{"id":37724,"date":"2013-08-06T07:09:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T12:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=37724"},"modified":"2013-08-06T07:10:06","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T12:10:06","slug":"its-only-correlation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=37724","title":{"rendered":"It’s Only Correlation"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the one hand, correlation doesn’t equal causation. <\/p>\n

So I’ll restrain my end-zone happy dance at the news that gun crime in Virginia has plummeted as gun sales boomed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Firearms sales rose 16 percent to a record 490,119 guns purchased from licensed gun dealers in 2012, according to sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
\nDuring the same period, major crimes committed with firearms dropped 5 percent to 4,378.
\n“This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don’t necessarily lead to more crime,” said Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See also: the rest of the freaking country. <\/p>\n

Bit remember – correlation isn’t causation. Knowing that people who live near Mosquitos are prone to getting malaria doesn’t mean Mosquitos cause malaria. But that knowledge can help lead you to the cause. Mosquitos carry<\/em> malaria. <\/p>\n

Do more guns decrease crime? Not necessarily. But there’s enough patterns in enough places to give you an idea that there’s something to investigate that has to do<\/em> with the availability of guns to the law-abiding<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the one hand, correlation doesn’t equal causation. So I’ll restrain my end-zone happy dance at the news that gun crime in Virginia has plummeted as gun sales boomed: Firearms sales rose 16 percent to a record 490,119 guns purchased from licensed gun dealers in 2012, according to sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,30,51,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-liberty","category-liberal-tyranny","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37725,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37724\/revisions\/37725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}