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Comment by aflag | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the original post was not trying to precisely inform the frequency, just that it's not a once in a generation occurrence, but rather something that happens regularly. By trying to refute the frequency, you're completely missing the argument. That's what me and other people are saying.

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In order to have a rational and productive discussion about policy one needs to have some kind of handle on reality, as well as a minimum of truthfulness and respect for the people you’re talking to.

Overstating the incidence of an event by a factor of 20 means you don’t have a handle on reality. Deliberately lying about news events means you’re not truthful. Putting words in people’s mouths and imparting inhumane motivations to them means you lack respect. All of these things happened in just this handful of comments, and, no, I don‘t think I’m missing anything at all.

The phrase "everyday occurrence" does not mean that something literally happens every day, it means that it happens commonly enough that it's not broadly notable.

You derailed this comment thread by quibbling over the specific frequency of these tragic events, rather than focussing on the point - which was that these accidental killings do indeed happen frequently - perhaps more frequently than you realised.

Factor of 20? Who's exaggerating now? If the linked incident happened on Monday, we could perhaps extrapolate that this happens perhaps once every four days, so that's a factor of four.

Seriously, though, maybe this is just a local colloquialism or language barrier thing, but to me, the phrase "everyday occurrence" doesn't mean "something that literally happens every day", it means "something that is common and happens often".

In my comment below I liked to a WP article the gives a rate of 15 per year (almost all self-shootings) Once per day would be 24.33 times as frequent.

Your method of "extrapolating" is innumerate.

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