And one I’ve not heard – outside the “correlation doesn’t imply causation” statement so many people know. But now that my brain is more fully engaged (thanks to a caffeine infusion), aren’t you just reframing the ever-present problem of inferring population principles based on a sample from it? Is there some kind of study on the firearms issue that could be done that would persuade you, whichever way the results come up?

Are you familiar with the book Statistics as Principled Argument?

P.S. I find that many spellcheckers have problems with most foreign words that have been assimilated into English. That’s just one reason why I don’t have much use for them.