The psychology of why we're irrationally more scared of terrorism than guns
qz.com
qz.com
> 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...
Well, in the moment you still do mean to kill yourself.
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.
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
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.
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...)
First of all, among the gun deaths there are people that shot themselves, and also people shot in gang shootings and such (where, if you're not in a gang you're not that affected). So the number is somewhat inflated (of course still bigger than terrorism).
Second, people fear going into violent neighborhoods with gun crime (say Compton at night), a hell of a lot than they fear terrorism. They might agree when asked in polls that "terrorism is a great threat", but they sure as hell as pragmatically more concerned with areas with violent crime, and avoiding them in their day to day lives.
Third, as people in certain places have witnessed, terrorism can be a constant source of death and horror, with multiple incidents per year, or even daily if a country goes sour. Just because it hasn't happened in some place, it doesn't mean it's impossible to happen (e.g. if there's a sizable militant islam population in the US).
Fourth, terrorism can also bring much more horrible outcomes than the regular gun death, even more than a mass shooting. Some crazies can kill literally tens of thousands via some (not that elaborate) plan. And while it might not always be possible to predict or prevent such a thing, one can still fear it (and fear to further stir the conditions that might make it happen).
Fifth, do the people that are OK with guns believe that if there was strict gun control gun related crime would go down? Or do they believe that criminals will be the only ones with access to guns (bought illegally of course)? If the latter's the case, then it makes sense to be OK with guns, as they see them as something they can use to protect themselves against violent crime and that the criminals will have anyway. And of course nobody realistically believes that they'll snap and kill their spouse with that gun (or vise versa -- as it often happens). It's more realistic, in that sense, to fear terrorism than yourself.
As a counter-example: CIA trained operatives with decades of experience and a 20+ person team launching a coordinated attack could only kill 3,000 -- and that was only because of underlying weaknesses in our security policy. The 9/11 attacks were so easy to counter, they didn't even work through one full morning. (By which I mean, 25% of the planes were downed before reaching their targets.) Reinforced cockpit doors and changes in passenger/crew behavior means that a repeated attempt likely would result in 0 deaths.
The attack you mention was mostly meant to be symbolic and grandiose: not to do the most damage numbers-wise.
From bombing a stadium full of people, to gas poisoning the subway, to bringing some deathly strains of a virus (e.g. Ebola etc) to some mass event, the possibilities are endless.
You don't even need to go on atomic bombs and stuff...
The sheer volume and complexity of distribution of explosives or gas needed, or the rarity and oversight of biological agents necessary renders those attacks anything but simple.
You're talking dozens of people coordinating against hardened and watched targets with either a substantial planning period or access to high volumes of controlled substances.
Nothing at all about a few pissed off or crazy people or easy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
Guns and bombs are actually far more effective. Skimming the list of terrorist attacks in 2016, the most deadly seem to be bombs and teams of gunmen (mostly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Nigeria).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_att...
It also says that it caused "temporary vision problems for nearly 5,000 others" and that "hospitals saw 5,510 patients, seventeen of whom were deemed critical, thirty-seven severe and 984 moderately ill with vision problems".
So this says more about the particular gas used or venue chosen, than about the effectiveness of such an attack to reach thousands. A different gas could have had more devastating effects, and same for a different setting (e.g. a closed stadium).
Im not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying adding hundreds or thousands of gallons of poison to a distributed system isn't easy nor is it something a few pissed off people can do alone. You're well in to the realm of controlled/watched substances, advanced chemical synthesis, and dozens of people carrying out an attack against hardened targets.
How about just that of a huge building, say a hotel or hospital?
>nor is it something a few pissed off people can do alone.
Who said anything of a "few pissed off people doing it alone" though?
Large networks are easier to detect via our mass surveillance technologies. That's why most of the attacks we see these days are from small groups acting quickly.
My point was your scale was way off about what's realistic to be afraid of. It's easily 100 times as likely a large corporation will kill tens of thousands than that a terrorist group will.
