By Kevin Wilson
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I’ve always loved that saying. The implications are clear enough for anyone with three brain cells and some pocket lint to rub together between their ears.
You can take numbers, throw them together, draw some fancy charts, and support damned near any conclusion you want. It doesn’t matter that even the most basic examinations of the data will expose your cleverly crafted declarations of ULTIMATE TRUTH as a fetid pile of dingo shit. There’s an agenda to push goddammit, and the pretty numbers are a shining beacon of unassailable evidence that only an insensitive Nazi ISIS NRA terrorist would question, right?
Take, for instance, the oft-touted study that says that there have been more mass shootings than days so far in 2015. That’s pretty fucking terrifying by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, fuck me. 351 times this year someone has walked into a crowd and opened fire?
Not so fucking fast, twinkle tits.
The study, which comes from that most baffling corner of the Internet known as Reddit, defines a mass shooting as any incident in which four or more people, including the shooter, are injured or killed by gunfire. It does not take into account the circumstances in which the shooting occurred.
In the American lexicon, the phrase “mass shooting” brings to mind events like Columbine, or Sandy Hook, or Aurora. In each case, a gunman or gunmen walked into a public place and began killing unarmed civilians en masse. When you tell people there have been 351 mass shootings so far in 2015, that’s what the average person thinks you’re talking about.
Like all the best statistics, it ignores the fact that it’s taking widely disparate events and lumping them together under the same banner for the sake of backing a talking point.
Under that same banner falls gang violence, drug violence, and all manner of events that, while tragic, do not meet the popular definition of mass shooting. It also takes into accounts events with zero fatalities. Seriously. As long as four people take a bullet and the event makes the news, it goes into the tracker.
Look, this shit sucks, but it’s kinda hard to equate a barfight with a few minor injuries to some bastard walking into a shopping mall and taking more shots than a coed on pledge night.
What this study does, and what just about every foaming at the mouth journalist who’s regurgitated it in the hopes of generating a panic and therefore ratings has done, is lump all these events together and hope that either no one would look closely enough to call bullshit or would be too afraid to speak up and admit that maybe they aren’t quite the same thing.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Emperor is nekkid, and he’s got a tiny little shrimp dick.
Of course, calling attention to this crap will do nothing more than affirm to those that support gun control that the EVIL GUN TOTING LUNATICSTM don’t care about human life. To the anti-federalist types, it’s another sign of the VAST LIBERAL CONSPIRACY(TM) to take away your guns and make you all slaves crushed beneath the bootheel of the Fed’ral Gubment.
Slow your roll, fucknuts.
I’m not trying to give anyone more tinfoil to wrap around their tiny little brains. Y’all motherfuckers will see to that on your own. I ain’t gotta do shit.
What I am trying to do is point out that bullshit statistics generated for the sake of pushing an agenda are disingenuous at best, and counterproductive at worst.
We’ve got a serious fucking problem folks. The aforementioned bullshit aside, more and more often, we’re seeing events like San Bernardino go down, and no one has a fucking clue how to stop it.
Actually, I take that back. Everyone has their own ideas how to stop crazy bastards from shooting shit up, but the situation is so polarized that nothing will ever come of it at this rate. The situation is so bad that we can’t even let scientists research the why this shit happens, because the gong show that is Congress has turned it into a partisan debate. And as we all know, the second one side claims a side in a debate, the other side immediately goes balls deep into the the other side, because that’s how Congress rolls. 
If we’re gonna do anything to stop people from shooting up public places, what we need is a consensus on how to move forward. All you’re doing by throwing easily debunked figures into the mix is giving the other side of the debate yet another reason to dig their heels in. There’s enough of that laying around to keep us at an impasse for at least another decade as it is.
How about, instead of throwing more fuel on the fire, let’s sit down and talk. The hippies can bring a giant bag of weed, the 2A folks can provide security, and so long as we don’t run out of Funions and pizza rolls, we might actually be able to hash out a solution.
Yes, that pun was terrible. I’ll see myself out.