In my earlier diary I promised a second, little-discussed math-based observation regarding gun violence, and I will get to that, but first a recap of my first point in the light of some notable responses.
My first point was that the math of gun violence was not of direct cause-effect, but rather the lottery math of millions of small, infinitesimally-low-probability "tickets," inevitably leading to "jackpots," both small and large. Countries with lower gun violence rates don't have one single "cause" for their low rate, rather most of the several types of "tickets" occur in much lower quantities, and for various reasons.
This is a math model, folks. Some responses seemed to be on the order of "gun violence is not a lottery because I don't scratch off anything." And clearly, even many intelligent Kos readers do not understand the math of lottery probability, which is likely why they still buy tickets.
So here is the second math point:
That gun you purchased to "protect yourself" is probabilistically many times more likely (by a couple orders of magnitude) to harm yourself, or some you love, than it is to successfully defend yourself against "a bad guy with a gun."
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