"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.
**Kleck's survey is STILL a survey. It is not fact. It is also highly
flawed. There is no independent verification for any of the following:
* That the person who claimed a DGU (or DGUs) actually defended themselves.
* That the person who claimed a DGU for that time period, actually did use a
gun defensively during that time.
Here are the words from an official US government report into the DoJ's
survey into DGUs (the DoJ report claimed around 108,000 DGUs):
---
"Evidence suggests that this survey and others
like it overestimate the frequency with which
firearms were used by private citizens to defend
against criminal attack."
And:
"The evidence of bias in the DGU estimates is even
stronger when one recalls that the DGU estimates
are calculated using only the most recently
reported DGU incidents of NSPOF respondents; as
noted, about half of the respondents who reported a
DGU indicated two or more in the preceding year.
Although there are no details on the circumstances
of those additional DGUs, presumably they are
similar to the most recent case and provide
evidence for additional millions of violent crimes
foiled and perpetrators shot.
False positives. Regardless of which estimates one
believes, only a small fraction of adults have used
guns defensively in 1994. The only question is
whether that fraction is 1 in 1,800 (as one would
conclude from the NCVS) or 1 in 100 (as indicated
by the NSPOF estimate based on Kleck and Gertz's
criteria).
Any estimate of the incidence of a rare event based
on screening the general population is likely to
have a positive bias. The reason can best be
explained by use of an epidemiological
framework.[15] Screening tests are always subject
to error, whether the "test" is a medical
examination for cancer or an interview question for
DGUs. The errors are either "false negatives" or
"false positives." If the latter tend to outnumber
the former, the population prevalence will be
exaggerated.
The reason this sort of bias can be expected in the
case of rare events boils down to a matter of
arithmetic. Suppose the true prevalence is 1 in
1,000. Then out of every 1,000 respondents, only 1
can possibly supply a "false negative," whereas any
of the 999 may provide a "false positive." If even
2 of the 999 provide a false positive, the result
will be a positive bias--regardless of whether the
one true positive tells the truth.
Respondents might falsely provide a positive
response to the DGU question for any of a number of
reasons:
o They may want to impress the interviewer by their
heroism and hence exaggerate a trivial event.
o They may be genuinely confused due to substance
abuse, mental illness, or simply less-than-accurate
memories.
o They may actually have used a gun defensively
within the last couple of years but falsely report
it as occurring in the previous year--a phenomenon
known as "telescoping."
Of course, it is easy to imagine the reasons why
that rare respondent who actually did use a gun
defensively within the time frame may have decided
not to report it to the interviewer. But again, the
arithmetic dictates that the false positives will
likely predominate."
---
--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au
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