Are you afraid of guns?

[Totovader]

Yes, you are "measuring the conditional probability of death given a scenario". Sadly that is a meaningless question to us as humans. What we want to know is, which situation is more dangerous to us in a given timeframe?

No, it's not. I'm not measuring the lifetime likelihood of a random event occurring. That is not only miniscule, it's utterly irrelevant to this question. You are more likely to die in a plane crash, but so what- the question is: what is more dangerous?

The question whether spending time in a restaurant filled with guns is more dangerous than driving a car on public roads over a lifetime has no meaning.

Well, that's not really what the question was in the first place. The question is: what is more dangerous- what kills more. Not: what's the likelihood you will die in your lifetime from one of these things. That question is irrelevant to the discussion.

The question that actually matters is whether spending two hours in a restaurant with twelve armed men is more or less dangerous than driving a car for two hours.

This is where you have made your error. There is absolutely no reason to account for "the same amount of time" in this. The data has nothing to do with that, it has nothing to do with the question, and it's an arbitrary requirement. We don't care about your lifetime risk of dying from one of these things in a random event. That's not the question. The question is: given that these two things exist, which is more dangerous. You are confusing conditional probability with random events. I specifically measured the conditional probability because 1) it's where the error is most often made- and thus, this is a response to that and 2) it's what is most apropos to the question: which is more dangerous.

If you wanted to ask the question: which is more likely to kill me in a random event, you can. It's not relevant to this topic since we know that those numbers are going to be minuscule. And I don't care about random events: the audience generally doesn't understand them because they have no frame of reference and the "not gonna happen to me" bias prevents people from thinking critically about the issue. Which is more deadly, on the other hand: a cobra or a kitten... people care about that.

 

[Totovader]

An additional consideration is that rational humans are worried about the risk of death compared to the alternative, not just the raw number. In the case of police we are worried about our risk of death in a society with police versus the risk of death in a society without police, and the risk of death in a society with civilians carrying concealed weapons versus the risk in a society with unarmed civilians.

Since our risk of being a homicide victim is far higher in a lawless state (despite what anarchists like to think), it's clearly rational to prefer to have police around. It's also clearly rational to want those police to be well trained in when to use lethal force, but still bad police are much better than none. Whereas the homicide risk is definitely not decreased in any reliable and substantial way by civilians with concealed guns.

You keep saying this is a raw number. It's not. I don't see why you keep making this mistake.

You also assert that "homicide risk is definitely not decreased in any reliable and substantial way by civilians with concealed guns." In addition to the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this analysis would seem to indicate otherwise.

Perhaps you could provide a source for your claim.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You keep saying this is a raw number. It's not. I don't see why you keep making this mistake.

You also assert that "homicide risk is definitely not decreased in any reliable and substantial way by civilians with concealed guns." In addition to the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this analysis would seem to indicate otherwise.

Perhaps you could provide a source for your claim.

You seem to be trying to change the subject.

Are we agreed that your talking point about the risk of being killed by police officers using excessive force is erroneous if we are being charitable, and deceptive if we are not? It has been subject to serious and substantial critiques which you have not given a worthy reply to.

 

[Totovader]

You seem to be trying to change the subject.

Are we agreed that your talking point about the risk of being killed by police officers using excessive force is erroneous if we are being charitable, and deceptive if we are not? It has been subject to serious and substantial critiques which you have not given a worthy reply to.

Actually, I think it's you who is trying to change the subject to avoid your mistake.

This is not a response to my post at all. I request that you not dodge the point further.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Actually, I think it's you who is trying to change the subject to avoid your mistake.

This is not a response to my post at all. I request that you not dodge the point further.

Hang around the JREF forums and you will quickly become familiar with the tactic of presenting a deceptive talking point, and then trying to change the subject as soon as the talking point has been exposed as nonsense.

It's popular with people who have nothing but deceptive talking points, like the 9/11 deniers and the Creationists. Since they lack any really good, substantial arguments they try to make it look like a proper discussion by changing the topic as frequently as possible.

So anyway, what exactly do you think your factoid about the rate at which people are killed in excessive force incidents by police versus the rate at which they are murdered by civilians with legal, concealed weapons proves? You seem to think it somehow means that we should not be concerned about civilians with concealed weapons, or something, but the reasoning is opaque to say the least. Can you clarify?

 

[Totovader]

Hang around the JREF forums and you will quickly become familiar with the tactic of presenting a deceptive talking point, and then trying to change the subject as soon as the talking point has been exposed as nonsense.

It's popular with people who have nothing but deceptive talking points, like the 9/11 deniers and the Creationists. Since they lack any really good, substantial arguments they try to make it look like a proper discussion by changing the topic as frequently as possible.