Now, there probably are terrorist attacks that could harm tens of thousands (and no, I won't list what I think they are here), but none of those suggested here are them, they'd likely be coordinated by a state actor (and so questionable if we want to count it as just crazy people), etc.
Tens of thousands can work on a single small building. Heck, tens of thousands can eat at single McDonalds per day, where one might e.g. infect it's storage.
And why think it would be discovered quickly? An attack, eg. some virus or poison could be selected that takes a day or more to manifest any symptoms.
>they'd likely be coordinated by a state actor
There are groups of terrorists that are not state actors too, and some have considerable funding...
Ooops, meant "on a single building" here, like a hotel, hospital, etc, not "small building".
Saying this categorically is going too far. I absolutely agree that banning guns wouldn't end gang shootings. I do think it would have quite some impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Mexico#Type_of_fir...
This isn't a great table, but which Eastern Eupopean country do you think has worse problems with gun violence than the US? They tend to have stricter laws on guns and less intentional homicide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_guns_and_...
Because, as it says right above the section you've linked to, ownership is much more strictly regulated there:
"Under this clause, only citizens who have been granted a license to carry can lawfully carry a firearm outside their homes. Beyond military and law enforcement members, these permits are only issued to persons who qualify such as those employed in private security firms, those who live in rural areas, or those who may be targets of crime (politicians, public officials, wealthy citizens)".
And even those are limited to specific (and less potent) types of guns (unlike the US).
I've only done the lazy thing of looking at Wikipedia, but it appears that the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11 is the only event carried out by non state actors in recent history that killed more than 1000 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_and_other_viol...
(my wishy washy language is an attempt to acknowledge that definitions about this stuff are hard, not an attempt to quietly exclude other events. Many actions taken by nations have resembled terrorism in their intent and effect.)
That doesn't offer much guarantees though. Before that one, the ceiling was much lower for attacks in the US (or even elsewhere), but it suddenly got to 3000 at one go.
Here's a kind of disaster that can be caused by an attack (it was caused by corporate greed at the time), and which claimed thousands of lives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
Note that, as the article says: "Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) contends water entered the tank through an act of sabotage" -- even if its BS, as I believe it is, it could just as well have happened under an attack to such a facility.
But on the general issue of the past as a predictor, let me use Scott Adams' words, which can be fitting:
I keep seeing tweets and articles saying the odds of an immigrant killing a citizen of the United States are approximately zero. Obviously those calculations assume that our past experiences do a good job of predicting what happens next. And this is good news. Really, really, good news.
It’s good news because I used to be afraid of lots of stuff that never happened in the past. For example, I have never died from a nuclear attack, but now I understand that risk to be zero. We can dismantle our nuclear deterrents and relax. If a nuclear bomb hasn’t killed me in the past, I can safely conclude that it will never kill me in the future. I feel sorry for all of you science-deniers who think otherwise.
I built a complicated prediction model to prove my point. The model only has one variable – the number of times I have died in nuclear blasts in the past. That number equals the number of times I will die in nuclear blasts in the future. Skeptics might doubt the credibility of my prediction model, but I would argue that it fits the past quite well. And that means it predicts the future too, unless you are ignorant of science and whatnot.
More good news: Climate change is not a risk in the future. Man-made warming has never destroyed civilization in the past, so that means there is no chance it will happen in the future. That’s how the past works; it tells you what happens in the future. And boy is that handy. Before I learned that secret I was just guessing.
We all learned as kids that history repeats itself. You know it is true because you heard it when you were young and stupid, and it stuck in your head. That’s proof right there. And it fits your observations too. For example, look how many times the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. They must have done it thousands of times by now, just like they did the first time. You might think the airplane would stay invented. But that’s not how the past works, you ignoramus. The past repeats. Those brothers just keep inventing that airplane, over and over. Even after they died, which obviously they did not see coming because they had not died in the past.
He talks about odds of being "killed by an immigrant" though -- doesn't say "by a legal immigrant" specifically.
