In the end accounting, Joe Huffman may be one of the most-effective pro-rights webloggers – he is as patient as Job, sharp as the proverbial tack, knows what he is talking about, and has a wonderful way of both not mincing words and phrasing things in an occasionally… entertaining fashion. As such, when he finally throws up his arms in despair, you know someone has well and truly screwed up… repeatedly.
A few days ago, Joe wrote this statement:
The violent crime rate did not go up in proportion to the gun or ammunition sales.
… which is not a terribly complicated thing to say. Assuming that the percentage change in violent crime rates between 2008 and 2009 is V, and assuming the percentage change in firearm/ammunition sales between 2008 and 2009 is F, is V equal to F? Yes or no. True or false. 1 or 0. More generally, is V less than or greater than F, or is one negative and the other positive? And across a wider range, what about historical trends?
In response to this relatively plain statement, MikeB302000 said:
Joe, you are not only the master of the comparison, but of the carefully worded proposition that can be argued indefinitely. That sentence is a work of art, your art.
Um, wat?
That “proposition” is either true or false. There is no “indefinitely” to its argument – the numbers are out there, you crunch them, you see where they lie, and you determine the outcome. Unfortunately, MikeB302000 has admitted that he has no method for differentiating truth from falsity, and that he cannot understand basic mathematical relationships, so this most-recent exposure of his rank ignorance is nothing new. It was, however, the straw that broke the camel’s back, with Joe responding:
Last night when I read your comment, even before Weer’d posted his, I thought, “I must have a 50 point IQ advantage on him. I don’t know if I can explain things at a level he could understand them.”
After spending considerable time thinking about it last night I am still at a loss. I think you are beyond my help.
Sorry, but you are a waste of my time.
Wow. I cannot say as though I have seen that kind of condemnation from Joe terribly often, if ever, before – but, really, in Sparky’s case, it was just a matter of time.
However, just because I do know the numbers are out there, and because I am bored enough to do so (what with all the spare time I have while we prepare for an international, multi-week vacation), and because I firmly believe in driving a point home to the glue factory, I am going to go ahead and present the supoprt for Joe’s statement, in as bare-bones a form as I possibly can.
So, from the beginning of that sentence, how has the violent crime rate changed of late? Thankfully, we can avoid the raw numbers, and use Table 3 of the FBI’s 2009 Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report, which tells us that violent crime increased by 1.9% in 2006, decreased by 0.7% in 2007, decreased by 1.9% in 2008, and decreased by 5.5% in 2009. Granted, the numbers for 2009 are preliminary, and may change in the future, but we will just run with them for the time being.
Next, how have firearm sales changed of late? Well, to be fair, that one is a little harder to track – we can examine NICS transactions, but each one of those records could be for one firearm, or a hundred. Instead, we will just go to the root of the equation, and consider firearm production numbers – after all, while the news is quick to harp on the “declining” firearm market, it is not like there have been any news reports of gun dealers’ stocks not moving, or warehouses full of unsold firearms, and firearm manufacturers do not produce just for the fun of it. So, assuming every firearm produced in a year also sold in that year (which is not a wholly baseless assumption), in 2005, 3,241,494 firearms total were produced/sold. In 2006, 3,858,823 firearms were manufactured, indicating a 19% increase in production. In 2007, 3,922,619 firearms were sold, yielding a 1.7% increase. In 2008, 4,498,944 and a 14.7% increase. In 2009, again based off preliminary numbers, 5,408,799 firearms came into existance, indicating a 20.2% increase.
And, the last part, what about ammunition? Well, the numbers are out there, but they are generally from individual manufacturers, and I am honestly not that bored – if anyone can dig up consolidated sources of information on the number of bullets produced a year between 2005 and 2009, though, I will be happy to update this post.
So what about the test? Did violent crime increase in proportion to firearms? For the sake of clarity, the concept of “in proportion to” basically boils down to “two ratios being equal”, and in this particular case, we did the hard work already and normalized the ratios to all be X/100 – after all, 19% is actually 19/100. So, putting all the information in a single location, the result we get is:
| Year | Violent Crime Change | Firearm Production Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | +1.9% | +19% |
| 2007 | -0.7% | +1.7% |
| 2008 | -1.9% | +14.7% |
| 2009 | -5.5% | +20.2% |
One can clearly see the relationship, or lack thereof, from the table above – to wit, violent crime did not increase in proportion to firearm production for any of the above four years. In fact, violent crime only managed to increase one year, while the number of firearms being produced increased solidly each and every year. If you were to be really bored, and punch those numbers into Excel, you would find that the change in violent crimes correlates to the change in firearms being produced with an R-value of -0.22969, which is a very weak, negative correlation indeed.
As such, one can honestly, truthfully, and definitively state, without the slightest bit of argument at all, that, in the past four years we have numbers for, the violent crime rate in America has not gone up in proportion to firearm sales (which, by the way, rather disproves the “more guns = more crime” hypothesis). I have absolutely no faith that MikeB302000 will be able to understand this explanation (in fact, I am fairly certain I lost him around the time I started generating the change-in-production numbers), but this post was not exactly written for him… As always, it is good to have the truth out in the open; sometimes, though, you just have to spell it out excruciatingly explicitly.
