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Old December 8, 2017, 12:50 PM   #26
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Up to the point the GG started shooting, the BG had not directly threatened anybody else but him. The situation did not justify at all for a supposedly trained LEO to start a potential shootout in a room full of innocent people.
Perhaps you feel that the presentation of a firearm during the commission of a forcible felony doesn't warrant a deadly force response but I suspect that a good many people would disagree. Clearly this guy disagrees.

You may also see no threat of this offender continuing to commit a forcible felony against others in the same venue but again, I think many would disagree.
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Old December 8, 2017, 01:08 PM   #27
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...and what if he turned and ran and the bad guy shot him in the back? Would that still have been the easiest option?
Please.... he was as good as gone when he turned to engage him. He likely would have engaed the badguy no matter what. I have no problem with his response but at the same time I wont pretend that it would not have been "easier" to just keep on truckin. I think the goodguy did the right thing but he also chose to put himself in significant danger in the process. More danger than if he would have fled.
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Old December 8, 2017, 09:35 PM   #28
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Originally Posted by FireForged
Perhaps you feel that the presentation of a firearm during the commission of a forcible felony doesn't warrant a deadly force response...
No, I don't.
What I do feel is that the killing of a felon, however warranted it may be, does not justify putting innocent people at risk.
This guy got lucky, but the outcome here could've been very different, and if it was, it would've been his fault.
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Old December 8, 2017, 09:56 PM   #29
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Originally Posted by FireForged View Post
Please.... he was as good as gone when he turned to engage him. He likely would have engaed the badguy no matter what. I have no problem with his response but at the same time I wont pretend that it would not have been "easier" to just keep on truckin. I think the goodguy did the right thing but he also chose to put himself in significant danger in the process. More danger than if he would have fled.
whats "easier" is not the same as whats safer, you didn't answer my question. Many bad guys have turned and shot their victims after they have given them what they wanted. As long as the bad guy still has his gun drawn in the commission of a forcible felony he is the one putting innocent people at risk, regardless of the outcome.
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Old December 9, 2017, 07:00 PM   #30
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You are seemingly clinging to fringe possibilities which may favor your argument but are not supported by any statistics , evidence or value mentioned in this thread thus far. There is always a fair amount of conjecture in these discussions but I tend to not celebrate it to the degree that some do. If you can support your point with reasonable probabilities rather than possibilities, I will be glad to debate it further, otherwise I would consider it fruitless.
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Old December 9, 2017, 07:07 PM   #31
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No, I don't.
What I do feel is that the killing of a felon, however warranted it may be, does not justify putting innocent people at risk.
This guy got lucky, but the outcome here could've been very different, and if it was, it would've been his fault.
Maybe not so in Venezuela...............
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Old December 9, 2017, 08:46 PM   #32
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So I know we have both active and retired LE on this forum. Can anyone comment on what an officer in this scenario would have been trained to do in the US? Or would've been expected to do? Whether a plainclothes officer being robbed or maybe simply being nearby when it went down? When do you pop the mugger to ensure he won't shoot anyone, vs do everything possible to get him away from bystanders, etc?
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Old December 9, 2017, 08:48 PM   #33
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Maybe not so in Venezuela...............
Perhaps not legally responsible, but in some sense one could argue he would've still been ethically at fault.

Counterbalanced by the case that, had he not acted and the robber killed someone else, he may have been somehow ethically at fault also.
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Old December 9, 2017, 10:09 PM   #34
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I suspect in Venezuela, the rules are a little different than here

And I applaud the officer for ending the crime spree of some jackwagon.
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Old December 9, 2017, 11:02 PM   #35
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Originally Posted by FITASC
I suspect in Venezuela, the rules are a little different than here
Could you please elaborate?
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Old December 10, 2017, 09:00 AM   #36
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venezuela is one of the worlds most violent places, the murder rate is phenomenal, it is possible that he prevented a killing. he was probably well within his responsibilities as an leo. the venezualan constitution is a joke, it is run by a dictator, and it's just as likely that the guy was part of a gang and there would have been a killing in the process; note the way he dropped the guy and then scanned the crowd for other criminals. He fired directly into the perp and had chosen his background well.

legally this guy was probably on solid ground, he was ethically on solid ground as well, and given the situation in his country, he acted in what may have been a situation that would have ended in death. it's possible if not probable that the guy had killed before.