Plus, in places like France and Germany it's often not even immigrants, it's citizens that have been born there (of immigrant parents) that have been radicalized post-facto.
It seemed so out of the world to me, since it never occured to me that I will be the victim of a terrorist attack. And even if: what happens happens. No reason to stop going on with your life.
I have to say the only news I read are tech news. The rest I get from colleagues at lunch. And sometimes I skim through the newspaper and read some articles that really interest me.
Somewhat misleading, given that most of them shot themselves.
Firearm—In 2014, 33,599 persons died from firearm injuries
in the United States (Tables 18 and 19), accounting for
16.8% of all injury deaths in that year. The age-adjusted
death rate from firearm injuries (all intents) did not
change significantly in 2014 from 2013. The two major
component causes of firearm injury deaths in 2014 were
suicide (63.5%) and homicide (32.6%). The age-adjusted
death rate for firearm homicide decreased 2.8%,
from 3.6 in 2013 to 3.5 in 2014. The rate for firearm
suicide did not change.
You should understand that firearm-related injuries will be proportionately worse. Moreover, toddlers kill people at the rate of about 1 per week which is significantly greater than terrorism deaths except for 2001 (2908 with 9/11) and 1995 (171 with Oklahoma City).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/14/peopl...
I am from Canada and I am more scared by guns than by terrorism even given that just several days ago, we had one such attack on our soil.
A terrorist attack for me is like a lightning strike. Seems to be deadly but not very probable.
Meanwhile, living among people who casually own guns (like in US) is like living in a place where everybody has untamed wild tigers and bears at home. Unpredictable, dangerous, not very smart. It's a real day-to-day threat to our lives.
Am I really that much of an outlier?
Edit: For those that are downvoting me - I live in a large urban area with large urban area related crime problems that actually has had a terrorism related incident. Mind providing an explanation?
Ask 1,500 citizens in Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis...
People probably don't live their lives any differently because of it. Many do support shaping government policy around to an extent that is not easily justified by data.
No. Most people just live. They go to work, they go home, they sleep, maybe have a few drinks on the weekends, but their lives are not driven by fear of some nebulous thing like guns or terrorism. As a general rule most people's lives are not affected by the scary things on the news, save for the content of their facebook timelines.
Unless you work in a tall building of course...
Or pandemics – people are afraid of the next Ebola for the right reasons. The 1918 influenza killed 20-50M people.
This behavior is hardly limited to "team red". Tolerance of gay sex is a tribal value of "team blue". Yet it turns out M2M gay sex is between 15x and 200x as dangerous as gun ownership. How many people are remotely aware of this?
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/are_gays_or_guns_mor...
People suck at risk assessment in general. Apart from scoring cheap points for our team, why focus on terrorism and guns specifically?
People with guns kill more people than terrorism. Guns aren't sentient (yet). Guns are inanimate tools; it's a people problem, not a tool problem. Just as you wouldn't say that cars kill people and try to ban cars when it's actually irresponsible drivers (drunk, inattentive, etc) that cause the accident, you can't blame an inanimate object for what its user does with it. Shifting the blame is a political maneuver as old as mankind.
One could also say, "The suits are coming for your money." but articles of clothing do not, as a rule, walk around robbing people.
Anyway, I'm pro-gun, but 'guns' kill people is just saying that gun users kill people with guns.
I recall recently seeing a video (by a progressive minded producer) who laid out several "mean" looking guns (black synthetic stock, picatinny rail, etc) that were actually low power, single shot or limited capacity target guns (one was a BB gun), next to old-fashioned looking but semi-automatic and high powered rifles much more capable of harming large groups of people. Invariably the gun hating types picked out the less harmful weapons as "scary" and said they shouldn't be produced, while they were not nearly as frightened of the wooden stock weapons designed to shoot up to thirty rounds in as many seconds before reloading.
No one ever says "hey, I want to be a terrorist." Instead they're using their violence to support a personal righteous cause. Terrorism happens to people - it's not something people do.