Wednesday, January 12, 2011

#%!& Brad Kozak Says

Apparently,  Brad Kozak was a bit hurt at being exposed as something of a kook on his site, so he did what all authoritarians do when exposed-- he went into full censorship mode and banned me.

I really think it was my comments to this article that did me in.  In this article, Brad Kozak attempted to argue that a CCW holder, arriving late to the aftermath of the Giffords shooting, played some admirable role by somehow restraining himself and not pumping a few rounds into the chaotic scene.  I noted quite sagely that:
[by the same] logic, I should be commended as I was 2500 miles away and didn’t climb into my car and drive through a mall at high speeds. I also didn’t take my chainsaw and try to juggle it among small children.
Naturally, this upset Brad Kozak's delicate sensibilities who promptly channeled his dead father, referenced a Tom Cruise movie I've never seen, and accused me of wanting to ban all guns and turn the US into Australia(???).

Good times, good times.


For accuracy's sake, it must be noted that Brad Kozak's story was wrong.
The new poster boy for this agenda is Joe Zamudio, a hero in the Tucson incident. Zamudio was in a nearby drug store when the shooting began, and he was armed. He ran to the scene and helped subdue the killer. Television interviewers are celebrating his courage, and pro-gun blogs are touting his equipment. "Bystander Says Carrying Gun Prompted Him to Help," says the headline in the Wall Street Journal.

But before we embrace Zamudio's brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let's hear the whole story. "I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready," he explained on Fox and Friends. "I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. "And that's who I at first thought was the shooter," Zamudio recalled. "I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!'"

But the man with the gun wasn't the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. "Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess," the interviewer pointed out.


Zamudio agreed:

"I was very lucky. Honestly, it was a matter of seconds. Two, maybe three seconds between when I came through the doorway and when I was laying on top of [the real shooter], holding him down. So, I mean, in that short amount of time I made a lot of really big decisions really fast. … I was really lucky."

18 comments:

  1. Jade: “For accuracy's sake, it must be noted that Brad Kozak's story was wrong.”

    Armed Giffords hero nearly shot wrong man

    ...But he didn’t. So where is your point? He didn’t save the day, and he didn’t escalate it either. Let’s call it a wash.

    By the way Jade, Kleck had an explanation for the 8% wound rate from the DGU study. He dismissed that number as unbelievable just as you did. Apparently you didn’t read the study.

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  2. What? You banned from a website? No way!

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  3. TS: The fact was Kozak's article was titled to the effect that a CCW had played a positive role. In reality, of course, a very tragic situation very nearly becoame a more tragic situation.

    Re Kleck, in a later study, Kleck did indeed cast doubt on the 8% figure. The problem, however, is that you can't cherry-pick the responses you get. IOW, Kleck is happy to claim x number of respondents had a DGU but then he rejects these same respondents claims about wounding an assailant?

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  4. FWM: Way!

    Hard to believe isn't it?

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  5. You can argue that the situation was already resolved by the time he got there, but trying to say it “nearly” became more tragic is as fruitless as speculating how many lives he “nearly” saved had he been there sooner. Give it a rest. His having a gun was not a bad thing- he didn’t even draw it.

    Jade: “Re Kleck, in a later study, Kleck did indeed cast doubt on the 8% figure. The problem, however, is that you can't cherry-pick the responses you get.”

    Well you just did. You singled out the 8% wound figure, which you knew he had already dismissed, to give your response to. And your response was to say how that number is not possible, which Kleck already did. All you did was agree with him.

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  6. TS: As Zamudio admits he nearly shot someone who was not the assailant. I think we can both agree that wouldn't have been good.

    The fact is Zamudio did nothing to subdue the killer or prevent the tragedy; in fact, his only contribution was to nearly make it much, much worse.

    Re Kleck--you still miss the point. If I ask you several related questions, it's fraudulent if I accept some of your answers and reject others. I either have to reject or accept all your responses. I didn't cherry-pick, Kleck did. In Klec's case he was willing to accept a respondent saying he had a DGU but would then reject the same respondent saying he had wounded the assailant. Have you a plausible explanation why it's acceptable to do so?

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  7. Colin, It's not cowardice that got your comment deleted. Don't flatter yourself, although your arguments are sound, they're not that sound that we need to delete them.

    It's the "KKK" name that gets comments deleted around here. I know, I know, it's a double standard, you were about to say, but I beg to differ.

    If you think "gunloon" is as offensive as the name you've been using for my co-blogger, I disagree. And, as you know this is my blog and I make the rules.

    But please don't think it has to do with the substance of what you say.

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  8. Jade,

    I let gunloon.com domain expire. You should be able to pick it up in a month or two.

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  9. Jade, Zamudio didn’t even draw his gun. I guess you can say I nearly drove 2500 miles and plowed my car into a crowd at the mall. I nearly did… but I didn’t.

    Kleck explained how the question of having injured the assailant can have a greater degree of inaccuracy (or misremembering). Someone might be sure they “nailed him in the butt” when in fact they didn’t. Misremembering the whole account of being attacked is less likely. “Did I really get attacked by seven ninjas, or did I dream that?”

    Let’s say you were doing a survey for pediatrics, and you asked these series of questions:

    1) How many kids are in your household?
    2) How many times in the last year have they been sick?
    3) How many times in the last year have they sneezed?

