{"id":1503,"date":"2015-10-16T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/?p=1503"},"modified":"2015-10-15T18:54:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T23:54:42","slug":"correlation-causation-gun-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/2015\/10\/correlation-causation-gun-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Correlation is not causation \u2014 gun control edition!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;text-align: justify\"><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/2015\/10\/14\/correlation-causation-gun-control\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/files\/2015\/10\/Gun.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The recent shootings in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.torontosun.com\/2015\/10\/14\/student-charged-with-second-degree-murder-in-arizona-shooting\">Arizona<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-34419802\">Oregon<\/a> are deplorable events that should concern us all.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->My fellow SINner <strong>Jonathan MS Pearce<\/strong> has since shared <a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2015\/10\/12\/interesting-gun-control-vs-deaths-by-state-chart\/\">two<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2015\/10\/10\/guns-deaths-guns-deaths-guns-deaths\/\">posts<\/a> with statistics that make comparisons between gun laws and gun deaths, showing a <strong>clear inversely proportional relation between gun control laws and gun deaths<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d just like to point out that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.factcheck.org\/2015\/10\/gun-laws-deaths-and-crimes\/\">correlation is not causation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Although I am <em>for<\/em> gun control (in developed countries), I am foremost a skeptic, hence I will avoid jumping to conclusions until there is compelling evidence for said conclusion. Further, I have come to understand that most realities have multiple factors and can&#8217;t be accurately explained or addressed with simple explanations or answers \u2014 as far as I know, the only scenario that can comprise complex realities with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.samharris.org\/blog\/a-war-well-lost\">simple explanations and solutions<\/a> is the failed and immoral war on drugs.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m afraid we owe the victims of the shootings and their families a far more intelectually challenging and satisfying explanation for why these shootings happen. We can start doing that by keeping in mind that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tylervigen.com\/spurious-correlations\">correlations <em>can<\/em> be spurious<\/a> and that ideologically knee-jerk reactions often can&#8217;t provide solutions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a clear inversely proportional relation between gun control laws and gun deaths. I\u2019d just like to point out that correlation is not causation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":1504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[291],"tags":[385,386,97],"class_list":["post-1503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-skepticism-and-science","tag-guns","tag-statistics","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}