(May 19, 2023 at 12:13 am)FlatAssembler Wrote:(May 16, 2023 at 2:46 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: What’s that got to do with anything? Those were only used as examples to show that Kleck cannot determine after the fact if any particular life was saved by the use of a gun. In other words, it’s all but impossible to know if an assailant would have killed the person responding to Kleck’s question if the respondent hadn’t brandished a firearm. All he’s shown is that people predisposed to point a gun at someone believed that they were in immanent danger of being killed (colour me shocked) - this is why people who routinely carry firearms do so, because they think the world is teeming with people who want to kill them.
Boru
But don't you think it is kind of arrogant to think that almost everybody who thinks a gun saved his life is mistaken? I mean, don't they know better than you, since they have actually been in that situation?
It isn't a case of them being mistaken, it's a case of skewing the sample.. Look at Kleck's sample (not the sample size, but who he questioned): he drastically over-represented not just men, but the oldest male in each household with a gun. These are people predisposed to think they need firearms to preserve their lives, so naturally they're more likely to think that whenever they waved a gun in someone's face, their life was in danger.
No, they don't know better than me - they can't possibly. The only way to know for certain sure that they would have lost their life if they didn't use a gun would be to see into the future. No matter how much they believed they were about to be killed by an assailant (or a dog or the clerk who short changed them), there's simply no way for them - or Kleck or you or me - to know.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
