June 01, 2007
"It was a different story"
A big high five to the Canadian Press for attempting to torque a story and being completely incompetent at it. At 4:38pm (the time I accessed the story) on Friday, June 1, 2007, this story, carried at the Toronto Star website, reads (in part) as follows:
The federal Conservative government has rejected Ontario's call for a ban on handguns. ... [Stockwell] Day argued that other countries where handguns have been banned have seen the numbers of gun crimes increase. "In jurisdictions that have eliminated or tried to eliminate, to ban handguns – the United Kingdom, Ireland, other jurisdictions – in fact crime with guns has unfortunately gone up," Day said.
Here comes the torque:
Day's statements, however, don't appear to match with the facts.
Interesting. And, dear Canadian Press, what evidence do you marshall to maintain this assertion?
There was a 16 per cent drop in the number of firearms offences in the United Kingdom in 2006 compared with the previous year, according to figures from Britain's Home Office.
I know this particular blogging tic is increasingly frowned upon, but permit me to indulge: You. Absolute. Morons.
Here is the UK Home Office page from which the Canadian Press seems to be getting their statistics. And here is what it says:
In the year ending 31 March 2005 provisional figures show a:
16% reduction in the use of handguns
If you go to that website, and look three lines down from the piece I quoted, you will see the following:
Despite these figures, the number of overall offences involving firearms has been increasing each year since 1997/98.
So the Canadian Press has messed up in a variety of ways. One, they got the time period wrong - the statistic they are quoting is not for 2006, but for the year ending March 31, 2005. Two, they misrepresent the nature of the statistic: it is not the case that, as the Canadian Press characterizes it, "firearms offences" dropped 16%, it is handgun offences which dropped, which is only a subset of the larger category of "firearms offences". Third, the Canadian Press takes a one year drop and tries to use that as evidence that Day's point, that handgun offences have increased in the UK since the handgun ban was introduced nearly a decade ago, is incorrect - the fact that they don't mention the trend in handgun offences in the UK for the entire period is a critical omission and a flagrant misrepresentation. Fourth, and most important, they entirely ignore the statement of the Home Office that Day's point is entirely correct - since the United Kingdom enacted a handgun ban in 1997, gun crime offences have soared.
For further proof of the correctness of Day's statement, and the absolute mendacity of the Canadian Press, let's look at this Home Office report. Here's what it reveals: there was a sixty percent (60%) increase in firearms crime from 1999/00 to 2004/05 (page 72). Also see Figure 3.4 - although it is a bit difficult to tell because the gradations are not provided, firearms crimes involving handguns more than doubled from 1998/99 to 2001/02, before declining somewhat until 2004/05, though finishing at a number approximately 50% higher than in 1998/99.
Canadian Press: liars. And incompetent ones at that.
"It was a different story"
A big high five to the Canadian Press for attempting to torque a story and being completely incompetent at it. At 4:38pm (the time I accessed the story) on Friday, June 1, 2007, this story, carried at the Toronto Star website, reads (in part) as follows:
The federal Conservative government has rejected Ontario's call for a ban on handguns. ... [Stockwell] Day argued that other countries where handguns have been banned have seen the numbers of gun crimes increase. "In jurisdictions that have eliminated or tried to eliminate, to ban handguns – the United Kingdom, Ireland, other jurisdictions – in fact crime with guns has unfortunately gone up," Day said.
Here comes the torque:
Day's statements, however, don't appear to match with the facts.
Interesting. And, dear Canadian Press, what evidence do you marshall to maintain this assertion?
There was a 16 per cent drop in the number of firearms offences in the United Kingdom in 2006 compared with the previous year, according to figures from Britain's Home Office.
I know this particular blogging tic is increasingly frowned upon, but permit me to indulge: You. Absolute. Morons.
Here is the UK Home Office page from which the Canadian Press seems to be getting their statistics. And here is what it says:
In the year ending 31 March 2005 provisional figures show a:
16% reduction in the use of handguns
If you go to that website, and look three lines down from the piece I quoted, you will see the following:
Despite these figures, the number of overall offences involving firearms has been increasing each year since 1997/98.
So the Canadian Press has messed up in a variety of ways. One, they got the time period wrong - the statistic they are quoting is not for 2006, but for the year ending March 31, 2005. Two, they misrepresent the nature of the statistic: it is not the case that, as the Canadian Press characterizes it, "firearms offences" dropped 16%, it is handgun offences which dropped, which is only a subset of the larger category of "firearms offences". Third, the Canadian Press takes a one year drop and tries to use that as evidence that Day's point, that handgun offences have increased in the UK since the handgun ban was introduced nearly a decade ago, is incorrect - the fact that they don't mention the trend in handgun offences in the UK for the entire period is a critical omission and a flagrant misrepresentation. Fourth, and most important, they entirely ignore the statement of the Home Office that Day's point is entirely correct - since the United Kingdom enacted a handgun ban in 1997, gun crime offences have soared.
For further proof of the correctness of Day's statement, and the absolute mendacity of the Canadian Press, let's look at this Home Office report. Here's what it reveals: there was a sixty percent (60%) increase in firearms crime from 1999/00 to 2004/05 (page 72). Also see Figure 3.4 - although it is a bit difficult to tell because the gradations are not provided, firearms crimes involving handguns more than doubled from 1998/99 to 2001/02, before declining somewhat until 2004/05, though finishing at a number approximately 50% higher than in 1998/99.
Canadian Press: liars. And incompetent ones at that.