Just read this Times article , which signals the emergence of this issue into main stream British debate.

Extract:


I myself first saw Moore on TV Nation and thought he was great.

Then I went and saw his London show at the Roundhouse and was quite shocked by the simplicity and flimsiness of his material.

After this I thought I had better read Stupid White Men to see what all the best-selling fuss was about. Having seen him live I wasn't surprised by the child-like humour, but I was shocked at some of the 'facts' he was throwing out. I decided to check up on a few of them (e.g. his gun crime statistics) and found them to be shockingly misleading or just plain wrong.

Finally I looked at a few of the critical web reports on his documentaries and books (see Spinsanity.org). By now it came as no suprise to find that there was a mountain of evicence to show that Moore had waved goodbye to factual journalism some time ago, if indeed he had ever been familiar with the concept.

So why the rant?

Well I am pretty left-wing.
Thanks to a different thread I now have the credentials to prove it:
And so it annoys the hell out of me when there are hundreds of great left-wing cases to be made and many great writers and comedians (I recommend Mark Thomas ) championing them, and Moore is out there undermining all of them with his selfish desire to put showmanship before truthfulness.

If anyone else (of whatever political persuasion) would like to join my campaign to tell Moore to STFU then please do add your thoughts.
I am also open to hearing anyone who thinks that Moore will, in the long run, do more good than harm to the causes he professes to support.

/end rant

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Sparhawk

He's the liberal Rush Limbaugh. I'd like to toss them into a Cage Match and just have them go at it.

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Liquor Dealer

I'd pay a pretty good price to watch that one! A hundred bucks on Rush (and I dislike him as much as I do Moore).

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Scipio

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the hell out of Bowling for Columbine. It's a mighty entertaining movie, but as a liberal, it's disappointing that Moore doesn't appreciate the value of telling the whole truth.

Still, Moore brings something to the table that the democratic party sorely lacks: showmanship. With the exception of Clinton, the party has lacked a leader that could communicate effectively. It's a shame that a firey and controversial liberal like Moore has to come with so many faults.

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BBtB

I hate Michael Moore. I have a friend who will NOT believe what I tell him about the falsehoods in Bowling for columbine. He just thinks that Moore is the only one who will tell it like it is. And the countless websites and what not pointing out the falsehoods are the owns lieing.

You can lead a liberal to water but you can't make them think.

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Charlatan

The biggest problem is that when it comes to either the media paying attention, or just plain attention getting there is a sucking vacuum when it comes to the left side of the political spectrum.

The best informed (i.e. Noam Chomsky) are essentially ignored or maligned by the mainstream media.

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Lebell

A certain one word response is particular appropriate here:

DITTO

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4thTimeLucky

BBtB
I would suggest just finding a few quite irrefutable and outright lies.
The one that first caught my eye in Stupid Whit Men was:

This highliughts two of the classic Moore deceptions:
i) Bollocks statistics - does he really expect me to believe that in 2% of gun firings the burglar is hit and in 98% the owner/family is hit? So *no* bullets *ever* miss everyone and just hit the wall?
Clearly he found that 2% statistic somewhere and then made up what he wanted to about the other 98%.

ii) Misrepresentation - his final throw away comment indicates that the only other option is the burglar killing the family with their own gun. No mention of the burglar injuring the owner. Oh no, its death or nothing.

Charlatan

Chomsky is brilliant. I wish he could have just half as much publicity as Moore.
In fact Moore began his London show with a song, one line of which was (referring to himself) "He's no Noam Chomsky". Shame really.

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Darkblack

---------------
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/m...20020123.shtml



Seems to me liberals are the ones teaching you to think. Maybe you didn't pay attention in college.

smooth

When you first posted I was under the impression that you had actually researched the statistics related to gun crime/accidents and that they were blatantly falsififed.

Have you?

That is, did you find that the 2% was inaccurate and, if so, by how much?

Did you find that the 98% figure was inaccurate and, if so, by how much?

I don't have the book, but did Moore provide a footnote or reference to where he obtained his statistic?

I'd also like to know the extent Moore's editor may have altered certain "sensational" data to create the bestseller his book has become.

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Lebell

I guess it isn't terribly surprising to me that you leap to the defense of Moore, demanding to know just how "innaccurate" the statistics are without acknowledging what most liberals grudgingly admit: Moore lies to advance his agenda.

In any event, this was as close as I could come to your demand for "statistics" in a casual google search:

(All the hotlinks for the various studies cited are available if you need them at this LINK)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How Often Are Firearms Used in Self-Defense?


