Thursday, October 24, 2013

Plural of anecdotes is not data

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, violent crime is up 15% in 2012 over 2011, the second year of increased crime. Sounds scary, right? Until you look at where this information came from. The survey is conducted in 40,000 or so homes by the National Opinion Research Center for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and is intended to determine if the respondents were victims of crimes that they did not report to police. In other words, it is purely unverified and anecdotal.
The results are then assigned a score, and a weighting factor is assigned. The score is then used to determine how much crime is being committed. In other words, it is pure garbage.
The National Opinion Research Center is located on the campus of the University of Chicago. See the pattern? In order to support more gun laws, Obama needs more crime. Since he can't show increasing crime using police records, he invents it himself using Chicago politics.


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