As I said before, the situation is far less clear than it's made out to be. There's scope for more/better designed/better managed studies, but the fact that it's such a contentious topic makes that unlikely to happen.
So we agree there are issues with figures from these studies? Cool.
Not impossible. A lot of people miss when shooting under pressure and wrongly report a hit. Also, how many of the people who were listed as having reported shooting their assailant intended to report shooting, not specifically hitting their assailant?
But it does indicate that the situation is far less clear than it's usually made out to be.
So we still agree there's issues with the figures from the studies? It's weird - we agree, but you seem put out about that.
I'd say it was OK. During a dedicated and widespread attempt to use violence to gain more power in the country, followers of an ideology of racism and authoritarianism that openly embraces the use of violence to achieve political power formed a mob that was moving towards his house. He was right to consider that a threat to his life, especially if he was of the "race" that the ideology targets as their chosen scapegoat group whose lives are at best worthless. I would have done the same. A mob of people who explicitly, passionately and proudly proclaim that your life doesn't matter because you're not the "right race" and that you're to blame for everything because you're the "bad race" and who openly embrace violence as a tool for gaining power are approaching your home during a time in which that ideology is organising widespread violence across the country. Why would you not consider that a serious threat?
38 neighbours of the McCloskeys described it as a "peaceful protest". 9 protestors were charged with
misdemeanor trespass (and I believe were acquitted/charges dropped) - both McCloskeys were charged with
felony unlawful use of a weapon, were indicted by a grand jury and have court pending for November 2021. I'm already going to concede your inevitable point that there's some clear politicing in those cases, but still, so far all the criminals are on the "waving guns around" side of the sidewalk.
Also - it's been a while since I've watched Law and Order, but I seem to remember felonies are worse than misdemeanors, and misdemeanors aren't capital crimes. Yet. I mean, who knows, maybe this comment will age badly
Let me highlight another thing as well. Just really try and put aside your political feelings, how you feel about BLM, all of it - I know it's going to be tough, but seriously, just for 30 seconds.
Now imagine this is how some of those BLM protestors feel about police shootings of unarmed black people.
...especially if he was of the "race" that the ideology targets as their chosen scapegoat group whose lives are at best worthless. I would have done the same. A mob of people who explicitly, passionately and proudly proclaim that your life doesn't matter because you're not the "right race" and that you're to blame for everything because you're the "bad race" and who openly embrace violence as a tool for gaining power are approaching your home during a time in which that ideology is organising widespread violence across the country
I can already feel you leaping for the keyboard to rage at me about how it's different, but come on man - just let it sink in. Don't fly into a fury of "well, statistically..." and just imagine you're one black man, who feels utterly targeted and at risk because of his race. You've managed it for a white guy that lives in a mansion in a gated community, who literally nothing bad happened to - you can do it for a black guy as well. I believe in you.
Empathy and understanding are great things, but they need to go both ways.
Thank you for provided more evidence of the bias routinely applied to the topic:
You're welcome
1) Your statement is an exaggeration of the statement made by the article you link to, which was quoting (perhaps accurately or perhaps not - maybe they exaggerated too) another article which is a politicial opinion piece behind a paywall. Nothing is provided to support the statement.
2) It's comparing numbers from different studies done in different ways by different people at different times for different reasons. Studies which have very varied results. It could be as skewed as scouring all the available studies and "studies" (the jokey polls on some threads in these forums are technically studies), picking the highest one for alien abductions, picking the lowest one for using a gun in self defence, seeing that the latter is 50% higher than the former and saying that the numbers are similar. "similar" can cover quite a wide variety of comparisons. Also, why exclude defence of others?
3) You wouldn't do that for a topic you wanted taken seriously. All sorts of things could be described the same way by picking the right studies and "studies" for the desired results. Especially if there isn't even any need to state which studies or what the numbers were.
If only there was some absurd way of showing that you couldn't rely on self-reported studies, like maybe throwing in a bit about alien abductions. No, too crazy, it would never work.
I'm getting a sense that you're not happy we agree that these studies are flawed. You seem to be getting cross about it. It's almost like you think these insanely high numbers of DGUs based on tiny sample sizes, suspect questioning, unclear terminology and self-reporting are in fact correct. But that can't be right, surely? We were so on the same page earlier. What changed man?
EDIT: That article from Rand is a good write-up.
I bet it absolutely killed you to write that