Introduction
There are approximately two million defensive gun uses (DGU's) per year by law abiding citizens. That was one of the findings in a national survey conducted by Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist in 1993. Prior to Dr. Kleck's survey, thirteen other surveys indicated a range of between 800,000 to 2.5 million DGU's annually. However these surveys each had their flaws which prompted Dr. Kleck to conduct his own study specifically tailored to estimate the number of DGU's annually.

Subsequent to Kleck's study, the Department of Justice sponsored a survey in 1994 titled, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms (text, PDF). Using a smaller sample size than Kleck's, this survey estimated 1.5 million DGU's annually.

There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually. Why the huge discrepancy between this survey and fourteen others?


Dr. Kleck's Answer:

Why is the NCVS an unacceptable estimate of annual DGU's? Dr. Kleck states, "Equally important, those who take the NCVS-based estimates seriously have consistently ignored the most pronounced limitations of the NCVS for estimating DGU frequency. The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge. Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact. In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."

"It is not hard for gun-using victims interviewed in the NCVS to withhold information about their use of a gun, especially since they are never directly asked whether they used a gun for self-protection. They are asked only general questions about whether they did anything to protect themselves. In short, respondents are merely give the opportunity to volunteer the information that they have used a gun defensively. All it takes for a respondents to conceal a DGU is to simply refrain from mentioning it, i.e., to leave it out of what may be an otherwise accurate and complete account of the crime incident."

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively. Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

Kleck concludes his criticism of the NCVS saying it "was not designed to estimate how often people resist crime using a gun. It was designed primarily to estimate national victimization levels; it incidentally happens to include a few self-protection questions which include response categories covering resistance with a gun. Its survey instrument has been carefully refined and evaluated over the years to do as good a job as possible in getting people to report illegal things which other people have done to them. This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done. Therefore, it is neither surprising, nor a reflection on the survey's designers, to note that the NCVS is singularly ill-suited for estimating the prevalence or incidence of DGU. It is not credible to regard this survey as an acceptable basis for establishing, in even the roughest way, how often Americans use guns for self-protection."

(Source: Gary, Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1995, Vol. 86 No. 1.)

On the Other Hand: Studying the Studies

Excerpted from ABCNEWS.com:

The political climate surrounding guns is so intense that studies have been done of studies that have been done about studies. Philip Cook, the director of Duke University's public policy institute, has examined the data behind the 108,000 and the 2.5 million figures and suspects the truth lies somewhere in between. "Many of the basic statistics about guns are in wide disagreement with each other depending on which source you go to," says Cook, a member of the apolitical National Consortium on Violence Research. "That's been a real puzzle to people who are trying to understand what's going on."
For Further Reading


The DGU War:

Gary, Kleck and Marc Gertz, Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun - "By this time there seems little legitimate scholarly reason to doubt that defensive gun use is very common in the U.S., and that it probably is substantially more common than criminal gun use. This should not come as a surprise, given that there are far more gun-owning crime victims than there are gun-owning criminals and that victimization is spread out over many different victims, while offending is more concentrated among a relatively small number of offenders."

David Hemenway, Survey Research and Self-Defense Gun Use: An Explanation of Extreme Overestimates - "Self-report surveys of rare events easily lead to huge overestimates of the true incidence of such events, particularly if the event in question has some potential social desirability. Researchers who claim that such survey incidence data are accurate must show how they have eliminated the enormous problem of false positives. Kleck and Gertz do not accept, let alone meet, this burden of proof. Their survey methodology does not ensure a Specificity rate of well over 99%. Attempts to determine the external validity of their estimates only buttress the presumption of massive overestimation. The conclusion seems inescapable: the Kleck and Gertz survey results do not provide reasonable estimates about the total amount of self-defense gun use in the United States."

Gary, Kleck and Marc Gertz, The Illegitimacy of One-Sided Speculation: Getting the Defensive Gun Use Estimate Down - "Hemenway has failed to cast even mild doubt on the accuracy of our estimates. The claim that there are huge numbers of defensive uses of guns each year in the United States has been repeatedly confirmed, and remains one of the most consistently supported assertions in the guns-violence research area."

Tom W. Smith, A Call for a Truce in the DGU War - "Neither side seems to be willing to give ground or see their opponents' point of view. This is unfortunate since there is good reason to believe that both sides are off-the-mark. . . the main shortcomings of the two approaches and some of the keys issues of contention are discussed."

An interview with Gary Kleck.

