Induced Helplessness?
By Mitch Berg
The FBI has a long history of underreporting defensive gun use by civilians.
Foir example, in the early 1990s, when criminologist Gary Kleck was estimating civilians used firearms for legal, justified, defensive purposes between 500,000 and 2,000,000 times a year – roughly 99% involving no shots fired. At the same time, the FBI’s estimate was closer to 80,000.
Chalk it up to reporting, or bureaucratic “conservatism”, or a statistical model that demanded a fairly high standard of confirmation for unreported episodes (like this one). Heck, even ascribe bad motives, like “trying to convince people that armed resistance to crime is counterproductive and futile” – although this was long before federal law enforcement (outside the BATFE) was widely presumed to be in the bag for the Democrats.
But some things never change:
The shooting that killed three people and injured another at a Greenwood, Indiana, mall on July 17, 2022 drew broad national attention because of how it ended – when 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, carrying a licensed handgun, fatally shot the attacker.
While Dicken was praised for his courage and skill – squeezing off his first shot 15 seconds after the attack began, from a distance of 40 yards – much of the immediate news coverage drew from FBI-approved statistics to assert that armed citizens almost never stop such attackers: “Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander” (Associated Press); “Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting” (Washington Post); and “After Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence” (New York Times).
The FBI reports that armed citizens only stopped 14 of the 302 active shooter incidents it identified for the period 2014-2022. The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include those it deems related to other criminal activity, such as a robbery or fighting over drug turf.
But as with all information from government and media “experts”, the standards is “distrust and verify – and, almost invariably, distrust some more”.
Because the facts are a lot more interesting:
Evidence compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that the sources the media relied on undercounted the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks by an order of more than ten, saving untold numbers of lives. Of course, law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare. What is rare is national news coverage of those incidents. Although those many news stories about the Greenwood shooting also suggested that the defensive use of guns might endanger others, there is no evidence that these acts have harmed innocent victims.
The errors in the FBI’s stats are legion, and egregious. For example – remember this case? I sure do.
The FBI? Enh:
For example, the Bureau’s report about the Dec. 29, 2019 attack on the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, that left two men dead does not list this as an incident of “civic engagement.” Instead, the FBI lists this attack as being stopped by a security guard. A parishioner, who had volunteered to provide security during worship, fatally shot the perpetrator. That man, Jack Wilson, told Dr. John Lott that he was not a security professional. He said that 19 to 20 members of the congregation were armed that day, and they didn’t even keep track of who was carrying a concealed weapon.
It’s not just a few case:
Seriously. The undercount is egregious.
If the CPRC is correct – and it always is – citizens respond effecivelty to, not 4%, but rather to almost 36% of active shooter situatons.
The whole thing is very much worth a read.
And as always, repeat after me. Disturst and verify.
And, usually, distrust with greater vim and vigor.
September 15th, 2023 at 1:32 pm
#1 – if MSM does not report it, it did not happen.
#2 – funny how libturd “If it only saves one life” meme does not apply here.
September 15th, 2023 at 1:45 pm
If ordinary citizens got the notion they could look after themselves, why would they need to pay government bureaucrats to do.it?
And make no mistake, police officers and sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents are all government bureaucrats, working for the public, receiving public benefits and entitled to public pensions.
Gotta protect that rice bowl…
September 15th, 2023 at 5:59 pm
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23977198-121113193136
There are a 1000 websites claiming a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the New Mexico governor’s gun ban but I don’t like my legal news filtered through ignorant reporters so I found the link to the judge’s order.
The gun ban is another case of a Liberal
wanting citizens to be helpless in the face of crime. Existing United States Supreme Court precedent makes that unnecessary, upholding the wisdom of the founding fathers.
September 16th, 2023 at 12:13 am
[…] Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio’s Mom Says Trump Hasn’t Reached Out Shot In The Dark: Induced Helplessness, also, The True End Stage STUMP: Who will bail out Chicago? The Political Hat: Queering Children In […]
September 16th, 2023 at 12:06 pm
OMG, there’s a federal government shut down looming! World ending, women and children hardest hit! OMG! Republicans at fault! OMG!
Let ’em. Shut down everything except entitlements (social security, medicare, VA) and essentials (air traffic, military, customs and border patrol). Yes, shutting down entitlements would make the most sense financially but it would cause the most trouble politically so bite that bullet and leave them open. Even Ronaldus Magnus had to make strategic tradeoff choices to accomplish the major goals. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
Shut down Departments of State (except passport division), Treasury, Labor, Agriculture, Interior (except forests/parks), Transportation, Justice, Education, Homeland Security, Energy, and Commerce. See how long it would take for anybody to notice.
But . . . but . . . without a federal government to wipe our noses and kiss our boo-boos, how will we survive! We’re helpless without them! Just like these people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uffhVqum7P4
September 16th, 2023 at 1:33 pm
Remember the last time Americans were held hostage in Iran? Remember how that ended (hint for our Canadian readers – Jimmy Carter did NOT pay them $6 Billion).
I know we’re trying to make friends and influence people around the world but has the US military become so helpless we must resort to paying ransom to kidnappers instead of simply blowing them up?
September 16th, 2023 at 5:04 pm
When I was growing up, Americans trusted their institutions – The Church, Walter Cronkite, school teachers, the family doctor. We weren’t “helpless” but we were naive.
The Church betrayed that trust by accepting homosexual pedophiles into the priesthood and covering up their crimes. Walter Cronkite’s legacy was squandered by Dan Rather’s “false but accurate” story. School teachers abandoned phonics for Ebonics; arithmetic for New Math; “Sally, Dick and Jane” for “Gender Queer.” At every turn, villains are protected as victims are blamed.
And the medical establishment lied to us about Covid. It really was just a bad flu. There was no medical justification for lockdowns, masks, or experimental treatment hastily rebranded as a ‘vaccine.’ They’re doing it again.
Take away quote: “Pfizer’s version, approved this week as well, also has zero efficacy data and has not been tested on humans at all. We only have data about antibody production from 10 mice.”
https://nypost.com/2023/09/14/the-real-data-behind-the-new-covid-vaccines-the-white-house-is-pushing/
All the institutions we trusted to help us have made it their mission to keep us helpless to resist the latest fad, the latest encroachment on our rights, the latest leftward shift of the Overton window. About time people started to wake up.
As the smiling lady in the meme says: “They’re doing it again because you didn’t hang them last time.”
September 17th, 2023 at 1:18 pm
^ Speaking of trust, in interpersonal relations, the DemoCommies are also doing all that they can to go from high-trust societies to low-trust. Lock your doors, buy security cameras and alarm systems, buy guns, buy more guns, carry them around with you… these are all developments for which the DemoCommies are the proximate cause.
September 17th, 2023 at 3:52 pm
They create the conditions that require those behaviors then blame us for behaving as conditions require
fear of crime comes from a place of white privilege, you know
September 18th, 2023 at 8:40 am
Big, you are using big facts and logic and that means you are wrong, dead wrong. I just had to sit through a talk by a CEO who was spewing latest UN proclamations as “fact” including hottest July on earth, EVER! It took all the willpower I could muster not to go on a tirade of my own as i was speaking next. BTW, next buzzword is “overshoot”, that’s when earth’s resource capacity falls below demand. 2050 is the new boogie man year. These people are idiots and what’s really dangerous, they do not learn from the past, even recent past.
September 18th, 2023 at 8:50 am
Good old Tommy Malthus, still with us after all these years.