Think about the war in mexico, and then think about the war in chicago, which is even worse. venezuela tops them both, and in mexico they cut innocent people's heads off and throw firebombs into casinos.

this isn't omaha or seattle, this is a literal war zone of crime.
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Old December 10, 2017, 10:54 PM   #37
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Ok, first, here's some extra data:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...elan-bank.html

So, yeah, the robbery took place in the Los Jarales shopping mall, in San Diego, Venezuela. The shooter was William Ferreire, an undercover cop. And there was an accomplice outside, in a motorcycle.


Now, briandg, I'm gonna reply to some of your comments. I apologize to everybody for derailing this thread, but somebody may take issue with briandg's comments (just as I did), so I feel this must be done.

Venezuela is NOT one of the world's most violent places. In fact, the only Latin American countries among the world's 20 most dangerous places are Colombia and Mexico.

http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/m...the-world.html

Caracas is Venezuela's (and the world's) most dangerous city, followed very closely by Acapulco (Mexico) and San Pedro Sula (Honduras), However, this robbery was in the city of San Diego, 122 km (76 miles) away.

http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/m...the-world.html

As a country, Venezuela's murder rate is 57.15 murders per every 100000 people, which makes it LESS DANGEROUS than St. Louis, Mo (60.37), and just a bit more dangerous than Baltimore, Md (51.14).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ate#By_country

About the Venezuelan Constitution, I'm not a constitutionalist, so I'm not qualified to decide whether it's good or bad, but it's been ratified by popular referendum, which is much more than can be said for many others, including the Argentinian and American ones.

About the LEO, his primary responsibility is to protect the innocent, and he failed miserably at that. And the law doesn't take "possibility" into account, only "proof" matters.

And finally, Venezuela is not worse than Mexico (take a look at the second link), and Mexico is not at war. NORTHERN Mexico is being controlled by a gang of narco-terrorists. But I have a cousin living in Veracruz, and she has told me repeatedly that central and southern Mexico are as peaceful as it gets.
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Old December 11, 2017, 01:07 AM   #38
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As a country, Venezuela's murder rate is 57.15 murders per every 100000 people, which makes it LESS DANGEROUS than St. Louis, Mo (60.37), and just a bit more dangerous than Baltimore, Md (51.14).
Comparing the overall murder rate for an entire country to the murder rate of an urban area doesn't provide an accurate picture. For example, although there are urban areas in the U.S. with high murder rates, overall, the national murder rate in the U.S. is 4.88, almost 12 times lower than that of Venezuela.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._homicide_rate

Venezuela's national murder rate of 57.15 murders per 100K, gives it the dubious standing of having the third highest murder rate in the world, topped only by Honduras (63.75 murders per 100K) and El Salvador (108.64 murders per 100K).
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Venezuela is NOT one of the world's most violent places.
If we use murder rate as the criterion for violent places then Venezuela is one of the three most violent places in the world.

Country-----Intentional homicides per 100K
El Salvador-----108.64
Honduras -----63.75
Venezuela-----57.15

This source places Venezuela's national murder rate as second in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Venezuela

Looking at the murder rate by city, Venezuela tops the list with Caracas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...by_murder_rate
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Old December 11, 2017, 02:30 AM   #39
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Comparing the overall murder rate for an entire country to the murder rate of an urban area doesn't provide an accurate picture. For example, although there are urban areas in the U.S. with high murder rates, overall, the national murder rate in the U.S. is 4.88, almost 12 times lower than that of Venezuela.
Absolutely.
I didn't compare it to give an accurate country-by-country picture, I did it to make it understandable that Venezuela is not some apocalyptic hell-hole, but it's actually not more violent (in average) than some cities in the US.

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If we use murder rate as the criterion for violent places then Venezuela is one of the three most violent places in the world.
Which clearly shows that's not the right criteria to be used.

Let me put it in perspective:

Like I said, Caracas is the most violent city in the world. Now, contrarily to the US, where population is spread more evenly, Venezuela has 31 milion people (give or take), while Caracas (the whole metropolitan area) has over 5 million. That means about 1/6 of Venezuela's population lives in the "most dangerous city in the world", so when you're saying "Venezuela's murder rate", that number is highly influenced by Caracas' murder rate. Same happens in Colombia (for what I've been told), and in Argentina (and I can testify for it). So that murder rate is not really representative of what life is like, in most of the country.
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Old December 11, 2017, 03:02 AM   #40
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So that murder rate is not really representative of what life is like, in most of the country.
Right, that's true of pretty much all decent sized countries. The urban areas, which are also large population centers, tend to have much higher crime than the more rural areas with lower population densities.

