Muscle Head (oops Memory) II

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I came in late on this one. What's the proposition that's being debated here?

As a point of information, I should point out that if someone is making an argument along the lines of "EVERYONE will ALWAYS do [or fail to do] X in situation Z", then bringing up a single counter-example is a valid rebuttal to the argument.
 
Pooper, my statistics are VERY verifiable. You think I can make up how many residential burglaries there are? One phone call gets that information.
Also regardless of the number it is RARE for a home owner to shoot an intruder even on a national basis considering the number of occupied home burglaries of gun owning homes that take place.
And of the homes occupied with guns in them, I assure you MANY of them will be occupants familiar with firearms and even those dedicated to home defense.
Shooters love to come up with the big plans of what they will do and forget what the bad guy will do. I just had a student who woke up with a guy standing in his bedroom door. The guy sat on his bed and they talked and he asked for money. The homeowner (gun was close at hand) gave him $20 and the guy left. AFTER the guy left the homeowner "remembered" he had a gun. This is not uncommon at all.
Another just told of how he woke up in the morning and his kids piggy bank had been emptied during the night and his wallet taken from his pants next to the bed.
Such cases are very common and any cop can tell you about some NEAR you on a regular basis.
I have the best of security and had a smash and grab burglary a few years ago. I got the alarm call on my cell phone and was minutes from home and missed them. I could have been home when it took place and I doubt if I would have been able to respond in time unless I was awake and had the gun ON me.
Don't think for a minute burglars are stupid.
With thousands of students out there I still get reports of them and their families being a victim of burglary or other crimes even with their best efforts and skills. Denial isn't a river in Egypt.
Breaking into occupied homes is still a low risk job in this nation. And that is using ANY statistics including your unverifiable ones.
When faced with the REAL thing most homeowners make serious errors and judgement calls to the thugs advantage.
I just had a small fire in my home and with my firefighting background over the years and I good plan we had in effect we made SERIOUS errors, mostly what we did NOT do. We are redoing that fire plan AGAIN but I am not silly enough to think we will ever do it 100% right if it happens again. REAL life doesn't work that way.
 
Matt:

A review -

1. What is muscle memory?
2. Is training worthwhile?

Answers:

1. There is no "muscle memory". Memory is
da Brain.

2. Under stress people will:
a. revert to their training
or
b. forget their training

A war begins between these camps:

Answers to stress:

1. PlusP camp - you forget training all the time.

2. JD camp - you always revert to training

3. Glenn - explains how this works and why
sometimes you do revert to training and
sometimes you don't.

Chaos ensues with arguments over brain mechanisms and telling of anecdotes of one type or another. I call for research design approaches as anecdotes don't cut it.

That's where we are now. Read my posts, they are one true source of knowledge in this thread. I am all wise :)

Glenn
 
"DerGlockenPooper, did you take Research Design? How dare you use such analyses in this discussion?"

Glenn- you are just trying to be funny with this statement, correct? I don't want to misunderstand you.


Pluspinc - You got hung up on one word in my post and failed to see the rest. I assume you are not familiar with debate, Logic and science, otherwise you would have understood my post better, particularly the word "unverified" in regards to your statistics.
I said that your statistcs are "unverified" because I have not verified them, and I don't care to. I trust your statistics are true! But still, since I don't have a source, as a "scientist" I have to ASSUME your statistics are true. This is no reflection on you, just a premise to the post and a basic prerequisite to working with a statistc is to assume that they are accurate in the first place.

I hope you did not miss the rest of my post that points out the error of your argument:

%6.5 of robberies being of homes that have people in them along with a gun possibly present somwhere in the home HAS LITTLE OR NOTHING to do with your argument that "if a person is in a life threatening situation, they will not be able to use the gun on them and shoot it straight to defend themselves". In debate, what you have used is called a straw man argument, and it means that you built up a statistic that has no direct causation to the argument, and then you tore down that statistic in an attempt to prove your point. Politicians and "bannits" LOVE to push this kind of fallacy on the general public, and most people are not well versed enough in Logic to understand that the statistc really has nothing to do with the argument.

Yes, SOME, very few, of those people that are robbed in their homes are gunowners, trained with the gun, and have it loaded and ready to go within reach and they then attempt to use it. But, it is far from the whole, and probably a very very small majority of your claim.

