Christian Allen's Corner

There's still the wars...

It's easy to forget there is a war(s) going on.  I don't generally publicly speak about politics and war, but scrolling through the news today, I got hit with a blow.  One of my old units, the ANG 1132nd MP Company out of Rocky Mount, NC, came under rocket/mortar fire in Baghdad.  One soldier, Staff Sgt. Emanuel Pickett, 34, died.  14 others were wounded.

I didn't know Staff Sgt. Pickett.  He joined the 1132nd after I got out of the service (I was part of the unit before it "stood up," or became a deployable unit).  But the news of his passing and the attack hit me in the gut today.

I had a similar feeling back in '05, when I read the report that many of my friends from the 855th MP Company in AZ were receiving purple hearts.  People in my fire team.  Folks I had left when I transfered to the 1132nd. 

Here I am making video games, and my brothers & sisters are taking fire.  I guess I don't know what to say to that, except godspeed.

My thoughts go out to the family of Staff Sergeant Pickett, as well as all my family, friends, and service mates that have served these conflicts...I'm sorry I wasn't standing beside you when it really mattered.

The BBC Actually responds to my letter...

Wow, I'm impressed.  I read a BBC article that had a factual misstatement in it, and so I sent them a letter.  Not only did they respond, but they updated the story!

My Letter:

The photo tagline in this article states "Handguns are used in most US assaults and robberies."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7104800.stm

According to the USDOJ website, "simple assaults," those without a weapon, make up around two-thirds of all assaults, as seen here:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/aslt.htm

Also, According to the website, in 2005, 42.1% of all robberies, and 21% of all aggravated assaults were committed with firearms.  I don't see how this data backs up your statement that "Handguns are used in most US assaults and robberies."  Even if all the firearms used were handguns (which I am sure they are not), these numbers do not support the statement "most", especially when factoring the number of simple assaults compared to aggravated assaults (since by definition simple assaults do not involve a firearm).

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/guncrimetab.htm

Please correct your statements and print a retraction.

Thanks,

Christian Allen
USA

Their response:

Dear Mr Allen,

Thank you for your email. Your comments regarding the FBI statistics
are absolutely correct.  I have amended the FBI figures in the story. The
writer of the story is not on shift so I cannot check where he got the
figures from. I believe it may have been an erroneous conflation of a
line that read "handguns - the weapon of choice in two-thirds of
robberies and assaults." - which is, of course, entirely, an entirely
different statistic.

I have passed your comments on to the writer and sub responsible for
the story.

Kind regards
Americas desk
BBC News website

The amended tagline to the article reads:

"The debate over handguns is politically charged in the US"

Not that will will make much of a difference in the big scheme of things, but nice to see a news organization take the details seriously, you don't see that too much in gun control coverage.