Two new things I learned this week seem incredible. According to a GQ article posted on March 7, “In the U.S., gun shops outnumber Starbucks, McDonald’s, and all grocery stores combined.” Wow, right? Being human, my reaction is, But I see Starbucks and McDonald’s and grocery stores everywhere, and I almost never see a gun shop. Even when visiting Houston. But I must not be looking. According to ATFE, “The United States has 58,344 Federally Licensed Gun Dealers.” Odds are, you live close to someone with a Federal Firearms License. 95.3% of Californians do. If you want to check out your state, the percentage and a map can be found at https://everytownresearch.org/how-many-gun-dealers-are-there-in-your-state/. Click on Download to see each map.

There are caveats. FFLs don’t outnumber all the stores mentioned above in every state, just nationwide. Whether you live near an FFL is also related to the geography of your state. For instance, Texas has almost 14 times as many FFLs as Massachusetts, but the ones in the Commonwealth are more evenly distributed, so a slightly higher percent of Mass citizens live near one.

Still it seems creepy to me, both that there are so many nearby FFLs and that I am so blind.

Meanwhile, a Vox article dated March 8 analyzed an MIT study published in Science that claims falsehoods spread faster than truths on Twitter.* The bottom line: Individuals spread fake stories farther and faster than either large accounts with millions of followers or bots. The reason: Falsehoods are often more striking, surprising, and emotionally engaging than facts.

This seems obvious. I’m not on Twitter, but I receive exciting-sounding clickbait all the time. If I don’t dismiss it, I do some fact checking, because I’m a dour skeptic.

I’m engaged–gently, with positive, helpful posts–on Nextdoor this very day, because someone posted a link to a questionable site that claims flu shots induce rather than prevent flu. The person knows it’s right, because everyone she knows who got a flu shot contracted flu! Plus a researcher at CDC who believed it hasn’t been seen in a long time, so it’s obviously being suppressed!

Bully for Twitter for allowing the MIT researchers access to the data. Too bad this seems unsolvable. People are going to retweet exciting stuff, period. Most people, including most people in my extended family, aren’t dour skeptics. Often this is a good thing.

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* Article is here: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/8/17085928/fake-news-study-mit-science