# Brady Campaign claims **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 29, 2013, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044 "2013-04-29T20:12:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/21 "2013-04-29T23:36:58Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Anyway, I get it…you don’t like the Brady folks, you disagree with them, and you’re trying to poke holes in their arguments. This is a group that has an agenda, after all. I don’t buy that their data collecting methods were random. They skew the statistics to lean in a manner they want them to. Interviewing kids from the inner cities and mixing those results with interviews from kids in different areas may give them the ratios they present, but it’s not an honest depiction of reality. If 25 kids in one school see the same shooting take place, and 80 kids in another school have never seen a shooting take place, there is your 1 in 4 ratio. It sounds like there were multiple shootings but in this example it was just 1 incident. They present the 1:4 ratio in an attempt to make it seem like there are more shootings involving teenagers than there actually are. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/22 "2013-04-30T00:27:41Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > Interviewing kids from the inner cities and mixing those results with interviews from kids in different areas may give them the ratios they present, but it’s not an honest depiction of reality. To be fair, you have no idea since you don’t know much about statistics in general nor about the data gathering methodology of the studies in question. You have an instinctive distrust of the conclusions and that may be valid. But you are leaping to the assumption that the study is incorrect and then looking for any way to justify your conclusion. Why don’t you start by familiarizing yourself with how the data was gathered and then decide if it is accurate? ---
**Author:** ![skdo23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@skdo23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skdo23)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/23 "2013-04-30T00:39:22Z")
> [@skdo23](#): > > Good point. My post wasn’t meant as an argument against gun control (I’m generally in favor of it), but rather just an observation on my part, but still probably too subjective for GD.:smack: My bad. :smack::smack:Meant to say GQ, not GD.:smack::smack: ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/24 "2013-04-30T01:02:51Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > If 25 kids in one school see the same shooting take place, and 80 kids in another school have never seen a shooting take place, there is your 1 in 4 ratio. It sounds like there were multiple shootings but in this example it was just 1 incident. They present the 1:4 ratio in an attempt to make it seem like there are more shootings involving teenagers than there actually are. It doesn’t sound anything like multiple shootings to me. The 1 in 4 simply means, to me, that if you put a population into a hat, and picked out a name, there is a 1 in 4 chance that person witnessed a shooting sometime in their life. That’s all. That statistic is not saying anything about how many shootings there are, just how many people have direct experience with a shooting. Now, will some people not stop to think about what the statistic is telling them? Probably. But there’s nothing I see as sneaky or disingenuous about it and, as I said in the closed thread, I’m neutral on gun control, and actually slightly pro-private ownership of firearms, so it’s not like I have an agenda. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/25 "2013-04-30T01:39:02Z")
Sounds like suspect statistics. Dunbar’s number says the average person knows 150 people. If one in three people know somebody who’s been shot, that works out to one person out of every four hundred and fifty. And the statistic doesn’t say how people got shot. You have to figure a lot of them were veterans shot in military service. On the statistic that nearly one in four American teens have witnessed a shooting, I want to know what they consider witnessing. Does it count if they see it on TV or online? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/26 "2013-04-30T01:48:03Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Dunbar’s number says the average person knows 150 people. If one in three people know somebody who’s been shot, that works out to one person out of every four hundred and fifty. Are you saying one in 450 sounds high? Because that doesn’t sound high at all to me, especially given that about 100,000K people a year have gotten shot over the last few years. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/27 "2013-04-30T01:55:54Z")
Whoops, that should be “100K” and not “100,000K.” 🙂 And, yes, I understand this represents shootings with injuries or death, not unique individuals who have gotten shot. There will be some people over a period of time who will be double, triple, etc., counted in the statistics. But one in 450 over a lifetime sounds plausible to me. Hell, I know four people, all dead: three suicide, one random victim of violence. ETA: Actually, there’s a fifth, but I’m not counting my uncle as he got shot in the military. He’s the only one I could think of that survived a shooting. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/28 "2013-04-30T02:03:27Z")
Ugh. Missed the edit. I should also rephrase “a shooting” to “a gun shot.” Bit of a semantic difference there. Most of the people I know who were shot were suicides. And there’s probably a couple I’m forgetting/ ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/29 "2013-04-30T03:30:11Z")
[… ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/30 "2013-04-30T03:41:12Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > To be fair, you have no idea since you don’t know much about statistics in general nor about the data gathering methodology of the studies in question. > > You have an instinctive distrust of the conclusions and that may be valid. But you are leaping to the assumption that the study is incorrect and then looking for any way to justify your conclusion. Why don’t you start by familiarizing yourself with how the data was gathered and then decide if it is accurate? No, that is not true. I can also promise you that I know more about statistics than you do just based on chance alone 🙂 but not all claims fall into the realm of statistics. You can also have other huge study flaws like the tendency for teenagers to exaggerate or lie that statistics alone can’t tell you anything about. This is a case where fuzzy math can tell you about the plausibility of claim #2 without diving diving into sample sizes or the nuances of any individual studies. Let’s check claim #2 ( **Nearly one in four American teens have witnessed a shooting** ) for plausibility just by using some fuzzy math: **Fact #1:** There are about 90 million people in the U.S. under 20 years old give or take a few million based on my quick numbers. **Fact #2:** There are about 52,000 deliberate shooting in the U.S. per year (2/3rds of those are suicides). Let’s do the fuzzy math here. For teenagers in general to have a 1 in 4 chance of witnessing an actual shooting personally, it would take (90,000,000 people under 20 years old/52,000 shootings a year) divided by 19 years in that age range and divided again by 4. **That means that each shooting would need on average about 22 personal witnesses under the age of 20 not including older people. That also includes all the suicides (2/3rds of all shootings) and take into account any duplicate young people that witnessed more than one.** Conclusion: Not plausible. A large number of our teenage population simply lies on surveys. I am shocked, shocked I tell you. It has nothing to do with statistics. It simply isn’t a plausible conclusion and it shouldn’t be displayed as a real number because it obviously isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![DataX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@DataX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataX)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/31 "2013-04-30T03:41:32Z")
On the second page of that PDF - third bullet point from the bottom - the definition seems to include “witnessing or hearing a shooting”. Hearing a shooting - IMHO - is not the same thing as “witnessing” it. To me - I think of witnessing being either seeing someone shoot a gun at another person - or see a person get shot. But I guess if you hear a gunshot - and later find out someone was shot - you have been a witness that gun violence exists. Not what I think they are implying by quoting that stat. But I have no trouble believing that stat - if you include hearing a gunshot as “witnessing”. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/32 "2013-04-30T03:41:42Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And the statistic doesn’t say how people got shot. You have to figure a lot of them were veterans shot in military service. As I noted in Post #6, the Gallup poll from which this statistic was drawn specifically excluded “military combat”. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/33 "2013-04-30T03:54:17Z")
I can think of one off the top of my head. A friend back in Texas who accidentally shot himself in the foot while he was being driven by a friend to a shooting range. And this was someone who prided himself on his gun safety and really was conscientious about it from what I could tell. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/34 "2013-04-30T04:27:18Z")
> [@DataX](#): > > . . . But I have no trouble believing that stat - if you include hearing a gunshot as “witnessing”. I’d be uncomfortable including merely hearing a shot in that category. There are parts of town where you can hear gunshots every two or three nights, all year round. The sound can travel quite a distance; thousands of people could hear a specific gunshot. So, yeah, if that’s how they define the term, then it’s entirely believable. (The fascinating thing about the “Law of Large Numbers” is how small a number can be, and qualify as a “large number” for these purposes. The average roll on a pair of dice, for instance, converges to very close to 7.0 after only twenty or thirty rolls.) ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/35 "2013-04-30T04:30:21Z")
“There are liars, damn liars & statics.” Or so my Dad always said. I know hundreds & hundreds of kids who never witnessed a shooting. So no 1 in 4 for this group. Is the Brady bunch populated by dogooders with an agenda? I think so. They are not really worried about the poor kids, they want the world the way they would like and not give anyone a choice about it. The very terminology shows that they want answers they like. My Dad also like to say, “Just because 50,000 Frenchmen do it does not make it right.” IMO, the questions were loaded… ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/36 "2013-04-30T04:36:27Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > I suppose the first one could be come about. If someone who was shot was known by dozens or hundreds of people I guess each one could say they knew someone who was shot. That doesn’t prove the amount of total people shot is a significant number, though. A large amount of people in the sample could say they knew someone who has been shot and it could just be one guy known by all in the sample. Well, this does seem to be the most-quoted and most-commented part of your OP among the responding posts, doesn’t it? This may be GD territory more than GQ territory. Here’s my take: Yes, I think they put it that way to jack up the numbers. It’s propaganda. (Disclaimer: To be sure, if they’re trying to make a case for gun control, that’s fine with me.) We see exactly the same thing in campaigns about illegal drugs: The statistics are jacked up to make the problem sound much worse than it is (as if the drug problem isn’t bad enough). The common meme: Some large XX% of all people know (or work with) someone who’s using. That makes the problem sound much worse. If a certain company has 100 employees who work in one office, and _one_ of them is a drug abuser, that’s a statistic of 1 if you count, you know, the drug abusers. But if you count employees who _work with_ a drug abuser, you get to count 99 of them (or even all 100, if you count the perp himself too). This gives you a much scarier statistic to bandy about! ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/37 "2013-04-30T05:23:34Z")
> [@GusNSpot](#): > > “There are liars, damn liars & statics.” Or so my Dad always said. . . . I know dynamics is more fun, but what’s he got against structural engineering? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/38 "2013-04-30T07:06:49Z")
> [@skdo23](#): > > Even if the stats mentioned in the OP are true, there’s still a the issue of whether the shootings occurred under circumstances that would lend weight to the Brady Campaign’s agenda. Based on the question as presented by MikeS in Post #6, I know two people who have been shot - one was a senior law enforcement officer who accidentally shot himself with his service pistol while cleaning it, another was a childhood friend’s adult brother who committed suicide with his father’s hunting rifle that was stored in a locked cabinet. Both tragic, of course, but neither shooting would have been prevented by any of the various gun control laws that the Brady campaign has advocated for. Right. My 'shot" are (not counting combat) a dude who was hit by a pellet when hunting\*, another while cleaning his gun, a suicide- and a couple of cops who were nodding acquaintances. What does “know” mean? I have hundreds of LinkedIn connections- do I “know” them? In other words, as far as friends or family members, I know no-one who was the victim of a criminal shooting. - do I count? when skeet shooting a pellet bounced off and stuck itself about 1mm deep into my arm, barely breaking the skin. Was I 'shot"? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/39 "2013-04-30T12:55:02Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > Conclusion: Not plausible. A large number of our teenage population simply lies on surveys. I am shocked, shocked I tell you. It has nothing to do with statistics. This was my original thought about the second stat. But if they do include “hearing” shots as “witnessing” a shooting, that’ll skew things quite a bit. And, in that case, what is defined as “a shooting?” Just someone popping a cap in the air? Because those guns sound the same as those being aimed at people. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044/40 "2013-04-30T13:46:21Z")
For that matter are we assuming all shootings are a bad thing? Was it a bad thing that the Tsarnaev brothers were shot by police? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brady-campaign-claims/657044.md?page=3)