Comment by unimpressive | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unimpressive | Hacker News Reader

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A quick search says that 71 people were shot or killed in the massacre.

If a gunman were to go out every day and shoot up a movie theater of say, 110 people, for the next century; the death toll[2] would be:

(110 * 365) * 100 = 4015000

Which is a little more than 4/5ths of double the annual fatalities in 2009. [0]

[0]: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

[1]: Of course, if our hypothetical gunman only targeted movie theaters, going to any single movie theater on a given day might be a risky proposition. If someone can find the number of people who see a movie every day in the US I'd love to know.

[2]: Actually, shot != death; so the death toll would be lower. Of course then you have to think about things like permanent debilitation and traumatic memories, not to mention healthcare costs.

According to this table:

http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/wv8t1/comprehensive_ti...

There were 60 victims, and 38 have been released from the hospital. 8 are still in critical condition, so we can't know if they'll live or die.

I'm going to assume, just for the sake of being on the pessimistic side of estimations (I don't actually believe this.), that everyone in critical care dies.

So presumably that would mean:

60 - 38 = 22.

Depending on the lethality of the shooter and random chance, the death toll may be as much as 2/3rds lower than the total number of those injured.

EDIT: This post originally said:

Which is still lower than the amount of people killed by heart disease in a single year here in the US. [0][1]

At the first citation.

I don't know, these exercises seem pointless to me.

If you find that kids in a certain school district have a high rate of death by self-inflicted gun shot, you don't ignore it and say "Well, that's statistically insignificant compared to the number of people who die of cancer every year".

It's still a problem and still needs to be looked at and solved.

That's not what people are doing though. They aren't looking at a local issue and trying to figure out what to do to heal the community. They're looking at a shooting in Aurora and asking what to do about our national gun laws. And our national security infrastructure.

And the answer is, largely nothing. Because this is nationally statistical noise.

(And on the subject of noise, giving crazed gun men this level of attention I would think is probably one of, if not the; largest factor in causing these incidents to happen.)

I think a call for restrictions on gun ownership is a natural reaction to the fact that any lunatic can (and does) load up with military-style weaponry and can go on a killing spree.

It doesn't happen everyday, but there are without a doubt lots of people who are stocking up on guns. Many of them are at least a little wacky, and long-guns are nearly unregulated in most US jurisdictions.

You can call these events statistical noise, but the general public put you in the category where folks who claim that nuclear reactor meltdowns are no big deal are.

> military-style weaponry

Please stop.

All semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines are functionally identical.

The suspect had a rifle, shotgun and handgud. that is 'loaded up'?

Since when does 'requires federal background check' == 'nearly unregulated'?

All semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines are functionally identical.

I take your point. However, the cartridges fired by those guns may differ significantly in their effect, and the media persists in calling the killer's AR-15 a "high-powered assault rifle". This is demonstrably false. If anything, it's a "low-powered assault rifle".

The AR-15's 5.56mm NATO ammunition [1] is designed to be light and portable, and to injure rather than kill. Compare that to, say, the AK-47 and it's 7.62x39 ammunition [2]. The energy of the AR-15 ammo is about 1300J, while that of the AK's is 1500J or more.

The media is causing a certain degree of the fear here. I see three possible reasons:

A. They've got a specific agenda

B. They expect that sensationalism will get them better ratings

C. They're lazy. "High-powered assault rifle" is a hackneyed phrase that just springs to mind, and they don't care enough about accuracy to check it. (of course, the reason it's hackneyed is itself the media's overuse)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56x45mm_NATO

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62x39mm

The AR-15's 5.56mm NATO ammunition [1] is designed to be light and portable, and to injure rather than kill. Compare that to, say, the AK-47 and it's 7.62x39 ammunition [2]. The energy of the AR-15 ammo is about 1300J, while that of the AK's is 1500J or more.

7.62x39 is not a NATO round only because it's Russian in origin. It's generally the same is the 5.56 (basically a .223) in that it's a non-expanding bullet typically due to the FMJ (full metal jacket). The light and portable part is mostly due to history - the arms race of more shots equaling more kills, and mobile infantries. Compare that with say the .30-06 or 7.62x54 which are big rounds shot from big, heavy rifles (M1 Garand and Mosin-Nagant, respectively), a holdover from trench warfare.

