Do “coding errors” miss the target?

What, exactly, is a “coding error?” That’s what Professor John Lott (author, More Guns, Less Crime) is accused of in this 120 page atrocity.
Does anybody have time to read this shit? I don’t. And I am not putting down the authors (described by Glenn Reynolds as “honest”; but be sure to check out Lott’s web site), or attacking the quality of their statistical analysis. I don’t know enough about shit like coding and sampling errors, and frankly I don’t want to know. For starters, I don’t have time.
I mean, if someone is making stuff up, like Michael Bellesiles, who invented imaginary people and imaginary statistics and then cited them, well, that’s simple dishonesty, which rendered Bellesiles’s work a fiction (and not worth reading unless you enjoy Pravda-like lying historical revision).
But coding errors? That sounds like something only super nerds could understand.
As for me, I hate statistics anyway. You’ll never get me to step into that hopelessly labyrinthine crap about sampling rates, and skewed extrapolations. I mean, sheesh!
The last time I saw a cat fight like this crap was when the right wing anti-homosexual crowd decided to go after the Kinsey statistics. They maligned Kinsey as a child molesting, Satanic cultist, and claimed his statistics about the prevalence of homosexual conduct were the product of a perverted mind with a grand scheme of world rule by perverts or something. In their view, Kinsey had said there were too many homos, and thus his statistics had to be discredited.
Of course, if you assume the anti-gay crowd’s statistics are right, and homosexuals are only three percent of the population instead of ten, what does this mean? That it’s OK to imprison or kill them?
Kinsey was an evil pervert, so that means open war on homos?
(Or, Lott had a “coding issue” so we lose our guns?)
I guess that makes me very cynical about people who believe that statistical battles are the key to deciding important principles or ultimate truths.
Statistics are inherently misleading, and distract people ? even very good people ? from focusing on real truth. At best, even when a given statistic can be agreed upon by both sides, it only supplies a utilitarian argument. A million people saying that a horse is a dog, for example, does not make a horse a dog.
Mark Twain was not kidding when he complained about “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I don’t care what the statistics show. I can tell you from my own experience that having a firearm prevents even the craziest of people from attacking you. On more than one occasion, I used a gun to protect myself, and it worked or I wouldn’t be here. People who tell me that having a gun means I’ll be more likely to have it used against me are just anti-gun, and anti-Second Amendment, and they will bludgeon me with statistics in the hope of wearing me out. This is a common tactic, and it is a major reason why people detest bureaucrats, politicians, and lawyers.
You get into a debate with those types, and they’ll wear you out with statistics, much the same way a large law firm will try to wear you down with a sea of litigious paper.
The problem is, people win arguments that way, and they shouldn’t. Exhausting an opponent is a dishonest tactic. And right now, I feel that they’re trying to do it to Second Amendment supporters — by throwing huge piles of statistics at me in the hope that I will be cowed.
Well, I have been around too long to pay any attention to these tactics. I will not play their game. I refuse to read the Stanford Law Review article. People who make their living billing their clients by the hour can get into it if they want, but I consider it like a tar baby. You touch it and you’re stuck in sticky goo and there is no end to it.
I am not aguing against truth, mind you, for I am not a deconstructionist. I recognize the value of taking the time to plod through something like that law review article, and even attempting to refute it point by point. But I can assure you that even if it turned out to be false, the gun control advocates would come out with another one, and another one. And another one. They do not stop. They crank out statistics like shit through a goose.
If I let them, they’ll even refute my own life experiences through statistics. I do not doubt that someone could cite statistics to prove I do not exist, just as they proved the bumblebee cannot fly.
My blogfather busts his ass to compile the weekly Yahoo gun bias statistics. I would be willing to bet that if Sarah Brady’s grab-the-guns think tank commissioned a professional (read highly paid hired whore) statistical analysis, they’d manage to find problems with his work. I don’t know whether they’d call it a “coding error” or whether they’d use words I don’t understand, but it would not faze me in the least, because I know what their bottom line is: they want to take away my guns, and they see statistics as a weapon to do that.
The only statistic that should legitimately concern anyone who cares about freedom is how many rounds you can get into the target when you’re shooting.
Coding and sampling errors are one thing, but if they wanna take away my guns, well, maybe I can’t hit the target every time, but are they feeling lucky?