Tag Archives: murder

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Making Conclusions

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Everyday all of us gather data, analyze it and act.  The resulting actions could be nothing (also a default), gathering more data, or behaving in a way we conclude is appropriate to the facts.

Same Facts, Same Conclusions – Not!

Conclusions are very dependent on perceptions, preconceived notions, personal baggage – basically your filters for helping you understand a set of facts.

The really scary part is in many cases the same set of facts can lead to multiple conclusions and all can be right.  And of course on occasion this principle does not apply.

Consider an individual on trial for murder.  The jury have all been presented the same facts, but interpret them with their filters and could come to different conclusions, that is guilty, not guilty or even not enough information to decide (which in our system is not guilty).  Hung juries do occur so we know this circumstance can happen (some jurors say guilty, some say not).   The thing is someone was murdered and the person on trial either did it or they did not.  In this case, clearly there is only one right answer.

Flawed Analysis

It is not possible to be one-hundred percent sure your conclusions are correct or that they are the best approach to handle a given set of facts.  This could be just a decision about what to do next as opposed to a yes or no conclusion like the murder trial but you will still never know for sure if the conclusions was on the mark.

So where does that leave us?

Some helpful ideas

  • keep an open mind as much as possible – i.e., resist your per-conceived ideas and personal behavioral filters to the greatest extent possible.
  • collaborate to validation – use as many sources as you can to review the facts, and present them from alternate views to support or deny your conclusions.
  • test conclusions – before acting construct approaches to confirm the conclusions are the best.  This can take a little time and is not always possible but for key decisions, it is time well spent.
  • admit your wrong when it turns out your conclusions were incorrect  (I did this a couple of times today. )
  • don’t force a conclusion – if the facts are not leading you down a path to a action decision, pause, reflect and come back at the problem later.
Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Gun don’t Kill, People Do!

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The recent mass shooting in Oregon has triggered another storm of discussion around “gun violence” in the United States.

First off, I think this is another great case of political speak.  Gun violence hardly adequately describes what is for me basically random mass murder using guns.  Gun lobbyist’s argue just because people use gun’s to murder, this is not a reason to restrict the availability of guns.

I know, why don’t we ban all murderers instead, that will solve the problem.

The real concern is the threat of murder.  In reality, one of the easiest and most effective tools to use for murder is a gun.   I could use a hammer. my bare hands, poison or hundreds of other options.  That being said,  statistically, murder by gun far exceeds any of the other methods as the most used.

Mass Shootings – Key Traits

Mass shootings are a well studied phenomenon in the United States (around the world too). Here are a few key observations:

  • majority conducted by males
  • majority of males subjects are thirty to fifty
  • majority of murderers suffered documented mental issues
  • for mass killings using guns almost every case resulted in the gunman killing themselves (suicide) or allowing the authorities to shoot them to death (still suicide).
  • Ease of availability of guns was defined as a key factor in every case.  This was considered a key enabler for the gunman being able to carry out their plans.

Note:  Professionals that study these crimes advise the only viable method of prevention is through leaks (i.e., the gunman talking about the attack beforehand) and this prevention method mostly relies on luck.  There is not solid way to ensure leaks are heard and communicated to the right place.

Considering these key attributes of the random mass murders occurring in the United States it seems obvious to me the number one  variable that can be exercised to mitigate the risk of occurance is limiting the availability of the weapon of choice – guns.

Is there a problem?

In Saturday’s Globe and Mail there was a chart showing  annual gun deaths per capita for thirty-two developed countries.  United States (no surprise there) came out as the highest and not by a little but five times higher their nearest competitor.  Canada was middle of the pack with five murders per million people.  It is easy to do a little searching and find among those thirty two countries those with the lowest rate of gun deaths have the most restrictive laws.  For me this is statistical proof in the value of restricting access to guns.

We can only hope

Is it finally time for the United States to come together as a nation and react to this problem in a real and effective way?  We can only hope.