You can purchase non-NATO 5.56/.223 ammo for hunting, and are typically required to use it when hunting game. The opposite of warfare, it's considered more humane to kill an animal than to injure it.

7.62x39 ... It's generally the same is the 5.56 (basically a .223) in that it's a non-expanding bullet typically due to the FMJ

The fact that they're typically jacketed is where the similarity starts and ends. They are loaded differently, spin at different rates, and so on. But most obviously, 7.62x39 is almost twice the diameter of 5.56.

7.62x39 is probably much more comparable to the .308 Winchester [1] typically used for hunting larger game. According to wikipedia, "the .308 Winchester has become the most popular short-action, big-game hunting cartridge worldwide".

Now, circling back to my original point about the AR-15 (or, really, the 5.56mm cartridge it shoots) being low-power, wikipedia lists the energy of the energy of the .308 bullet at 3600J-3900K, nearly triple the power of the 5.56mm.

So I stand by my claim that the AR-15 is a low-power rifle.

You can purchase non-NATO 5.56/.223 ammo for hunting, and are typically required to use it when hunting game.

This is absolutely false. 5.56mm ammunition is too small for hunting deer, bear, etc. You've got to be a very good shot to take down large animals with something bearing so little energy. That's why hunters tend to use rounds in the .30cal range -- like the .308 I mentioned, and also very commonly the 7.62x39 from the AK, but when hunting it's probably being shot out of an SKS [2]. Wikipedia verifies that "In the early 1990s, the Chinese SKS rapidly became the "poor man's deer rifle" in some Southern areas of the United States".

So there are a variety of larger cartridges used for hunting larger game, generally in the .30cal neighborhood or more, because the 5.56mm/.223 cartridge just doesn't carry enough energy to take down the big animals.

(looks like someone changed the wikipedia link on me! The new link for 7.62x39 is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9739mm )

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.308_Winchester

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sks

You can purchase non-NATO 5.56/.223 ammo for hunting, and are typically required to use it when hunting game.

I re-read my sentence and it didn't come out quite right. I agree that 5.56/.223 isn't your typical hunting round. What I meant by my sentence is that you can hunt with it but it isn't generally legal to use non-expanding rounds for hunting.

So I stand by my claim that the AR-15 is a low-power rifle.

No need to move from your position, you are correct. It's an instrument of war and not utility.

There are slight ups and downs depending on the size of game but I agree that the .308 is probably the de-facto starting round for big game.

Shorter barrels are useful for hitting multiple targets rapidly at short ranges and less useful at long ones. Which has a lot to do with the design of military style weapons vs. a rifle used for hunting vs. target practice. If your attacking a target you want longer range accuracy and a large clip, if your defending yourself you want a hand gun. Which is a major reason why the police don't go around with swat style weapons.

if your defending yourself you want a hand gun

Disagree, at least depending on the situation.

If you're defending yourself in your home, the most appropriate weapon is likely a short-barreled shotgun. The short barrel is advantageous for being able to quickly maneuver around corners, etc. And the shot requires less (but not zero) accuracy in aiming, and if you use the right size shot, is less dangerous to bystanders because of minimal risk of over-penetration.

While we're on the topic, the gun control people are irrational in trying to ban rifles with pistol-style grips. Such a grip gives no advantage to the bad guys: in Aurora, he was equally able to fire the AR-15 (which had such grips) and the shotgun (which probably didn't). However, pistol grips are useful to a home defender. It would allow the defender to hold the weapon covering the bad guy with one hand, while using the other hand to dial 911. Without the pistol grip, the defender couldn't do that.

Have to agree with CWuestefeld, for home defense you want a shotgun with a short barrel. You want to know how to shoot it and you want some safety and maintenance training. Also, do not choose ammo that is going to go through your walls.

