On the Proper Use of Demographics During Tragedy

The last week was understandably absorbed by the news of the Boston marathon bombing, and as details came to light about the perpetrators of the bombing, the common questions came up. Were the bombers Muslim? Are they foreigners? What role did that play? The news grabbed any detail they could find on the brothers Tsarnaev supposedly in an effort to glean a motive for this heinous act, and while I understand a need for answers, I suspect that the actual goal is always to help people bucket these people in such a way as to differentiate themselves from the monsters. As such, I propose that we ask a simpler question in these trying times.

What role did the fact they they were murderous douchebags play?

Really, I get that we need to put everyone in a bucket. It makes us feel safe. It helps us appreciate diversity while still clinging to pride in our respective heritages. The issue is that during times of great stress, this bucketing lends itself to incorrectly attributing behaviors to the wrong group of people.

Let me give you the example that sadly comes up the most often in the US: Muslims. According to Wikipedia, "As of 2010, over 1.6 billion or about 23.4% of the world population are Muslims.". Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that every member of Al-Queda falls under the "murderous douchebag" umbrella as well (which is probably unfair, because I bet a lot of them joined the group to impress a girl - don't ever underestimate the amount of historical stupidity that has occurred to impress a girl). That makes around fifteen to twenty thousand murderous douchebags out of 1.6 billion, or .0000125% of the Muslim population. I haven't taken statistics in a while, but that number doesn't seem to justify the always-rational "KILL THEM ALL" argument that comes up so often in the comments on news articles.

It works for other tragedies too. Depending on which phoney baloney source you look at, in 2010, around 39% of Americans owned a gun. In that same year, there were 11,078 homocides by firearm. Even if you assume each homocide was done by one person, that's around .000092% of the 120,410,759 gun owners that turned out to be killers.

Now, guess what percentage of the 11,078 were murderous doucehbags.

My point is this: If we're going to bucket people so we can all be glad that it isn't someone we relate to, then lets make sure the bucket is all inclusive. The best part is how exclusive this group is. Let's say you're cold, black heart is full of murderous rage. So long as you do your job, pay your taxes, occasionally let people merge on the highway, and just generally keep that %$#& to yourself, you're not in the group. Similarly, you want to park your SUV across four spots before making life Hell for a some kid at Starbucks making minimum wage because your Venti Hazelnut Macchiato wasn't hot enough, knock yourself out. It's only when you combine these two that you become part of the group, and then the rest of us, regardless of race, religion, or really any other personal affiliation, get to agree that you're the part of humanity that we find generally unpleasant and could well do without while being respectful of each other.

See, isn't that better?