Reply To: THE PUZZLE OF MURDER-BY-GUN STATISTICS
I’ve already done it. The correlation is between higher rates of firearm ownership and higher rates of firearm related death.
Well at least this time you’ve accurately characterized what the study concluded.
But even if the study is correct (and I’ve no particular reason to believe it isn’t, I’m just covering my bases here), it still doesn’t refute Unseen’s very different statement that gun ownership does not correlate with the (overall) murder rate.
“Firearms related death” and “murder” are two very different things.
They overlap, of course (note, though, that both sets have elements outside the other set), but such overlap doesn’t allow one to carry a correlation involving one over to claiming a correlation involving the other; there’s nothing showing that the overlapped area correlates, much less anything showing that the other set as a whole correlates. I’d almost be willing to bet that professionals at such things have a name for this fallacy.