Don't forget a lot of gun owners are shot with their own weapons. At a minimum you want a shoulder strap for larger weapons, and the ability to keep a hand free while aiming. Longer barrels also allow people to more easily grab them which is vary dangerous, and make it more obvious where they are in the home. As to penetrating issues, you can use shotgun ammo in handguns, but with a short enough barrel the difference becomes minimal as long as you have a reasonable clip size.

PS: Statistically gun owners are less safe. I expect that with reasonable precautions you can cross the threshold into overall safety. But, clearly you need to approach things from the perspective that owning a gun is a larger risk by default and then deal with the new risks.

Do you have the stats on "Don't forget a lot of gun owners are shot with their own weapons". I don't think I agree with the shoulder strap part, and I have never seen or heard of shotgun ammo in a hand gun.

Kellermann states that as an emergency room doctor, he noted that the number of gunowners injured by their own gun or that of a family member seemed to greatly outnumber the number of intruders shot by the gun of a homeowner, and therefore he determined to study whether or not this was in fact true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Kellermann (I could quote from this, but it's IMO worth a read.)

When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-i...

EX: "owner that was armed with a shotgun got shot with his own gun" http://texasfred.net/archives/2671

PS: As to why you have not heard of this. The final appropriation language included the following statement: “[N]one of the funds made available for injury control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control”. These words appear in every CDC grant announcement to this day. [5]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Showing correlation doesn't show causation.

Consider, for example, that people who are more likely to be injured by a gun at the outset are probably more likely to own, and even to have to use, a gun themselves. A drug dealer, for example, is more likely to have a gun because of his line of work. But having the gun isn't what makes it more dangerous; rather, it's more dangerous, so he feels he needs a gun.

Thus, the gun owners have a higher Bayesian prior. It would be very wrong to interpret this to say that owning a gun causes your likelihood of it being used (maybe even accidentally) against you.

I suggest that many people who actually do such studies understand this, and that is a better reason for it not to be in the headlines.

I don't feel the need to defend the research. There is a lot of it and it does address your obvious concerns. My point about funding was demonstrating that like Abstinence only education the is that it's treated as a political issue where actual evidence is irrelevant. The proper result of a study that you disagree with is to look for flaws and then do more research or change your stance, not to cut funding.

Anyway, did you read the any of the studies or are you filtering new evidence though your basis in such a way that you don't need to reconsider your stance? In proper Bayesian reasoning you need to consider how much this information even if flawed adjusts your probability estimates. Deciding that the risks of some activity is worth it is one thing, deciding that some activity is good and therefore ignoring the risks is not. I just linked a specific case where someones owning a gun resulted in there being shot by that gun so the situation exists. The question becomes how common is it and how common is it to defend yourself with a gun and then compare them. And to do that you need actual evidence not a hunch.

Yes, being shot with your own gun is a rare event, so is using your gun to defend yourself. And at the level of paranoia where spending money on a gun so you can defend yourself becomes reasonable you need to consider other low probability events. The largest downside is how having a gun tends to escalate the violence of a situation, but when evaluating types of guns that takes a back seat to losing control of it.

PS: I am pro gun despite the expectation that it reduces safety. Arthur Kellermann overestimates the risks, but he is a good starting point for the research.

As you phrase it here, I'll buy your response.

But let me note that we're not just passengers on the probability bus. All those possibilities of accidents or otherwise being harmed by your own weapon are avoidable. I can mitigate all of those dangers by taking responsibility for myself (and imposing the same on my family) to be properly trained and practiced.

On the other hand, there isn't so much that I can do to mitigate the danger I'm in should I or my family find ourselves in the (admittedly very unlikely) situation of being attacked (yes, I can try to avoid some situations to begin with, but I claim that ordinary prudent behavior is the most that can be expected here without getting to diminishing returns).

If I'm under attack, there's little else I can do to protect myself. But ahead of time, I can prepare myself and family to defend ourselves, and at the same time ensure that we won't get ourselves into trouble. I much prefer being the one driving the outcome, rather than the bad guy.

I have never heard of shotgun ammo being used in a handgun. Your PS does not explain that. I am going to go with CWuestefeld's response until I see some actual stats on the issue.

There are handguns that shoot a .410 shotgun shell. The Taurus Judge[1] is one such gun.

