Wednesday, July 19, 2006
IRAQ AND WASHINGTON D.C.
I won't vouch for the accuracy of the figures below but they sound pretty right
If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000soldiers. The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capitol - which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation - than you are in Iraq. Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington immediately
OR: Storeowner shoots alleged burglar: "A storeowner shot and wounded a 16-year-old in the back side after he tried to rob his Beavercreek store Saturday night and helped nab another man, sheriff's deputies said. Jamal James Shihadeh, 18, was arrested for the Beavercreek burglary. The alleged burglar remains hospitalized and a second suspect, Jamal James Shihadeh, 18, was charged with first-degree burglary... Police said Robert Finke, the owner of Clarks General Store on South Beavercreek Road, and a neighbor heard breaking glass around 11 p.m. Saturday night and ran to the store, confronting two burglars inside. The owner held one suspect at gunpoint inside the store, then ordered him to the front porch of the store where he told him to empty his pockets with items stolen from the store, Strovink said. Shihadeh, who had initially fled the burglary scene, returned to the store and said he was armed with a gun. Both suspects ran from the store, with Finke and his neighbor Travis Wilber in hot pursuit. Investigators said one of suspects fired several rounds from a weapon, but no one was hit. Finke, who was armed with a shotgun, shot the 16-year-old suspect once in the rear end with a buckshot load type of ammunition. The suspect was later airlifted to Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland. When Clackamas County Sheriff's deputies arrived on the scene, Shihadeh was found and taken into custody. Finke and Wilber were not injured"
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1 comment:
The DC and Iraq firearms death numbers did not look right to me, so I tested them as follows:
The simplest is that 80.6/60 = 1.34, 34% more likely to be shot and killed in DC, not 25% (if the stats are right, see below).
That's the least of it. There are more serious problems.
The only way to get a 60 per 100k figure for Iraq is by working it out on a monthly basis:
(2,112/22) x (100,000/160,000) = 60 deaths per 100,000 per month.
Alternately if the statistic should be calculated on an annual basis,
(2,112/22 x12) x (100,000/160,000) = 720 deaths per 100,000 per year
Population of Washington DC according to 2002 census: 570,898 (5.71 x 10^5)
Number of deaths in DC (all causes) per year in 2002: 8,263
http://www.areaconnect.com/population.htm?s=DC
80.6 deaths per 100,000 of population is the statistic quoted. However, the time scale is not given.
If it is per month to be comparable with the 60 per 100k used for Iraq, then annual deaths by firearms in Washington DC are:
80.6 x 12 x 5.71 = 5,522 firearm deaths per year, =====> 66.8% of all deaths from all causes.
or, in a 22 month period to directly compare with the 2,112 deaths in Iraq,
80.6 x 22 x 5.71 = 10,125 deaths
There is an obvious problem with these numbers and their relationship with reality.
On the other hand, assuming 80.6 per 100,000 population per year, Washington DC annual firearm deaths is:
80.6 x 5.71 = 460 firearms deaths per year, =====> 5.6% of all deaths from all causes.
On these figures, taking the annual rates, 80.6/720 = 11.2%, Iraq is 9 times more dangerous than Washington DC.
In fact, murders in DC peaked in 1991 at 482 that year, population 598,000, annual rate 80.6 per 100,000 per year http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm
Since then, recorded murders have steadily declined, in 2000 there were 239 in a population of 572, 059 for an annual rate of 41.8
So the relative risk for a soldier in Iraq over DC is 720/41.8 = 17.2 times greater or 1,720%
I don't know where the stats you quoted came from, while checking this I have seen them widely quoted, but they are utterly bogus. Whether deliberate or due to simple innumeracy, who can tell?
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