Comment

Self-Defense Statistics-When Stats Are Colored With Attitude

45
Obdicut (Now with 2% less brain)6/04/2014 11:55:02 am PDT

re: #43 Rightwingconspirator

How do you interpret the motive to criminalize possessing harmless bits of gun paraphernalia, like an empty brass casing?

Accidental fallout from criminalizing things in a broad class. I really don’t give a shit about brass casing. If it’s a case where a guy isn’t loading up his own ammo but just has a few left over or something, then they should be let off. There should be an ‘intent’ bit that’s considered.

re: #44 Rightwingconspirator

See since we disagree about the utility of those numbers this is pointless.

What do you mean about disagreeing about their utility? You think they are meaningful for figuring out day to day risk of being a victim?

For the sake of discussion, I’ll make this modification here-

The general interest in disseminating these numbers includes helping us understand the day to day risk of being a victim

This is a false claim. The FBI, nor any general public, nor anyone, does not have that interest because you cannot use those statistics to figure out the day to day risk of being a victim.

What is it about that you don’t get? The reason why the statistics are released is so that people who work with statistics can use them in their research and practice, including law enforcement. THat’s why they say the numbers are released, and they include a caveat about using it at the municipality level without thorough professional analysis to take into account contingency.

So why do you think what you’re saying is true? Why claim the FBI is saying that the statistics can help us understand our day to day risk of being a victim? The FBI doesn’t claim the statistics can do something they can’t.

There were two false claims, really: That the FBI said that, when they didn’t, and that these national or regional statistics can help us figure out our day-to-day risk of crime, which they can’t. At the very, very fucking least, you would need data at the precinct level of granularity, and as I did in my own rough analysis above, you’d need more than that, detailed breakdown of the precinct data.

The FBI numbers which you cite are absolutely meaningless for figuring out day to day risk. They are great numbers for looking at broad, broad trends: they are useless for assessment of day to day risk. Worse than useless: Misleading.