My cousin, who is an avid watcher of Fox News, posts all sorts of tidbits on his Facebook page. He's a likeable enough sort, but sometimes his posts fall over the boundaries and I sometimes comment on them. He apparently watches someone on Facebook called "Liberal Lunacy" who did some searching on statistics for guns, and came up with an attention grabbing graphic that says Chicago (with sever gun control) had 506 homicides in 2012 while Austin (with less gun control) had 35.
(see the graphic here: )http://www.facebook.com/...
All together now.... "When you compare the homicide rates you have to use cities the same size."
As it happens, Waukegan had 2 homicides compared to Austin's 35
http://www.city-data.com/...
However, I don't think Liberal Lunacy's going to make a graphic about those differences.
The problem is that bad factoids like that just fuel up both sides into blockading themselves behind their own walls of "rightness" and keep any useful dialogue from occurring. The "homicide rate" for Chicago actually is all homicides, not just guns. Ditto Austin. And Waukegan.
While we can decry these statistics, maybe a better tactic is to gently ask the person "can you tell me how many of those are GUNS only?" or "What are the statistics in a different city that is exactly the same size? How many are guns only and how many are other sources?"
I don't think that either method will win anyone over, but it might be that a well-placed (and kindly sounding) question could do a lot more good than a "YOU IDIOT" response.... which, (let's face it) is my knee-jerk reaction to a lot of picture factoids.