This paper, the National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms", contains criticisms of Kleck's survey. [Text]~[PDF]

Kleck responds to some criticism of his study.

Lawrence Southwick, Jr., Guns and Justifiable Homicide: Deterrence and Defense - concludes there are at least 400,000 "fewer violent crimes due to civilian self-defense use of guns" and at least "800,000 violent crimes are deterred each year because of gun ownership and use by civilians."

Newspaper accounts of self-defense with a firearm.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So while it does not address directly what you've asked, the article does support the contention that there are far more successful defensive uses of firearms than are reported in the press and are admitted to by liberals (i.e. Michael Moore) either by direct ommission or by poorly constructed surveys.

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Easytiger

Give me Chomsky any day. He gets about a hundredth of the attention he deserves.

smooth

Yes, Lebell I was "defending" Moore by asking if 4thTimeLucky had found out whether the statistics were actually falsified or inaccurate and wondering by how much, if so.

How silly of me to ask whether the book provided sources...

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Lebell

And how silly of me to ask you if you questioned Michael Moore's statistics as vociferously.

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smooth

Lebell, your articles don't even mildly relate to my questions to 4thTimeLucky.

His position was that Moore misused a statistic regarding the use of firearms in the home while the articles you presented relate to research conducted on all instances of defensive gun uses.

Is this the level of research and logic you employ when determining whether one is deliberately falsifying information or have you already reached a conclusion and are merely finding information that solidifies your opinion despite its relevance?

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"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

smooth

@4thTimeLucky,

Anyway, people can infer whatever the hell they want to from typewritten sentences.

I wasn't "demanding" anything from you; in fact, you don't even need to respond (as I'm quite certain you know).

However, I have respect for your opinions and my impression has been that you research data before reaching conclusions so I am curious what you found, if anthing.

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"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

Lebell

No.

As I stated, statistics regarding the over all use of hand guns in defensive situations was as close as I could come to addressing your questions with a quick google search.

And as I also stated, it supports the overall supposition that anti-gun pundits (such as Michael Moore) under report or don't report at all the such instances.

As to my conclusion regarding Michael Moore's veracity in reporting, that has been covered and documented extensively on these boards.

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Darkblack

This also does not make him a liar. By leaving out parts it is still true. It only makes it biased not false.

sykosystem

Well said, 4thTime...I do suggest to everyone to see Roger & Me, in which Moore makes a slightly better case and is less egotistical than in recent times. But as to recent times...last year when Michael Moore came to a local college, a student tried to announce the living wage campaign by putting it in perspective by saying that what the college was paying Moore to come talk was what some workers would earn in a year. Michael Moore totally shot him down and did not comment on the need for a living wage.

seretogis

In a majority of cases, the mere sight of a firearm will cause the criminal to flee rather than chance getting shot. The percent of the time that a firearm is turned on its owner is probably lower than 2%, especially for trained/licensed gun owners/carriers.

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seretogis

Hundreds of people die in plane crashes every year! If you leave out the fact that millions of people use planes in the same timespan and that you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than dying in a plane crash, it sounds likes a horribly unsafe method of transportation. Knowingly leaving out some of the facts is just as bad as lying.

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4thTimeLucky

Okay, have been away for a few hours so sorry I didn't get back to people on this. (It is now 7am. I have not slept and am still wearing White Tie - I hope that shows my dedication/addiction to TFP )

So....
2%, 98%? Whats going on.
My first thought at seeing those statistics was: This statement (the one I quoted from p.76) *must* be wrong. It says that on all occassions that a home owner's gun was fired in a break-in it hit a person - either the owner, their family or the burglar. Any basic reality check will tell you that that cannot be true. The gun must sometimes hit nobody, and in fact I would suspect that happens quite a lot.

BUT that is just a reality check. It flashed a little red light in my head and I did the sensible thing - check for references an footnotes.....
Here is the entirity of what it says:
Note he says "statistic" when in fact he gives about five statitistics. But that may be a minor point.
So guess what I did next.....

The Brady Campaign "Guns in the Home" Factsheet

And what did I find?

