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Posting this at top level since its burried in replies:
Fact time. You don’t always die when shot, and the US is a baby factory. I can’t find good stats on non-lethal gunshot, so I’ll do the rest.
Verdict: Pretty accurate.
- 8.4% without health insurance (33 in 400)
- 11.5% poverty rate (46 in 400)
- 20% adults at or below literacy level 1 (80 in 400)
- 57% mental illness untreated (228 in 400) (requires math from NIH source)
References:
Btw your 20% figure includes those at Level 1 literacy, only 8% are below level 1 (from your source)
What is level 1 defined as?
People with Level 1 Literacy can:
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Locate one piece of information in a sports article
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Locate the expiration date on a driver’s license
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Total a bank deposit entry
People with Level 2 Literacy can:
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Interpret appliance warranty instructions
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Locate an intersection on a street map
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Calculate postage and fees when using certified mail
People with Level 3 Literacy can:
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Write a brief letter to explain a credit card billing error
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Use a bus schedule to choose the correct bus to take to get to work on time
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Determine the discount on a car insurance bill if paid in full within 15 days
People with Level 4 Literacy can:
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Explain the difference between two types of benefits at work
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Calculate the correct change when given prices on a menu
People with Level 5 Literacy can:
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Compare and summarize different approaches lawyers use during a trial
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Use information in a table to compare two credit cards and explain the differences
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Compute the cost to carpet a room in a house
A lot of them seem to be mathematical questions
Damn, I’m fairly dumb but I think I could put this on my resume, I’m a lot higher in literacy than I expected.
i can’t interpret warranty instructions, but I’ve done the credit card thing. I also found the phones from the manufacturer that were compatable with my non-international telecommunications service. (I got the first Sony waterproof release in the age of ricepacks)
So I’m… esoteric.
I saw that warranty one and was like, welp, I’m already in trouble.
Then I got down to the lawyer one, and was like hey only lawyers can understand lawyers in court. A lawyer I am not.
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Oh good catch. Will edit.
I wanted to test myself to get a sense of what “level one literacy” actually meant but you have to pay to take the test and the OECD already gets enough of my money as is.
Here’s a good study on gunshoot statistics thay include nonletal gunshot wounds:
Which comes out to about 1/7 of a person in that room being shot per year.
But its not as shocking if I say that there are a million people in the room and one gets shot per day! (But I mean, that still seems significant to me.)
In their example, almost everybody is getting shot every year. Happy birthday, BLAM!
Yea, if 1/400 people were shot a day, nearly everyone would have been shot by the time they were 2.
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Quick Google results showed me between 15 and 20% lethality for single GSWs
That needs an addendum, otherwise it sounds like any GSW is about as lethal as covid19:
Not accounting for suicides and precision shooting, a single GSW is likely an accident, which drives the lethality down considerably. Filter out unintentional single GSWs and I bet the lethality is rather different.
This article indicates there’s no difference, in fact, and is lower than the conservative percentage I was getting earlier.
Maybe I’m reading the abstract wrong, but it appears that the article specifically compares single headshots with multiple GSW including a single head GSW. In which case there’s no significant difference.
But maybe I’m reading it wrong. I may be biased, because I really want to believe that JimBob shooting himself in the foot cleaning his gun, occurs with a higher frequency and with less mortality, than people shooting to kill.
I admit I didn’t look deep into that particular article. There are a lot of sources easy to find that show that multiple GSWs are surprisingly not that much more lethal, but they’re harder to repair. This one for example which lists 13% for single, and 18% for multiple.
How convenient, you left out the shooting statistic. It’s fucking insanely wrong.
That’s good to see a lot of the statistics are close, and I appreciate the sources.
That said, for a full picture, I think you should mention that the average 20 year old doesn’t have 18 gunshot wounds (365 wounds per 400 per year, is about 9.1 wounds per person per decade, or 18.2 wounds per 20 years per person)
So I’d appreciate if you include a bullet point about that.
You didn’t fact-check how many trans people there are in the U.S.1
It looks to be between 0.5% and 1.6% of the total U.S. population (2 - 6 in 400).
References:
- https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Pop-Update-Jun-2022.pdf
- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/
Semi-related, the number of intersex people (in the literature they talk about people with “disorders of sexual development”) have also been estimated to be around 1% of the population (4 in 400), source:
https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a
1 yes, the U.S. isn’t mentioned in the OP, but your sources are looking at U.S. demographics and so I will continue with the U.S.-centrism already present.
Some Thoughts (oh boy):
There is a weird logic to pointing out how few trans people there are actually are in the OP. Even if there were many more trans people, (like if there really were 1 in 5 trans people as is commonly mis-perceived), would that make the GOP’s campaign of fear-mongering and animus any more justified? I don’t think this is what Shon (
@gayblackvet) was going for, but it almost seems like a consequence of how the message was written.Maybe I’m wrong here, but does it seem like way it is written implies that the problem is not that the trans panic is unjustified in its fear of trans people, but that it is merely blown out of proportion? Maybe the angle was that even if we assume trans people are a problem, it’s still so few people it’s not worth all this panic and legislation (there are >500 anti-trans bills in the U.S. right now, over 40 of them have already passed).
