Deltoid

Since Scripter argues so badly, litters his postings with insults and outright lies, deliberately cooks his statistics and frequently gets his facts wrong, it seems to me that he he is trying to convince people that the pro-gun case is totally without merit. Is Charles Scripter an HCI plant?

Ingredients of a Scripter posting.

(1) Insults:

... oppressors, such as yourself, ... ... stupid sheep ... ... Lambert, much as the rapist does ... ... Tim "Lean back and enjoy it" Lambert.

You are but a filthy vermin that scurrys for hiding when the light is turned on. Likewise your arguments require obfuscation and darkness to thrive, and crumble when exposed to the light of scientific inquiry. As for death threats, an invertebrate such as yourself is unworthy to soil my blade...

Presumably, if he didn't consider me an "invertebrate" he would attempt to murder me, so I guess we should be thankful for small mercies.

Scripter hopes that I will respond in kind to his insults so that the discussion will degenerate into a slanging match and we will not discuss the facts, since he knows that the facts do not support him.

(2) Lies:

Timmy has already "scientifically proven" (read: "manufactured statistical trends") that guns cause crime,

1) You haven't the faintest idea what underlying mathematical assumptions are made to develop the statistical formulae you use, nor do you understand the correct application of these formulae, or

2) You are deliberately and blatantly guilty of academic dishonesty.

he DOESN'T UNDERSTAND statistics

Timmy has repeatedly demonstrated his inability to solve simple probability problems.

Timmy has manufactured trends; he has ignored various potentially important parameters in his assumptions, he has failed to justify the discard of these parameters, and he has drawn incorrect conclusions from his data.

(3) Getting it wrong:

armedThe statistic is clearly marked in the study as unreliable because gun and knife self defence was so uncommon. The actual numbers were 1 completion out of 32 attempts. A 95% confidence interval for the completion rate is 1-15%. The completion rate for non-violent resistance was 10%. So the data does not tell us whether resisting with a weapon was better or worse than non-violent resistance.

But you ignore the data from a much larger study. Here's a clip from a file I found that discusses it.

A 1979 US Justice Department study of 32,000 attempted rapes show that overall, when rape is attempted, the completion rate is 36%. But when a woman defends herself with a gun, the completion rate drops to 3%.

A sample size of 32,000 is probably much more reliable than the 32 events you have chosen to attack. Lambert, much as the rapist does, has chosen to attack a smaller and weaker opponent.

No Charles, it's the SAME STUDY. Here is the complete reference that those numbers above came from:

AUTHOR :McDermott, M. Joan
TITLE :Rape victimization in 26 American cities
PLACE :Washington
PUBLISHER :National Criminal Justice
DATE :1977

The relevant number to estimating the reliability of the estimate for the completion rate when gun/knife defense is used is the number of samples when gun/knife defense was used, not the total sample size.

"armed woman" does not equal "resist with gun or knife". Someone with a weapon may be unable or choose not to use it.

Non sequitur, since I specifically referred to women who used a weapon to resist.

And followed it by talking about disarming people, indicating that you thought the statistic had some relevance to the benefits or otherwise of being armed.