FRIDAY FLASHBACK!: Self Defense Against Rogue Statistics

Buckeye Firearm Association's web site is seeing an amazing growth in visitors and new articles are being posted several times a week.

With everything that is going on, it is easy to miss some important and interesting articles. To make sure that you don't miss anything, we are going to repost one of our more popular articles every Friday.

This week's "Friday Flashback" is....

Self Defense Against Rogue Statistics

by Dean Rieck

Mark Twain is often quoted as saying, “There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics.” That’s another way of saying that while statistics are useful, they can be slippery. Much of the problem with statistics is ignorance about how they are created and what they mean. However, many people, including some anti-gun zealots, purposely misuse statistics, especially polls and surveys, to deceive the public.

Unfortunately, people in the media are equally ignorant about numbers, so they are just as easily deceived and become accomplices in the deception. It works like this: An anti-gun group runs across a statistic that appears to support their cause. They don’t check the veracity of the statistic. They just write a quick news release and rush it to their media contacts.

A busy editor receives the news release, decides to run with it, and hands it to a staff reporter to write up a story. The reporter, who is overworked and underpaid and is likely to be at least a little sympathetic to gun control, doesn’t question the statistic because it just seems to make sense. Plus, since the anti-gun group has a name such as “Americans for Gun Safety” or “American Hunters and Shooters Association,” the reporter doesn’t question their motives because it appears that the group is genuinely concerned about safety, as opposed to the NRA or Buckeye Firearms Association who are openly (and honestly) partisan.

So the statistic gets reported. The public gets deceived. And the truth gets buried under one more shovel full of anti-gun B.S.

So what can you do? The best form of self-defense against deception is knowledge. We’ve discussed how the anti-gun groups funnel their slippery statistics to the media. Now let’s look at how the statistics get mangled in the first place.

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