Rhetorically this perspective-taking might be effective in appealing to mildly transphobic centrists or moderate conservatives who are not entirely comfortable with trans people but who might not want to be perceived as transphobic and don’t want to be associated with the rabid and vocal transphobia of the GOP.
That wedge between a more moderate closeted transphobe and a more openly transphobic right-wing one is politically useful, so I am not necessarily complaining, but there is a concern here about whether tackling transphobia is really the goal here, and if so how we should best go about that.
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my favourite is how tennessee effectively made insurance more expensive for everyone because one trans child wanted to play sports with her friends in school
what’s the story?
they basically put up a bill that banned tenncare from contracting with organizations that offer gender affirming care in any state, which is… a lot of organizations which limits the options which makes everything more expensive. at the time it was all based on a lawsuit from one 8 year old trans girl who wanted to play sports with her friends.
Nothing more Republican than having the government artificially restrict free market capitalism… wait that not what every Republican I’ve ever known has said they support. Weird.
Those trans people better not play sports! /s
I feel like it would be ok as long as they have health insurance.
Americans care a lot about debating what’s “fair” except when it comes to poverty
Because all the other shit is those two people’s fault somehow, obvs.
They need to make up reasons why their god is being such a piece of shit.
You just accurately (and accidentally?) summarized all religions.
Holy shit the literacy rate is kinda shocking…
Do people not like to read? A quarter of the population is fucking NUTS
Some people didn’t have an opportunity to learn in the first place. Lack of education doesn’t make someone “fucking NUTS”.
I think they meant a quarter of the population being illiterate, that is, that fact that such a statistic exists, is “fucking nuts,” not the illiterate population themselves.
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Well he proceeded it by saying that they don’t “like” to read, implying that this is a choice on their part.
Not at all the way I read it, but I can see your thought train
Hence it being a question. I wasn’t aware that access to learning to read wasn’t easily available.
Stats on illiterate by choice vs socioeconomic standing would be very interesting
85 is a bit high. It would be around 60, and that is the global illiteracy rate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate Still too high though.
This basically comes down to how you define literacy.
Nationally, 21% of Americans have level 1 or below literacy on the PIAAC literacy scale. That’s probably where the 85 people came from.
12% are at level 1, meaning they can only read at a basic level. 4% are functionally illiterate, and 4% had some kind of cognitive or physical handicap or language barrier that kept them from being surveyed.
About 34% of illiterate Americans were born outside the US, so they’re possibly literature in another language.
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This video is a great discussion of literacy. To put that rate into context, ‘illiterate’ often includes people that can read and write a little bit, but still struggle with some vital or everyday tasks. According to Wikipedia, 20% of US adults have a literacy level at or below level 1 which would be 80 people in this example. This report has a ton of stats and also defines each level of literacy.
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I have no idea how no one has picked up on this and have all decided “Americans are dumb”.
What everyone has missed is the literacy statistic is for ENGLISH literacy. The other 20% or so are pretty much all immigrants that cannot speak English and there aren’t tens of millions of adults with the mental capacity of a rock.
I’m from Connecticut. Willimantic area, not Greenwich area, but we were still less damaged by Jim Crow and similar policies (except for redlining, that fucked everyone). I spoke to a man in 2017, who had been born in the US, seemed aware and thoughtful, and had to get his granddaughter to write down the claim number I wanted to give him, because he didn’t know his numbers or letters.
I didn’t ask, even though it was killing me with curiosity. His granddaughter probably heard the curiosity in my voice, and explained that in 1967, when he was able to leave school, the teachers didn’t care whether a black kid learned to read. They let him leave school at twelve, even though it was well after brown v the board of education. By the time he wanted to learn to read, he was older, had full time work, and it just didn’t click.
That man was underserved by his government well past the point of mistreatment, not stupid. He’s obviously only one data point, but he’s not the only black man who was treated differently in schools
Not entirely.
Only about a quarter of them were born in another country. Then you’ve got e.g. people with severe cognitive delays or some kind of physical impairment such as blindness. And there’s also people whose education system failed them.
It’s honestly a mix of things.
If at least 1 person in the room of 400 is shot per day they’d be dead in just over a year…
Last I checked the population of the US wasn’t plummeting, so what else is wrong here?
Oh no I see the point, but I’m hardly going to believe a point that’s surrounded by obvious mistakes or embellishments
In this case, being more accurate would have distracted from the overall point.
Granted, attracting the dismissive comments of insufferable pedants and the wilfully obtuse isn’t ideal either, but here we are 🤷
How would being more accurate distract from the point? I agree with what the post is saying, but making up statistics doesn’t really help IMO and takes away from the credibility
Hyperbole and hypotheticals aren’t “making up statistics”
It doesn’t seem like this post was meant to be hyperbolic though? Hyperbole doesn’t work well in the context of numbers. If someone said 1 in 100 people drive a Toyota, how would I differentiate that from being an actual figure or hyperbole? It’s not obvious unless you look into it. Likewise, if someone told me that 1 in 400 people in the US get shot every day I’d struggle to tell if that’s true or not, given how much I hear about gun crime over there.
