Remind me to review the concepts of "scientific" and "evidence" with you.I'd rather not, but I guess that's what you're attempting to do in the post I'm responding to. I understand that I'm something of a smartass, especially when you try to condescend to me. I get why you're mad. And since this is one of the last times you'll be getting a shot at me (I have to take a hiatus), I guess I'll indulge you.
Part 1: Criminological data and studies have definitively
established that, compared to victims who resisted with a gun, victims who submitted
were injured about twice as often; also, of course, non resisters were much more likely to
be raped or robbed.
Note how he conveniently avoids the numbers of people resisting by other means. The only comparison is with resistance using firearms and non-resistance. Talk about your stacked deck...
I know you're all excited about making me look bad, but you missed the point of the quotation. Read the post through again and think about it, jgraz.
There are two schools of thought; those who believe in the right to keep and bear arms and those who do not. The short introductory statement is drawing a contrast between the solution suggested by the Brady Campaign and the one suggested by gun rights advocates. It is not a dodge.
Only a biased person would see a clearcut comparison between two schools of thought as a dodge. That biased person would be you. You took a keen interest in what the statement DOES NOT SAY and imputed a corrupt motive to the speaker--a demonstrably false corrupt motive.
Armed is coauthored by Kates and Kleck. If Kates was conveniently avoiding the number of people resisting by other means, he could hardly have chosen a worse place to do so. You see, in the same book is a chapter by his coauthor, chapter 7, entitled "The Nature and Effectiveness of Owning, Carrying, and Using Guns for Self Protection." This chapter is an exhaustive, nuanced review of the effectiveness of guns vs other means of resistance and vs non-resistance--the very thing you imagine Kates "conveniently avoids."
The Chapter starts on page 285. On page 289 there is a table, Table 7.1 Effectiveness and Risks of Victim Self-Protection Measures (percentages), that shows in tabular form the results of various self-protective or resistive measures, such as "Ran/drove away, tried to", "Tried to attract attention" and "Threatened O {Offender} with other {non-gun} weapon."
Since you are interested in non-gun resistance vs resistance with a gun, I will give you a taste of Kleck's analysis:
These data indicate that victims who use guns for self-protection actually face less favorable circumstances than other victims, and that the post-self-protection injury rates for defensive gun use, low though they are, may still be misleadingly high compared to other self-protection measures because victims who used guns faced tougher crime circumstances. More dangerous situations apparently prompt victims to adopt more dangerous self-protection measures. Two pieces of information available in the NCVS support this view. First, victims who used guns were substantially more likely than victims in general or victims using other self-protective measures to face offenders armed with guns--32.7 percent of victims who attacked the offender with a gun, faced offenders with guns, compared to only 6.8 percent of all victims who used self-protection measures, and 2.2 percent of all victims. Second, victims who used guns were more likely to face multiple offenders--33.2 percent of victims who attacked offenders with a gun and 34.5 percent of those who threatened with a gun confronted multiple adversaries, compared to 20.6 percent of all those who used self-protection measures and 6.2 percent of all victims. These findings are consistent with the view that crime circumstances likely to appear more dangerous to victims are more likely to push victims into using their guns. They are contrary to the speculation that crime outcomes are better for gun-wielding victims merely because other circumstances of the crime made successful outcomes more likely.
Based on the 1992-1998 NCVS data, 20.8 percent of robberies, assaults, and confrontational burglaries in which a victim used a gun for self-protection resulted in some kind of injury to the victims. But most of this injury occurred prior to the victim's use of any self-protection measures. Only 3.6 percent of all gun using victims in these crimes were injured after use of self-protection. Even if one made the extreme assumption that all of this post-self-protection injury was provoked by the victim gun use (i.e., non of it would have occurred anyway, in the absence of victim gun use), it is fair to say that victim gun use almost never provokes a criminal into attacking the victim.
...
Multivariate analysis is especially important in judging the relative effectiveness and safety of different self-protective tactics because, as noted, crime victims who use guns seem to face tougher crime circumstances than those who adopt other tactics--more numerous adversaries who are more likely to be themselves armed with guns. Thus simple analyses of self-protection and the crime outcome alone can be misleading because they confound the effects of victim self-protection actions with the effects of associated crime circumstances.
The simple percentage table results concerning robbery completion and injury rates are, however, supported by more sophisticated multivariate analysis of NCVS robbery incidents. In a logistic regression analysis, Kleck and Miriam DeLone found that robbery victims who used guns in self-protection were significantly less likely to either be injured or lose their property than victims who used any other form of self-protection or who did nothing to resist. This was true even when controlling for other characteristics of the robbery situation that could influence the effectiveness of defensive actions, such as the number of robbers, the number of victims, whether the robbery occurred in a private, whether it occurred when it was dark, whether the robbers were armed, the age and gender of the victims, and so on. Thus, there is no support for the speculation that gun defenders do well merely because of other advantageous crime circumstances associated with defensive gun use.
