
Bruce Schneier: Drawing the wrong lessons from horrific events - bootload
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/31/opinion/schneier-aurora-aftermath/index.html
======
mduerksen
Even here in Germany, the overreaction to the event in Aurora can be
witnessed:

I went to the cinema last sunday (for Batman), and they had signs all over the
place saying something like "In reaction to repeated worried requests about
security, we will not allow visitors to be costumed and may search bags."

I won't comment on the knee-jerk reactions of the customers. What more
interesting to me is the decision made by the people in charge there, in
reaction to those "worried customers". Was the cinema management panicking as
well? Or were they just not courageous enough to stay calm and risk being
deemed as "not doing something about it"?

~~~
_delirium
That seems more like pandering to customers to me, which is a common thing for
businesses to do. Customers keep asking about $foo, so you have to at least
pretend to care about $foo.

~~~
mduerksen
Yes, but by doing this, you potentially scare all other customers off as well,
and make them feel uncomfortable. I don't think that is a wise business
decision.

An alternative would be to just give those worried ones a warm fuzzy feeling,
without even informing the others. Or, if that doesn't suffice, just live with
the fact that a few people won't go to the cinema for a month.

Of course, I don't know how many people were "worried" in this case. I hope
there weren't to many of them, that would be a sign that my country is getting
_really_ paranoid.

~~~
larrys
" I don't know how many people were "worried" in this case."

I think that's the thing about irrationality. If the media hype is strong
enough anyone's brain can be taken over.

I remember very clearly the anthrax scare. I remember consciously thinking
about anthrax when receiving envelopes at the business when that happened. I
knew it was irrational but it was nearly impossible to fight those thoughts
until the media attention died down.

------
unimpressive
A quick search says that 71 people were shot or killed in the massacre.

If a gunman were to go out every day and shoot up a movie theater of say, 110
people, for the next century; the death toll[2] would be:

(110 * 365) * 100 = 4015000

Which is a little more than 4/5ths of double the annual fatalities in 2009.
[0]

[0]: <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm>

[1]: Of course, if our hypothetical gunman only targeted movie theaters, going
to any single movie theater on a given day might be a risky proposition. If
someone can find the number of people who see a movie every day in the US I'd
love to know.

[2]: Actually, shot != death; so the death toll would be lower. Of course then
you have to think about things like permanent debilitation and traumatic
memories, not to mention healthcare costs.

According to this table:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/wv8t1/comprehensive_ti...](http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/wv8t1/comprehensive_timeline_aurora_massacre)

There were _60_ victims, and 38 have been released from the hospital. 8 are
still in critical condition, so we can't know if they'll live or die.

I'm going to assume, just for the sake of being on the _pessimistic_ side of
estimations (I don't actually believe this.), that everyone in critical care
dies.

So presumably that would mean:

60 - 38 = 22.

Depending on the lethality of the shooter and random chance, the death toll
may be as much as 2/3rds lower than the total number of those injured.

EDIT: This post originally said:

 _Which is still lower than the amount of people killed by heart disease in a
single year here in the US. [0][1]_

At the first citation.

~~~
statictype
I don't know, these exercises seem pointless to me.

If you find that kids in a certain school district have a high rate of death
by self-inflicted gun shot, you don't ignore it and say "Well, that's
statistically insignificant compared to the number of people who die of cancer
every year".

It's still a problem and still needs to be looked at and solved.

~~~
unimpressive
That's not what people are doing though. They aren't looking at a local issue
and trying to figure out what to do to heal the community. They're looking at
a shooting in Aurora and asking what to do about our _national_ gun laws. And
our _national_ security infrastructure.

And the answer is, largely nothing. Because this is _nationally_ statistical
noise.

(And on the subject of noise, giving crazed gun men this level of attention I
would think is probably one of, if not the; largest factor in causing these
incidents to happen.)

~~~
Spooky23
I think a call for restrictions on gun ownership is a natural reaction to the
fact that any lunatic can (and does) load up with military-style weaponry and
can go on a killing spree.

