"avidlistener" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Apr 20, 12:23 pm, "Trevor Wilson"
wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Fri, 20 Apr2007 07:10:43 -0500, dave weil
wrote:
On Fri, 20 Apr2007 07:36:57 -0400, "CB" wrote:
"nebulax" wrote in message
.. .
"We are captives, the majority here, of the NRA. To hell with the
NRA!
What
about the society? I don't get it." - Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...tico/main26981...
The more guns 'LAW ABIDING CITIZENS' have the less a dirt bags will
have
to
carry out dirt deeds!
It's not the gun you ass, it's the criminal mind that puts thought
into
action
Yesterday, one of the major proponents of Right To Carry laws was on
CNN once again during Virginia Tech coverage claiming that people
packing guns kept the crime rate down, if teachers were allowed to be
toting handguns things like this wouldn't happen, blah, blah, blah.
His major claim was that the crime rate dropped everywhere Right To
Carry laws were instituted. So I decided to do a quick survey and it
turns out that yes, crime rates have dropped in those states. However,
crime has dropped roughly the same rate in the two states that still
don't have any concealed carry laws at this date, Illinois and
Michigan. Crime has generally been dropping since the mid-80s whether
or not concealed carry laws have been put on the books.
He also trotted out one of those occasions where vigilanties prevented
crime. Well, with 12,000 plus gun-related murders a year, and
something like 30,000 gun deaths of all kinds a year, I'm not sure if
it really matters that a handful of lives have been saved by some
amateurs lucky enough not to have killed bystanders or themselves.
'handful' my ass. Most estimates put it at over 1,000,000 per
year.
**Bull****. Those "estimates" are nothing but wild speculation. There are
somewhat less than 200 DGUs (Defensive Gun Uses) resulting in the death
of
the perp each year in the US. A handful more result in injury.
Of course, they can ONLY be SWAG's because, by the nature of
the situations, 90 % + of them go unreported.
**Then how the **** can you say that 1,000,000 DGUs occur each year? The
ONLY DGUs of interest are the ones which are reported to police. Anything
else is a delusion.
By studying the data and how it was arrived at hehttp://
www.gunsandcrime.org/dgufreq.html
THE KLECK (AND GERTZ) STUDY ON
FREQUENCY OF DEFENSIVE GUN USES
(and Gun Controller Criticism of It)
RESULTS
222 of the 4799 respondents reported having at least one DGU in their
household in the past 5 years. After correcting for oversampling in
some regions, this figure drops to 66 personal accounts of DGUs in the
preceding year, indicating that 1.326 percent of adults nationwide had
experienced at least one DGU. When multiplied by 1.478, the average
number of DGUs reported per DGU claimant for the preceding year, and
by the total adult population, an estimate of 2.55 million DGUs per
year was arrived at.
However, Kleck reviewed the record associated with each reported DGU
and flagged every report for which: (1)it was not clear if the
respondent had actually confronted the perpetrator; (2)the respondent
was a police officer, soldier, or security guard; (3)the interviewer
had not properly recorded exactly what the respondent had done with
the gun, so it was not certain that the respondent had actually used
the gun; or, (4)the record did not state a specific crime the
respondent thought was being committed.
When all such cases were eliminated, the results were 1.125 percent of
adults had used guns defensively an average of 1.472 times each, for a
total of 2.16 million DGUs per year. This, then is the K-G
conservative estimate of annual DGUs. So, rather than saying that K-G
found that there are 2.5 million DGUs per year, we should say that
there are up to 2.5 million, or be more conservative and say something
like over 2 million.
Note that an average of 1.472 DGUs per person implies that some people
are involved in DGUs much more frequently than others.
In their report K-G say that the sampling error for 95 percent
confidence interval is plus or minus .32 percent for the unpurged 2.55
million estimate for DGU frequency. The corresponding sampling error
for the more conservative 2.16 million estimate would be something
greater because the purging would have reduced the sample size.
However, do not assume that the results are actually this accurate
since these sampling errors do not account for any biases in the
survey.
And this last line is the key --- biases in the survey.
For in fact the survey is multply biased toward reporting DGUs, and
accepting reports for what they are. That is, the person pulling the weapon
defines the incident, not both parties involved let alone an independent
third party. Thus the most common DGU reported is something like "I saw a
scary person, I brandished my gun, and he ran away".
An analysis of Kleck's numbers, even after they are vetted to remove reports
even Kleck finds unreliable, show most rspondents could not_prove_ that a
crime was committed or that the person supposedly doing the threatening was,
in fact, armed. That is, the DGUser was actually the agressor.
Additionally, the statistical methods used by Kleck and others to come up
with such large numbers are suspect.
From the above they do not report the sampling error for the "validated"
data because this sample size is too small, instead reporting the sample
error from the unvalidated data. This is a no no, using known bad data to
calculate the integrity of a smaller sample size.
There is also a hint of another problem wiith Kleck's data --- an
acknowlegement that in reality a smaller number of people account for the
bulk of reported incidents because the average reports of incidents is 1.4
That is, in reality the sample size is really much, much smaller than they
indicate (it should be number pf people, not number of reports), making the
data even more unreliable. (the larger the sample size, the more accurate
the data, the more reliable the conclusions. Below a certain sample size you
cannot support any conclusions)
Larry