However, I think the parent meant that owners either are shot by someone they know who is using their guns maliciously or non-maliciously, or have the gun somehow removed from their control by an assailant and then killed with it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_Judge

You want to know how to shoot it and you want some safety and maintenance training.

Absolutely! One needs to learn how to properly wield the weapon, and to do so safely. But "knowing" this stuff isn't sufficient to be able to do so successfully. You must train: practice at least until you can feel comfortable with the weapon: you know what the trigger pull and the recoil feels like, you are comfortable with the grip in your hand and smoothly bringing it up to position, etc.

For anyone crazy enough to believe what they see on television: you won't be able to just pick up a gun and shoot it properly without some experience. You just won't. Some of this is "book learning". But some of it is "you just need the practical experience". In particular, you will be very surprised at how difficult it is to use a handgun to hit a person-sized target in the far corner of your living room.

If you don't learn and practice with your gun, you're no more likely to be successful than you are at programming without actually doing a real project.

I do agree practice is a necessity but people often forget the other basics, particularly maintenance. To add, if you intend to own a firearm, go somewhere with some experience and get one that suits you personally. Think of it as the vi / emacs debate writ larger.

if you intend to own a firearm, go somewhere with some experience and get one that suits you personally

Good advice. In particular, it's too easy to view the gun's style. Do NOT consider that it looks cool, tough, etc. The fact that the .50 Desert Eagle looks menacing is not going to save you from the fact that you (or me, at least) just can't properly shoot a gun that's so big and powerful. Being able to use it properly is much more important.

Also, don't just assume that it's going to be an auto like a Glock, etc. IMHO a simple dual-action [1] revolver is probably a better choice for defensive situations, precisely because it is so simple. A revolver will never let you down: you can always just pull the trigger again to get to the next chamber. By contrast, autos are prone to jamming, not to mention a misfired bullet; either way, you're now at the mercy of the bad guy. Your primary concern in this area is dependability.

[1] "Dual action" means that you may cock it for better trigger pull, but if you don't, you can still fire it with just the trigger

The problem in the US is not rifles, it's handguns. The US gets ~17k murders per year. 13k of those are with firearms. 11k of those are with handguns. Shootings like Aurora are visible, but they're not common.

A much harder thing to do is decouple firearms from masculinity - that link is everywhere in the US, from Hollywood to patriotism to those 'defend your daughters against home invading gangbangers' ads.

Well, out here in the middle states its a tool and a lot of women shot just as well as men.

We don't teach people about actual risks, but we sure hit them with hysterics. We can do this because people feed off what breaks the pattern and then assume it is the pattern.

Statistically don't these things happen way more in the US than anywhere else though? Or is that just a media bias?

Correct. The us has a homicide rate over 400x (ie. not 400%, but 400 times) the gun related homicide rate of Australia, where there are far tougher gun laws in Australia. Some may consider that acceptable, or say that knifings in Australia are significantly higher (which is not true), but the fact is that the US has a poor record of gun related homicides.

One great thing about the US is that states can act like laboratories for testing different laws. Massachusetts has some of the toughest gun laws requiring someone to obtain a gun permit before they can own a gun.

Massachusetts also is second only to Hawaii in the lowest firearm death rate:

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-death-rate-...

The firearm death rate in MA is 1/5 - 1/6 the rate of high death rate states.

I looked into what it takes to get a gun permit in MA and was surprised by how common sense it is. As long as you have a record of no violent felonies and no current restraining orders you must take a gun safety course. Then you need to submit a signed statement to the chief of police in your town from two adults saying you are an upstanding person. This way the police know who has a gun and they are probably best able to judge if you should have a gun.

On the other hand, if we interpret the right to keep and bear arms out of our Constitution because it is inconvenient, it will just make it easier to do the same with due process, which is already on its last legs in the US.

Because amending a constitution is a dangerous thing that should never be done!

Re-read what I said. If you amend the Constitution it's a highly deliberative and drawn-out process. If we just decide that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in the US Constitution means what it does in the English Bill of Rights though that's not the same thing.

I think we clearly need to amend the 2nd amendment. The text says the government can't stop the guy down the block from having nukes, and that is obviously inappropriate.

