New Study: Since 2007, Concealed Carry Up 130%, Murders Down 22%

[NETim]

I was promised blood in the streets!

The study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans now have permits to carry concealed weapons, up from 4.5 million in 2007. The 146 percent increase has come even as both murder and violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/09/murder-drops-as-concealed-carry-permits-rise-claims-study/

[GardoneVT]

I was promised blood in the streets!

The study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans now have permits to carry concealed weapons, up from 4.5 million in 2007. The 146 percent increase has come even as both murder and violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/09/murder-drops-as-concealed-carry-permits-rise-claims-study/

In Chicago, there's plenty to go around. Except it's the bad guys turn to bleed with CCW being legal.

[Shellback]

Original article here (http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2014/07/new-report-from-crime-prevention-research-center-shows-11-1-million-americans-hold-concealed-carry-permits/), with nifty interactive map, showing CCW holders per state.


The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) today released a report, Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States, revealing that 11.1 million Americans hold concealed carry permits up from an estimated 4.6 million in 2007...

The report also notes:

*Three states (South Dakota, Indiana, and Alabama) now have over 10 percent of their adult populations with permits, and 10 states have at least 8 percent of their adult populations with permits.

*The number of concealed carry permit holders is likely much higher than 11.1 million.

*Between 2007 and the preliminary estimates for 2013, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.4 per 100,000 – a 22 percent drop in the murder rate at the same time that the percentage of the adult population with permits soared by 130 percent. Overall violent crime also fell by 22 percent over that period of time.

Actual report here in PDF form. (http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Concealed-Carry-Permit-Holders-Across-the-United-States.pdf)

[Tamara]

Also here: http://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?12790-New-Study-Since-2007-Concealed-Carry-Up-130-Murders-Down-22!

[Tamara]

Correlation does not, of course, equal causation, but that's been the smart argument for our side all along. Tying gun ownership to social utility is a bad move long-term, whereas pointing out that the murder (or overall violent crime) rate is largely decoupled from gun ownership rates is beneficial.

[TR675]

Correlation does not, of course, equal causation, but that's been the smart argument for our side all along. Tying gun ownership to social utility is a bad move long-term, whereas pointing out that the murder (or overall violent crime) rate is largely decoupled from gun ownership rates is beneficial.

This.

[MDS]

Correlation does not, of course, equal causation, but that's been the smart argument for our side all along. Tying gun ownership to social utility is a bad move long-term, whereas pointing out that the murder (or overall violent crime) rate is largely decoupled from gun ownership rates is beneficial.

Trudat. I like to specify legal gun ownership rates. It begs the argument that illegal guns are the ones causing crime, and that reducing the number of overall guns would reduce the number of illegal guns used in crime. But since legal ownership rates are decoupled from gun violence rates, then legal ownership rates are necessarily decoupled from illegal ownership rates. They respond with "well, the illegal guns are smuggled from surrounding areas with high legal ownership rates" and I say "I've heard that but I've never seen data to back it up...except Fast and Furious data that we can explore if you like."

But I rarely get to finish the gambit for the vigorous shouting-down I'm taking by then.

[Shellback]

Thanks Tam.

[RoyGBiv]

Correlation does not, of course, equal causation,


This.

+ bazillion

[Hooper]

Correlation does not, of course, equal causation, but that's been the smart argument for our side all along. Tying gun ownership to social utility is a bad move long-term, whereas pointing out that the murder (or overall violent crime) rate is largely decoupled from gun ownership rates is beneficial.
If we're going to be scientifically/statistically rigorous we can't even conclude that from this information alone. There may simply be other factors that impact the murder rate more strongly that are pushing the murder rate down faster than increased gun ownership is pushing it up.

Of course the additional information that murder rate among CCW holders is exceptionally low adds some compelling weight to the hypothesis that they might be weakly coupled or uncoupled, at least in a non-rigorous way.

[GardoneVT]

If we're going to be scientifically/statistically rigorous we can't even conclude that from this information alone. There may simply be other factors that impact the murder rate more strongly that are pushing the murder rate down faster than increased gun ownership is pushing it up.