I would venture a guess that in direct application to your argument that only about .1% of people are actually in their home, with a loaded gun on them or right next to them, and feel threatened enough to use that gun to attempt to use it. (How many people reading this RIGHT NOW have a loaded gun within reach? Okay, we are on a gun forum, so the number will be respectively high. Now, How many of the general public do we really think have a loaded gun within reach all the time when they are home? Not many) Of those people, then you would need to find out how many actually succeed in using that gun to defend themselves, and how many failed, in order to build a statistic that is relevent to your argument.
My original post on the topic explains this in detail, and does not even account for all the variables, but just a few major ones.

Another large variable in your statistic is that you claim that "%13 of robberied are in occupied homes" and then you make the HUGE assumption that %50 of those homes have a gun somewhere in them (my last post addresses this part). But, most robberies are going to occur in high crime areas. Many if not most high crime areas have made guns illegal to own. The residents in these areas like New York, DC, LA, Chicago etc CANNOT OWN GUNS in those areas, or the residents cannot afford guns, and/or they have a record and can't buy one. Thereofre, if these people are home and they are robbed, very few of them will even have a gun. So, to assume that %50 of homes that are robbed have guns in them is a giant assumption. So, your assumption that %50 of the homes robbed have guns in them is missing yet another huge variable. In fact, very few homes that are robbed may have guns in them due to the kinds of areas that have high crime. This variable could go either way, but I don't think it works in your favor, and it is yet another variable that detracts from your statistic.

Red Bull just listed multiple recent stories of people who did just have a gun on them and used it to defend themselves in just the last few weeks. The latest example is the woman who was in Arizona. She was home, with her gun within reach (very rare situation), and a man came in threatening her family, and she reacted and shot him dead. Of course, this is just one case, but we would need a survey of many cases like this to observe the overall trends in regard to your argument (whether or not this study group uses the gun successfuly). In this one case, as well as a couple other stories by Red Bull, from the newspapers this month, the woman did exactly what you said she would not, and she grabbed her gun and shot the bad guy dead.

My last post is a little more succinct on the matter, but I don't think you understood it the gist of it all. Maybe you should read it again? It is all very logical, but if you are going to use statistics, you need to make sure they have some reasonable amount of relevancy to your argument.
 
DGP'per - yes - I was failing in an attempt to be funny as I appreciated your logic.

I guess gun lists are too grim for funnies.
:(

Do you prefer the F-ratio, Chi-square, t-test, Wilks Lambda? I teach this stuff!

:)
 
Nice try, but the fact shooters use guns in defense of home from intruders is still rare by math standards. Yup, I have a gun within reach. But most thugs wait until I go to sleep. We are defenseless one full third of our life when we sleep unless the crook is rather stupid. Having taken countless burglary reports over 40+ years you soon learn how it works in the real world.
As for debating skills, try a radio talk show for man years in Mpls/St.Paul area a top 15 market. I do well thank you. I still do regular radio TV appearances on firearms issues, including national on Fox Network and recently Time-Warner show in NY City.
Toss in 300+ gun rag articles, two books and a bunch of other stuff. I kinda do good on some days. Advantage of OLDE age.
 
Cool thread. I have kept out of it because I don't have a bunch of statistics to toss around and I often times have failed to follow some of the logic here. I'll just add this:

Some months ago there was a television special that tried to show both sides of the gun control issue. I know some of you saw it because it was discussed on TFL. During the show the anti-gun folks were using statistics to show how a home owner is more apt to be shot with their own gun or to have an accidental shooting than to shoot an intruder.

On the other side of the coin was some mathematician who does statistical analysis of criminal activity. He appeared to be neither pro nor anti-RKBA. When asked about the amazingly low number of self defense shootings compared to the number of home intrusions, he explained that there are thousands of incidents where the home owner retrieves a firearm and the intruder then leaves (fight or flight I guess) with his tail between his legs. I found the number to be absolutely staggering, in the many thousands. The point being made on the show (and I am trying to make it here) is that on most occasions the presence of a firearm stops the threat without a shot being fired. OK guys, factor that into the equation and carry on.

[This message has been edited by Ankeny (edited February 05, 2000).]
 
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