NO mention of 2% of firings hitting the burglar and 98% hitting owner/family.
What they DO say though is...
i) "When someone is home, a gun is used for protection in fewer than two percent of home invasion crimes."
- This seems an unrelated 2% statistic. But Moore could just think it means that if 2% of gun use is to defend the home then 98% must be to attack it! However this is not what the quote says at all. The quote says that in all the home invasions that occur, less than 2% will involve the defensive use of gun.

ii) "in 1999, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, there were only 154 justifiable homicides committed by private citizens with a firearm compared with a total of 8,259 firearm murders in the United States"
- This says that 2% of firearm murders are justifiable (i.e. home self-defence or similar). But its a big stretch to make that fit his statement: The figures include all murders, not just those in homes. And even if it were then this just says that *of* killings 2% are justifiable self-defence and 98% are murders, it doesn't take into account woundings or misses.

So. That statistic sure doesn't come from the Brady factsheet.
But I noticed something else...

Michael Moore:
Brady factsheet:
Given Moore's track record and the fact that he only cites the Brady factsheet as his source of statistics it seems clear to me that he has taken this fact....
(1) a GUN is 22 times as likely to be used to SHOOT your family than harm a burglar.
....and turned it into this fact....
(2) a FAMILY MEMBER is 22 times as likely to DIE from gunfire if you own a gun than if you don't.

Now is it just me, or does the leap from (1) to (2) seem gargantuan and in fact a blatant mistruth?

So that means that on just one page he has essentially either made up or completely distorted two facts that are integral to his argument.


NB: I also followed up the source of the 22 figure to here: Journal of Trauma Seacrh for "Kellermann" and click on Abstract for "Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home". Whilst the sample size seems very small (636 shootings) and the figures given in the Abstract don't quite add up, it still seems a solid enough original source for the Brady factsheet to use.

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KillerYoda

It seems to me, with the Michael Moore thing, all the "lies" people get him on are trivial bullshit. The death tolls in the movie are accurate, but oh no, it turns out the Columbine killers <b>skipped</b> bowling class that day. But, he showed a clip of the sheriff saying they attended class...<b>OH MY GOD!</b> Well fuck, I guess that makes the entire movie bullshit then.

The anti-Moore people are as full of shit as they claim he is. InDave Kopel's anti-BFC article, he says this:

<i>"This serves as a setup for a later segment looking at the causes of Columbine, and arguing that blaming violent video games (which the killers played obsessively) or Marilyn Manson music (which the killers enjoyed) makes no more sense than blaming bowling."</i>
Apparently Kopel didn't read Time, Rollingstone, or Newsweek, which stated the killers hated Manson's music and were actually KMFDM fans. Well, Kopel fucked up, so I guess everything he says in his article is bullshit now too.

It's such a damn crime when a filmmaker makes mistakes in his documentary, but it's entirely alright to start a war before there's any proof of WMD. I love the state of the American public sometimes.

"No weapons? Eh, fuck it, bomb them."

"Oh my God, he made Charlton Heston look dumb? <b>Take away his Oscar!</b>"

I think he's doing good by making movies that make people think and do research on subjects themselves. If you get all your education from movies, documentary or not, then you're a fucking moron to begin with. It doesn't seem right to shit on him because he made a movie you don't agree with, or makes the "club" you're in look bad. Moore succeeds in making people think, whether Klebold and Harris bowled 300's or not.

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Lebell

Your right in one thing KY, MM makes you do research, but mostly to find out which of his many statements are truth, half truths and outright lies.

Speaking of research...

Stupid Academy Award

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KillerYoda

I'm sure FrontPage Magazine never, ever makes statements that contain truth, half truths, and outright lies.

Like I said, the evidence that supports the point of the film, which was our citizens purchase mass amounts of weaponry to soothe our fears still holds true.

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seretogis

In the spirit of Michael Moore.

I agree with KY, for once!

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KillerYoda

Two can play at this game!
Ooooo...yo' momma.
I get your point, Moore editing the NRA speech was deceptive, but that still doesn't make the entire movie a lie.

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damianjames

I have no respect for the man. I feel like he spews diatribe rather than informed opinion.

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retg34

I've read Stupid White Men and even went to go see Moore speak recently, and even though I know much of his facts are skewed to be influential, I still think many of points he makes have merit. Like any political figure (and that's what he is), Moore uses statistics with accuracy of a blindfolded man with vertigo trying to hit a target with a bow and arrow after being spun around twelve times. Just look at any recent politician and the facts they use and try to discern the truth from the big, steamy piles of bullshit. Should we burn Moore at the stake for this, no. Should we demand that he and all political personalities start using the facts generated by studies funded by our tax dollars accurately, hell yes. But he still makes excellent points about the corruption of our political system by the money of big business, and the questionable foreign policy this country is currently engaged in.
The fact is, like with everything, if you're not thinking for yourself, then your living a lie, because everyone one that tells you something has their own agenda. Even me.

