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Originally Posted by Double Naught Spy
Classic example, but usually it is given that CCW folks have crime rates much lower than the general population as if that somehow shows that they are safer. Well of couse CCW people have crime rates lower than the general population because many of the crimes committed in the general population are specifically things that keep people from being able to obtain CCWs. The general population is composed of a goodly percentage of felons and repeat felons. So this makes for a decidedly biased presentation of the data that is done for politically motivated reasons.
Did you know that women are less likely to get prostate cancer than the general population?
So with the nun example, you can be a felon and be a nun. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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Double Naught Spy makes a very good point here. But I still find the comparison valid because the Brady Campaign wishes to make the comparison. If the BC is going to begin publishing emotional stories of kids killed by people with CCWs they to look at statistics.
It is very true that the statistics are skewed because you cannot be convicted of a crime and then hold a CCW, bringing about a bit of an issue with repeat offenders. But remember, license carriers are by nature law-abiding because they spent sometimes hundreds of dollars to make sure they are following the law when they carry their weapons. The same cannot be said for criminals. That is the argument I make when someone tells me that I just want to shoot the place up, etc etc: That I spent hundreds of dollars and went through various background checks and hours of training to get this license and cannot continue to carry this license if I have a felony conviction. Thus, the fact that I still have one is a pretty good indicator I'm a law abiding citizen. But again, this is not fool proof.
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Originally Posted by Double Naught Spy
You never see the comparison between CCW people and their crime rates against the general population of CCW eligible people from the general population who opt not to get a CCW. Do CCW people actually commit less crime than their "equals" in the general population?
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This would be interesting, but you risk running the same fallacy. Either way, we can speculate. Between 1990 and 2002, 56% of felonies resulting in conviction were committed by repeat offenders (SOURCE:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n17194955/) So we can cut out over half of felonies when we would examine the data of comparing CPL holders to the eligible population. This lends credence to your original statement, but remember we are talking about rates. It is very possible that people with CPLs are just as likely to commit a felony as their eligible counterparts, but logic does not sway that way. If someone was going to a crime, they would do it regardless of their license status (they are already breaking the law after all). I would also ask in how many of those cases, if the eligible person would have had a CPL, would that have mattered? Conversely, in the crimes people with CPLs commit, do the CPLs come into effect (ie: if they committed murder-suicide in their home with a shotgun, that has no bearing on their CPL status, anyone could do that).
Statistics are a sticky issue, but we can draw some conclusions from logic. My argument is rarely ever that the CPL population is much less likely to commit a crime because of the fallacy DNS stated. It is much more often that the process, time, money, and hassle one has to go through to ensure that they are following the law when carrying their weapon is a much better indication of their intentions when it comes to committing crimes.