hedgetank t1_j9c3jd0 wrote
Reply to comment by AggressiveSkywriting in Union City neighbor shoots man he witnessed stabbing woman by B1Baker
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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