I’m doing this from my Windows Phone 7 which makes it a little difficult to do the research but I think we have been trying to help MikeB302000 with his special education needs for over a year now.
At first I thought he might be just playing with us and pretending to be stupid. I could not believe someone could be that stupid and still be capable of formulating a complete sentence. It still might be that he is just playing the role of the troll but it doesn’t matter. He is not worth our time.
I have a post in mind to elaborate on this. I might be able to get it out late tonight.
Thanks for the link and the kind words.
Well Sparky isn’t as smart as an 11th grader!
My youngest son immediately understood the explicit and implicit message behind the sentence.
I’ll try to find a 5th grader to see how Sparky rates but I’m afraid it is not looking good for him.
I completed the post I was talking about.
This is why I point out that people like MikeB, or Japete, or Jadegold, or Laci are mentally ill. They are OBVIOUSLY not playing with us (Well they all do things to inflame and troll, but I believe the majority of their actions are sincere) but for them to demonstrate the inability to understand the issues, and to fail to see their own behavior as something the average person would be embarrassed by, would be impossible, as they can write clear sentences, and they all hold full-time jobs.
Instead I sense a mental block that connects their fragile ego to the ideology they use to identify themselves. People like MikeB, Japete, Jadegold, and Laci ARE Gun control, and without it they wouldn’t have an existence, when people point out that gun control is a backwards, and ignorant ideology, they don’t re-think their beliefs like a rational person would, and they don’t seek out to disprove the facts against them. Instead they take it personally and lash out.
These are not normal, or sane people.
I think MikeB just has a nasty habit of saying whatever crazy bullshit he thinks is most likely to get him noticed. He’s an attention whore and little more. Like Joe I have a hard time accepting that anyone can be that terminally stupid.
That’s not to say I don’t also think he’s an idiot.
@mike w. – I think you’re correct. If you look at Mike’s early Blog logs he talks about the Death Penalty, Vegitarinism, the wars, and left wing political politics.
He got nothing because while I don’t think he’s a total idiot, he isn’t bright enough to write an interesting blog post.
But when he talked about gun control, he roped us in with our desire to convert and educate. In this event, Joe was right. Expose, and abandon. Far too many of us wasted far too much time feeding his ego.
@Joe Huffman – Heh, good call – my first post on him was exactly a year before this one, and in all that time, he has not progressed a whole lot beyond where he started – about the only thing I can recall that he admitted he was wrong about was assault weapon bans, and even that, he occasionally weasel-words around re-enacting.
At this point, though, and over those 365 days, I think it is very safe to say that we have more than sufficiently established the sought-after “pattern of misconduct”, both in his continuing ignorance and stupidity, but also his militant unwillingness to do a damned thing about either.
I agree that it is long past time to abandon him to wallow in his own private hell, unaware of it though he may be. That said, one must be careful of repeated lies becoming “truth”, which is something I am going to address over at you post
.
@Bob S. – Yeah, well, are you really surprised? He cannot do basic math, he does not understand the scientific method, and apparently he does not get basic elements of the language. It must suck to lead that kind of life…
@Weer’d Beard – They sure as hell are not on an even keel, that is for bloody certain… It may be due to the significant cases of narcissism they most likely are stricken with, it may be due to more deep-seated psychological issues, but as Heinlein says, any person who cannot do basic mathematics is not really an adult human being. Perhaps an undeveloped child inhabiting the body of an adult, but scant more.
Japete is pretty much the prime example of that lack of self-identity you are talking about, though… People presented her with the bare, plain facts of the situation, and she reacted as though people were personally attacking her, and specifically her, rather than the positions she is espousing. To be certain, some people were definitely snarky, and deservedly so as the conversation progressed, but to the extent that she reacted? Hell with that.
@mike w. – Hell, I have been saying that a while. The guy is a straight-up attention whore, and will do whatever is necessary to keep the hits coming in. If that means he has ot act even more stupid than is the baseline for him… yeah, he is certainly not above it.
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s46aynuroz&r=36
Seems that not engaging on his blog is making a difference, wouldn’t you say?
@Weer’d Beard – To be fair, you still kind of are, what with your still commenting there
… Cut off his feed supply of comments (if only I could get that point across to RuffRider and the rest), and I have little doubt he will metaphorically die.
@Bob S. – Borken link. Sitemeter being wonky, or Sparky hiding his unimpressive stats?
I maybe post 3 comments a month, and mostly just go there to see the inevitable in-fighting between Cabot and Sparky. There’s nothing I can do about the remaining hold-outs on his blog. That being said he only now comments at Joe’s and Sebastians, and both of those places are very rare, and his site meter is showing an average number of hits in the low teens.
I’ve resigned that we can’t crush his blog…but let’s face it how many of those 100 are us? Let’s face it, he’s not dead to us, but he IS dead to the world…
Weerd,
I’ve checked the referrals for Sparky’s blog. He gets many, many hits from people searching names that appear in news stories he copies.
I’ve seen very few search terms on issues.
@Weer’d Beard – Fair enough. It is unquestionably true that the only new commenters that have been showing up are those batting down his pop-fly arguments… and like you said, I believe, when he comments outside of the few gunblogs that he does visit, no one cares, and no one pays him hardly any heed.
Still, attention whores crave that attention, and even in small doses, we are, unfortunately, keeping him going.