It doesn't happen everyday, but there are without a doubt lots of people who
are stocking up on guns. Many of them are at least a little wacky, and long-
guns are nearly unregulated in most US jurisdictions.

You can call these events statistical noise, but the general public put you in
the category where folks who claim that nuclear reactor meltdowns are no big
deal are.

~~~
fr0sty
> military-style weaponry

Please stop.

All semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines are functionally
identical.

The suspect had a rifle, shotgun and handgud. that is 'loaded up'?

Since when does 'requires federal background check' == 'nearly unregulated'?

~~~
CWuestefeld
_All semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines are functionally
identical._

I take your point. However, the cartridges fired by those guns may differ
significantly in their effect, and the media persists in calling the killer's
AR-15 a "high-powered assault rifle". This is demonstrably false. If anything,
it's a " _low-powered_ assault rifle".

The AR-15's 5.56mm NATO ammunition [1] is designed to be light and portable,
and to injure rather than kill. Compare that to, say, the AK-47 and it's
7.62x39 ammunition [2]. The energy of the AR-15 ammo is about 1300J, while
that of the AK's is 1500J or more.

The media is causing a certain degree of the fear here. I see three possible
reasons:

A. They've got a specific agenda

B. They expect that sensationalism will get them better ratings

C. They're lazy. "High-powered assault rifle" is a hackneyed phrase that just
springs to mind, and they don't care enough about accuracy to check it. (of
course, the reason it's hackneyed is itself the media's overuse)

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56x45mm_NATO>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62x39mm﻿>

~~~
Zimahl
_The AR-15's 5.56mm NATO ammunition [1] is designed to be light and portable,
and to injure rather than kill. Compare that to, say, the AK-47 and it's
7.62x39 ammunition [2]. The energy of the AR-15 ammo is about 1300J, while
that of the AK's is 1500J or more._

7.62x39 is not a NATO round only because it's Russian in origin. It's
generally the same is the 5.56 (basically a .223) in that it's a non-expanding
bullet typically due to the FMJ (full metal jacket). The light and portable
part is mostly due to history - the arms race of more shots equaling more
kills, and mobile infantries. Compare that with say the .30-06 or 7.62x54
which are big rounds shot from big, heavy rifles (M1 Garand and Mosin-Nagant,
respectively), a holdover from trench warfare.

You can purchase non-NATO 5.56/.223 ammo for hunting, and are typically
required to use it when hunting game. The opposite of warfare, it's considered
more humane to kill an animal than to injure it.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_7.62x39 ... It's generally the same is the 5.56 (basically a .223) in that
it's a non-expanding bullet typically due to the FMJ_

The fact that they're typically jacketed is where the similarity starts and
ends. They are loaded differently, spin at different rates, and so on. But
most obviously, 7.62x39 is almost twice the diameter of 5.56.

7.62x39 is probably much more comparable to the .308 Winchester [1] typically
used for hunting larger game. According to wikipedia, "the .308 Winchester has
become the most popular short-action, big-game hunting cartridge worldwide".

Now, circling back to my original point about the AR-15 (or, really, the
5.56mm cartridge it shoots) being low-power, wikipedia lists the energy of the
energy of the .308 bullet at 3600J-3900K, nearly _triple_ the power of the
5.56mm.

So I stand by my claim that the AR-15 is a _low-power_ rifle.

 _You can purchase non-NATO 5.56/.223 ammo for hunting, and are typically
required to use it when hunting game._

This is absolutely false. 5.56mm ammunition is too small for hunting deer,
bear, etc. You've got to be a very good shot to take down large animals with
something bearing so little energy. That's why hunters tend to use rounds in
the .30cal range -- like the .308 I mentioned, and also very commonly the
7.62x39 from the AK, but when hunting it's probably being shot out of an SKS
[2]. Wikipedia verifies that "In the early 1990s, the Chinese SKS rapidly
became the "poor man's deer rifle" in some Southern areas of the United
States".

So there are a variety of _larger_ cartridges used for hunting larger game,
generally in the .30cal neighborhood or more, because the 5.56mm/.223
cartridge just doesn't carry enough energy to take down the big animals.

(looks like someone changed the wikipedia link on me! The new link for 7.62x39
is <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9739mm> )

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.308_Winchester>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sks>

~~~
Zimahl
_You can purchase non-NATO 5.56/.223 ammo for hunting, and are typically
required to use it when hunting game._

I re-read my sentence and it didn't come out quite right. I agree that
5.56/.223 isn't your typical hunting round. What I meant by my sentence is
that you _can_ hunt with it but it isn't generally legal to use non-expanding
rounds for hunting.

