How gun buffs took over Wikipedia’s AR-15 page

[Anroth]

Since I regularly assess people's credibility as part of my job, I would just point out a lack of basic math skills is not really an indication of how credible someone is. So we shouldnt really hold that against him.

[Volunteer Marek]

What I am saying is this: Every state in the US has millions of people and every state has a percentage of the population larger than 3% that owns guns, so, it is statistically impossible to say that 3% of the population owns the majority of the guns.

Even if in every single state 100% of people owned guns, it would still be statistically possible for 3% of them to own 50% of the guns. Say that in each state there are exactly a million people who in total own two million guns. Say 970,000 own one gun each and the remaining 30,000 own the other 1,030,000 guns, or about 34 each.

Thank you!

[Volunteer Marek]

Since I regularly assess people's credibility as part of my job, I would just point out a lack of basic math skills is not really an indication of how credible someone is. So we shouldnt really hold that against him.

When discussing statistics? It sure is.

[Poetlister]

As for the credibility of the research, the paper's authors designed the survey but it was conducted by GfK, one of the best organisations in the world at this sort of work. Surveys are never perfect, and there is always room for bias and of course sampling error, but it seems to me pretty watertight to say that a fairly small proportion of people own far more than their fair share of guns.

[Kumioko]

well if you go back and look at the links i provided that show the percentages by state you'll see that it's a lot higher than 3%. I'm not sure where that 3% came from, but it's complete horseshit.

Also, the idea that 3% consist mostly of white males with low education and unstable income is also a complete fallacy. Sounds like someone is just making shit up to justify their point of view and try to astroturf everyone into thinking they represent the majority.

Well, here's the paper on the research: linkhttps://www.rsfjournal.org/doi/pdfplus/ ... 017.3.5.02[/link]

Thanks for that link, now it makes a lot more sense to me:

About one quarter (22 percent) of gun owners reported that one of the primary reasons they owned a firearm was as part of a collection

and

Not surprisingly, gun collectors owned more guns than those who do not collect guns (ten versus three guns), and gun collectors accounted for most of the upper range of number of guns owned (noncollectors owned one to forty-three guns; collectors owned between one and 140).

Although I am still skeptical of the 3%, I can see now how they came to that conclusion. Personally, I would argue anyone with more than 10 guns is probably a collector and I think we can assume that there are some that own more than 140. For example, I know several people who own more than 140, some of which are dealers, some of the weapons are non functional (antiques or rare items).

I think it's also important to note that this survey was done by 3,949 U.S. adult respondents via a mail-out. So that is a pretty small sample group. I would be interested to know if the survey was targetted at a certain area, and looking at page 45 I see that a lot of the data was based on assumptions and educated guesses. So again, although I see how they got the 3%, and it may be completely unbiased, it's still based on a lot of assumptions. I personally think the number is closer to 10% rather than 3%, especially if we were to include the gun dealers as owners.

[Zoloft]

Since I didn’t ever visit or attend Harvard, I can call it a made-up college, run by crisis actors and non-existent.

[Volunteer Marek]

well if you go back and look at the links i provided that show the percentages by state you'll see that it's a lot higher than 3%. I'm not sure where that 3% came from, but it's complete horseshit.

Also, the idea that 3% consist mostly of white males with low education and unstable income is also a complete fallacy. Sounds like someone is just making shit up to justify their point of view and try to astroturf everyone into thinking they represent the majority.

Well, here's the paper on the research: linkhttps://www.rsfjournal.org/doi/pdfplus/ ... 017.3.5.02[/link]

Thanks for that link, now it makes a lot more sense to me:

About one quarter (22 percent) of gun owners reported that one of the primary reasons they owned a firearm was as part of a collection

and

Not surprisingly, gun collectors owned more guns than those who do not collect guns (ten versus three guns), and gun collectors accounted for most of the upper range of number of guns owned (noncollectors owned one to forty-three guns; collectors owned between one and 140).

Although I am still skeptical of the 3%, I can see now how they came to that conclusion. Personally, I would argue anyone with more than 10 guns is probably a collector and I think we can assume that there are some that own more than 140. For example, I know several people who own more than 140, some of which are dealers, some of the weapons are non functional (antiques or rare items).

I think it's also important to note that this survey was done by 3,949 U.S. adult respondents via a mail-out. So that is a pretty small sample group. I would be interested to know if the survey was targetted at a certain area, and looking at page 45 I see that a lot of the data was based on assumptions and educated guesses. So again, although I see how they got the 3%, and it may be completely unbiased, it's still based on a lot of assumptions. I personally think the number is closer to 10% rather than 3%, especially if we were to include the gun dealers as owners.

Putting other stuff aside cuz it's not worth it, a sample of 3949 is just fine (and ALL analysis, data driven or not is based on SOME assumptions)

[Poetlister]

Apparently a 17 year old boy shot and badly injured two other children before being killed by an armed guard. Great, the NRA will say. That proves our point that gunmen can only be stopped by armed guards. But if that 17 year old boy had been unable to get a gun, he'd still be alive and those other children wouldn't have been injured. i don't know how bad they are but I hope they live.

[greyed.out.fields]

Apparently a 17 year old boy shot and badly injured two other children before being killed by an armed guard. Great, the NRA will say. That proves our point that gunmen can only be stopped by armed guards. But if that 17 year old boy had been unable to get a gun, he'd still be alive and those other children wouldn't have been injured. i don't know how bad they are but I hope they live.

More of Wikipediocracy's blatant liberal bias. Gun ownership is what keeps our children safe. And if the price of keeping our children safe is having our children killed, them... erm... IT'S WHITE MEN THAT ARE THE REAL VICTIMS HERE!

[Lightbreather]

The Verge and a couple of other online sites had some interesting reading about how a pro gun group took over editing the AR-15 page in Wikipedia.

Here is a https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/6/17086 ... s-shooting to the article. Here is a link to the Wikipedia page for the AR-15 style rifle (T-H-L).

Lightbreather has been raising the same points on her blog for months. I wouldn't be surprised if The Verge story originated from her.

Hey, hey! This is an old discussion, but now that I'm back I want to say that although it's possible the The Verge saw my blog post before they wrote their story, I never heard from them. To be clear, I was never contacted by them, let alone interviewed or anything like that.

[Randy from Boise]

When I saw this necrothread pop up , I was gonna say, "Hey, Lightbreather is back... What does she have to say about this?"

tim

[Zoloft]

When I saw this necrothread pop up , I was gonna say, "Hey, Lightbreather is back... What does she have to say about this?"

tim

Eh, Lightbreather has the right of reply. But I'm gonna lock it now as handled.