AggressiveSkywriting t1_j9bccmt wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in Union City neighbor shoots man he witnessed stabbing woman by B1Baker
It's also based on self reporting.
Lot of the DGU encounters neglect to mention that they, uh, got in a fight (or were doing a crime against someone). They sure love that "dead men tell no tales" bit.
[deleted] t1_j9bejf2 wrote
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hedgetank t1_j9c225x wrote
It's difficult to track because unless shots are fired or something actually happens, the police aren't called. If the police are called, it's after the event and the report won't really reflect much.
So, the only way to track these kinds of incidents is either going to be self-reporting, or some means of requiring a police report and requiring the report to reflect that the victim drew a firearm in preparation for self defense, but didn't require firing it.
You can imagine just how difficult it would be to get cops to do all that paperwork, considering how loathe they are to do it already.
This means that people who don't want to believe that it's even possible for whatever reason can blow off the statistic, because, like a lot of other things, if it's not reported, it obviously didn't happen, right?
[deleted] t1_j9cq5mc wrote
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hedgetank t1_j9czdh0 wrote
I mean that if someone threatened me with a weapon for whatever reason, I drew my firearm in preparation to defend myself because I had no other choice, she the attacker decided to cut and run instead of risking it, why would I call the cops and invite all the hassle that dealing with American cops brings?
There's no suspect, there's little evidence, no shots fired, presumably no harm to me, and my choices are to call 911, try to convince them that something happened and to send cops, spend hours going over details, and end up nowhere; or I could simply collect my wits and get the hell out of there.
Hell, after I was attacked and nearly killed, the cops and the DA both said to me face that since there were no witnesses, and the area was rough, there was basically fuck-all they could do and zero chance they'd ever find the guy, and my home town is relatively small.
Studies and data from the FBI generally show, too, that many encounters of various kinds like I described above go unreported because people don't want to deal with the cops. More so if they're a minority.
So tell me again, how do you propose to track incidents where someone draws a gun in self defense, but things never get to a point where shots are fired and police aren't involved?
[deleted] t1_j9d2sdc wrote
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lynx_and_nutmeg t1_j9eyaza wrote
Pretty sure that road rage guy who shot another guy's daughter in the car would totally claim he was "protecting himself"*
*from having to suffer an emotional reaction of boredom while sitting in the traffic
Yeah, self-report doesn't mean shit.
[deleted] t1_j9fet89 wrote
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hedgetank t1_j9c3jd0 wrote
the thing about that is, with regards to someone "getting into a fight", there's so much gray area to it that the blanket statement of "they got in a fight" doesn't disqualify their right to use force in self defense. There are numerous scenarios in which a person may have gotten into a fight, or even started a fight, and still be within their rights to escalate/use greater force to defend themselves.
It's just not automatic/clear cut.
And in the case of "were doing a crime against someone", legally speaking, they would not be entitled to a claim of self defense if they were committing a crime, outside of very specific circumstances. To wit, if I were in the middle of burglarizing your home and I found you busy stabbing your wife to death, technically I would be within my rights to use force to stop you, despite my being in the middle of committing a crime, as I'm technically acting in defense of another.
So just throwing those out there like they somehow automatically disqualify either the entire survey or even the particular claims is deeply misleading and erroneous without all of the facts available to review.
AggressiveSkywriting t1_j9cer3l wrote
>So just throwing those out there like they somehow automatically disqualify either the entire survey or even the particular claims is deeply misleading and erroneous without all of the facts available to review.
I mean, these variables DO throw the entire survey into doubt though. It cannot be used as some ironclad "truth" like many try to use, because it's problematic in its nature. That's just how stats work, often.
People using this old survey without any context or all the facts is "equally" misleading and erroneous, perhaps moreso (as a survey that admits its potential biases is more honest than one that omits/obscures them).
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6936&context=jclc
hedgetank t1_j9d0ggr wrote
And yet there are other studies that come to similar conclusions. The fact is that we can't say for sure because there's no way to accurately track the events objectively, and that means the situation can be skewed to make it look like the events are extremely rare (which gun control orgs do), or extremely common (which gun rights groups do).
The raw statistical probability just based on population, prevalence of guns, and general crime rates alone would put the figure somewhere in the middle, much higher than the low estimates used to suggest defensive use of firearms is extremely rare.
Until there's an objective way to measure a subjective event like this, the best we can do is to use self reported data, news reports (e.g. /r/dgu), and statistical analysis to come up with a rough estimate range of possible rates.
It neither proves nor disprove the study in question, but it does get more accurate than biased oversimplifications.
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