Leave it to HN to completely ignore the point of the article and nitpick statistics. Guns kill more people than terrorism, period. Regardless of the actual numbers, the article's point still stands.
The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
31–40 of 73 posts
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#32> (between 2005 and 2015) 301,797 people in the US were shot dead Somewhat misleading, given that most of them shot themselves.
100k people is still pretty terrible.
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#33> jihadists killed 94 people inside the United States between 2005 and 2015. During that same time period, 301,797 people in the US were shot dead > Americans are more afraid of terrorism than they are of guns, despite the fact that guns are 3,210 times more likely to kill them Er, that's not really how probability works. Sure, it makes some sense but as was pointed out, most of those people shot themselves. Since I…
Even discounting suicides and accidents, shooting deaths are still several orders of magnitude more common than terrorist-caused deaths.
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#34A great example how, based on your readings of the data, you can lie or present any case with statistics... First of all, among the gun deaths there are people that shot themselves, and also people shot in gang shootings and such (where, if you're not in a gang you're not that affected). So the number is somewhat inflated (of course still bigger than terrorism). Second, people fear going into violent neighborhoods wi…
Fourth, terrorism can also bring much more horrible outcomes than the regular gun death, even more than a mass shooting. Some crazies can kill literally tens of thousands via some (not that elaborate) plan. And while it might not always be possible to predict or prevent such a thing, one can still fear it (and fear to further stir the conditions that might make it happen).
I've only done the lazy thing of looking at Wikipedia, but it appears that the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11 is the only event carried out by non state actors in recent history that killed more than 1000 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_and_other_viol...
(my wishy washy language is an attempt to acknowledge that definitions about this stuff are hard, not an attempt to quietly exclude other events. Many actions taken by nations have resembled terrorism in their intent and effect.)
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#35> jihadists killed 94 people inside the United States between 2005 and 2015. During that same time period, 301,797 people in the US were shot dead > Americans are more afraid of terrorism than they are of guns, despite the fact that guns are 3,210 times more likely to kill them Er, that's not really how probability works. Sure, it makes some sense but as was pointed out, most of those people shot themselves. Since I…
The latest statistics that I can find on the CDC's website (final data for 2014) shows that the number of homicide deaths in the US for that year was 10,945, which far outstrips terrorism deaths.
Since I don't intend on shooting myself, the probability of me being shot is immediately a fraction of the number quoted in the article.
While I did not review the data for 2005-2013 and 2015, if the trends are similar in those years, then firearm deaths are about 1/3 (32.6% in 2014).
I live in Ohio.
If you're looking at regional differences, the ratio to firearm homicides to terrorism deaths is even higher in Ohio since there has been no major terrorist attack there, but there have been hundreds of firearm homicides over that 10 year period.
[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_04.pdf table 18, firarm, homicide
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#36There's some rationality to people's fear for terrorism. The impact of a terrorist attack is probably exponentially distributed, like an earthquake attack. Saying no one has died in earthquakes in SF in the last 10 years is not relevant.
Or pandemics – people are afraid of the next Ebola for the right reasons. The 1918 influenza killed 20-50M people.
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#37A great example how, based on your readings of the data, you can lie or present any case with statistics... First of all, among the gun deaths there are people that shot themselves, and also people shot in gang shootings and such (where, if you're not in a gang you're not that affected). So the number is somewhat inflated (of course still bigger than terrorism). Second, people fear going into violent neighborhoods wi…
Another thing is that even if you BAN guns, it would not affect gang shootings because gang members would get guns illegally.
it would not affect gang shootings
Saying this categorically is going too far. I absolutely agree that banning guns wouldn't end gang shootings. I do think it would have quite some impact.
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#38Leave it to HN to completely ignore the point of the article and nitpick statistics. Guns kill more people than terrorism, period. Regardless of the actual numbers, the article's point still stands.
Please don't generalize HN like this, particularly as you choose to participate in the community. If you have specific criticisms, please address them civilly.
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#39[deleted]
Re: The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
#40A great example how, based on your readings of the data, you can lie or present any case with statistics... First of all, among the gun deaths there are people that shot themselves, and also people shot in gang shootings and such (where, if you're not in a gang you're not that affected). So the number is somewhat inflated (of course still bigger than terrorism). Second, people fear going into violent neighborhoods wi…
I think you're wrong about point 4. Could you outline such a plan? As a counter-example: CIA trained operatives with decades of experience and a 20+ person team launching a coordinated attack could only kill 3,000 -- and that was only because of underlying weaknesses in our security policy. The 9/11 attacks were so easy to counter, they didn't even work through one full morning. (By which I mean, 25% of the planes we…
Something like poisoning the water supply, maybe?