VikingHippie

Nope. That's just objectively wrong.

The choice of 1 almost certainly wasn't a deliberate exaggeration of the actual amount. It's just the nearest number that isn't too specific to distract from the overall argument and/or small enough that pro-gun advocates can use it as an argument for gun violence not being a problem at all.

You seem to have a very binary view

Of distracting from the actual topic by needlessly fixating on an only tangentially relevant detail? Yeah, I'm kooky like that.

Is it not possible for someone to agree with a message, but think we can improve on how we tell it?

Sure, but that's not what you're doing. You're, deliberately or not, pulling all attention away from the message by demanding a fix to something that, in the specific case, is unimportant.

If we want to convince people of something, is it not best to provide as convincing an argument as possible?

As I said before, being more exact would invite MORE distracting arguments about it, not fewer.

I'm not trying to distract from the message

You're also not trying to NOT distract from the message either, though. Or you are and you're doing a piss-poor job of it.

I'm wondering how we can tell it better

It was told just fine. You're actively obscuring the salient point with your pedantry.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'people like me'

Pedants, the easily sidetracked, those who will jump at the opportunity to distract from the message itself by hyperfocusing on an insignificant technical detail.

Take your pick.

Absolutely. Hell, with how much of the heavy lifting they're doing for corporations destroying most aspects of the world, it should probably be illegal to advertise at all except in strictly limited circumstances.

Let me put it another way.

There's 4,947,342.562 kinds of people in the world: those who obsess over needless numeral exactitude when faced with a rhetorical argument, and those who don't.

You're not being a dimwit, it's the immense corruption implicitly accepted that's utterly bizarre. I'd be baffled too if I wasn't used to it. Still am sometimes, tbh.

And yeah, getting private (and foreign government) money out of public politics is the absolute most effective thing that the US could do to start fixing the many systemic problems.

She's so unhinged she doesn't touch any metal that isn't a gun. Just in case it might be a hinge.

Burning Man called. They want their gigantic strawman back.

Expressing the number of people shot as a tiny fraction of 400 million people would raise at least as many questions about accuracy and make it EASIER for people like you to distract from the point by obsessing over an unimportant (to the point being made) detail.

Analogies and third decimal-accurate statistics just don't fit together.

In this case, being more accurate would have distracted from the overall point.

Granted, attracting the dismissive comments of insufferable pedants and the wilfully obtuse isn't ideal either, but here we are 🤷

Remember the good old days when you got ads INSTEAD of directly paying rather than in addition to forking over already extortionate sums to profiteering megacorps? Pepperidge Farm does.