Of course the additional information that murder rate among CCW holders is exceptionally low adds some compelling weight to the hypothesis that they might be weakly coupled or uncoupled, at least in a non-rigorous way.

I realized something in the aftermath of my foiled-by-ccw not-carjacking. Guns DO have a social utility, but we'll never be able to measure it to rigorous scientific standards. When Mr Thug tried to take my car and stopped at the sight of my carry gun, no report was generated. The cops didnt show up, and the bad guy definitely didn't run to a local PD station to report he had the kitten scared out of him whilst breaking the law.

I'm theorizing dozens of times throughout America bad guys and gals are deterred by their intended victim producing a firearm at a choice moment. There won't be any paper trail to follow, however, because unless someone actually gets shot the police don't get called. No police report means no paper which can be used in a verifiable study or survey.

Sadly, when the bad guys attack unarmed victims there's all kinds of documented proof, which means the opposition always has stats while we don't.

[Tamara]

Thanks Tam.

Your thread title was definitely more indicative of the contents. :)

[BLR]

Correlation does not, of course, equal causation, but that's been the smart argument for our side all along. Tying gun ownership to social utility is a bad move long-term, whereas pointing out that the murder (or overall violent crime) rate is largely decoupled from gun ownership rates is beneficial.

Still, blood in the streets was promised. Gutters and storm drains overflowing, IIRC.

[Shellback]

Still, blood in the streets was promised. Gutters and storm drains overflowing, IIRC.

Same thing with Constitutional/permitless carry in the states that have passed it. Good guys carrying guns aren't a problem and bad guys don't obey the laws anyway.

[NETim]

What I like most about reports like this is that it blows great big gaping holes in anti-freedomite's argument that "more guns=more crime." All they have going for them is theatrics.

[RevolverRob]

What I like most about reports like this is that it blows great big gaping holes in anti-freedomite's argument that "more guns=more crime." All they have going for them is theatrics.

Uhh, you might go re-read Tam's comments. The more guns = more crime argument is as much fallacious as the more guns = less crime argument. Crime stats are influence by a number of factors: socioeconomic status, current economic status of the country, education, alternative venues of income gain than crime, addiction rates, policing and enforcement, etc. In other words you can see crime rates drop for a number of reasons.

Here is an example, the crime rate in Detroit has dropped recently. It does not appear that crime has been reduced in Detroit by any stretch of the imagination, rather the police infrastructure is so bad that there are not enough officers to respond to most of the crime and reports do not get filed and reported (see GardoneVT earlier for another example of this). Thus the crime rate has dropped. Weak corollary arguments would say it's because "CCW permit holders are shooting bad guys!" Which they are, at a higher rate than anywhere else in this country. But in fact likely crime rate has dropped, because the infrastructure is inadequate to accurately report crime statistics.

See Hooper for an excellent break-down of what might be interpreted from these data. Be very careful flinging stats like these around in support of any particular hypothesis. As Samuel Clemens once wrote, "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." All stats are capable of easily being manipulated and if evidence is not gathered to test a specific set of null and alternative hypotheses you have at beast weak correlation-based arguments that fail to hold up to strong scrutiny and rigorous evaluation. Both sides of gun control suffer from this problem, which is why rhetoric is the more important tool in arguments of this nature. You can use the weakness of any of these data to open the door to productive dialog about it with fence-sitters.

-Rob

[MDS]

Both sides of gun control suffer from this problem, which is why rhetoric is the more important tool in arguments of this nature.

Great post! I guess it begs the question - if numbers don't tell the story that more guns == more better, how do we know that's true? (Putting aside for a moment that the ultimate argument for the 2A is liberty.)

[Tamara]

I would say that it doesn't matter if more guns = more better or not. The idea of taking away a citizen's possessions because of something that they (or someone else) might do with them flies in the face of all kinds of foundational beliefs of our society.


Group punishment belongs nowhere outside of boot camp and Mrs. Crabapple's 3rd grade classroom.
You shouldn't be required to prove a "need" to buy things.
Prior restraint is un-American.
Et cetera.

[joshs]

I would say that it doesn't matter if more guns = more better or not. The idea of taking away a citizen's possessions because of something that they (or someone else) might do with them flies in the face of all kinds of foundational beliefs of our society.


Group punishment belongs nowhere outside of boot camp and Mrs. Crabapple's 3rd grade classroom.
You shouldn't be required to prove a "need" to buy things.
Prior restraint is un-American.
Et cetera.


Unfortunately, whether or not a given gun control law is unconstitutional does depend on social science data. I don't agree with the analysis, but almost all federal courts examining claims under the Second Amendment have looked at the government interest sought to be protected by the law and weighed it against the burden the law creates on the individual right to self-defense (all courts that I'm aware of have completely disregarded Heller's guidance that self-defense is only one of several purposes for the Second Amendment. E.g., Colorado's 15 round magazine limitation may be a relatively minimal burden on self-defense, but it significantly burdens the militia purpose of the right).

[Chuck Haggard]

I realized something in the aftermath of my foiled-by-ccw not-carjacking. Guns DO have a social utility, but we'll never be able to measure it to rigorous scientific standards. When Mr Thug tried to take my car and stopped at the sight of my carry gun, no report was generated. The cops didnt show up, and the bad guy definitely didn't run to a local PD station to report he had the kitten scared out of him whilst breaking the law.

I'm theorizing dozens of times throughout America bad guys and gals are deterred by their intended victim producing a firearm at a choice moment. There won't be any paper trail to follow, however, because unless someone actually gets shot the police don't get called. No police report means no paper which can be used in a verifiable study or survey.

Sadly, when the bad guys attack unarmed victims there's all kinds of documented proof, which means the opposition always has stats while we don't.

I can think of five incidents where I was off-duty had a gun in hand and bad guys being detered that never made it to paper. It happens often IMHO.

[Tamara]

Unfortunately, whether or not a given gun control law is unconstitutional does depend on social science data. I don't agree with the analysis, but almost all federal courts examining claims under the Second Amendment have looked at the government interest sought to be protected by the law and weighed it against the burden the law creates on the individual right to self-defense (all courts that I'm aware of have completely disregarded Heller's guidance that self-defense is only one of several purposes for the Second Amendment. E.g., Colorado's 15 round magazine limitation may be a relatively minimal burden on self-defense, but it significantly burdens the militia purpose of the right).

I should have made it clear that I was referring to Facebook arguments against gun control, as I am in no wise qualified to comment on the courtroom kind. :o (I was indirectly replying to RevolverRob's comment about rhetoric instead of statistics.)

[joshs]

I should have made it clear that I was referring to Facebook arguments against gun control, as I am in no wise qualified to comment on the courtroom kind. :o (I was indirectly replying to RevolverRob's comment about rhetoric instead of statistics.)

I'm pretty guilty of focusing too much on the latter, and I pretty much avoid FB at all costs, so it's not something that I'm usually thinking about.


I can think of five incidents where I was off-duty had a gun in hand and bad guys being detered that never made it to paper. It happens often IMHO.

This is pretty consistent with Kleck's findings in the National Self-Defense Survey.

[Jeep]

[QUOTE=NETim;234770]I was promised blood in the streets!

I was always against gun control, but back when Florida was the first state to liberalize CCW, I thought it was a tactical mistake because I thought we would indeed get blood in the streets.

In other words, I had internalized--and accepted--much of the gun controllers' argument, even though I had already experienced things that should have told me that most people who would apply for CCW licenses would be law abiding and that law abiding people don't engage in criminal activity.

Thankfully, I was dead wrong, the CCW people were completely right and they persevered despite idiots like me. A lot of bad things have happened in my life in the public sphere, but the explosion of CCW is one of the relatively few good things; among other things it has increased public support for gun rights and taught millions how to take responsibility for their own defense. If any of you here were part of the early CCW movement, you have my heartfelt thanks for seeing these things long before I did.

I don't think that it is easy to tell whether CCW has cut crime based upon the published statistics, but like others here I know for a fact that the presence of a firearm in a good guy's hands prevents crime from happening far more often than is generally recognized. Criminals might be (and generally are) stupid, but not stupid enough to want to run those kind of risks.

[RoyGBiv]

Original article here (http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2014/07/new-report-from-crime-prevention-research-center-shows-11-1-million-americans-hold-concealed-carry-permits/), with nifty interactive map, showing CCW holders per state.



Actual report here in PDF form. (http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Concealed-Carry-Permit-Holders-Across-the-United-States.pdf)

Interesting... CHL holders have better (lower) violation numbers than LE.


The Florida numbers can easily be compared to data on firearms violations by
police officers during the three years from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2007.
During that time period, the annual rate of such violations by police was at least 0.007 percent.
That is higher than the rate for permit holders in Florida.

The police data on total annual offenses also provide a direct comparison for Florida and Texas.
The rate of all crimes committed by police is 0.124 percent – a number about 6 times higher than
the rate for in Texas and about 10 times higher than for Florida.

[NETim]

I can think of five incidents where I was off-duty had a gun in hand and bad guys being detered that never made it to paper. It happens often IMHO.

Doesn't mesh with the agenda and it isn't news.

"If it bleeds, it leads."

[Chuck Haggard]

Doesn't mesh with the agenda and it isn't news.

"If it bleeds, it leads."

If I wanted to multi count, I have one bad night in DC, walking from the Metro stop after we missed the last train that night, where I had my 642 in my hand five different times before we made it back to the hotel.

[Shellback]

Doesn't mesh with the agenda and it isn't news.

"If it bleeds, it leads."

Nor do they go reported, typically.

[Chuck Haggard]

Actual self defense shootings never make more than the local media unless it's a Zimmerman type case.

Most self defense gun pointings never get reported, to the media or the cops.

[NETim]

Uhh, you might go re-read Tam's comments. The more guns = more crime argument is as much fallacious as the more guns = less crime argument. Crime stats are influence by a number of factors: socioeconomic status, current economic status of the country, education, alternative venues of income gain than crime, addiction rates, policing and enforcement, etc. In other words you can see crime rates drop for a number of reasons.

Here is an example, the crime rate in Detroit has dropped recently. It does not appear that crime has been reduced in Detroit by any stretch of the imagination, rather the police infrastructure is so bad that there are not enough officers to respond to most of the crime and reports do not get filed and reported (see GardoneVT earlier for another example of this). Thus the crime rate has dropped. Weak corollary arguments would say it's because "CCW permit holders are shooting bad guys!" Which they are, at a higher rate than anywhere else in this country. But in fact likely crime rate has dropped, because the infrastructure is inadequate to accurately report crime statistics.

See Hooper for an excellent break-down of what might be interpreted from these data. Be very careful flinging stats like these around in support of any particular hypothesis. As Samuel Clemens once wrote, "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." All stats are capable of easily being manipulated and if evidence is not gathered to test a specific set of null and alternative hypotheses you have at beast weak correlation-based arguments that fail to hold up to strong scrutiny and rigorous evaluation. Both sides of gun control suffer from this problem, which is why rhetoric is the more important tool in arguments of this nature. You can use the weakness of any of these data to open the door to productive dialog about it with fence-sitters.

-Rob

I wasn't suggesting that CCW accounts for the crime rate drop (though I believe it is a factor but can't prove it.) What I was hinting at was the fact that there are more guns than ever in private hands and more private citizens are carrying than ever, yet, despite what the anti's predict, crime rates continue to fall.

More evidence IMHO, that it's not the number of guns present in society, but the number of folks willing to do wrong that's the problem.

[NETim]

Actual self defense shootings never make more than the local media unless it's a Zimmerman type case.

Most self defense gun pointings never get reported, to the media or the cops.

Hypothetical. Waingro accosts Joe CCW on the street. Joe successfully deploys the Glock. Waingro realizes the error of his ways and slinks back into the darkness. He later robs an unarmed willing victim.

Was a crime prevented? Yes. Did the crime rate go down though?

[TR675]

It's important when dealing with crime statistics to know that the entire process of collecting this data is riddled with errors.

For example, not only are many crimes not reported, but many that are reported are mislabeled by the authorities (i.e., a homicide reclassified as "cause of death unknown") either intentionally or accidentally, and in fact many convictions for major crimes are not reported by city and county employees to the state. I saw first hand how incomplete a "rap sheet" can be in my time as a county employee when the county had records of felony crime that didn't show up on the state conviction records...and IIRC the feds rely on state authorities for their statistics...

Having said that, they're what we've got and barring changes in data collection methods they are relevant to giving us a big picture idea of what's going on in the country on a year to year basis.

[Drang]

...back when Florida was the first state to liberalize CCW...
Washington state went shall-issue in the early 60s.
/digression
:cool:

[Chuck Haggard]

Hypothetical. Waingro accosts Joe CCW on the street. Joe successfully deploys the Glock. Waingro realizes the error of his ways and slinks back into the darkness. He later robs an unarmed willing victim.

Was a crime prevented? Yes. Did the crime rate go down though?

Typically, hypothetically? Yes, because Joe Scumbag would have robbed both parties given the chance.

[Hooper]

...What I was hinting at was the fact that there are more guns than ever in private hands and more private citizens are carrying than ever, yet, despite what the anti's predict, crime rates continue to fall.

More evidence IMHO, that it's not the number of guns present in society, but the number of folks willing to do wrong that's the problem.

If we may, perhaps we could clarify this point here to the point of making it more difficult to refute by the opposition.

Essentially what you are saying is that firearms ownership is clearly not a factor with so strong a negative impact on crime such that when firearms ownership rises, murder rates must necessarily rise with it, correct?

In other words, whatever its effect on crime, gun ownership does not appear to be a leading factor in causing crime. In fact, it is possible that it may have no relationship at all, or may even help prevent crime overall.

So, that being the case, perhaps it is fair to conclude that the anti-gun activists are at least overhyping the issue and behaving in a manner detached from reality, if not trying to whip the country up into a hysterical frenzy and redirect energies that could be better directed towards more meaningful causes. All that for a cause that may be counterproductive.

This is all made particularly onerous when you consider the other realities (as mentioned by Gardone, Tamara, and Mr. Haggard) that the type of argumentation made by the anti-gun activists must try to overcome.

Addendum: whenever we start talking statistics and want to try to state things scientifically to be definitive, such that we are not just abusing the numbers and proving to the world that we are dead-set on confirming our biases...as RevolverRob stated we have to try to try to develop some specific hypothesis which we try our best to disprove. This is why we have the "null hypothesis," which in other words means we saw nothing happen when we expected our hypothesized phenomenon to have an effect. So if we can make a mathematical model of the relevant part of the world and use it to show that our null hypothesis is unlikely, we have just gained some evidence that our hypothesis may not be false. If we repeat this and other tests many times and see the same result, we can start to become more confident in our hypothesis.

When asking questions like "does more gun ownership cause higher murder rates?" the way we approach this statistically is to formulate a mathematical model of murder rates as a function of as many potentially influential independent factors that could impact murder rates as possible. So we want to model gun ownership primarily, but include as many other variables as possible to "correct" our understanding of just how much influence gun ownership specifically is having.

This is known as a regression model or general linear model, in its simplest form. Here we would form an equation for murder rate essentially as follows:

(murder rate) = beta1 * (corrector1) + beta2 * (corrector2) + ... + betaN * (gun_ownership)

We are interested in finding betaN, the effective slope or rate at which gun ownership level impacts murder rate. If this number is effectively zero, then there is no relationship between gun ownership level and murder rate. If it is positive, then increased gun ownership increases murder rates. If negative, increased gun ownership reduces murder rates.

But note that we try to include other factors in the equation. What I denoted corrector1 might be socioeconomic status, while corrector2 might be drug usage, etc. We pull together as many possibly influential corrections like this for which we have data, then try to solve for all the betas with what is essentially a line fitting process.

In the end we have a bunch of numbers, and by running some tests on variability are able to test a hypothesis on whether or not betaN is zero.

Getting good data isn't always straightforward, as TR675 mentioned. And we have some fundamental problems in analyzing large societies in this way in that they are very complex (meaning lots of potential corrections necessary), but history isn't repeatable such that we could make multiple measurements with the same set of confounding variables to increase our certainty.

The main point is that the common mistaken assumption that we can just always assume cause and effect between some observed societal phenomenon and a given factor we are interested in can quickly get us in trouble.

[GardoneVT]

If we may, perhaps we could clarify this point here to the point of making it more difficult to refute by the opposition.

Essentially what you are saying is that firearms ownership is clearly not a factor with so strong a negative impact on crime such that when firearms ownership rises, murder rates must necessarily rise with it, correct?

In other words, whatever its effect on crime, gun ownership does not appear to be a leading factor in causing crime. In fact, it is possible that it may have no relationship at all, or may even help prevent crime overall.

So, that being the case, perhaps it is fair to conclude that the anti-gun activists are at least overhyping the issue and behaving in a manner detached from reality, if not trying to whip the country up into a hysterical frenzy and redirect energies that could be better directed towards more meaningful causes. All that for a cause that may be counterproductive.

This is all made particularly onerous when you consider the other realities (as mentioned by Gardone, Tamara, and Mr. Haggard) that the type of argumentation made by the anti-gun activists must try to overcome.

Addendum: whenever we start talking statistics and want to try to state things scientifically to be definitive, such that we are not just abusing the numbers and proving to the world that we are dead-set on confirming our biases...as RevolverRob stated we have to try to try to develop some specific hypothesis which we try our best to disprove. This is why we have the "null hypothesis," which in other words means we saw nothing happen when we expected our hypothesized phenomenon to have an effect. So if we can make a mathematical model of the relevant part of the world and use it to show that our null hypothesis is unlikely, we have just gained some evidence that our hypothesis may not be false. If we repeat this and other tests many times and see the same result, we can start to become more confident in our hypothesis.

When asking questions like "does more gun ownership cause higher murder rates?" the way we approach this statistically is to formulate a mathematical model of murder rates as a function of as many potentially influential independent factors that could impact murder rates as possible. So we want to model gun ownership primarily, but include as many other variables as possible to "correct" our understanding of just how much influence gun ownership specifically is having.

This is known as a regression model or general linear model, in its simplest form. Here we would form an equation for murder rate essentially as follows:

(murder rate) = beta1 * (corrector1) + beta2 * (corrector2) + ... + betaN * (gun_ownership)

We are interested in finding betaN, the effective slope or rate at which gun ownership level impacts murder rate. If this number is effectively zero, then there is no relationship between gun ownership level and murder rate. If it is positive, then increased gun ownership increases murder rates. If negative, increased gun ownership reduces murder rates.

But note that we try to include other factors in the equation. What I denoted corrector1 might be socioeconomic status, while corrector2 might be drug usage, etc. We pull together as many possibly influential corrections like this for which we have data, then try to solve for all the betas with what is essentially a line fitting process.

In the end we have a bunch of numbers, and by running some tests on variability are able to test a hypothesis on whether or not betaN is zero.

Getting good data isn't always straightforward, as TR675 mentioned. And we have some fundamental problems in analyzing large societies in this way in that they are very complex (meaning lots of potential corrections necessary), but history isn't repeatable such that we could make multiple measurements with the same set of confounding variables to increase our certainty.

The main point is that the common mistaken assumption that we can just always assume cause and effect between some observed societal phenomenon and a given factor we are interested in can quickly get us in trouble.

I think we need to collectively accept that some questions cannot be accurately answered by statistics. The social utility of firearms is one of them. How many spree killings have we avoided because the scumbag bit the dust? Well never know, because they didn't happen. I'm reminded of a LEO involved incident where two officers traffic stopped a car and the driver got out shooting. Once the shooter bit the dust it was later found he had an AK and rounds pre-loaded into magazines in a backpack. For all we know he might have been on his way to perpetrate Newtown 2.0 and was fortuitously stopped by the officers en route. Perhaps he was on his way to the range and just snapped. Well never know, because the only guy with answers is worm food.

No statistic can qualify the civil benefit of a horrific tragedy which is prevented by the use of a firearm.
It also can't quantify the negative impact, because again.... many cases of firearm misuse never hit paper. I know a girl who had a gun pointed at her by a negligent fool trying to play tough guy. The cops weren't called, and she simply never hung out with said cretin again and moved on with life, albeit with a profound anti-gun outlook.

[RevolverRob]

I think we need to collectively accept that some questions cannot be accurately answered by statistics. The social utility of firearms is one of them. How many spree killings have we avoided because the scumbag bit the dust? Well never know, because they didn't happen. I'm reminded of a LEO involved incident where two officers traffic stopped a car and the driver got out shooting. Once the shooter bit the dust it was later found he had an AK and rounds pre-loaded into magazines in a backpack. For all we know he might have been on his way to perpetrate Newtown 2.0 and was fortuitously stopped by the officers en route. Perhaps he was on his way to the range and just snapped. Well never know, because the only guy with answers is worm food.

No statistic can qualify the civil benefit of a horrific tragedy which is prevented by the use of a firearm.
It also can't quantify the negative impact, because again.... many cases of firearm misuse never hit paper. I know a girl who had a gun pointed at her by a negligent fool trying to play tough guy. The cops weren't called, and she simply never hung out with said cretin again and moved on with life, albeit with a profound anti-gun outlook.

Let me introduce you to my friend Bayes' theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_Theorem

The basic concept is, you can use pieces of data (factual observations) to inform the unknown variables and make more accurate predictions in a probabilistic framework. Bayesian statistics has been used to make accurate predictions about a wide variety of sociocultural phenomena (such as the outcome of the most recent presidential election, or the outcome of major sporting events) as well as much more accurate scientific predictions. Bayesian statistical models can be developed which account for the random nature of a variety of factors. I challenge the notion that you cannot make predictive statements about humans or human nature. That is actually the antithesis of psychological study, which is based on the idea that the brain in every human works in a similar fashion and thus we can use study of some individuals to generalize accurately across a majority. Certainly stochasticity exists in any given scenario, but even that can be evaluated and tested for.

In short, yes, if you collected data in a rigorous fashion with a clear understanding of the limitations of said data, you could in fact analyze the trends and test the hypotheses proposed here. If you had accurate data on the gentleman who was killed by the police, on spree killers, on other criminals of that nature, you probably could make an estimate on whether or not he was going to commit Newtown 2.0 or not. It would, however, remain only a hypothesis and not confirmable.

-Rob

[Spr1]

With regard to the rhetoric side of the argument, think how this would have been trumpeted by the radical left if the headline was "Concealed carry permits up 130%, MURDER RATES UP 22%!!!"
The left has used the guns equal crime rate argument for years as a subterfuge for the accretion of power over liberty. Any data that damages their false argument is certainly a good thing.

[GardoneVT]

Let me introduce you to my friend Bayes' theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_Theorem

The basic concept is, you can use pieces of data (factual observations) to inform the unknown variables and make more accurate predictions in a probabilistic framework. Bayesian statistics has been used to make accurate predictions about a wide variety of sociocultural phenomena (such as the outcome of the most recent presidential election, or the outcome of major sporting events) as well as much more accurate scientific predictions. Bayesian statistical models can be developed which account for the random nature of a variety of factors. I challenge the notion that you cannot make predictive statements about humans or human nature. That is actually the antithesis of psychological study, which is based on the idea that the brain in every human works in a similar fashion and thus we can use study of some individuals to generalize accurately across a majority. Certainly stochasticity exists in any given scenario, but even that can be evaluated and tested for.

In short, yes, if you collected data in a rigorous fashion with a clear understanding of the limitations of said data, you could in fact analyze the trends and test the hypotheses proposed here. If you had accurate data on the gentleman who was killed by the police, on spree killers, on other criminals of that nature, you probably could make an estimate on whether or not he was going to commit Newtown 2.0 or not. It would, however, remain only a hypothesis and not confirmable.

-Rob

Therein lies the problem.

How can someone collect valid data on how often "Waingro" aborted an attack because his target was armed? A survey form ain't gonna cut it. How does one quantify self defense in jurisdictions which make it illegal? How can one collect data on armed self defense when both citizen and felon can go to jail if the incident becomes public? We cannot simply say self defense with a firearm never happens in New Jersey, Los Angeles, or NYC........

[Jeep]

Washington state went shall-issue in the early 60s.
/digression
:cool:

Drang: My apologies. I meant in "in the modern era"--in other words after the lowered the pitcher's mound.

[Chuck Haggard]

Therein lies the problem.

