Gun Sense is wrong ... and Right

The problem with many people is that they conflate an increase in available information with an increase in presence of phenomena described by the information. This comes from our old mindset, a time before the world wide internet.

So let's take a trip to a time before information was free, as in freely expressed, transmitted, and viewable. Back to the age I grew up in, the 1980s and early 1990s.

Prior to to that age, information came even slower due to a lack of outlets, before that it was even slower due to a lack of media. Remember, most of our modern technology was not available 20 years ago, and it was very expensive to own even a clunky 8-bit computer with no modem.

A modem, for those too young to remember, was required to connect to the few BBS systems available using a telephone. Each modern website would be an entire BBS, and to change to a different "website" you had to hang up, then dial a new phone number.

Any information about current events, government activities, even scientific advances came to us filtered by the ruby lenses of the mainstream media. An outlet of information that is only for profit, and it is censored by the very government who is invested in keeping the masses quiet and uninformed.

As for science, scientific research was discouraged, and businesses kept it from the masses, a monopolized collection of information which was accessible only by corporate elites. Today the scientific community is very pleased that this is no longer the case, which is why we see more advances in both science and technology.

Fast forwarding to today, all of us who grew up in the last 3 or 4 decades are now seeing 300% more information. Ultimately, this has been called "information overload," the result is an illusion of increased events, phenomena, and occurrences.

The reality is that the information is increasing, while most of what that information describes is remaining the same. Mass shootings are the perfect example, there is no actual increase in these shootings.

We are, however, getting live feeds from every one of the shootings now. There is a natural shift in such events, depending on public state in a specific locale, which can cause an increase or decrease based the environment and social climate.

The social climate is usually the primary cause for these changes, but not the primary reason for the event. The reasons for the events are often a separate issue.