Mark Addinall writes:
Tim Lambert writes:
I looked in the reference you cite: "How Firearm Crime is Declining"
It claims that the number of firearms owned in Australia has increased
from about 2.5 million to about 4 million (Graph 1). I do not believe
that "quadrupled" is the appropriate way to describe this increase.I have graph 1. 18" from my hose and I'm sure that bar 1. is less than
1.5 million.
The thing's right in front of you and you STILL can't read it
correctly. Sad. Graph 1 shows the firearms homicide rate AND an
estimate of the numbers of firearms owned. It has two scales, one on
the left going from 0 to 3 per 100,000 for the firearms homicide rate
and one on the right for the number of firearms owned going from 0 to
5 million. Mark has mistakenly used the left scale for interpreting
bar 1 to get an incorrect answer of less than 1.5 million for the
number of guns owned in 1979.
He then compounded the error by dividing 4 by 1.5 and getting the
answer 4.
Let me show you the relative length of the bars on the histogram:
1979 *********** 1994 *******************
Mark claimed that it was a "fact" that the second bar was four times
as long as the first one.
So all of those guns imported into Australia actually emigrated and
are living in secular communities in rural Australia.
Gibberish.
If the Australian
Bureau of Statistics states the 3 million firearms have been imported
since 1979, where do you think the are hiding?
The 3 million comes from your misreading of a graph created by Ted
Drane, not the ABS. It is quite possible for the total number of guns
owned to go up, while the percentage of Australians owning to go
down.