Friends Like These...

I used to think of the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Weekly Standard as the least unfriendly of journalists. Well, the Weekly Standard turned into the Bulwark and then the Dispatch -- or maybe it was the other way around, I can't remember and don't care if they still exist -- National Review went softer than it already was, and the Wall Street Journal remains no real friend to gun rights at all.

The percentages look damning, until one recalls the famous adage popularized by Mark Twain: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. If those cases increased by 59% over five years, what's the scale involved? How many cases does a 59% increase entail?

Not many, as it turns out. The entire data set consists of 200 cases or fewer in each of the five years...

Hot Air then provides this chart to compare that 200 number to the whole:

If you were to chart this independently, 200 doesn't fit on the scale. In fact it's more than 12,000 short of rising to the level that would fit on the scale. That is to say, if it were to increase by a factor of 60 it still wouldn't fit on the scale -- not a "59% increase," which is a little more than half again more, but 60 times more and it still wouldn't make the chart.

It can't be a coincidence that journalists assigned to the gun beat are so bad at math so consistently across decades.

UPDATE: Another journalistic storyline, this time on guns to Mexican cartels because of 'lax gun laws' in the USA, that proves unreliable.