Bang! (Does a bullet make you dead-er than a car-crash?)

I'd like to begin this post by unequivocally stating that I am staunchly against violence. Furthermore I can think of nothing worse than losing a child--to any cause. That having been said, I would like to address a story heard on NPR recently with regard to violent gun deaths.

For those who have never taken the Mass Pike into Boston, there is a billboard, 250 feet long by 20 feet tall that has been owned by the organization, Stop Handgun Violence. While their goal is laudable, I wonder at their numbers. Not that they are wrong, only that they are somewhat subjective.

On May 24 of this year, a new billboard was revealed with a counter that shows the number of kids killed by guns since the 2010 elections. As of May 26 (according to a Google images search, anyway) 1,624 kids had been killed by guns. Annualized, this says that 2,892 kids will be killed by November 2, 2011 (one year from the elections).

There are two glaring problems with this statistic: first the time frame is arbitrary and second, the term "kid" is not well defined.

Let's begin with the arbitrariness of the time-frame. I see three problems with it: First, while it is generally accepted that Republicans are more progressive with regard to gun control (and I am prepared to stipulate that point), it is irrelevant. Unless Stop Handgun Violence is suggesting a causal relationship between the election of a Republican majority in one house of the national legislature, and handgun deaths, this is a meaningless date. Second, rather than reaching out to partner with Republicans to find some way to reduce handgun violence (or even stop it), they alienate that portion of the electorate who have the most credibility with firearms owners. Finally, it's just a difficult time-frame to work with. Quick, how many days has it been since the elections? How many months? Or what portion of a year? See my point? This is why we want to pick clear dates that are easy to work with. This is especially true when you have someone's attention for all of about 8 seconds as they zoom by the billboard.

The second glaring problem is that the term "kid" is not well defined. Is it everyone under 18? 17? 13? I would assume 18, but I could have chosen age 12 as the cutoff, with the justification that after 12 you are a teen and no longer a "kid." Similarly if I were 60, I could have chosen anyone under 40. Finally, if I were a villain on Scooby-Doo, anyone who interferes with my nefarious plot is a kid, regardless of age or species, (the Scooby-Doo definition is equally ill-defined and contains the confounding adjective"rotten", which may alter their predisposition to firearm violence).

Now you could legitimately argue that this is splitting hairs, but I would argue that it is not. Look at this graph, showing the number of deaths by guns by age for the years 1999 - 2007:

As you can see, up to age 12 or 13, your chance of being killed by a gun, either accidentally or intentionally is almost nothing. But around age 13, your likelihood of being murdered skyrockets. Despite the fact that about 3,000 17-year-olds were killed between 1999 and 2007, you should remember that there were about 34,500,000 17-year-olds during that time. This makes the odds of a 17-year-old getting shot about 1 in 11,500, or 0.0087%. A fatal car crash is almost three times as likely, about 1 in 3,500, 0r 0.0284%.

There are a large number questions I didn't answer here, such as the effect of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status and geography on the probability of gun violence. These are all questions that, if answered, might give a more meaningful insight into how to stop gun violence. For example, if we find that a disproportionate percent of shootings are on rural farms at the end of winter, we would want to address the problem very differently from if almost all of them occurred in ballet classes among girls jealous of the prima ballerina.

Now, before I go, I want to put my money where my mouth is. I am all for stopping gun violence and want to help in some way. Therefore, all advertising money made on this site between now and September 1, 2011 will go to Stop Handgun Violence. And who knows? Maybe they'll use that money to give some better statistics!

Finally, speaking of statistics, my source for information was the CDC's excellent database, which you can check out here: http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html, as well as the infoplease web site: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html.

OK, I'm done shooting my mouth off.