 _So I stand by my claim that the AR-15 is a low-power rifle._

No need to move from your position, you are correct. It's an instrument of war
and not utility.

There are slight ups and downs depending on the size of game but I agree that
the .308 is probably the de-facto starting round for big game.

------
mbesto
Daniel Kahneman wrote about this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman#Hedonic_psychol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman#Hedonic_psychology)

and is a concept called the Focusing Illusion or Anchoring:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing_illusion>

In his tests, Kahneman showed that people assign too much "utility" to painful
events, even though a simliar event with less heuristics for pain was
statistically the same.

Great read for anyone interested:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow>

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I just finished _Thinking, Fast And Slow_ a couple of days ago, and it's the
most thought-provoking, moving work of non-fiction I've read in years.

~~~
mbesto
Absolutely. I can't recommend it enough.

------
tnorthcutt
I wrote Bruce an email after reading this article on my phone this morning:

\-------

Mr. Schneier,

I read your piece on CNN this morning (Drawing the wrong lessons from horrific
events) on my phone.

I thought you'd like to know that when viewed on a phone, the (utterly
ridiculous and annoying) links that CNN inserts in their articles are no
longer distinguishable from the content of the article, as all formatting is
stripped. Consequently, it appears as though on the second page of the
article, you wrote "Opinion: Average Americans don't need assault weapons",
when that is not the case (as far as I can tell). I've included a screen shot
from my phone for your convenience (also viewable here: <http://d.pr/i/MTOx>).

Cheers, \-- Travis Northcutt

------
dennisgorelik
Even if we assume that such crazy shooting attacks could be frequent, it's
still not obvious what should we do about them.

Should we ban the weapons or should we allow carry weapons, so law-abiding
citizens could protect themselves? After all, that movie theater was in a gun-
free zone.

~~~
EvilTerran
It was dark. It was crowded. The guy set off a smoke grenade. Everyone was
panicking.

Firing a gun in those conditions, you could hit _anyone_ \-- by sheer force of
numbers, you'd be far more likely to wound a hapless bystander than the
shooter. Especially as he was wearing body armour.

As such, I hold that the death toll would have been considerably higher if
some of the cinema-goers had been packing heat and decided to shoot back.
There's no way this incident is a valid argument for more guns.

~~~
colinshark
>It was dark.

Hmmm... Which person do I engage? Maybe the guy with the rifle, down in front
of the screen, who is facing the audience, shooting everyone, with a clearing
around him?

>Everyone was panicking

Not everyone panics in emergency situations.

>I hold that the death toll would have been considerably higher if some of the
cinema-goers had been packing heat and decided to shoot back.

He shot about 60 people in about 90 seconds. Anything to trip him up would
have lowered the death toll.

~~~
pyre

      > Hmmm... Which person do I engage? Maybe the guy with
      > the rifle, down in front of the screen, who is facing
      > the audience, shooting everyone, with a clearing around
      > him?
    

Imagine every person in the theater was packing. They all pull out their
weapons. Through the smoke and the dark, which is the good guy, which is the
bad guy? Just shoot everyone that has a gun?

~~~
bdunbar
You may be assuming that 'guns' are the only added factor.

What appears to happen is that people who carry on a routine basis are more
aware that they _are_ carrying and act accordingly.

It's a theater. The good guys are in stadium seating, the bad guy is in front.

It's a perfect setup for that kind of a thing - everyone is carrying a weapon,
everyone keeps their seat, fires over the heads of the row in front. Problem
solved.

But in reality, guys like this never pick an armed crowd of people. They never
show up at the police station, never at a gun show, at an NRA convention,
never at a shooting range.

I submit if everyone were armed at the theater he would have gone somewhere
else.

