Let me preface this by repeating that I want to see a host of measures to reduce violence in America, including sensible gun control legislation, most of California's laws applied nationally.

And, this new term "active shooter", was it invented just to create a statistical category that could be claimed to be of growing concern, as is often done with damned statistics?

OK.

I was reading applegrove's interesting post in the other group: http://www.democraticunderground.com/12625349

And attached to the source article was this graph of "mass shooting" incidents and number of victims by year from 1976 through 2010.



I was thinking that it seems to be mostly flat with maybe a bit of an upward trend and then it struck me.

That graph doesn't take into account the growth in population over that time frame; it's not per capital, it's just raw overall data.

In 2010 there were 40% more citizens than in 1976 but guess what? The shooting incidents numbers haven't risen by 40%-- they haven't risen at all, and the number of victims has risen only slightly.

Adjusted for population growth or measured per-capita, the number of incidents and victims of mass shootings, then, has fallen by as much as 40%.

If I'm statistically wrong, and I'm pretty sure I'm not, please feel free to refute the above.

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