However, I'm a little skeptical about the idea that Caracas is the sole reason for Venezuela's high overall murder rate given that it's not just Caracas that has a high murder rate. In fact, 4 out of the top 10 most violent cities in the world and 7 out of the top 50, are in Venezuela.

It makes perfect sense that the urban areas have more violent crime, but the idea that there's just one urban area in Venezuela that's giving the wrong picture overall doesn't seem to match with the facts.
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Old December 11, 2017, 08:55 AM   #41
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So it seems to be that there was a bit of hair splitting in the discussion here. I put out information based on memory and I guess that I was foolish to not spend a lot of time actually looking up the statistics and absolute facts. War in Mexico? The Mexican army is in charge of some places, in the recent past they were given orders to shoot to kill and not bring any prisoners in. War in the United States? Okay, we have the national guard out at times, cops are being assassinated, groups are killing each other, terrorism against civilians is common, it's at least a bit similar.

John pointed out that my very general speaking at least inspired him to search out accurate facts, and if it results in that, I'm glad.
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Old December 11, 2017, 09:33 AM   #42
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https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/ve.html

https://www.osac.gov/Pages/ContentRe...aspx?cid=17137

Of the fifty most violent cities in the world five appear to be in Venezuela. They appear to all be in the top 20. Caracas is reported to be number one.

Quote:
Venezuela remained one of the deadliest countries in the world for 2014.
yes, the report is two years old, written in fifteen. It appears that they are all in the top twenty.

Venezuela is a rough place. I couldn't put my hands on information regarding some issues, so I'm not going to discuss them. These links are from the US cia and state department.
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Old December 11, 2017, 10:57 PM   #43
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Originally Posted by JohnKSa
However, I'm a little skeptical about the idea that Caracas is the sole reason for Venezuela's high overall murder rate given that it's not just Caracas that has a high murder rate. In fact, 4 out of the top 10 most violent cities in the world and 7 out of the top 50, are in Venezuela.

It makes perfect sense that the urban areas have more violent crime, but the idea that there's just one urban area in Venezuela that's giving the wrong picture overall doesn't seem to match with the facts.
Oops. Went gung-ho on Caracas, and didn't even look at the rest of the top 50. Sorry.

However, that actually proves my point.
Let me see if I can explain myself better with numbers, being that my performance with words is being kinda poor...

Venezuela has a population of 31,586,179, and a murder rate of 57.15 out of 100,000. That means 18,052 people get murdered every year.

Now:
Caracas has 3,305,204 @ 130.35 murder rate, or 4309 murdered per year.
Maturin (#6) has 592,574 @ 82.84, or 491 murdered per year.
Ciudad Guayana (#8) has 877,547 @ 82.84, or 727 murdered per year.
Valencia (#9) has 1,560,586 @ 72.02, or 1124 murdered per year.
Barquisimeto (#16) has 1,322,068 @ 59.38, or 785 murdered per year.
Cumana (#17) has 488,507 @ 59.31, or 290 murdered per year.
Barcelona (#29) has 846,353 @46.86, or 397 murdered per year.

That means, for those 7 cities, a total of 8,992,839 people, out of which 8123 people get murdered yearly.
That, in turn, means the rest of the country has 22,593,340 people, out of which 9929 people get murdered a year, which gives a murder rate (outside those 7 cities) of 43.94, which would put the "rest of Venezuela", between the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Jamaica.Now, you can argue that's still very high, and it is, but there's a big difference between 57 and 44.

Either way, I said before that murder rate is not the right criteria to use for judging how dangerous a country is. One of the reasons is because you gotta look at the nature of those killings.
Sure, a stray bullet will kill you just as dead in Caracas as in Bern. However, it's stilll gonna be a lot more dangerous for you to go visit Yemen (in the middle of a civil war) than Norway.
Now, in the case of Venezuela, most of the murders are politics or drugs (as in drug trafficking) related . Of course, that doesn't mean you'll be "safe", but I'd argue you'd be much safer there than in Buenos Aires, the city where I live, which doesn't show in the "Top 50", yet it's overrun by criminals, while the police and justice departments do nothing.
I can actually guarantee you, without a shadow of a doubt, that if you flash a $100 bill in public, almost anywhere in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, you will get mugged, and probably killed in the process. Yet Buenos Aires is not in the "Top 50", and Argentina is #83 and has a 6.53 murder rate.