~~~
pyre
Right _now_ most of the people that are packing legally concealed weapons are
generally people that are obsessive about their guns and practice a lot (and
generally take them seriously).

If _everyone_ started carrying concealed weapons, that would be another story.

~~~
bdunbar
Consider cars.

Everyone drives. Yet only a small minority truly panic when something bad
happens on the road. Most of us turn into a skid, slow down in wet conditions.

Any road - absent something mind-bendingly drastic, I don't see more than a
small minority of people carrying daily.

------
protomyth
I'm actually a lot more concerned with how we handle people with mental
illness in the USA. If it wasn't a gun, it would have been a backpacked filled
with explosives, but the common factor is a sick mind that had multiple
interactions with people who could have helped. It seems like we need to spend
some money on figuring out why our systems and processes in this area are
failing.

------
engtech
for the people who are arguing "but what about the right to bear arms"?

The wikipedia page has some interesting discussions about the history and
analysis of the 2nd amendment.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

~~~
CWuestefeld
Downvoted: simply saying "there's another page that has something interesting;
go read it" isn't adding anything. At least summarize, or point us to
something there that you think is salient.

~~~
CrazedGeek
They're simply linking to a page related to the topic. It's adding historical
context to the "right to bear arms" issue, and that's valuable when debating
such a thing.

------
chimi
> People tend to base risk analysis more on stories than on data.

People base all decisions on stories rather than data. It's marketing 101 --
don't sell features, sell stories.

------
jrkelly
Comments under the CNN article are universally positive. You basically never
see that on news site comments -- seems like there is broad public support for
ratcheting down security theater. I don't really understand what stands it up
now.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_I don't really understand what stands it up now._

American politics has nothing to do with reality anymore.

This morning in the car there was a news bit about a guy who had just been
arrested, and it was found that he'd posed with the Governor for a photo a
couple of weeks ago. Clearly the Gov poses for scores of photos every day,
most of which are with people whose names he doesn't even know. But it appears
that someone thought that we needed to know about this photograph, and I can't
imagine any reason for that.

The political system seems to be a perpetual motion machine. It sustains
itself independent of the rest of the world by producing unfounded hype that
creates hysteria.

------
tzs
> If a friend tells you about getting mugged in a foreign country, that story
> is more likely to affect how safe you feel traveling to that country than
> reading a page of abstract crime statistics will.

One can make an argument that this is reasonable. I share many common
interests with my friends, and so if I were to visit that foreign country I'd
probably be interested in the same things in that country that my friend was
interested in, and so would likely be traveling to the same places my friend
visited. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to weigh my friend's experiences in
that country higher than statistics derived from the combined experiences of
everyone who goes to that country.

~~~
4ydx
Ok, well, feel free to not understand statistics.

~~~
dojomouse
Same back at you - tzs's comment is entirely reasonable. The point is that
statistics collected from a situation with a higher similarity to the one
you're trying to predict can provide a better indicator than general
statistics, even if the sample size is smaller.

------
kokey
John Kay's piece today about the same issue is quite pertinent:
<http://www.johnkay.com/2012/08/01/8684>

He's looking at how a media frenzy affects perception and laws
disproportionally.

------
lenkite
As someone not living in the US, my takeaway from this article was that
citizens and visitors should all wear bullet-proof vests in public places
similar to the way everyone wears car seat belts for safety. Since one
shouldn't over-react and take away the freedom of toting around assault-
rifles.

Body Armour companies would LOVE this.

------
davidw
Gun debates are about as hacker newsy as abortion or gay marriage or other
controversial subjects. In other words: not very.

~~~
abrahamsen
The article isn't about guns[1], but about evaluation of risks.