This post is quite clearly framed in a way that sounds like fact.
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Im pretty sure those users a legitimately, unironically autistic.
Not being abelist, just trying to prevent others from taking this argument for more than it is: someone incapable of thinking outside explicit literals.
Lol fair enough, I can understand why you’d think that.
I’m quite capable of thinking figuratively. But in the way that this post is framed, I’m pretty sure any layperson would take the figures as being based on some actual statistics. It’s deceptive, and I don’t think that’s a good look if anyone were to look into this in any detail. If you’re going to make an analogy, make it actually analogous. And if you want to use hyperbole, use it in a way that’s clear (i.e. by not mixing in numbers)
That’s not how autism works, and saying you’re not being ableist doesn’t actually mean you’re not being ableist, as you’ve demonstrated here.
(and before you even try, because I’m not coming back to debate this, I am autistic, and those assholes are just being deliberately obtuse and pedantic, throwing autistic people under the bus to defend them is gross. And if you are autistic too and think that means you can’t be ableist, let me introduce you to lateral and internalised ableism which are what your reply would be if not “run of the mill” ableism)…
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It’s not misinformation if the post starts off as a hypothetical
Some people like you aren’t capable of thinking much further than your face though
Expressing the number of people shot as a tiny fraction of 400 million people would raise at least as many questions about accuracy and make it EASIER for people like you to distract from the point by obsessing over an unimportant (to the point being made) detail.
Analogies and third decimal-accurate statistics just don’t fit together.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘people like me’. To be 100% clear, I agree with the point of the post but I just don’t think they’ve gone about explaining it in the best way. To somewhat agree with what you’re saying, I’d say yes, analogies and accurate statistics don’t fit well together, but neither do analogies and statistics in general. Either stick to written analogies/hyperbole OR use actual statistics.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘people like me’
Pedants, the easily sidetracked, those who will jump at the opportunity to distract from the message itself by hyperfocusing on an insignificant technical detail.
Take your pick.
Ok so you’re saying that you need to outright lie to get people to side with you?
That makes you sound like a politician, not a human rights advocate, but sure
Burning Man called. They want their gigantic strawman back.
How about you address the fact that you’re saying that telling the truth would distract from the point instead of pulling up distractions? Sounds like whataboutism to me
Let me put it another way.
There’s 4,947,342.562 kinds of people in the world: those who obsess over needless numeral exactitude when faced with a rhetorical argument, and those who don’t.
Hyperbole and hypotheticals aren’t “outright lies”
Exact and false numbers given as proportions aren’t hyperbole, they’re misrepresentations, ie lies.
“Say you’re in a room”
It’s literally at the start of the post. Anyone who has eyes and can read now understands this is hypothetical
If anything the people pointing out how others are missing the point, are actually missing the point…
There’s a middle ground between ‘autistically measuring in decimals’ and blowing something completely out of proportion to make a forced point.
People are just getting defensive because it’s an underlying point they agree with (rightly so) and going on attack for anyone calling it out for being disingenuous.
Why are you using ‘autistic’ as an insulting word?
And that makes it okay for you to do it?
I used it as an example and put it in quotes…
I’m literally calling people out for using it incorrectly.
why does that make it fine to use as an insult?
Nope. That’s just objectively wrong.
The choice of 1 almost certainly wasn’t a deliberate exaggeration of the actual amount. It’s just the nearest number that isn’t too specific to distract from the overall argument and/or small enough that pro-gun advocates can use it as an argument for gun violence not being a problem at all.
You can’t say they’re just rounding up when they randomly decided to choose 400 as the starting point…
So what you’re saying is that 400 is completely random and because of that, it follows that 1 is meant to be accurate? 🤔
I’d say that it’s much more likely that they’re operating under the (incorrect but commonly believed) assumption that the US population is closer to 400m than 300m and both numbers are rounded up for simplicity.
The post says “at least 1” which implies that if anything they’re rounding that number down, because on some days that number is 2. So they’re suggesting that on any given day between 800,000 and 1.6 million Americans get shot, or that every single person in the country gets shot every 13 months or so.
If they’re going to use a number that wildly inaccurate then I immediately assume that every other number in the statement is equally inaccurate, even if that’s not actually the case.
Shot does not mean killed. Of the 327 average daily people shot, 210 survive. I will however admit that 1 in 400 people being shot a day does not represent the same ratio as the 327 out of the 330,000,000 a day at all.
Also birthrate
Pedantry is a great distraction when you don’t want to address problems.
Very true, which is why it’s important not to give easy fuel for pedantry like this gun stat does. It undermines the entire point if the numbers aren’t at least close to the real statistics.
Good point