4thTimeLucky

I haven't seent the movie (and haven't commented on it here), so that seems irrelevant. In fact if anything I would say I agree with many of the points I hear he makes.

My point seems to be one you would agree with Yoda:

How can we criticise the hawks on the right for taking us to war basd upon lies and mistruths, if we don't *also* criticise the doves on the left (like Moore) for reaching conclusions based upon lies and mistruths.

I think Moore's conclusions are pretty on the button. And as with any truthful conclusion there are facts and statistics that one can back it up with. But when Moore then gies and ignores all of these genuine supporting facts (presumably because they aren't sexy enough) and then distorts other peoples research or just grabs figures from thin air to make what he says more dramatic, then he guilty of exactly the same offence as the lieing politicians he so despises.

If he is seen as the flag bearer for the critical left then when his deceptions are publically exposed a huge swathe of people will feel cheated and become dissillusioned with the left. The left (and I do not include the Democrats or New Labour as being such) will never have the financial backing or the advantage of incumbancy that the right and centre-right do. But what they do have is the truth and the facts to point to it. When Moore jeopordises that one, percious asset then he deserves to be brought to book.

From Moore's Oscar speech:
"We like non-fiction, yet we live in fictious times."

That is a fine statement, but it sounds hollow coming from a man who uses fiction as much as fact in his work.

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geep

I guess I'll just plunk down $12.95, pick a catchy URL, type up some bullshit, and people can quote me as a source. Not only are statistics skewed by the interpreter, but they are subject to the parameters used in collecting them. a quick jump to this website reveals this:

Notice that in the objectives the author states he intends to investigate "guns in the home". (quoted directly from his text). Notice next in his results he states "shootings occurred in or around a residence". Well, which is it? What exactly is included in his statistical count. Were the guns kept in the house? Or were they brought there from the outside? Maybe closer examination reveals the answer but it was not available to me at that website. There are other problems with this research summary, can you find them?

Statistics should always be looked at skeptically, they are not by themselves valid proof, whether in Michael Moore's hands or Rush Limbaugh's (or anyone elses for that matter). Their presentation adds selling points to the pitch, but it doesn't make the product better.

Sparhawk

Funny how I don't see you as nitpicky regarding the investigation of NBC/WMD in Iraq. Maybe it's because you can't argue with this statistic:

Number of NBC/WMD found: 0

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4thTimeLucky

geep

You are indeed being over knitpicking in some ways, but not in all.

Firstly, that is not just any old URL. The article was published in Trauma a peer reviewed journal. That is normally one of the first things we look for in an academic study. It does not mean that it is the final word (other refuting articles could have been written - that is the point of such journals), but it means that it has a lot more credibility than just any old URL.

As for your "in the home" / "around the home" distinction, it is an abstract. By its nature an abstract will over-simplify things - it is trying to summarise a ten page article in two lines. You would need to read the full article before being able to jump to any conclusions.

However the abstract does raise questions. For example, the study finds 10 self-defence shootings, 118 suicides and 54 unintentional shootings. From this it says that for every self-defence shooting there are 11 suicides (11.8 rounded down) - fine. It then says that for every self-defence shooting there are 4 uninentional ones - but why not 5 (5.4 rounded down)?

So the abstract raises questions, but no more. The chances are that Drs. Kellermann, Somes, Rivara, Lee and Banton are, between them, quite capable of dividing 54 by 10. So we should really read the full article.

__________________
I've been 4thTimeLucky, you've been great. Goodnight and God bless!

geep

Good catch on the math! The object of my post was not casting dispersions on the reputation of Trauma or Drs. Kellermann, Somes, Rivara, Lee and Banton. My point was simply this: Just because a guy has some numbers rolling around in his argument that doesn't make his argument true. With this particular study, which I have debated elsewhere so my opinoin of it may be skewed, the questions I raised about the guns being kept in the home or being brought there are legitimate. Many times, contrary to popular belief, parameters for statistics are set with the specific intent of bolstering the presenters opinion. I'm not saying that this is the case in Dr. Kellerman's study but it does happen. There are other ways to use statistics to lend credence to an argument. Their presence does not gaurantee truth.

Your statistic is meaningless to me because IMO we were NOT there JUST to find WMD's. Therefore I will accept your statistic as truth, but it doesn't help your argument.

smooth

Thank you for your research, 4thTimeLucky. I figured you had already started on that.

