Here's another statement from Hemenway:
"The majority of Americans who die unintentionally from firearms are under twentyfive
years of age." No date is given for this claim but one can assume it's for 2003 or 2000, depending on the cited paper.
According to Wisqars, in 2004, there were 649 unintentional deaths by firearm for all age groups. For the ages of 1-25, there were 247. 38%.
Assuming he stayed w/ the "early nineties" wording before switching over to 1996-2001 (as looking at each individual year shows he did), the numbers for 1990-1994 for under 25 were 3926/7143. 55%
For 1990 alone it was 772/1416. Still 55%.
True, that's a "majority".
By 2000, however,(three years before he finished this report) it was 306/776. 39%. Not a majority. The same holds true since at least as early as '96. Over three years before his self cited other paper.
So even assuming he used the same wording from his 2000 paper, it would seem he would have to added over a decade of pre-'96 data to more current to come out w/ a "majority" or he intentionally used old data to make a current claim. Since he cites having accessed WISQARS for numbers in 2004, either way it shows nothing but a case of blatant intellectual dishonesty.
2 comments:
did any of the other age groups show a larger percentage? the word "majority" has been muscling in on the definition of "plurality" for some time now, lots of people say "majority" when they really mean "simple majority".
I haven't looked at too many other separate age groups for specifics yet but the 17-25 demographic is always high. I was mostly focused on Hemenway's changing from "under 25" claims to showing charts of under 15 w/ associated years all over the place.
Post a Comment