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Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Flawed Media Reaction to a Flawed FBI report (FBIs Active Shooter Report, part II)

Yesterday I talked about the FBI's nonsensical Active Shooter report, today I happened upon an article by the Huffignton Post.  Obviously the Hufpo is not considered serious unbiased media by me or probably anyone reasonable, though its a source of credible information for at least enough people to keep it in business which says something.
Some people enjoy smoking meth, too, which also says something
Is this Hufpo piece a work of investigative journalism that breaks down the inconsistency and futile nature of the FBI reports data?  Haha, no.  The Hufpo decided that the report was sound and ran with the numbers to back a "moral" position even though the report admits to the reader that its incomplete and very specific in what it considers an active shooter event to be, which is basically an arbitrary definition someone in the government came up with and maybe won a bet on.




See, the Federal Government needs three deaths (not including the shooter) to classify an event as an active shooter (it also has to happen in a confined space, size not detailed).  40% of the 160 incidents included in the report dont meet this definition but are used anyway because, well, I actually have no idea...bodies are bodies, I guess?  Of these 160 events, 21 shooters were stopped by unarmed individuals (not LE) and only 5 incidents were stopped by armed individuals (not LE).  These aren't good numbers for the NRA's "Good guy with a gun" line, says HufPo.  Well, setting aside the problems with the report to begin with, Hufpo seemed to miss the point that these numbers represent people.  Actual living, breathing Americans and are not statistical commodity to be traded for political points.  Yeah, forgive me if I dont like peoples life and death situations being used to further a political ideology.  Lives were actually saved and Hufpo says its just not good enough.  They want less lives saved, I suppose.


Hufpo writer Mike Weisser doesn't care about your feelings, he has an issue with personal responsibility and obviously doesn't like the idea of people protecting others out of some moral or ethical desire to do so (unless its as a paid employee as the government, that is).  But Mike isnt done, he then cites a 2005 paper by Gary Kleck that looked at sexual assaults against women. 






Kleck examined sexual assaults and attempted sexual assaults from 1992-2002.  He goes into great detail on if these victims defended themselves and with what (gun, knife, other object) and then supposes based on numbers that those who didnt resist or fled to call the police were far better off than those who did fight back.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Klecks report advocates being a victim by choice (im seeing a trend here).  Our first problem is that the data he used if from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which does not ask a victim specific questions regarding guns, only resistance and it includes all victims including children/teens ("persons aged 12 or older") who cant legally own guns and probably didnt carry dirty.  Kleck comes right out and says that those who didnt resist with force were much less likely to be injured, except for being raped, that is.  Based on this dickpunchingly stupid correlation, Kleck is an idiot who thinks being raped must be better than being beat up after attempting to stop a rape, or, you know, smoke checking the rapist.  Hes an advocate for the victim-in-waiting mentality.  Because Kleck speaks Mike Weisser's language, its obvious why the Hufpo writer would include a report about sexual assault against women in an article about citizens resisting an active shooter because in the liberal mind these must be the same thing.  You literally can not make this shit up.  Well, you can but not ironically.  Oh yeah, and Kleck kind of contradicted himself a few times in the report like this one time he wrote this:

"In assault incidents, most Self Protection (SP) tactics appear to reduce the risk of injury and serious injury compared to nonresistance."

So self defense is good...then?  Im not convinced that they even know what they are saying.  Whatever they are selling, im not buying.  What is on display is that guns must not be very effective since they are used rarely to stop rapists and active shooters.  This is true if you re-arrange the numbers or sample the data to prove your point.  The evidence should not be made to fit the crime is rule number one of criminal investigations, not J school, it seems.  So Hufpo wrote a bad article on a bad report and a bad study.  Wait, I have something for this....



The FBIs report does not focus on those who stopped attempted active shooting events.  Now, someone reading this could say "well how can we know that someone prevented an active shooting?"  How about because this country and our legal system in general is obsessed with motive and intent.  Even when something isnt a tragedy, we want to know how bad it could have been.  Oh, and by we I mean the same media that wants you to be a victim, apparently.  The investigation and common sense regarding the elements of the crime will show what may have happened; and we my have the criminals words as well.  Just off the top of my head I can think of a few situations where a CCW or off duty cop prevented an active shooter.



I dont know about you, but having a chance is always better than no chance and being unarmed is not much of a chance.  Though if I read the Hufpo piece right, he may be advocating that unarmed resistance is better than armed resistance which makes a weird kind of sense if you are morally opposed to inanimate objects based on their effectiveness to perform certain tasks.  Im sure he rides his bike across country as opposed to using an airplane because its the right thing to do.  Just looking at some of his other articles im also pretty sure hes trolling Hufpo and the irony is that his trolling is indistinguishable from extremism so no one has noticed.


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