"Study finds stray-bullet shootings frequently harm women and children"

[Skippys]

Why this is coming across the Homeland Security News Wire as breaking news is beyond me, but the report, "Study finds stray-bullet shootings frequently harm women and children" is something I recall reading about at least a year ago.

One need look no further than the backers and producers of this "study" to discern where they're going with it.

The biggest issue I have is the pitch, "…nearly one-third of the victims [of stray bullet injuries or deaths] were children and nearly half were female….," somehow implying a disproportionate number of victims are women and kids when the math actually shows two-third of the victims were not kids and better than half were male.

Might the authors be happier if all the victims were middle-aged men? Frankly, that would be news because it could demonstrate that stray bullets were somehow discriminatory.

A secondary issue I have is that the age and gender of the victims is irrelevant to the problem. Because none of the victims -- young, old, male or female -- were intended targets, because guns and bullets don't possess conscious thought or deliberate motives, and particularly because the majority of urban, gun-toting criminals are simply bad shots. I don't know what it implies about the noted hunting incidents except perhaps that it appears there are an unfortunate number of hunters who don't practice gun safety. Be that as it may, it stands to reason the ratio of stray-bullet victims is more or less proportional to the ratio of the general population, at least as far as gender and age are concerned.

"The release notes that to gather data for the study, Wintemute and his colleagues used Google and Yahoo! news alerting services and the news archives of GunPolicy.org to track stories published between March 2008 and February 2009 that contained the phrase “stray bullet.”

When a study uses the archives of an organization such as GunPolicy.org, an outfit decidedly dedicated to gun control, to collect it's data, a fishy study automatically becomes bogus.

It would not surprise me if this study "...by Garen Wintemute, professor of emergency medicine and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center..." was actually a project he had his grad students research, using the term loosely, on which he could slap his name and chalk up as a published paper for his credentials.

This so-called study is only a transparent attempt to ply the emotion of readers of the MSM, many of which will doubtless copy and paste this "press release" without even considering the validity of its claims, data and conclusions. It certainly sheds no light on anything.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[Burns]

SMH...

[barstoolguru]

the study points out that when the shooting states woman and children are slower to get out of the way and find cover.

[ccw9mm]

In the general population in the USA, there are roughly 50% male and 50% female. So it would stand to reason that a random act like sending a stray shot skyward would, on average, end up striking females ~50% of the time. Let me guess ... it ends up striking males ~50% of the time, too. Sounds like "breaking" news to me. Statistics. Whew!

[Burns]

In the general population in the USA, there are roughly 50% male and 50% female. So it would stand to reason that a random act like sending a stray shot skyward would, on average, end up striking females ~50% of the time. Let me guess ... it ends up striking males ~50% of the time, too. Sounds like "breaking" news to me. Statistics. Whew!

97 males for every 100 females in the US to be exact. And that's my random fact for the day :/

[retsupt99]

In Detroit and Chicago, studies show that most of the shooters ARE children...I'm just sayin'...

[erick619]

68% of statistics are made on the spot. Just sayin'.

[Adameeski]

"An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination." -- Andrew Lang

[i10casual]

I believe it. It's ball in the face factor.
You take a female to the park, gym, or sporting event, they are 80 times likelier to get smashed in the face with a loose ball than a male. I don't know how this happens but I've seen it so I'm making up the statistic.

[RKflorida]

It's horrific if it is a woman or child but it's ok if it's a man?

[Mike1956]

The facts have been tabulated, the results analyzed, and the conclusions, inescapable. Criminal assailants are, as a group, lousy shots.

[hogdaddy]

"Wearing body armor or taking other extreme protective measures is just not practical on a widespread scale, so we need to look at other ways to help communities feel safe from such evntse,” Wintemute said. “Given that these stray-bullet shootings are a byproduct of gun violence in general, it’s plausible that if you prevent the violence, you’ll prevent the stray-bullet shootings"


They should make thier Gang members take a Handgun Course Would Solve EVERYTHING
H/D

[nedrgr21]

What definition are they using for "child" - anyone under 25 like a previous study?

Another study failure: Only incidents where someone was actually hurt were counted
"He defined stray-bullet shootings as episodes involving a bullet that escaped an intended sociogeographic space and injured at least one person, either from the gunshot itself or a secondary mechanism, such as an injury from glass sent flying by a bullet."

Interestingly, the same number of people are killed/injured, in the same proportion (killed/injured not m/f/c), by lightning each year (not kidding here).

Hey, yeah, let's send all the gangbangers to FrontSight with a free course certificate.

[64zebra]

"Wearing body armor or taking other extreme protective measures is just not practical on a widespread scale, so we need to look at other ways to help communities feel safe from such evntse,” Wintemute said. “Given that these stray-bullet shootings are a byproduct of gun violence in general, it’s plausible that if you prevent the violence, you’ll prevent the stray-bullet shootings"


They should make thier Gang members take a Handgun Course Would Solve EVERYTHING
H/D

....and get background checks....errrr....ummm...wait a minute

[Crowman]

New study shows that statistics are not always statistically correct statistics...... Just saying.....