This thread discusses the Content article: FACTS TO PONDER

Brilliant!

Can you spot the logical fallacy in this argument?

Guess I picked the wrong profession! Any ideas for a midlife career change?

A good starting point would be to read "Freakonomics" by Levitt and Dubner.
Aren't statistics wonderful, that they can be used to support just about any theory.....no matter how farcical, or be twisted to promote any agenda.

The gun facts stated have been floating around the net since....well....there has been a net. The sample below is from a collection of stats which I have always found revealing and more damning to anti-gunners.

* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high."

From....http://www.gunowners.org/sk0802.htm
Just For Skeptics: Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives

Please explain the logical fallacy to us.

QUOTE:
Out of concern for the public at large, we have withheld the statistics on Lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention.

Ain't that the truth.

We don't need folks to go to the hospitals there are killer germs in those places....people die like flies in hospitals.



DOWN WITH THE FDA while we're at it.

Where's the stat on how many people have been killed by Left wing legislation, like withdrawal from Viet Nam, banning of DDT, and so on. I know they're in the TTP archives somewhere. Didn't Pol Pot kill around 2 million? That's John Kerry's real legacy.

Now I see ads to send nets to Africa to keep people from dying from Malaria. Nets? How many millions have environmentalists killed by banning some pesticides? So now the best solution we are left with are nets. Nets?
That's the environmentalists legacy.

How many people have died in the name of Clintopia?

Essentially this is a modern version of a joke attributed to Mark Twain, that since most people died in bed rather than on trains, beds should be banned.

It is a false analogy. The crux is that the risks can not be compared 1 to 1.

A doctor's accident is called malpractice, which is a legal definition and is subject to interpretation by lawyers. There is an enormous financial incentive to classify an unsuccessful procedure as malpractice.
Doctor' s in different specialties have different risks. OB/GYNs have greater risks than dermatologists.
Each doctor would have to kill one person about every 6 years for the math to work.
Doctors see more than one patient every 6 years who then dies from malpractice. Most people in the US see a doctor during that period at least once. 300,000,000 people/ 6 = 50,000,000 a year who visit a doctor.
50,000,000 / 120,000 = or 1 in 417, not lottery odds but not so great either. *But*
Doctors treat people who are sick, very few of the 120,000 die during a routine checkup.
Most who die from the alleged malpractice are already on death's door, so there is a selection bias.
Physicians add to the average lifespan of the population more than they subtract from it. This is partly through early detection, better treatment modalites and greater understanding of the medical research.
Most gun deaths are not accidents, many of the accidents are suicides.
80,000,000 guns does not translate into 80,000,000 gun owners.
Gun accidents tend to cluster in "risk groups", those with prior criminal records/drug problems/etc and are not uniform in their distribution.

Therefore, if you are having chest pains, see a physician not a gun store owner.

I'm trying to figure out if it be better or worse if the doctor has a gun?