[1] Or if it is, I totally missed the point.

~~~
davidw
You wouldn't know that from looking at the discussion here. I think a more
hacker newsy kind of thing would be an actual discussion of risks with some
mathematical modeling, not a discussion of current events from cnn.com, with
statements that are bound to set certain people off.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Guilty as charged. It's too tempting to slide into "pro-gun vs gun control"
discussion even if the topic is "overreaction to extremely low probability
events".

------
robomartin
Another attempt to blame guns for what people do.

I don't own any guns of any type. I've fired quite a few of them, of all
kinds. I don't feel the need to own one for personal protection or as a hobby.
I know plenty of people who do. Without fault, these guns spend more time
locked-away in a safe than being fired for any reason. Yes, even the "assault
rifles" (do rifles assault without a person holding them?).

Every time something happens liberal-leaning media rushes to blame guns. It's
never people, is it?

A gun doesn't kill any more than a car. It's the people using them that
sometimes, intentionally or not, harm others.

None of these articles are backed by any data. Yet they are quick to blame
"assault rifles" and proclaim all manner of remedies.

I wanted data. A quick Google search for "homicides by weapon type" produced a
bunch of links. The top link comes right out of the US Department of Justice:

<http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/weapons.cfm>

The very first chart shows very clearly that the vast majority --by a factor
of 3 to 5 or more-- of homicides are committed with handguns. Not "assault
rifles".

I'm assuming that "assault rifles" falls under the "other gun" category in the
chart.

What's even more interesting is that homicides using a Knives exceeded "other
gun" by a good margin from 1976 to about 1994 and then run about even. That's
interesting data. It seems that knives are just as dangerous today as "other
gun".

Far more detailed data is available here:

<http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr>

I really didn't have the time to dive into it, but I suspect I would learn
exactly the same thing: "assault rifles" represent less than about 3% of total
homicides. Put another way, more people --like TEN TIMES MORE-- are killed
with knives every year than with "assault rifles". This is data from the DOJ
and FBI so one can hardly put any kind of spin on it.

All of this anti-gun talk after some crazy nutcase goes and does something
stupid is absolute nonsense. The claims are not backed by data and those
making the claims, for some reason, never choose to present any data (or
confuse people by lumping "guns" with "other guns").

I am more of a libertarian who leans left on some issues and right on others.
I'd like to believe that I think things through rather than follow like sheep.

I happen to find the way the left constantly bitches about and vilifies guns
to be disgusting pandering. They never discuss what the actual data shows:
That young blacks are killing each other en-masse for drugs and other
bullshit. And that our first black president has done virtually nothing to
materially change the reality of millions of black kids who I am sure would be
wonderful assets to our society given the right ecosystem.

It's far easier to sling distorted statistics, vilify the NRA and rally idiot
voters to try to take away gun rights. In the meantime the real victims of
violent crimes, which --by far-- statistics show are hispanic and black
youngsters, don't see anything of real value change in their environment.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ushomicidesbyweapon.svg>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Stat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States)

And, of course, let's not forget that the 9/11 attacks where carried out using
knives. They killed thousands.

The penalties for using guns criminally should be brutally severe. Automatic
life in prison or some such thing. Criminals need to know that choosing a gun
is the worst possible idea. I'm all for that. As far as your average Joe,
leave him alone.

~~~
klez
I live in a country with tight weapon control, so I'm genuinely curious. What
do you need an assault rifle for?

~~~
learc83
>What do you need an assault rifle for?

Very few people actually own assault rifles (you need a tax stamp and it has
to have been registered before 1986). The weapon the shooter in Colorado used
wasn't an assault rifle because it was semi-automatic.

Whether you agree with it our not our constitution gives us the right to bear
arms as a check against government oppression.

The second amendment clearly wasn't written to protect hunter's rights.

That being said an AR-15 can be used for hunting, target shooting, or home
defense. Its not fundamentally different from any semi-automatic hunting
rifle.

Previous "Assault Weapons" restrictions in the US targeted guns based on how
"scary" they looked (guns with barrel shrouds, collapsible stocks etc...).
Since statically these kinds of guns are almost never used in crimes,
regulating them would have almost no impact on overall death rate.

