We often discuss the question of which type of gun incident is more common, the DGU (defensive gun use) or the incidents of gun violence. Here's one recent example.
Suddenly I realized that not once over the last year or so has a commenter reported a personal experience of this kind or one that happened to a close friend or family member. That's odd because such a story would directly rebut many of my remarks about DGUs, basically that they're not all that common.
Even the most reasonable pro-gun commenters say there are hundreds of thousands per year. The more passionate stick with Kleck's reported 2.5 million. The gun control side says there may be as few as 80,000.
But my question is, why from the 10 or 20 most prolific commenters who have visited here over the last year, and from their 10 or 20 closest family members and friends who own guns, has there not been one incident of a DGU reported?
Any ideas?
"But my question is, why from the 10 or 20 most prolific commenters who have visited here over the last year, and from their 10 or 20 closest family members and friends who own guns, has there not been one incident of a DGU reported? "
ReplyDeleteTotal BS and you know it.
Care to remember this, from your own blog comments?
http://daysofourtrailers.blogspot.com/2009/03/4-legs-vs-2-legs.html
Hell, I even sent this to you in a personal email in addition to posting it in your comments.
Technically, you are correct in my instance that I did not report this incident, but my question remains; who the hell in law enforcement would have responded to this report, had I made it?
I have been very civil up to this point, do you wish to lose my basic respect?
I just shook up my majic 8-ball and all answers point to yes.
I'm beginning to wonder if you're secretly a pro-gunny who posts this nonsense in order to make the true control freaks look bad.
Do you wish me to post your email response with your real name and actual response, MikeB?
I have kept that info confidential out of respect, should I violate that in order to prove you wrong, or would you rather admit your mistake?
Ball is in your court.
This ring a bell?
To: mikeb302000@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 4:16:36 AM
Subject: better story
If you liked the story about the angry black bear, this is the back history to that story as well as to how I was introduced to firearms at a very young age. We may disagree on some very fundamental concepts, but I at least wanted to share where I'm coming from so that you can better understand my position and stances.
We(both sides of any issue) can hurl quotes and statistics and theories all day long and get nowhere. Where human beings truly excel is in the telling of stories, sharing life experiences and listening to our elders.
enjoy
http://daysofourtrailers.blogspot.com/2009/02/howdy.html
Response...
Thanks man. I left a short comment basically to say I loved the story. It's nice what you said about what human beings truly excel in.
M
Well, does it?
Ding ding ding.
You have 24 hours in which to apologize. After that...I might be feeling a bit frisky.
kaveman, I wrote in the post, "Suddenly I realized that not once over the last year or so."
ReplyDeleteI should have been more precise and clear. I remember very well your story about the bear, I loved it in fact. But it didn't happen this year did it? I didn't mean incidents that have taken place over the entire course of our lives that you wrote about this year. I meant incidents that have taken place THIS YEAR.
When we talk about 2.5 million DGUs, we're talking PER YEAR.
Now do you know what I mean?
You don't have to apologize, I promise I won't lose respect for you or threaten you with outing your personal info. Maybe you can stop doing that to me, what do you think?
"Any ideas?"
ReplyDeleteYes, take a statistics course. (10 or 20 out of 300,000,000?)
While you are at it, one in logic would be a big help too.
20 gun owning commenters, + 20 x 20 closest friends X 50% gun ownership (since there is nothing that requires my friends and family members to be anymore into guns than I am, in fact of my 3 siblings, one owns firearms and two don't).
ReplyDeleteSo 220 potential people. If Kleck's 2.5 million DGU figure is evenly spread out among the 50 million gun owners (very low estimate), then there is only a 5 percent chance of any one person. So at best you would have 11 instances per year from your regular commenters and their family. If these are distributed evenly throughout the year, then only 8 have happened this year.
Now for something more real. We'll still use Kleck's numbers. But we know that approximately 50% of criminals who die as a result of a legal civilian shooting are done by blacks. So we'll assume this is indicative of all DGUs (if there is a study that breaks down DGUs by race I haven't seen it). Since only 10% of the population is black, I am going to assume that among that 220 people 22 are black. So let's divide this out again.