The NCVS data did not permit anything meaningful to be said about gun resistance in rape because there were no relevant sample cases to analyze. However, we may gain some strong hints about the results of gun resistance from an analysis of all forms of armed resistance by rape victims. Grouping together instances of resistance with guns, knives, or other weapons, Kleck and doctoral student Susan Sayles found, in a multivariate analysis of national victim survey data from 1979 to 1985, that rape victims using armed resistance were less likely to to have the rape attempt completed against them than victims using any other mode of resistance.
{As Kleck then goes on to point out in more words that I care to type, since guns do well in robberies--as opposed to other armed resistance--it stands to reason that they would do well in defense against rape. This is especially so since rape almost always involves a woman defending against a man, which is not true of robberies.}
Source: Armed, pp 291-292, 293-294
Clearly Kates was not dodging anything. I was not dodging anything either. I needed a clear concise statement showing that guns are defensively useful; I did not want to get into the details of multivariate analysis. My open letter was intended for a general audience and is long enough as it is. Clearly, however, THE DEEPER YOU GO INTO THE DETAILS, THE BETTER DEFENSE WITH A GUN LOOKS AS OPPOSED TO BOTH NON RESISTANCE AND RESISTANCE BY OTHER MEANS.
Part 2: Irrelevant argument about guns being taken away from the user. How does this "embolden" criminals? Not scientific, not evidence.
Part 3: Another irrelevant argument about gun safety. How many criminals were "emboldened" by this?
Points 2 and 3 are not direct evidence, and they are not evidence if considered in isolation, but they are part of a chain of evidence.
Let's use a non-gun analogy.
1) The bottle was accidentally mislabeled, it actually contained a deadly poison.
2) Mr. Jones knew that the bottle was mislabeled; he took pains to keep it from his children. And although he loved the product he secretly used another bottle. This was uncharacteristic for him; the children all report that he hated having two bottles of the same product open in the house.
3) Mr. Jones left the mislabeled bottle containing poison on the table so his wife could use it when his children were at their grandparents house.
If the prosecutor could prove each of the above, he would have strong case against Mr. Jones.
The fact that the bottle was accidentally mislabeled is not in and of itself evidence of guilt. The fact that Mr. Jones kept his children safe is not evidence of guilt. The fact that he left an accidentally mislabeled bottle where his wife could drink it is not necessarily evidence of guilt. Take together, however, they are strong evidence indeed.
I have shown that
1) Guns are useful in keeping criminals from getting robbed, raped, injured or killed.
2) Criminals almost never disarm defenders who use guns
3) Indeed a criminal facing an armed citizen is more likely to be injured or killed than a citizen facing a police officer
4) Criminals seem to know the above and claim to be more afraid of facing an armed citizen than facing a police officer
5) Mysteriously, as gun laws are liberalized, violent crime drops. I know that correlation does not equal causation, but combined with the above it's clear that the evidence SUGGESTS there may be a deterrent effect at work.
Can't you see the chain of evidence? It is similar to the chain of evidence against Mr. Jones. Actually it's stronger. Criminals SAY they're afraid of getting shot. What if Mr. Jones said that he HATED his wife and wished her dead? Would you still see no evidence against Mr. Jones?!!!!
Oh, and jgraz, if felons are more afraid of facing an armed citizen than facing a policeman, and if armed citizens have no deterrent effect wouldn't that suggest that police have no deterrent effect? Actually, since they are MORE AFRAID wouldn't that mean that police embolden crime??
And then we get a nice little story illustrating why you should never present nice little stories as "scientific evidence".
From the OP:
Here is some scientific evidence along with a story to support my position:
:dunce: :rofl:
What's that 3-dollar word you keep using? Oh right: "sophistry".
Sophistry is a word I use often, it applies to most of your arguments above. But the word of the day is not sophistry, jgraz. It's LITERACY.
Sorry, I couldn't help it. You set yourself up so beautifully almost every time you debate me. And you condescend while doing it. I'm trying to be a kinder, gentler TPaine7, but you really test my resolve.
Here's some free advice, jgraz. Take time to read a post and understand it before trying to blow it out of the water. I understand why you have your fangs bared, really I do. So often before you have looked exactly like you look now.
Here's how you should respond to my--or anyone else's--posts:
1) Read
2) Understand
3) Respond
Instead you typically respond thus
1) Read (or skim)
2) Respond
3) Understand(?) after I explain it to you in excruciating detail. (I'm not 100% sure you ever understand what I say even then, hence the question mark.)
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