Washington Post slams Everytown statistics

What did I miss? Did I slip through the portal into a mirror universe? This link was on the front page of the WaPo. Labeled "analysis"


https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...k-525pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.ccc432aa4941

No, there haven’t been 18 school shootings in 2018. That number is flat wrong.

Everytown has long inflated its total by including incidents of gunfire that are not really school shootings.

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wut??

After The Washington Post published this report, Everytown removed the Jan. 3 suicide outside the closed Michigan school.

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You dont say

In 2015, The Post’s Fact Checker awarded the group’s figures — invoked by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) — four Pinocchios for misleading methodology.

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Shocking! Everytown illegal mayors goobering statistics! Well, shocking that is that WaPo printed the truth and linked to it on the front page.

First possibility: a broken clock is correct twice per day.

Second possibility: desperate to get subscribers.

Amazing...

but welcomed

aaaannnnd, cherry-picking stats...

What is not in dispute is gun violence’s pervasiveness and its devastating impact on children. A recent study of World Health Organization data published in the American Journal of Medicine that found that, among high-income nations, 91 percent of children younger than 15 who were killed by bullets lived in the United States.

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Can we define that any more narrowly to make it sound worse?

By race, maybe?!!

Mr H said:

aaaannnnd, cherry-picking stats...



Can we define that any more narrowly to make it sound worse?

By race, maybe?!!

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I feel like they threw that in at the end as a bone to soften the blow.

Not too many people read to the bottom of an article.

Kudos to the Wash Post fact checkers. They don't let Everytown (and those that cited the bogus Everytown stat) get a pass, and instead go on and on tearing down the agitprop.

the problem is while the fact checker proves the statistics wrong the washington post will ignore that and continue to use them in other articles. Same thing happened when the fact checker debunked most of the claims about the hearing protection act- the main part of the post continued to publish articles and write editorials using the arguments debunked by their own fact checker.

Drmsparks said:

the problem is while the fact checker proves the statistics wrong the washington post will ignore that and continue to use them in other articles. Same thing happened when the fact checker debunked most of the claims about the hearing protection act- the main part of the post continued to publish articles and write editorials using the arguments debunked by their own fact checker.

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#fakenews. Don’t let facts get in the way of a story.

If you can't get the numbers you want, make something up.

Mr H said:

aaaannnnd, cherry-picking stats...



Can we define that any more narrowly to make it sound worse?

By race, maybe?!!

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I wish I knew how to quote your quote as well...but regarding the "among high-income nations" part, that little detail reminds me of this interesting article my wife found and shared about comparing US to other countries:

https://www.mdshooters.com/showthread.php?t=220275

Personally, I just say, "Ef'em. The whole point of this country is that it's not Europe," but the article had some interesting other points, too.

While surprising, there were a lot of jabs thrown through out

Gun violence is a crisis in the United States, especially for children, and a huge number — one that needs no exaggeration — have been affected by school shootings. An ongoing Washington Post analysis has found that more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999

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The figures matter because gun-control activists use them as evidence in their fight for bans on assault weapons, stricter background checks and other legislation. Gun rights groups seize on the faults in the data to undermine those arguments and, similarly, present skewed figures of their own.

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This quote basically says, "We are actually just trashing everyone for the same thing net gain/loss is "zero"

It is a good thing that Everytown hasn't found out about the firearm discharges on this campus or their numbers would be much higher.
https://www.facebook.com/WVURifle/

Drmsparks said:

the problem is while the fact checker proves the statistics wrong the washington post will ignore that and continue to use them in other articles. Same thing happened when the fact checker debunked most of the claims about the hearing protection act- the main part of the post continued to publish articles and write editorials using the arguments debunked by their own fact checker.

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That is one aspect of this battle which is so frustrating, seeing the same old lies repeated as if they are Gospel truth. How many times does Kellerman's 1993 study or Webster's Missouri hogwash need to be debunked before writers stop using them as "facts" in articles? They are both pure BS but a cogent explanation of why they are nothing more than "sagecraft" is way too long for use as a comment on any article using them and certainly a case of TLDR for the social media mindset.

I am coming very close to falling back on Kurt Schlichter's argument style but it seems too much like opening the fourth box.

https://ijr.com/opinion/2015/07/245...-new-argument-against-gun-control-here-it-is/

danb said:

What did I miss? Did I slip through the portal into a mirror universe? This link was on the front page of the WaPo. Labeled "analysis"


https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...k-525pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.ccc432aa4941

No, there haven’t been 18 school shootings in 2018. That number is flat wrong.



wut??



You dont say



Shocking! Everytown illegal mayors goobering statistics! Well, shocking that is that WaPo printed the truth and linked to it on the front page.

Click to expand...

********************************************
Did I just actually read that from the WaPo..??I think I need stronger reading glasses..pinch myself or stub my big toe,did Bloomt**d face flush a pale white from fright..??Bugger..

fidelity said:

Kudos to the Wash Post fact checkers. They don't let Everytown (and those that cited the bogus Everytown stat) get a pass, and instead go on and on tearing down the agitprop.

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The post is using the Everytown statistics right now in other pieces.

And the Post is not being altruistic in the article debunking it, the post is utterly anti second amendment. What the post knows, is the definition Everytown is using likely means that school shootings by the metric used by Everytown is twice as common 25 years ago.

Gun control advocates have to either cherry pick as "notable shootings" or "high profile shootings" with very carefully chosen numbers to avoid the problem that almost every way you count these events are LOWER today, not higher than in the past.

The core problem for them is that US gun murder is less than half of 25 years ago. Gun murder of children in the 0-5, 6-12, 12-17, 17-20 cohorts is also half of what it was 25 years ago.

Heck the post is today also using a "polling" number on assault rifle ban support from right after las vegas without noting that there are ALWAYS a short-live spike up after events, and a great decrease in support for assault rifle bans after. They are quoting 68% in favor a ban when they know that support for assault rifle ban when gallup and Pew both show support for ban down in 30, 25, 20, 15, 10 and five year metrics. It typically goes up 10 or 20 points after an event and then down 12 or 22 points a few months later.

Look here at the long term trend which smooths out the upblips into actual valid context:
http://content.gallup.com/origin/ga...roduction/Cms/POLL/z1glhmw4sksuic7lekpteq.png



The Post also uses, without criticism, the GSS numbers on self reported gun ownership rate as actual gun ownership, when it has run analysis pieces how GSS type surveys are large undercounts - on anything highly private. Survays on who is gay are "undercounts" surveys on who has smoked dope are "undercounts" but surveys on who owns a gun? No the post has not once said they could e an undercount.

The post also sometimes still uses the everytown developed narrative on "a mass shooting a day" which was based on a definition of four persons wounded, including the shooter. When this number was shown to a) be virtually all gang on gang, criminal on criminal, or in some cases included hearing injuries, and when analysis of prior years showed that this number was actually falling per capita, they started to distance themselves from the claim. But only after they had repeated it over and over.

dogbone said:

How many times does Kellerman's 1993 study or Webster's Missouri hogwash need to be debunked before writers stop using them as "facts" in articles?

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kellerman is one of the most duplicitous junk science promulgators and he is simply taken as gospel. Work of his objectivity shown to be absurd is one of the reasons for the CDC ban.

I gotta do work stuff now, but can you guys post up some examples of the press using flat out wrong everytown information in reporting for me. I've got some examples that need assembling for an anti-gunner that thinks everytown is 100% factual.

the sad thing is that the Brady campaign, Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Ownership (I know H0rwitz has violence) and Josh Sugarmann are equally dishonest. When Paul Helmke was still on the HuffyPuffy he was routinely losing to people who weren't lawyers