My initial guess as to why the data doesn't exactly add up could be due to round off compensation, attempts to minimize a Type I, or related to sliding the Chi-square. I'm assuming their variables were nominal so they should have been using Lambda--off to see now...

edit: damn, haven't been able to find the full text, yet. I have found some of the articles listed in the extensive references list (one of which is Kellermann's work). I'll keep poking around but it looks as though I'll have to run to the library and pull the hardcopy eventually.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

smooth

4TheTimeLucky, you switched the wording in number 1.

The Brady Fact Sheet does state that a gun in the home is 22 time more likely to kill (not merely shoot) someone one knows than an intruder.

So the issue becomes whether Moore incorrectly interpreted whether the danger is to family members and people (like friends and surprise visitors), in general, and not whether he incorrectly assessed to risk of death rather than mere shootings.

smooth

I agree with your analysis here to a point. The issue I differ on is that if one's statement doesn't appear to make logical sense we may be faced with an enthymeme. That is, in logic we say "all" meaning every case but in common language "all" often means "all the cases being spoken about."

If faced with an enthymeme, we have to make it valid if it can be read in a valid form. Simply put, "Of all the cases that a gun is fired and hits its target 2% are..."

Presumably, Moore is smart enough to know that at least one bullet will eventually miss, so we *must* conclude that he is not including misses in his sentence--unless we ask and he states otherwise.

So now we are left with our analysis of part (ii). Since the 2% data you cite becomes the upper bound then Moore's statement that less than 2%... is logically acceptable, yet could be sensationalist.

The actually figure could be .5% for instance, yet this still falls under "less than 2%."

4thTimeLucky

First off, I don't want this to become a debate about one particular page of Stupid White Men pertaining to guns.

The fact is that Stupid White Men is *full* of figures and statistics that don't match their references or are just plain wrong. The gun page contained just two examples.

But, as we are talking about the guns, I should try and make very clear the point that Moore is using statistics that I can find no evidence to support. I can see (or I think I can see) what original fact he has distorted, but that doesn't make what he does any better.

smooth

I did not erroneously phrase point (1).
Here is the Brady factsheet again:
Top line says kill. Bottom line says "shooting".
So we need to go back to the original Kellermann study for an adjudication. Here's what the study says:
So the answer: It should be shootings.

This is a prime example of how a statistic gets warped.
Fact 1) A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to *shoot* someone in the family than to shoot the burglar. [- Kellermann study]
"Fact" 2) A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to *kill* someone in the family than to kill the burglar. [- Brady factsheet]
...and now the Moore quantum leap....
"Fact" 3) "A *member of your family* is 22 times more likely to *die* from gunfire if you have a gun in your house than if you don't." [- Stupid White Men, p.76]

So if you lived in a rough area and you had a 5% chance of dieing from a gunshot, what is the effect of you buying a gun?
Answer: You now have a 110% (22 x 5) probability of being killed by a bullet.
Hmmm.

Now I don't get paid for reading Kellermann. Nor do I get paid for writing in TFP. Nor do I have the support of a publisher or a research team if i wanted one. Yet I managed with ease (it took me twenty minutes to find, read and check Kellermann's maths) to find the above out. Why couldn't Michael?

Furthermore, smooth, I think I need to re-emphasise the 2%/98% point. Michael again:
Firstly, I don't find a logical inconsistency in what he says. I think he makes a clear statement that is obviously and intuitively wrong.
Secondly, there is nothing on the Brady factsheet that genuinely resembles Moore's claim. Nor have I found anything that would substantiate it. There are two places where the Brady factsheet uses the figure 2% or a pair of numbers that could used to reach 2%. But neither of these statistics translates into what Moore is claiming.
In other words Moore is just making up statistics that he thinks will look shocking (and of course they do look shocking, because they blow reality out of proportion) and suit his argument.

__________________
I've been 4thTimeLucky, you've been great. Goodnight and God bless!

smooth

Yeah, 4thTime, I'm off to grab the book right now. But just for reemphasis I agreed with your overall analysis.

I also was unable to read the Kellermann study--only the abstract was available to the public on the page you provided and I haven't been able to find it on ebscohost or any other paid full text services from my uni.

so I didn't have evidence that Kellermann only referenced shootings as opposed to killings.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

Lebell

I followed up that link on the Brady Web site, I also did a google search on "Al Kellerman", the author cited for that particular statistic (22 times more likely to be by somebody they know).

Here's a few tidbits I found:

I sounds like specious data and conclusions have been quoted and requoted until they become "fact".

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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