Data Denial on Guns in America

At the meta level I guess my problem with modern day conservatism (as opposed to the conservatism in the family I grew up in) is its almost total denial of reality, of the data that shows reality. Perhaps because the world has moved so far from the reality described by conservative individualistic, nationalistic, religious belief systems, it must be very hard to accept statistical data that suggest very strongly that the world is not as you think it is. So whether it is climate change, Nate Silver’s election data, or gun fatality data, the conservative world is not and perhaps cannot be open to the data.

This is not say that liberals and other approaches cannot be data blind. They are. It is just that it is not so across the board systemic because they belief system is more porous, is more open to being wrong. Indeed liberal in some ways means open to being wrong, of their being more than one way of looking at the world. And indeed part of the conservative objection to the liberal view of history is that it takes a varied and critical view of the history of America.

With this in mind, I post an interesting graphic that I assume will act as a litmus test of whether you are in data denial about the recent murders in New Town, by a person I will not name because I think henceforth, to discourage other psychopathic killers, I think he should simply be called the ‘New Town Cowardly Murderer’ as with the ‘Columbine Cowardly Murderers’ without name or picture so their fame dies as their victims did.

If this graphic resonates with you as it does with me, then you are probably liberal. But if you are conservative and it resonates with you and you have conservative suggestions to reduce the chance of mass killings in our schools, please post your suggestions.