When do statistics count?

[onlinebiker]

And the really fun part?

Cops shoot 1000 people a year - and the cophater tries portraying all these "victims" as innocents.

Care to look at how many of those 1000 a year were armed and threatening or indeed attacking other people - including the cops?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Nope to all three. Learn what 'statistically' means and get back to me.

Boru

Quit making up your mind - then twisting numbers till they fit your desired outcome - and I will get back to you.

Lol, nothing’s been ‘twisted’. It’s the numbers YOU cited that undermines your argument. Do civilians kill more people than cops? Absolutely they do, but that’s only because they’re a vastly larger group.

Try it on a smaller scale. Joe kills one person with his gun. Guns Backwards R Us, a gun club with 1000 members, kills ten people with their guns. Joe has a kill rate of 100%. The gun club, even though they’ve killed more people, has a kill rate of 1%.

Statistically, Joe is 99% more likely to kill someone than the gun club.

Boru

Edit: For the record, I don’t for a minute believe that all of the people killed by cops are innocent.

[The Grand Nudger]

Your honor, the dead man was a very bad person. Hoping we can get a pass on this.

[vulcanlogician]

I don't think Boru is twisting anything. Cops kill more people per capita. This is a different from the (also true) fact that you're more likely to be killed by a civilian.

In 2020 - some 45,000 people got killed with firearms in the USA.

In 2020 - just over 1000 people were killed by police.

Now - even if you discount half of the 45,000 - as they are suicides - you still are 20 times more likely to be killed by gunfire from a civilian, than a cop.

If you discount the suicides, what happens to the per capita numbers?

One thing I probably agree with OLB on, btw, is how suicides are lumped in with deaths by firearms (I think we agree on this anyway). I think we should always be clear when discussing gun deaths. These numbers are often presented as if they're murder rates, when they aren't.

[onlinebiker]

Quit making up your mind - then twisting numbers till they fit your desired outcome - and I will get back to you.

Edit: For the record, I don’t for a minute believe that all of the people killed by cops are innocent.

Really?

What percentage of police shootings do you think ARE justified? (Only US legal standards apply).

Shouldn' t the justified shootings be removed from the numbers? After all - that is what we pay the cops to do.

[The Grand Nudger]

What you would pay the cops to do, according to you.....and what others would pay them to do..are probably different things. Relative risk and innocence are unlikely to be relevant, even to you.

[Jehanne]

I don't think Boru is twisting anything. Cops kill more people per capita. This is a different from the (also true) fact that you're more likely to be killed by a civilian.

If you do not encounter the police, you will not be killed by them.

[Irreligious Atheist]

I mean, it does make sense that we focus more on police killings than civilian killings because police are held to a higher standard, and rightfully so, but, as the OP mentions, of course the activists do exaggerate things to pull at the heartstrings and cause people to worry more than they should. When I see a 40 year old black lady on tv saying she doesn't know if she's going to make it home each day because the police might shoot her, a law abiding citizen, just for being black in public... no, just no. That's beyond over the top.

Speaking of statistics, a lot of activists don't seem to understand that black people are 13 percent of the US. For instance, black people are actually overrepresented among coaches in the NBA, but you'll hear a lot of the activists and players say that most of the coaches should be black since most of the players are black, and therefore basketball is a black thing. 50/50 or greater than 50 % is not what equity means when you're 13 % of the population.

[Jehanne]

This is where proportional analysis is so very important, proportions being dimensionless quantities. For instance, what proportion of the population, black or white, is shot by the police while not in the act of committing a crime? Committing a crime but not armed? Committing a violent crime but not armed? Committing a violent crime while armed with a lethal weapon? Fleeing from the police? Armed or not?

[onlinebiker]

I don't think Boru is twisting anything. Cops kill more people per capita. This is a different from the (also true) fact that you're more likely to be killed by a civilian.

If you do not encounter the police, you will not be killed by them.

You might be.

You also might get hit by a meteorite.

.....

But you probably won' t. You certainly shouldn' t lose any sleep at the prospect.