I'm watching it happen before my very eyes. You make an absurd claim, misrepresent my analysis- and then have the audacity to go on this rant about the decorum. Just answer the question.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

Essentially, I'm interested in this part: Why is there a massive disparity between what a person carrying a gun means to a proponent of gun control versus a proponent of gun ownership. One looks at that scenario and recoils in fear, the other looks at that scenario and feels relative safety.

Didn't read the thread. Did anyone agree with your nonsense premise?

 

[Totovader]

Didn't read the thread. Did anyone agree with your nonsense premise?

Every single person, as far as you know. Don't believe me? Well, I guess if the "post consensus" is important to you, you'll have to go look for yourself.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

Every single person, as far as you know. Don't believe me? Well, I guess if the "post consensus" is important to you, you'll have to go look for yourself.

I did, got to the first reply, it said what I would have said. So rather than go through a bunch of posts pointing out what should've been painfully obvious to you, I thought I'd just ask if there was anyone that found your premise remotely accurate or reasonable.

 

[Totovader]

I did, got to the first reply, it said what I would have said. So rather than go through a bunch of posts pointing out what should've been painfully obvious to you, I thought I'd just ask if there was anyone that found your premise remotely accurate or reasonable.

And I put in the same effort in my reply to you.

 

[tsig]

And I put in the same effort in my reply to you.

Now, now, there seems to be a bit of venom creeping into your replies.

 

[Mark6]

You also assert that "homicide risk is definitely not decreased in any reliable and substantial way by civilians with concealed guns." In addition to the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this analysis would seem to indicate otherwise.

Perhaps you could provide a source for your claim.

I did, in post #48. The rest of Western World, with far lower availability of guns than US, has much lower levels of homicide.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Your "Confirmation Bias"is a Red Herring. If a case can be articulated from the physical facts, then that is all that is needed.

Yep, and when that doesn't happen you get this thread.

 

[Totovader]

I did, in post #48. The rest of Western World, with far lower availability of guns than US, has much lower levels of homicide.

And that one factor causes that?

In the United States, we can see what happens when gun availability goes up. That's the same culture, changing to more availability: crime goes down. In extreme cases where gun ownership becomes mandatory, crime is dramatically and quickly reduced. This is a far better measure than comparing one country to another. So we know that the assertion "more guns means more crime" is false.

 

[Totovader]

Yep, and when that doesn't happen you get this thread.

Mind explaining that one?

 

[newyorkguy]

...Pretty simple statistics are involved, here. Again, there are assumptions to be sure- but I took the best possible numbers. There were 247 fatalities from police officers involved in misconduct in 2010- this would be unjustified homicides, not accidental bystander stuff. ...The rate of murder by corrupt officers is 32 per 100k..

I had this exchange with Totovader in another thread: He said the kill rate for "corrupt cops" was 32 per 100K. I asked what that meant, what the numbers represented. He said he couldn't answer because it would be off-topic. He directed me to "the other thread." I presume he meant this one. Okay I see he explained in post #1. There were 32 unjustified killing per 100K officers based on there being 247 unjustified 'killings' in 2010. In 2010 there were about 700,000 sworn police officers (non-federal) in the U.S. That works out to about 32 officer-involved bad shootings per 100,000 cops.

In 2010 the FBI reported "law enforcement officers justifiably killed 387 felons..." Link The figures Totovader is presenting indicate close to 40% of fatal police shootings were officially declared unjustified in 2010. Correct? Here's my question-

That seems like a lot. Totovader where did you get your figure from? That 247 people were unlawfully killed by police in 2010?

 

[Totovader]

I had this exchange with Totovader in another thread: He said the kill rate for "corrupt cops" was 32 per 100K. I asked what that meant, what the numbers represented. He said he couldn't answer because it would be off-topic. He directed me to "the other thread." I presume he meant this one. Okay I see he explained in post #1. There were 32 unjustified killing per 100K officers based on there being 247 unjustified 'killings' in 2010. In 2010 there were about 700,000 sworn police officers (non-federal) in the U.S. That works out to about 32 officer-involved bad shootings per 100,000 cops.

In 2010 the FBI reported "law enforcement officers justifiably killed 387 felons..." Link The figures Totovader is presenting indicate close to 40% of fatal police shootings were officially declared unjustified in 2010. Correct? Here's my question-

That seems like a lot. Totovader where did you get your figure from? That 247 people were unlawfully killed by police in 2010?

From page 1.

 

[Lorentz]

No, it's not. I'm not measuring the lifetime likelihood of a random event occurring. That is not only miniscule, it's utterly irrelevant to this question. You are more likely to die in a plane crash, but so what- the question is: what is more dangerous?

You are correct, I did not before analyse in detail exactly what you were doing. My apologies.

My argument was concerned with the prevalence of guns as a denominator, which tends to be ignored in such statistics. You did a straightforward Bayesian calculation which takes that into account.

