Editor: I see Mr. Bowman’s fuzzy logic is back with us again.
While his latest letter to the editor of (the Times June 17) primarily bemoans the bias of the evening news, he once again compares deaths by firearms in Canada to those in the U.S.
“We Canadians are six time more likely to killed by a Canadian gun than Americans are by an American gun,” he says.
I have no idea how accurate that statement is. It sounds like something Trump might make up, but I assume that, once again, he is referring to “registered” guns. Of course, that brings up the usual two questions:
1) How many guns in Canada are registered and how many are registered in the U.S.?
2) How many are unregistered in either country?
Apparently death by unregistered guns don’t count.
As we found from transposing Mr. Bowman’s figures from his last letter, and with a little help from Google, that at that time one had a 6.87 per cent chance of being killed by firearms in the U.S. than in Canada.
That would be all firearms, not just registered ones. (I would imagine that since the recent tragedies in San Bernadino and Orlando that figure is now closer to seven per cent greater).
I don’t suppose the victims caught in those massacres much cared if the crazies firing at them had registered their weapons or not.
Shame on Mr. Bowman for attempting to use such a feeble statistic to warp the reality of gun violence.
One would almost think that he had a bias of his own.
Evan Brett,
Langley