[jplasmeier]

> jihadists killed 94 people inside the United States between 2005 and 2015. During that same time period, 301,797 people in the US were shot dead

> Americans are more afraid of terrorism than they are of guns, despite the fact that guns are 3,210 times more likely to kill them

Er, that's not really how probability works. Sure, it makes some sense but as was pointed out, most of those people shot themselves. Since I don't intend on shooting myself, the probability of me being shot is immediately a fraction of the number quoted in the article.

I'm not afraid of guns because I have the privilege of living in a safe area. I'm a lot more scared of the immediate threats to my well-being, which seem to be distracted drivers [0] and slipping on ice [1].

Admittedly I closed the article after this butchering of statistics, so I don't know if the rest of the article is as misguided.

[0] - There have been several instances where I walked out into a crosswalk but stopped because I could see a car approaching but not slowing down, with the driver staring at their lap.

[1] - I live in Ohio. It snows a lot, but people don't shovel their sidewalks. People walk on the snow and compress it into ice (combined with freezing temps at night) which can persist for a week.

EDIT: Stats folk: is there a term for this? It seems similar to a Bayesian Fallacy but I'm not sure that's exactly correct...

[Xylakant]

Actually, suicide stats indicate that "I do not intend to kill myself" is not how it works. In general, suicidal episodes seem to be short and having access to means to kill yourself increases the chance you'll actually do that. Not having the means available increases the survival rate - even small barriers like selling painkillers in smaller boxes show significant reduction in suicide rates. Another considerable factor are accidents - nobody intends to kill himself in a gun accident either, it just happens. So I think it's quite correct to include those numbers in the risk profile.

[iopq]

If you don't OWN a gun, which is a choice you can make even if they are legal, then guns don't increase your chance of suicide.

[jimmywanger]

> In general, suicidal episodes seem to be short and having access to means to kill yourself increases the chance you'll actually do that.

Well, in the moment you still do mean to kill yourself.

[notgoodrobot]

Is someone killing themselves something that should be included in what people fear? This seems like it might be another issue that can't be easily compared to the fear of terrorism.

[dsp1234]

The latest statistics that I can find on the CDC's website (final data for 2014) shows that the number of homicide deaths in the US for that year was 10,945, which far outstrips terrorism deaths.

Since I don't intend on shooting myself, the probability of me being shot is immediately a fraction of the number quoted in the article.

While I did not review the data for 2005-2013 and 2015, if the trends are similar in those years, then firearm deaths are about 1/3 (32.6% in 2014).

I live in Ohio.

If you're looking at regional differences, the ratio to firearm homicides to terrorism deaths is even higher in Ohio since there has been no major terrorist attack there, but there have been hundreds of firearm homicides over that 10 year period.

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_04.pdf table 18, firarm, homicide

[Houshalter]

I think his point is that both risks are tiny for most people. As an "average" American, I have basically 0 fear of being murdered or being in a terrorist attack. The average commenter here is probably significantly more at risk of dying in a car accident.

One thing to note about terrorist attacks, is they follow a power law. The vast majority of terrorist attacks are complete failures that cause barely any casualties. But the most successful ones kill thousands. It's quite possible an unusually successful terrorist attack could kill tens of millions, which would vastly overwhelm homicide statistics. E.g. if a terrorist organization obtained weapons of mass destruction. Fortunately that has lowish probability, but perhaps not low enough to make the risk greater than homicide.

Say there is a 1% chance every decade of a terrorist attack that kills 15 million people, the annual expected death toll is about 15,000, which is greater than the annual homicide deaths.

[dmoy]

If some terrorist nuked NYC, there wouldn't be 15m deaths (there could be well over 1m deaths). The chance of a terrorist attack killing 15m is probably much closer to 0.000001% than it is to 1%.

The estimated immediate casualties from another nuclear state air-burst nuking every major US city simultaneously is only like 60m. A terrorist attack would be able to achieve significantly less.

I get your general point, but what I'm going for is roughly: humans are total crap at properly estimating, predicting, and gauging the risk of crazy anomalous events like that. (I think if we weren't so bad at it, less people would play the lotto for one...)

[Xcelerate]

They're not customizing the stats for you; it's for the average American — i.e., it's not P(shot|jplasmeier), but rather P(shot|American).

[CJefferson]

Yes, but let's imagine an extreme case... if 1 million people in the US had a 33% chance of being killed by a gun, and everyone else had 0% chance of non-terrorist gun violence, but the chance of a terrorist attack was evenly distributed, it would make sense for 99% of the population to be more afraid of terrorism than guns.

The problem is, that is the world that many people think they live in -- that gun violence is something that happens to "someone else", but terrorism can happen to anyone.

[jplasmeier]

Right, but isn't that rather useless? If we knew the actual probability of each individual being killed by guns or terrorists, we could find that neither of these averages would be represented by even a single person.

[charonn0]

Even discounting suicides and accidents, shooting deaths are still several orders of magnitude more common than terrorist-caused deaths.