this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
1072 points (97.0% liked)

Data is Beautiful

4842 readers
1 users here now

A place to share and discuss visual representations of data: Graphs, charts, maps, etc.

DataIsBeautiful is for visualizations that effectively convey information. Aesthetics are an important part of information visualization, but pretty pictures are not the sole aim of this subreddit.

A place to share and discuss visual representations of data: Graphs, charts, maps, etc.

  A post must be (or contain) a qualifying data visualization.

  Directly link to the original source article of the visualization
    Original source article doesn't mean the original source image. Link to the full page of the source article as a link-type submission.
    If you made the visualization yourself, tag it as [OC]

  [OC] posts must state the data source(s) and tool(s) used in the first top-level comment on their submission.

  DO NOT claim "[OC]" for diagrams that are not yours.

  All diagrams must have at least one computer generated element.

  No reposts of popular posts within 1 month.

  Post titles must describe the data plainly without using sensationalized headlines. Clickbait posts will be removed.

  Posts involving American Politics, or contentious topics in American media, are permissible only on Thursdays (ET).

  Posts involving Personal Data are permissible only on Mondays (ET).

Please read through our FAQ if you are new to posting on DataIsBeautiful. Commenting Rules

Don't be intentionally rude, ever.

Comments should be constructive and related to the visual presented. Special attention is given to root-level comments.

Short comments and low effort replies are automatically removed.

Hate Speech and dogwhistling are not tolerated and will result in an immediate ban.

Personal attacks and rabble-rousing will be removed.

Moderators reserve discretion when issuing bans for inappropriate comments. Bans are also subject to you forfeiting all of your comments in this community.

Originally r/DataisBeautiful

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 194 points 2 months ago (42 children)

So in short, in the 433 cases, 12 of them is stop by good guy with gun and 42 of them is stop by good guy with massive balls.

So by the statistic provided we should give everyone massive balls instead of gun to stop gun violence.

[–] TrickDacy 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wish we could win this argument with logic, but I'm certain the fanatics will immediately latch onto the narrative that guns are being used by good guys already, but we obviously need more guns and less restrictions on them them to get those numbers up.

With Republicans, any fact against them is either ignored or bastardized to say the opposite of what it actually says.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, there's rarely any logical sense being made because to them gun is a right, not privileges, and once privileges turn into right it take a dictator to take that away.

But then again, jailing people in shitty prison where most right are taken away is a okay 🤷

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (41 replies)
[–] [email protected] 93 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So in most cases the bad guy with a gun is stopped by a bad guy with a gun (himself).

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago

The Hitler strategy, classic.

[–] AA5B 13 points 2 months ago

Right.

  1. That means “good guy with gun” argument is wrong
  2. That means mental health intervention can prevent a much larger proportion of these tragedies
[–] GaMEChld 92 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I read "The police shot the attacker 98 times" with a different interpretation at first lol.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] BedbugCutlefish 80 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I agree with the point this is trying to make, but I don't think it does its job.

Like, the whole argument from the 'good guy with a gun' crowd is about stopping them early. You'd need to cross reference each of these catagories with 'how many people did the mass shooter kill'. And, this would really only be a strong argument vs the 'good guy with a gun' point if the 'shot by bystander' result had no fewer average deaths.

Additionally, it's easy to clap back with 'well, yeah, our society doesn't have enough "good people" trained with guns, that's why it's only 5%!'

Again, I don't agree with those points, it's just that this chart is pretty bad at presenting an argument against them.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Also, the data needs to include how many people are accidentally shot by guns through improper usage and storage.

From the numbers I have seen, far more children are killed accidentally by good-guy-guns then they are saved by those very same guns

[–] SkyezOpen 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

We need good kids with guns to shoot the bad kids with guns!?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] TrickDacy 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

it's easy to clap back with 'well, yeah, our society doesn't have enough "good people" trained with guns, that's why it's only 5%!'

I agree. It's pathetic how shit arguments that make no actual sense are allowed to fly by millions of people.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] BananaTrifleViolin 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

The other problem with the "good guy with a gun" is how many people does an attacker need to kill before you are the good guy killing the bad guy? One? And what if you didn't witness it? The "good guy" with the gun attacking another guy with a gun without knowing what's going on, are they still the "good guy" in that scenario? It's a mess.

The whole thing stems from fallacious logic. Arming everyone doesn't stop bad guys murdering people, at best it might curtail the length of some attacks and at worst it causes innocents to die as so-called "good guys" try to save the day and make it worse.

Prevention is the way forward, as then 0 people die. And the best way to do that is no one has guns (not even most police; just a small subset of specialist police). That is an anathema or sacrilegious to Americans, but it's the approach taken in many democratic and free countries in the world.

If the chart is trying to make a point, it's making the wrong one anyway.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] TheTechnician27 67 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Okay, so I'm not the only one who read "shot the attacker 98 times" and for a split second imagined this scenario where 131 times, the attacker was shot a gratuitous and strangely precise number of times, right?

[–] pyre 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

this has me laughing uncontrollably... it's so specific but also because it's the police, it's not impossible. god there's tears in my eyes from laughing

[–] TheTechnician27 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Shooter is down. Three clean shots to the chest. Johnson, put 95 more in him, and we can all go home."

