Multiple Shootings at Oregon's Umpqua Community College

Gun control advocates really need to ask themselves a very serious question - if your numbers are so demonstrative of what is happening and the answer is so easy to reduce the incidence of accidents and deaths by guns, then why are not state legislatures and Congress clamoring to your side of the argument with most making it easier for increased gun ownership by individuals? Could it be that all these people are working class bureaucrats who are easily bought off? And why is the public also in favor of increased gun ownership?

The reason is the same reason that when I saw this post I just shook my head and waited to see if someone caught the obvious problem relative to my post. This is also another perfect example of how the gun control advocates lose the argument on public panels.

If one read my post #1217, I discuss the issue of CCPs and guns licensed to those people - just keep that in mind.

As actuaries explain all the time, you cannot take a mass data set that contain different elements and then say you are comparing equivalent criteria using one number. That would be an actuarial 101 mistake.

Per capita, Wyoming is a much more hunting intensive state. The higher accidental discharge rate of Wyoming includes and is dominated by hunting-related accidental discharge of rifles and shotguns in an outdoors environment. The higher amount of the handling of these particular weapons, the higher the chances and of an accidental discharge, and subsequently the higher number. Basically, the more one loads and unloads a weapon, packs bullets and handles a gun in general, the higher the chances of an accident occurring - no statistical mystery there.)

Furthermore, a lot of these accidental discharges are among professional hunters and longtime users of weapons simply because the hunting environment means handling guns for long periods of time. It is a risk hunters accept.

Therefore, no additional training of ALL gun owners will affect these accidents because the higher rate in WY are statistically derived from a specific subset of long gun users and hunters.

Specific to my post, the issue had to to do with the issue of CCP holders and the guns licensed to them and accidental discharges. And, outside of the hunting long gun subset, there is no higher incidence of kids and accidental discharges with handguns, as compared to New York or anywhere else. These accidental discharges with handguns and kids are spread across all states.

(I do not know the number, but I would venture the number of accidental discharges involving long guns among kids in WY is higher simply because many more kids handle long guns on a regular basis. I also venture that the number of accidental discharge rates are higher for ALL major hunting states specifically because of long guns / hunting accidents.)

But here is where advocates lose the argument completely - Wyoming has the highest gun ownership rate in the country (63% of households), yet in 2010, the entire state had only 5 murders that were committed with guns. Check out NY and even CA and NJ on your own and see the multiples higher murder rate using guns per 100,000. Now, figure out which state you are most likely to shot by someone on purpose during the commission of a crime, the state with fewer guns or more guns per capita?

Bottom line, important to compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges. My post #1217 dealt with CCP background check systems and education and training licensing procedures in response to the call for increased education and training for ALL gun owners. I repeat again, for CCP holders across states, there is no difference in accident rate involving the guns CCP holders are licensed to carry.

Thus, the question still remains, if there is no difference with CCP holders’ accident rates between the states with intensive ownership hurdles and massive education and training, as compared to states with lesser education and training, then what is the point of some huge national government program, as just having more education and training have not shown to reduce accident rates? (But that is not a statistical mystery either, as there is a base accident rate for everything, and it is very possible, given the data, that we may at that point with gun accident discharge rates).

A little bit of analytical thinking goes a long way - something Google does not provide. Yep, you gotta love numbers.