A better analogy would be that we need to treat all dui drivers like extreme dui's because we cannot tell how inebriated they are. Again, I have no way of knowing where my assailant falls in the sample.
Well, once again we have an impasse. All drivers are not dui drivers, any more than all criminals are killers. You should not lump either together, particularly when your conclusion is likely to be wrong. There are many ways of knowing how inebriated a driver is, and one can predict with a fair amount of certainty what percentage of drivers will be intoxicated, how intoxicated they will be, etc. Thus you might look at the driving experience differently based on driving at 2:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.
Which is my point. It's easy to say that it's irrelevant when you are not the one involved in the incident.
Sorry, but I think you miss the point. What is irrelevant is looking at each element of each crime as a unique factor to be considered. All incidents are unique, but looking at unique incidents in aggregate gives one a pretty good idea of how the incidents will play out. thus the idea that each event is unique is irrelevant.
Again, there is no way to now the likelihood of the actions taken by your assailant without knowing his past patterns.
Sure there is. You know what he is doing now, and that helps you determine what actions are likely to be taken. When a driver turns on the left turn signal, it indicates a strong likelihood they are going to turn left. Sure, they might not do so, sure they might not have done so in the past, but it is fair to assume they are going to do so now. If your assailant is demanding your billfold, it is likely he is not going to rape you.
The only information that is totally relevant is the information you gather at the time the incident happens.
Sigh, that is just wrong, and in no other endeavor would such an idea even be considered. You are in essence arguing that, as an example, each NASCAR race is unique therefore past records of events, drivers, and so on are not relevant to discussing the likely outcome of the race.
No, what we should do is take action to down a hijacked plane in spite of the fact that most hijackings end without violence.
That might be a nice idea, but it has nothing to do with the question asked, as you may not know if a plane has been hijacked or not.
Based on nationally representative samples of crime incidents reported in the National Crime Victimization Surveys, victims who use guns for self-protection were less likely to be injured or to lose property than otherwise similar victims who used other forms of self-protection or who did not resist at all. For example, among robbery victims who used guns, only 17% were injured and only 31% lost property, compared to 25% inury rates and 88% property loss rates among victims who did not resist at all, and 33% injury rates and 65% property loss rates among all robbery victims.
As happens so often, knowing the story behind the numbers can be important. The NCVS findings look good, but as it turns out the reason we see such success is that the victims tended to fight back only when the criminal was not comparably armed, so we don't really see an appropriate comparison to what we are discussing, IMO. Also of importance in that same study is the fact that victims who used guns to defend themselves only hit the BG 3% of the time, and in only 2% of the violent crimes did the BG fire his gun. Those times they did fire the gun were almost exclusively as a response to something the victim did that threatened them, which tends to show that the basic premise of "if not hurt initially you won't get hurt" is a pretty safe bet.