    You would expect the accuracy of your answers to vary from assuming 100% correct on the first one, to random guess on the third one. Having asked the third question does not invalidate the whole study or the accuracy of the first answer- especially if the author specifically draws attention to the inaccuracy of responses to question 3, as Kleck did.

    That is not to say exaggeration isn’t a factor throughout Kleck’s survey, but yes, results will vary depending on the question (for any survey). You either back peddled into crying “cherry-picking” after you read Kleck’s critique of the 8% answer, or you did know all along which was intentionally deceptive. You can do better than that. Look, I am no big fan of the Kleck survey, so there is plenty to pick apart there. You haven’t seen me quoting 2.5 million DGUs a year, have you? I can think critically on my own rather than talking myself into anything the gun rights side says. You however, have swallowed so many hooks, lines, and sinkers fed to you by Kellermann that you need a team of world renowned gastrointestinal surgeons to remove the bowel obstruction.

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  10. TS: Again, it's simply unacceptable to accept part of a respondents answer and then discard another part.

    You have to realize that if someone was so uncertain about discharging his weapon and hitting an assailant--chances are pretty good he was also unceratin about the whole DGU. In fact--and this gets into methodology--people claiming a DGU may not have experienced one at all. For example, suppose I hear a noise outside my home. I grab my assault rifle and go to investigate. The noise stops and I don't see anything. Is that a DGU? Maybe, maybe not. OTOH, if I fire my assault weapon and think I hit something, well, chances are pretty good I did---otherwise I'm just a yahoo who was firing my weapon into the woods.

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  11. Halleluiah, we actually agree on something. In case you didn’t read it, I said I personally don’t give much credence to Kleck’s DGU totals, your example being one reason. I said “exaggeration is a factor”, and “there is plenty to pick apart there”. If you were also capable of honest rationalization you wouldn’t be making statements like this:

    Jade: “Again, it's simply unacceptable to accept part of a respondents answer and then discard another part.”

    No. It is totally and 100% acceptable for a surveyor, statistician, or scientist conducting an experiment to discard data that falls out of the norm with valid reason. It is done all the time.

    Jade: “You have to realize that if someone was so uncertain about discharging his weapon and hitting an assailant--chances are pretty good he was also unceratin about the whole DGU.”

    Though I have stated my concerns with Kleck’s DGU study, I will leave you with this final example to ponder over. When I go to the rifle range, I am 100% certain that I am at the rifle range. When I line up to shoot, I am 100% certain I am holding a gun in my hand. When I pull the trigger I am 100% certain whether or not the round discharged. Did I hit my target? I don’t know.

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  12. TS: Actually, it isn't. Do you think a basball statistician is going to record a batter hitting a HR and then no record an RBI?

    WRT your range example, are you seriously saying you don't know where your rounds go? Wow.

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  13. Jade: “Actually, it isn't. Do you think a basball statistician is going to record a batter hitting a HR and then no record an RBI?”

    Given that those stats fall within the norm, they would be counted. If the radar gun shows that a pitcher just threw a 214 mph fastball, it would be excluded from the record books.

    Jade: “WRT your range example, are you seriously saying you don't know where your rounds go? Wow.”

    I have good idea, but exactly? Did I hit within the spot I wanted to? I don’t know- the bullet was moving too fast to see.

    What may be more apt than the rifle range example would a hunting example: A guy is out deer hunting. Chances he knows he is deer hunting- 100%. Chances he knows he is armed- 100%. He sees a deer. Chances of it actually being a deer- call it 99%. He takes a shot. 100% certain he knows whether a shot was fired. The deer runs off. But you know what… he KNOWS he hit that deer. No way he missed from that distance! So he and his buddy look for a blood trail for 4 hours.

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  14. During the study period, 1860 homicides occurred in the three counties, 444 of them (23.9 percent) in the home of the victim. After excluding 24 cases for various reasons, we interviewed proxy respondents for 93 percent of the victims.

    Oops, looks like you can’t use Kellermann anymore by your standards. What will you do?

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  15. TS: You prove my point. Kellermann excluded 24 cases for various reasons--IOW, he didn't include parts of the cases he liked and excluded other parts. Kellermann simply excluded the whole case.

    In the cas of Kleck, he took a respondent and accepted part of the response and discarded other parts. Can't do that. You have to include everything or discard everything.

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  16. BTW, if we assume the 8% figure is wrong--let's guess that it was 2%--you still wind up with 7500 justiable homicides each year. Again, justifiable homicides each year rarely exceed 250, from all causes.

    Want to use 1%? 3250 justifiable homicides. Want to use 0.1%? 325. Still more than the actual number of justifiable homicides.


    What this points out, of course, is that Kleck's methodology is grossly flawed. IOW, for Kleck's numbers to *almost* pan out, we have to believe each respondent who had a DGU was telling the truth about each DGU and of those who claimed to wound the assailant, Kleck gets to discard nearly 99% of the responses.

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  17. Everybody is missing the point. This extremist is the prime example of guntard fantasy. Vigilante justice coming to save the day. He had absolutely no business slinging his gun and poking his head around looking for a fight. His duty was to retreat. Like many articles say, he could have gunned down the wrong person, maybe a child, maybe a senior, or maybe he himself could have been shot.

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  18. Right you are, BantheNRA. The guys who say we're all safer because of them are living in a fantasy world.

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