[CLUE-Talk] Political compass

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 09:12:54 -0700
Jeff Cann <j.cann at isuma.org> wrote:

> On Sunday 09 November 2003 8:46 am, Sean LeBlanc wrote:
> 
> > He even admits himself toward the end of the movie that he's not sure
> > why we have more gun deaths [1] than other countries. It's not,
> > according to the movie, access to guns. It's not a history of
> > violence.

I'd like to see a citation of the study in support of the gun death rate
claim. I've read a lot of articles debunking the statistics which are
often quoted in support of gun control, and as a result, I'm now
automatically skeptical.

> I thought that his point is that people here are afraid of things that
> are unlikely to happen to them, but TV news (in particular) does a good
> job of promoting fear as a means to gain viewership.  
> 
> It's too bad that many people seemed to miss or ignore this point
> because he bagged on the NRA or used hyperbole to make his point.  IMHO,
> his point about fear is right on, maybe other things in his movie are
> not.

For a good read on the fear factor, read Bruce Schneier's latest book,
"Beyond Fear". Schneier makes many good points on this subject, one of
which is that people form their opinions about threats/risks based on
reports of exceptional cases. The stories which make the news are things
such as traffic accidents, workplace shootings, etc., while the mundane
good news about the number of people who live through another day without
incident is unreported. That's the nature of news reporting, but people
make invalid assesments about their risks because the hear these reports,
and don't consider the flip side.

jed
-- 
... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier