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Originally Posted by Big Cholla
I believe that ALL prisoners in state and federal prisons are "felons". Some are in for commitment of a non-violent crime and some are in for commitment of one or more violent crimes. I have worked in maximum and medium security prisons. The violent crime criminals that I associated with were not reluctant to admit being more concerned of meeting up with the armed citizen than the police. For many years, armed citizens in the US kill or wound by shooting far more criminals in the act than all police combined. Police have so many restrictions on actually shooting a suspect that they usually err on the side of not shooting. The criminals know that.
I state again; "no valid study proves that a citizen is more apt to be killed or wounded if armed with his own weapon than he is confronting an armed criminal while being unarmed." That is supported by studies from Kleck and Lott both. The liberals want it to be true that the good guy is usually hurt/killed so bad that they continue to throw up statistics from a long ago discredited study that was skewed by its own bias. It is also my opinion, coming from an older law enforcement officer with lots of experience in training civilians for firearm and legal qualification to meet CCW requirements, that armed citizens are far safer in dealing with criminal opponents than unarmed citizens. Heck, everything writen here is a form of the writer's opinion and is a form of editorializing. I don't see the need to back up every statement by referencing a scientific based study. But, I will in the future to keep ruffled feathers down to a minimum, start every post with "IMHO".
One last point. Under commonly accepted statistical analysis procedures, a sample of 1800 to 2000 interviews randomly done within an identifiable set of 2,000,000 is valid enough to a determinable plus/minus factor of error. True even when that set includes every eligible voter within the USA. Just ask the AP, Zogby, Pew, TIME, AP-Ipsos, etc., etc. when they doing polling on political issues if they believe that a sample of 1800 to 2000 from that set is adequate to insure viable statistics.
IMHO liberals want to be allowed to use the weakest sort of generated statistics against conservative positions, but don't want conservatives to to be allowed to use repeatable statistical studys at all in their arguments. That is ok with me. I would much rather use empirical observations to base my opinion on anyway.
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Where are you coming up with this stuff?
The study is on a personal webpage of a student of Duke university. It was 'published' by the NRA.
There is no mention of the sampling error, the methodology, nor the survey apparatus.
This study is bunk science unless you can show me where it was peer reviewed by other criminologists who have examined the issues I raised.
You have no way of knowing whether 1800 was enough to approach acceptable error. You base your comments off Zogby polls? They go through careful calculations do determine the sample size--it's not adequate to assume that for every Y population size, X sample size will do.
You didn't mention it, so I assume you may not be aware, that the criminal population, not being a "known" size, presents incredible problems to the researcher. Those problems have to be explained how they were addressed in the study.
Anecdotal evidence aside, you are attesting to the validity and reliability of a study you haven't read--merely the synopsis. Then you claim it in here as fact--it isn't. Assuming it were found to be valid, it would still need to be conducted again by another researcher to determine it's reliability. These are first year method's research points--I'm not making it up do to some 'liberal bias.' And I certainly didn't cite any other studies of my own and try to twist them to scare the TFP public. I'm just rankled because you keep stating study this and study that because they support your personal experiences and beliefs--not because of their scientific accuracy.
And I'm just about sure that you can guess what I think about convicts' discussions with screws--they were probably
real truthful with you.
Oh shit, I just re-read the line you keep hinging your comment on. It does not claim that convicts are more afraid of armed citizens than police. It says that "57% felt that the typical criminal feared being shot by citizens more than he feared being shot by police."
That means that they were making statements about how others felt--not themselves. Most respondents, not just cons, are willing to guestimate what they think other people feel, without ascribing that belief to themselves. What we don't know, because the study doesn't tell us, is whether the cons answered that they believed most people were afraid of armed citizens, but that they weren't, which would follow the pattern of how people normally answer those sensitive questions (fear is a sensitive topic, especially in prison, which is only one of the reasons I'd be skeptical of a convict telling a screw how he or she was afraid of something on the street) during interviews.
So, at best, you have a study which states that convicts feel that the majority of other prisoners were more afraid of armed citizens than police officers--since we don't know how afraid they are of police initially (possibly squat, so 'more' afraid could be squat + 1), that answer doesn't really say very much does it?
And I didn't even address whether "more scared" translates into "deters behavior." I'm hoping that I don't have to dredge out proof that a scared person is more likely to do something stupid than rational. Based on what I've read in peer review journals, if I ever find myself with a gun to my temple with a hopped up junkie demanding my wallet and watch, the last thing I'm going to want to do is scare him. I want him to feel as comfortable and in control of me as possible. I don't want to infringe on his sense of control over the situation or give him any reason to go off the hook. I'm actually shocked that a practicing LEO wouldn't attest to that reality because I know that kind of awareness is taught in negotiation courses for the enforcement agencies down here in Southern California.