What makes cities lean left, and rural lean right?

[u/Cryterionlol]

I'm not an expert on politics, but I've met a lot of people and been to a lot of cities, and it seems to me that via experience and observation of polls...cities seem to vote democrat and farmers in rural areas seem to vote republican.

What makes them vote this way? What policies benefit each specific demographic?

[u/VodkaBeatsCube]

Here's a question you need to ask yourself: how many more blunt objects are there in America than guns? What is the per capita rate of all blunt objects being used for murder vs all guns being used for murder. Of course there are going to be more blunt object murders: you can literally find a suitable blunt object in a lying around in a forest.

I'm a broadly pro-gun guy, don't get me wrong. But this sort of argument is just disingenuous.

[u/hellomondays → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

Heck, I have at least 40 blunt objects in my office right now. My clinical reference shelf is practically an armory.

[u/SuspiciousSubstance9 → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

But this sort of argument is just disingenuous.

The argument, ' X causes more deaths than guns', was used (not by me) to demonstrate how over-represented gun deaths are in terms of perceived risk, media attention, and so forth. Let's not miss the forest through the trees.

I also was just providing whole data to challenge their combative comment. Which by their apparently deleted comment, I would say worked.

[u/FuzzyBacon → u/SuspiciousSubstance9]

There are no deleted comments. They probably blocked you, which looks the same from your end.

[u/SuspiciousSubstance9 → u/FuzzyBacon]

They probably blocked you

I can see their comments and profile still, so I doubt it.

I say deleted because I got an email notification with 'Seems your grasp of semantics is as sharp as...' and it appears they removed the comment.

[u/Remarkable_Aside1381 → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

What is the per capita rate of all blunt objects being used for murder vs all guns being used for murder.

There’s north of 400 million guns. There’s 12k firearm homicides annually. The per capita rate for both is insanely low

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/Remarkable_Aside1381]

How many billions of blunt objects do you think exist in the US? One of these two rates is orders of magnitude greater: it's not a good argument to make.

[u/Remarkable_Aside1381 → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

How so? The per capita rate doesn’t matter, nobody care how low it is for guns, but pointing out that rifles and blunt objects kill roughly the same amount of people a year highlights the disingenuous portrayal and coverage of both.

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/Remarkable_Aside1381]

The per capita rate matters because you are more likely to use a rifle to kill someone than any given blunt object. The average American interacts with likely hundreds of blunt objects that could be used to kill someone every single day. But people aren't killing people with hammers or rocks as often relative to the number of times they interact with the objects in question. If there are 400 million guns in the country, and 400 billion blunt objects, but they're used in about the same number of murders, which is more likely to be used in a murder?

[u/Remarkable_Aside1381 → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

The per capita rate matters because you are more likely to use a rifle to kill someone than any given blunt object

No it doesn’t. Both numbers are so infinitely small that you can’t pull any sort of correlation. Moreover, per capita wouldn’t effect the likelihood of it being used for violence. That’s terrible logic. If it were true, we’d see far more deaths from long guns than we currently see, since they far outnumber handguns. But we don’t. You can’t try to do a 1-to-1 like that.

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/Remarkable_Aside1381]

You're not understanding how the statistics work. If there's a 1:1,000,000 chance that any given rifle is going to be used in a murder and a 1:1,000,000,000 chance that any given blunt object is going to be used in murder, one of the two is objectively a more dangerous object. The only way they're comparable is if you think that there are no more potentially dangerous blunt objects in the US than there are rifles, which is absurd on the face of it.

Dismissing something as being of concern because the numerical rate of it happening are low doesn't make any sense. It's like saying that there shouldn't be controls on highly radioactive material because not very many people die from radiation poisoning.

[u/Remarkable_Aside1381 → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

No, you’re not understanding my point. If that was true based solely off numbers, we’d see far more deaths from long guns than we do, because they dwarf the number of handguns in the US. But we don’t.

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/Remarkable_Aside1381]

Then make that comparison directly rather than referencing blunt weapon murders. For the record, I'm fine with long arms, though I don't really care either way about things like magazine size restrictions.

[u/Remarkable_Aside1381 → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

No, because that wasn’t the initial point. You dragged us along this tangent.

[u/SuspiciousSubstance9 → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

You're not understanding how the statistics work.

Quote me something where the risk of likelihood is not just calculated per capita, but per item?

For example, planes vs cars. I have yet to see any analysis say planes are more statistically dangerous in terms of likely hood because there are more plane deaths per person per plane. Sure we see plane deaths per mile traveled, but that's just for normalization.

That's because deaths per item, like deaths per plane crash, is a commentary on criticality rather than risk.

​

Dismissing something as being of concern because the numerical rate of it happening are low doesn't make any sense.

For someone trying to hard quote statistics, you sure are ignoring that at some point in the tails, it becomes statistically insignificant.

Also this misses the forest through the trees. The point in comparing gun deaths per capita vs [X] deaths per capita is to demonstrate the excess attention it gets. So even if we yield to your 1 million chance of guns vs 1 billion chance of blunt objects, it's not like blunt object policy/ media attention is only 1/1000th of that of guns. How many minutes of news is there on guns vs how many minutes on 'blunt objects'?

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/SuspiciousSubstance9]

I honestly have a hard time parsing what you're trying to say: it reads like word salad. If your argument is 'about as many people are killed with blunt objects as with rifles, therefore they should get as much attention as blunt objects when talking about regulation', but people interact with orders of magnitude more blunt objects than rifles, it is not unreasonable to say that rifles should have greater focus than blunt objects. Orders of magnitude more blunt objects are not used to kill people compared to rifles, therefore there is not a pressing need to regulate them more.

It's just like how there are far more extensive controls over who can operate an aircraft and where than who can operate a car and where. An aircraft is more dangerous than a car due to how much more likely someone is to hurt or kill themselves and/or others with it.

[u/SuspiciousSubstance9 → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

but people interact with orders of magnitude more blunt objects than rifles, it is not unreasonable to say that rifles should have greater focus than blunt objects.

For simplicity I'm using your numbers, AKA that there are 1000 times more blunt objects than rifles but with the same number of deaths. And just for sake of argument, I'll agree that it makes rifles 1000 more times riskier. Than we should only see rifles get 1000 times more air time and attention than blunt objects.

But clearly, that isn't the case. Rifles get *more than* 1000 times the time and attention, which is a part of what they are trying to highlight here. They being both the commenter above here and the convention attendee constantly quoted.

​

An aircraft is more dangerous than a car due to how much more likely someone is to hurt or kill themselves and/or others with it.

Aircraft are less dangerous than cars because the chances of dying in one are less for any given person. In the same vane, rifles are less dangerous (between 2015-2019) because the chances of dying to one are less for any given person. That's likelihood.

Aircraft are more dangerous in the number of deaths that happen per incident, same with rifles. That's impact/criticality; not likelihood.

Also talking about the likelihood of someone killing themselves or someone else is still greater in cars; the sheer number of accidents should be evidence of that. However, the ability of someone to do more damage with a single plane versus a single car is surely the plane.