Are statistics swayed to manipulate sympathy for gun control or gun advocacy?

Are statistics swayed to manipulate sympathy for gun control or gun advocacy?

Numbers can be used by any group to make their case. And that's why whenever anyone's arguing about statistics, it's very important to look at the source of the statistics, to figure out how they're compiled, to see whether it's a legitimate group putting them together, to see whether the academic paper is one that's been peer-reviewed and gone through the standard academic measures. The old line is always, "There's lies, damn lies in statistics." Statistics are only as good as the background that goes into it, and certainly numbers can be swayed by any side in this. One of the challenges with guns is that in the United States we don't have good statistics on who has guns and where those guns are. So a lot of things are based on surveys. In other countries, they've got better records on the guns, so those numbers are a little more definite. But a lot of the studies in the United States are based on samples of a couple hundred people responding to questions, and those are the sorts of things that can be manipulated, or twisted, or misunderstood pretty easily.