How can someone collect valid data on how often "Waingro" aborted an attack because his target was armed? A survey form ain't gonna cut it. How does one quantify self defense in jurisdictions which make it illegal? How can one collect data on armed self defense when both citizen and felon can go to jail if the incident becomes public? We cannot simply say self defense with a firearm never happens in New Jersey, Los Angeles, or NYC........

There is some body of info, and no I don't have links, to bad guys in prison stating that they fear armed citizens more than cops. I've seen interviews to that effect several times.

[Hooper]

There is some body of info, and no I don't have links, to bad guys in prison stating that they fear armed citizens more than cops. I've seen interviews to that effect several times.

It makes sense if you consider their perspective: they can usually see law enforcement coming from a mile away. Not so with an armed citizen, who may unknowingly be any one of their intended victims, and who may be able to employ more of an element of surprise to gain the advantage.

[GardoneVT]

It makes sense if you consider their perspective: they can usually see law enforcement coming from a mile away. Not so with an armed citizen, who may unknowingly be any one of their intended victims, and who may be able to employ more of an element of surprise to gain the advantage.

Agreed. With LE, the bad guys also know what to expect in terms of response times and what gear the cops use. A home invader doesn't know if the house he's about to hit contains a tree hugger afraid of their own shadow, or a war vet with a loaded AR by the sofa.They won't know until they kick in the door.

[Drang]

Drang: My apologies. I meant in "in the modern era"--in other words after the lowered the pitcher's mound.

Not to mention that dadblasted Designated Hitter Rule, and, worst of all, Big Ten schools employing the <shudder> forward pass!
:p

[RevolverRob]

Therein lies the problem.

How can someone collect valid data on how often "Waingro" aborted an attack because his target was armed? A survey form ain't gonna cut it. How does one quantify self defense in jurisdictions which make it illegal? How can one collect data on armed self defense when both citizen and felon can go to jail if the incident becomes public? We cannot simply say self defense with a firearm never happens in New Jersey, Los Angeles, or NYC........

Sorry I meant to respond to this. I agree that you'll have an issue creating a survey to collect these data. Not all data collection is perfect, however. Nor are any of the potential statistical models we could use to evaluate these data perfect or reflect the full complex nature of the real phenomena. The idea is, we can try to figure out what the biases in the data are, where are they, what the appropriate ways to adjust, compensate, or fill in for those biases is and then build statistical models which we can use to refine and evaluate trends and make more informed, but not perfect decisions and predictions.

Edit: I realized I didn't address your points adequately:

How do we quantify incidents of self-defense where they are underreported or not reported at all? I do not have a good answer for you. I think we would have to look at the ways in which estimates of unreported rapes, abuse, car accidents, etc are made and try to figure out if those are the best methods or not.

How do we quantify aborted attacks? The previously mentioned survey of criminals in prison might help. If we survey violent offenders and specifically ask this question, we might get a sense of this dynamic.

How do we quantify incidents in NPEs? Again, we might look at both criminal surveys and incidents of lack of reported abuse.

I admit statistics will not solve the problems of the world, but going the other way, "we know our data are imperfect, therefore we must reject them" reinforces historical inertia to rely on incomplete or anecdotal evidence and rely largely on emotional as opposed to pragmatism to make decisions societally and culturally. I, personally, reject that as a viable method for going forward with respect to policy decisions. I guess what I am getting at, where you see this as a problem in data collection, some of us view it as a unique challenge that can be met with a collective and genuine effort.

Honestly, I have seen this as the biggest failing of both pro-gun and anti-gun movements. Neither group, for obvious political and personal reasons, has invested significant time, money, or brain power into actually conducted realistic, hard, and long-term studies of gun violence, crime in general, or other aspects of the debate. We can, as informed individuals reject the lack of hard data and instead work to gather the best data possible, acknowledging the limitations of it, develop studies on the best data available and make informed statements and decisions backed firmly by the best data available. Of course...I have yet to find a single individual, group, agency, political body, government, etc. that will fund such a study, because let's be honest it's not in the best interest of a political body, unless the results can be twisted to make a talking point. Personally, I have investigated methods of funding this study, but have not found satisfactory sources that did not require an unacceptable biasing of the questions, hypotheses, or results.

OR, since this is the internet, we can choose not to and just complain and moan about it. :p

-Rob