I dunno. The definition of a militia is a volunteer organization where people furnish their own weapons. I think it would be hard to argue that personal ownership of nukes serves either self-defence or the militia interest. I do think the machine gun ban is questionable though.

If it said, "the right of the people to bear arms for this purpose shall not be infringed" then I would agree. But it doesn't, it says "[This amendment is important because of militias;] the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." ... with some extra commas that are incorrect now based on how grammar has shifted.

One canon of construction of legal documents is to treat every word as necessary to the meaning. The history and text of the 2nd Amendment suggest that the right to keep and bear arms is allowed for two basic purposes: self-defence (as a pre-existing right and the fact that this is largely copied from the English Bill of Rights where this was more explicit), and the militia interest (again found in both the English Bill of Rights, limiting an individual RKBA to Protestants) and the text itself (which mentions a militia).

The Supreme Court has always said (even in cases where they held a collective right, like Presser v. Illinois) that an attempt at elimination of gun ownership by a state would run afoul with the militia interest by the federal government. This is because the militia interest can only be served by an individual right. You have to be able to bring your gun when you join a militia so you must be able to own one outside this, and so the right has to be broader than the mere militia interest. And I disagree with groups like the NRA here but I think that if the state put forth an inexpensive program for people to learn and be certified regarding gun safety, they could probably require such certification before allowing them to own guns.

Again, I don't see anything in the text or history of the second amendment that would preclude eliminating nuclear weapons ownership. Now, big guns on private warships? That's a more interesting question ;-)

You still need to demonstrate causation. Simply saying 'the US has the highest gun related deaths and the loosest gun regulations' only establishes corralation.

Contrast with Brazil, which has far stricter gun laws than the U.S. and far more gun deaths.

Here's the wikipedia page on gun-related deaths statistics since some people are writing "where's the beef?" comments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re...

   US has a score of 10.27 per 100,000

   Canada has a score of 4.78 per 100,000

   Australia has a score of 2.94 per 100,000

   England/Wales has a score of 0.46 per 100,000

   Japan has a score of 0.07 per 100,000

(edit: formatting)

Now you have introduced suicides into the mix. The great majority of gun related deaths in Australia are suicides. More than half of them in the United States are suicides.

Also, the grandparent claim of 400x does not stand up to scrutiny. The rate of gun related homicide in the U.S. is approximately 4 or 5 / 100,000. In Australia, it is about 0.5 / 100,000. That's 10x. Which is still quite a difference.

That's not what statistically insignificant means.

Sorry? I didn't understand. What's not what statistically insignificant means?

That's a creepy username in the context of your post!

(BTW, your century of gunmen racks up four million. Heart disease in one US year gets to about 600k.)

>(BTW, your century of gunmen racks up four million. Heart disease in one US year gets to about 600k.)

Oh, my eyes missed a zero.

You're only making half an argument there. Yes, heart disease is a bigger cause of death than crazed gunmen ever could be in a functioning society. Ergo... what?

>You're only making half an argument there. Yes, heart disease is a bigger cause of death than crazed gunmen ever could in a functioning society.

Actually that was a mistake, see edit above. And post below.

> Ergo... what?

At the rate that this actually happens, you shouldn't worry about it. Is it scary? Yes. Is it tragic? Yes. Is it a probable threat to you or your loved ones? Not really.

Ah. So your argument is, we should only be looking to prevent probable threats -- whatever that means, exactly. I think that's pretty silly.

If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y because X isn't a meaningful threat to any single person?

I think the answer should be: it depends. It depends on the costs associated with Y (not just the monetary ones). If it costs multiple billions that would otherwise have gone to, say, cancer research it's probably not worth it. If implementing Y involves installing a 10 PM mandatory curfew for everyone, it's probably not worth it. On the other extreme, if it costs nothing, you'd be negligent to not implement Y.

The point is, your argument is not valid if you don't consider the downsides. Arguably, there is a minimum threshold that needs to be exceeded in order to even make these evaluations, ie. if X only caused 1 death per decade, it might not be worth talking about it, even if it'd cost us almost nothing to implement Y. But I think that threshold should be really low and it really does not apply here.

