{"id":85975,"date":"2023-09-15T11:12:19","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T16:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=85975"},"modified":"2023-09-16T07:20:16","modified_gmt":"2023-09-16T12:20:16","slug":"induced-helplessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=85975","title":{"rendered":"Induced Helplessness?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The FBI has a long history of underreporting defensive gun use by civilians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>). 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But some things never change:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 \u2013 when 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, carrying a licensed handgun, fatally shot the attacker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Dicken was praised for his courage and skill \u2013 squeezing off his first shot 15 seconds after the attack began, from a distance of 40 yards \u2013 much of the immediate news coverage drew from FBI-approved statistics to assert that armed citizens almost never stop such attackers: \u201cRare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander<\/a>\u201d (Associated Press); \u201cRampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting<\/a>\u201d (Washington Post); and \u201cAfter Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence<\/a>\u201d (New York Times).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0FBI 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\u00a0an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area<\/a>. But it does not include those it deems related to other criminal activity, such as a robbery or fighting over drug turf.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But as with all information from government and media “experts”, the standards is “distrust and verify – and, almost invariably, distrust some more”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the facts are a lot more interesting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Evidence compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center<\/strong> 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<\/strong>, saving untold numbers of lives. Of course, law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The errors in the FBI’s stats are legion, and egregious. For example – remember this case<\/a>? I sure do.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FBI? Enh:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For example, the Bureau\u2019s 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 \u201ccivic engagement.\u201d 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\u2019t even keep track of who was carrying a concealed weapon.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It’s not just a few case:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Seriously. The undercount is egregious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If the CPRC is correct – and it always is – citizens respond effecivelty to, not 4%, but rather to almost 36% of active shooter situatons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole thing is very much worth a read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as always, repeat after me. Disturst and verify. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, usually, distrust with greater vim and vigor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85975"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85994,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85975\/revisions\/85994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}