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.
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