Arguably, there is a minimum threshold that needs to be exceeded in order to even make these evaluation

Arguably? How many separate things are there in the world that kill 5 or more people in the US each year? An awful lot. IIRC the number of people killed in newspaper related accidents in the UK is about that high.

Society only has so much attention, people only spend so much time learning about the world every day, and people only have so much capacity for worry. To the extent that we use up our worry on things that aren't important we lose the ability to worry about the things that are. I don't expect all the ink spilled on this shooting to save a single life, but if a similar amount of popular attention was devoted to teaching people what drowning really looked like it would probably save about 50 lives every year[1].

If you're going to cross the street it doesn't make sense to split your attention between looking to either side for oncoming cars and looking up for falling objects. Falling objects are very rare, and to the extent that you waste time worrying about them you're more likely to get run over.

[1]http://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/

That's the kind of argument I had in mind but I didn't want to elaborate on yet another incidental issue. Societal attention is a finite resource (which goes largely wasted). On the other hand, many of these questions don't rise to the level of public discussion, just think of all the safety regulations involved in engineering and manufacturing.

>If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y because X isn't a meaningful threat to any single person?

Well that's a hard question to answer, we still don't know how to evaluate the value of a human life. So in the general case I would say no I would, if it wasn't prohibitively expensive. (Relative to the number of actual damages caused.)

> I think the answer should be: it depends.

Okay. I didn't cover the kinds of issues you talk about in the following paragraph because in context everyone reading should know about them by this point. I could go on about the civil costs of gun control, the material costs, weighed alternative options like better mental health treatment, or not naming the shooter on national TV; etc.

But all that stuff could fit into a form letter. [0]

[0]: http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

EDIT: I accidentally said "yes" when I meant "no" in the first response paragraph. That is, in the general case; no I would implement countermeasure Y to prevent 5 annual deaths.

I think a better comparison is to another major risk we take every day, which is getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, something which kills 35-40k people in the US annually. In fact, 3600 Americans lost their lives in car accidents in September, 2001, about 20% more than were killed in terrorist attacks in the US at that time.

Assuming a nuclear attack kills half a million people (small nuclear warhead detonated, for example, in a port), you'd have to have one of those in the US ever decade before it would be significantly more of a risk than being behind the wheel of a car.

And Anthrax? How many people died as a result of the Anthrax attacks in 2001? How scared are people of that? Heck how many people died when the USSR released weaponized anthrax over a small population repeatedly?

There are many risks which aren't worth worrying about.

Just as a note, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to weaponized anthrax in the Sverdlosk accidents. While the exact death toll is unknown current counts are at most in the hundreds. We will probably never know the death toll in part due to coverups in part orchestrated by none other than Boris Yeltsin. However based on available data, weaponized anthrax just isn't that dangerous.

I stopped reading as soon as you said "4/5th of double."

Thank you for letting me know you have no idea what you're talking about.

Um, yes it is? [0]

If it's not, I would love for you to correct me.

[0]: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/calculate-perc...

total = 4874326

amount = 4015000

4015000 ÷ 4874326 = 0.823703626

1/5 = 0.2

4/5 = 0.8

Unless you mean it's an awkward phrasing, in which case you would be right.

(No, I haven't taken a statistics course, but the percentage algorithm is taught in like 5th grade, and I don't really need anything more complex than that here.)

(I would also like to note that if I have said something stupid/I said what I wanted to say in a stupid way, theres no way to fix it now even if I wanted to.)

I didn't care for the phrasing at all. By using 4/5, that implies lower, and stands out far more than the word double. The conclusion drawn by most would be "less than", which is quite misleading from the actual data of "almost double".

Edit: There is also an edit button if you wanted to fix your wording.

>I didn't care for the phrasing at all. By using 4/5, that implies lower, and stands out far more than the word double. The conclusion drawn by most would be "less than", which is quite misleading from the actual data of "almost double".

That's understandable.

>Edit: There is also an edit button if you wanted to fix your wording.

You can't edit a post after it's been unchanged for more than an hour. (Or somewhere in that vicinity.)

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