1.25 million DGUs /5 million black gun owners = 25 percent. Which means the black commenters and friends will account for 6 DGUs. 1.25 million DGUs / 45 million white gun owners = 2.8 percent. Which means the white gun owners will account for 5 DGUs. Still 11 total, but now we know something else we can speculate about.
If you don't have any black commenters and your commenters have no black friends (unlikely) then the total DGUs by this group would only increase by 1 (from 5 to 6).
If we use 100 million gun owners, then DGUs by your commenters and their friends drops to 6 total.
If we use a 100 million gun owners, only 1 million DGUs (still more than gun violence incidents), and assume only 5% of your commenters and their friends are black, then the total amount of expected DGUs to be reported on are less than 2. (One of which may not have happened for the year. Changing the DGU number to 500,000 (about as much as gun violence incidents) would mean there is only 1 expected gun incident to report (with 4 months left in the year).
One other thing to consider, since you question the legitimacy of every DGU that is reported, someone may not want to bring up something like that about their friends and family, since all you are going to do is drag them through the mud. They still might bring up a personal one, but if we changed the population of 220 down to 20 (actual commenters) then your original number (the absolute best case scenario of having someone report one) is no longer 11, but 1.
"Suddenly I realized that not once over the last year or so has a commenter reported a personal experience of this kind or one that happened to a close friend or family member. That's odd because such a story would directly rebut many of my remarks about DGUs, basically that they're not all that common."
ReplyDeleteTry to follow me MikeB...
You're theorizing about the commonality of an event and your sample size is, at most, 20 out of 80 million over the course of 8months(THIS YEAR).
Would you accept such "research" if it came from the pro2A crowd or would you call it what it is?
Seriously dude, go back to blogging about music or small shiny objects.
If you can't see the astronomically massive holes in your arguments or accept your total lack of understanding of anything related to boom sticks, try to write about smoething you actually know about.
Reputo, You are the greatest.
ReplyDelete"I realized that not once over the last year or so has a commenter reported a personal experience of this kind or one that happened to a close friend or family member."
ReplyDeleteReally, because I specifically remember a post I made regarding a member of Delaware Open Carry I know who was the victim of an attempted robbery and shot one of the two robbers.
I have one friend who drew a pistol on a group of youths who were attempting to rob him. The youths decided discretion was the better part of valor and ran like hell. No one was shot. 911 was called. The police didn't even send someone out to take a report.
ReplyDeleteHad another friend threaten to shoot a guy who was coming through his window into his bottom floor apartment. Causing the burglar to exclaim "Oh shit!" and remove himself from the window. My friend called the police, they came and took a report. Never caught the guy.
Not someone I directly know, but a close friend of mine in Texas, in the process of fleeing hurricane Rita, had her uncle pull a .45 on a group of men who wanted to steal the fuel he was carrying up a congested highway to their safe location inland.
I've had a gun drawn on sounder of feral pigs on the same friends' ranch in West Texas. Sows with their piglets. Fortunate for me and for the mama pigs, they took off once their piglets had safely retreated. If any of the sows had charged me, I would have fired.
Sebastian, Thanks for the examples. Now, I guess the ratio is just about right. Plus your cases perfectly support another point you and the others have made, that often these incidents do not result in shots fired and police reports.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet MikeB, given the ratios being right, you don't admit that the possibility of Kleck being right, do you?
ReplyDeleteYou've just conducted a survey, confirmed Kleck's estimate....what do you say now?
MikeB, if you don't have time to troll the news stories for DGU's, perhaps you could look at these websites:
ReplyDeleteClaytonCramer's Gun Defense Blog. Cramer is a historian, software engineer, and low-key (but smart) guy.
Gun Watch is here
I unnderstand why you won't reply to me coments.
ReplyDeleteDo you think i should explain this to your readers?
I unnderstand why you won't reply to me coments. Do you think i should explain this to your readers?
ReplyDeleteI hope it doesn't have something to do with you calling him at 4AM.
kaveman said, "I unnderstand why you won't reply to me coments.
ReplyDeleteDo you think i should explain this to your readers?"
I have no idea what you're talking about. Yesterday, unlike Oregon, it was sunny and beautiful here. I took my kids to the beach and spent most of the day. Last night I could only release the comments before crashing.
I thought I'd answered your main question in the second comment above. If there's something else, please let me know.