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This one's only counting active mass shooters. When it's still a lesser shooting with under 4 victims, the odds of a vigilante rando with a gun - that is, a citizen packin' heat and not a cop off the clock - stopping the violence is about 1 in 7000.

So, once a year in America.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

There are two different categories: "active shooter" and "mass shooting".

An "active shooter" has strict definitions and is tracked by the FBI. These are the events depicted in this graph. An active shooter is someone trying to kill people at random in a public place. The number of casualties is irrelevant. A few years back a guy tried to attack a courthouse in Texas and was killed by a cop before he even got a shot off. That still counts as an active shooter.

A "mass shooting" has no single definition, and media and government organizations that use the term set their own parameters. Many of them define it as "four or more people killed or injured", regardless of circumstances.

The problem with the term "mass shooter" (and the reason why the FBI doesn't use it) is that it's overly broad. Guy goes nuts and kills his family before offing himself? Mass shooting. Robocop shoots four guys in the dick? Mass shooting.

EDIT: It's worth noting that the linked source clarifies that the graph shows all active shooter incidents between the year 2000 and 2021. This throws off your calculation significantly.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The really crazy thing about the graph is that there are 433 fucking datapoints!

[–] Harvey656 13 points 2 months ago

Even crazier, the graph is two years old.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

Don't forget when cops shoot the good guy with a gun!

Here are a few I could find quickly. There's at least one more that I just happen to recall that didn't come up because I can't seem to remember where it happened. I think it was more recent than any of these. And I'm quite sure there are many more than that, this was just the most time I was willing to spend googling at the moment.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/560798-police-chief-hails-good-guy-with-a-gun-after-officer-kills/

https://www.bet.com/article/eokrmr/black-man-kaun-green-disarm-shooter-shot-by-police

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/12/good-guy-with-a-gun-comes-to-rescue-police-kill-him/

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/nra-quiet-police-shoot-black-armed-good-guy-with-a-gun-alabama-ca37e7e5475a/

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] Agent641 44 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Statistically, we need more bad guys with guns, to stop themselves.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Sooo technically most of the time a "Bad guy with a gun" is stopped by a "Bad guy with a gun".

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's why you should make sure they all have access to guns.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Had a little trouble reading this at first, I was like, "The cops showed up and shot the person 98 times? Police brutality is so ridiculously out of hand!." Then I realized I was reading it wrong, but decided the statement was still valid.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] WoahWoah 40 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I feel like if police arrive on scene, they're probably shooting whoever has a gun, "good guy" or "bad guy." Cops seem pretty jumpy. Perhaps if we could make the good guys and bad guys wear differently colored hats?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (14 children)

Cops seem pretty jumpy

Come on, it's not like a cop would yell "SHOTS FIRED" because of a falling acorn and proceed to empty his clip, would it?

load more comments (14 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] TankovayaDiviziya 37 points 2 months ago (15 children)

You know what, the American obsession with guns has never been anything to do with "protection", it's about being ammosexual.

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago

The really sad thing about this graph is the fact that 433 active shootings barely covers half a year

[–] ZILtoid1991 34 points 2 months ago (4 children)

> died by suicide

Sometimes even bad guys with a gun stop themselves.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] menemen 25 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Is there a statistic how many bystanders were hurt by armed citizen bystander?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago

The fact that there are 433 data points means it's not working

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun... In an action movie, in real life, there's kinda too much chaos going on for anyone to differentiate between the "bad guy" and the "good guy", or for the "good guy" to know the situation.

I've heard of more times where someone tried to play hero and was gunned down by the police who mistook him for the real shooter than I have any reports of "Hero Gunman slays horrible villain"

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] einlander 23 points 2 months ago

What about the times the good guy with a gun is shot by the police?

[–] AA5B 21 points 2 months ago (17 children)

Wow, 12/433 “good guy with a gun. That’s higher than I expected! However you still need to compare to deaths caused by “careless guy with gun” plus “scared/angry guy with gun”, which includes the latest school shooting and is much much higher

load more comments (17 replies)
[–] BilboBargains 18 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The 133 real heros are the attackers that stop the attack by leaving the scene of the crime promptly to avoid incarceration.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Fedizen 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

I think republicans should pivot into "only a good guy with a truck can stop a bad guy with a gun" because it makes as much sense.

"if the teacher had a 4x4 mazda truck they could run over the attacker if the school was a fully paved parking garage. We should consider making the school cooridors driveable"

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] xantoxis 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

This one actually demonstrates some flaws in this graph format. Maybe it's just how it's expressed this time, but, here are some insights you might gain from this presentation that aren't actually the case:

  • "the police shot the attacker 98 times" which just sounds like a normal headline about how police handle things.
  • Very near that branch, you can accidentally see "the police died by suicide 38 times"
  • and, similarly, "the police surrendered 15 times" which is a surprise because I thought that only happened at Uvalde.

Like, I get what is trying to be conveyed here but the format requires a lot of work for my brain to parse and makes it harder to understand.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] huzzahunimpressively 12 points 2 months ago (19 children)

I'd like to know how many times a civil with an AR-15 has saved the day.

load more comments (19 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›