However, you make some very questionable assumptions in that calculation:
1) You assume that 100% of crimes in which guns were present are "crimes committed with a firearm".
2) More seriously, you use gun ownership of 35% as an estimate of how often guns are present in any situation. This gives a serious overestimate of how often people around you are carrying.
3) You count all crimes, but we're generally not very afraid of being pickpocketed or of someone doing insider trading. The type of crime that scares us tends to be violent crime.

The combination of only 4.55% of crimes being "committed with a firearm", you then using that as a substitute for 'a gun was present during a crime' and 35% of people owning guns and you using that as substitute for 'a gun is present in general', means you are starting with the assumption the populace in general is more than 7 times more likely to be carrying a gun compared to a criminal. That's going to give you some seriously crazy numbers, as indeed it did.

Probability of a firearm given that you have been the victim of a crime = 4.55% (~1 in 22 chance) - an interesting statistic, but not what we're after
Probability that you are a victim of crime given that there is a firearm = .43% (~1 in 234)
Probability that you are the victim of a crime given that there is no firearm = 4.81% (~1 in 21)
That shakes out to: you are 11 times more likely to be the victim of a crime given there is no firearm

I'll redo your calculations twice with slightly different assumptions.
1) Still assuming all crimes where guns are present are committed 'with guns', but taking only violent crimes (5.8 million) into account and assuming only 1 in 14 gun owners are actually carrying at any given time (still overly high IMO), so prevalence of guns becomes 2.5% rather than 35%.

Probability of a firearm given that you have been the victim of a violent crime = 8.06%
Probability that you are a victim of a violent crime given that there is a firearm = 5.66%
Probability that you are the victim of a violent crime given that there is no firearm = 1.66%.

2) Still assuming all crimes where guns are present are committed 'with guns', but taking only serious violent crimes (2.3 million of which 1.2 millions with guns) into account and assuming only 1 in 50 gun owners are actually carrying at any given time, so prevalence of guns becomes 0.7% rather than 35%.

Probability of a firearm given that you have been the victim of a serious violent crime = 5.18%
Probability that you are a victim of a serious violent crime given that there is a firearm = 5.16%
Probability that you are the victim of a serious violent crime given that there is no firearm = 0.033%.

P.S. I tried to reproduce your exact numbers using Bayes Theorem to make sure I could see what you were doing, but my results diverge somewhat from yours. Crime-given-there's-a-firearm comes out to 0.404% for me. Can you share how you applied the formulas?
P.P.S. Your 467,321 firearm vicitms seems to count only the NON-fatal incidents.
P.P.P.S. As far as I can make out, the National Crime Victimization Survey doesn't count people accidentally shooting themselves, nor suicides. Including those would increase the danger posed by guns further.

 

[The Don]

From page 1.

As Totovader points out, the figure for the 247 fatalities comes from the Cato Institute's 2010 National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) Police Misconduct Statistical Report.

According to that report:

247 – Number of fatalities associated with tracked reports

A partial breakdown of this figure includes:

• There have been 127 fatalities associated with credible excessive force allegations within 2010, which means approximately 8.1% of reported excessive force cases involved fatalities.
• At least 7 lives were lost due to misconduct involving drug laws.

It's not entirely clear where the 247 number comes from nor is it clear that, for example, all 127 fatalities associated with credible excessive force allegations were subsequently proven. There seems to be a gap between "associated with" and "caused by".

It's also not clear that the police involved with the 247 deaths were all corrupt. Some could have been merely incompetent of poorly controlled or managed.

 

[newyorkguy]

From page 1.

This isn't an explanation. It's just a link. You can't even be bothered to explain what the link is to.

As Totovader points out, the figure for the 247 fatalities comes from the Cato Institute's 2010 National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) Police Misconduct Statistical Report.

According to that report:



A partial breakdown of this figure includes:

• There have been 127 fatalities associated with credible excessive force allegations within 2010, which means approximately 8.1% of reported excessive force cases involved fatalities.
• At least 7 lives were lost due to misconduct involving drug laws.

It's not entirely clear where the 247 number comes from nor is it clear that, for example, all 127 fatalities associated with credible excessive force allegations were subsequently proven. There seems to be a gap between "associated with" and "caused by".

It's also not clear that the police involved with the 247 deaths were all corrupt. Some could have been merely incompetent of poorly controlled or managed.

I appreciate The Don taking the trouble to vet the numbers. I would also add, Totoavder was comparing bad killings by police to bad killings by CCW holders. From the Cato Institute figures:

There have been 127 fatalities associated with credible excessive force allegations within 2010, which means approximately 8.1% of reported excessive force cases involved fatalities. Of these excessive force fatalities, 91 were caused by firearms, 19 were caused by physical force, 11 by taser, and 6 by other causes.

A different picture is emerging.