My point in all this (before somebody asks ) is that you can't know if a country is "dangerous" just looking at some numbers.

Back in 2000, when I was getting ready to emigrate to the US, lots of people (and I mean LOTS of people) gave me plenty of reasons why I should NOT go there. From "they will make you feel unwelcome", to "the cops will use you as a scapegoat, when they can't solve a crime", or "it's a country full of junkies, dealing dope and killing each other in every corner", I heard it all. So, when I landed in Miami, I was beyond terrified.
Took me a couple of days to realize maybe the US wasn't as they said. Today, the 13 years I lived there count as the happiest years of my life, and I wouldn't hesitate for a second, if I had the slightest chance to go back.

So, you shouldn't judge a country for a number, or an opinion. Sometimes, the only way to know something is, well... knowing it.
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Old December 11, 2017, 11:59 PM   #44
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So, you shouldn't judge a country for a number, or an opinion. Sometimes, the only way to know something is, well... knowing it.
I understand now.
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Old December 12, 2017, 01:51 AM   #45
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That, in turn, means the rest of the country has 22,593,340 people, out of which 9929 people get murdered a year, which gives a murder rate (outside those 7 cities) of 43.94, which would put the "rest of Venezuela", between the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Jamaica. Now, you can argue that's still very high, and it is, but there's a big difference between 57 and 44.
That is off-the-charts high considering that it is a statistic that omits the large population centers of the country.

In other words, even AFTER removing all the highest murder centers of the country, it is still #5 #4 in the world for murder rate when comparing against the statistics of countries which still have their high-rate murder centers included.

The bottom line is that to do a realistic/accurate comparison, the comparison needs to be of similar statistics.

At first, you started by trying to compare the murder rate in the single city in the U.S. with the highest murder rate against the murder rate of the entire country of Venezuela. That is not a reasonable comparison for the reasons pointed out above.

Then you tried to compare the murder rate of the part of the country of Venezuela that does NOT include the high murder rate urban areas against the murder rate of entire countries where their high murder rate urban areas are included in the statistic. That is also not a reasonable comparison.

The bottom line is that any reasonable comparison of similar statistics will show that Venezuela has one of the top 2 or 3 murder rates in the world and that nearly half of the top 9 murder capitals of the world are cities in Venezuela.

I'm sure that there are many other creative ways to come up with comparisons which make the violent crime levels in Venezuela seem less shocking than they actually are, but so far all of the ones you have come up with require comparing a statistic of one type for Venezuela with a statistic of a different type for the other countries in the comparison. Not because those comparisons make a lot of sense from a logical standpoint but apparently because simple comparisons of like statistics with like statistics doesn't support your argument.
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I can actually guarantee you, without a shadow of a doubt, that if you flash a $100 bill in public, almost anywhere in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, you will get mugged, and probably killed in the process. Yet Buenos Aires is not in the "Top 50", and Argentina is #83 and has a 6.53 murder rate.
That sounds like a dangerous place.

And yet you're arguing that Venezuela, where even the parts of the country that aren't on the top 50 list of the most dangerous cities in the world have a murder rate around 5 times higher than Buenos Aires is not a dangerous place? I don't follow that logic.
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Took me a couple of days to realize maybe the US wasn't as they said.
You should have looked at the statistics and you would have seen that the violent crime rate is actually quite low overall--below that of even Argentina which has one of the lowest violent crime rates in Latin America.

The statistic would have shown that even though the U.S. makes up about 4% of the world, only 8% of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in the U.S. Compared, for example to Venezuela which makes up 0.4% of the world and yet has 14% of the 50 most violent cities in the world. Or compared to Brazil which makes up only about 3% of the world population but has 38% of the world's 50 most violent cities.
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So, you shouldn't judge a country for a number, or an opinion. Sometimes, the only way to know something is, well... knowing it.
"Knowing something" without facts to back it up is not actually knowing something. It is merely holding an opinion. It is only when opinion is backed by facts, that it can graduate from being simply an opinion to being knowledge.
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Old December 12, 2017, 03:21 AM   #46
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Oh, boy...
Well, at least briandg did understand.

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That is off-the-charts high
No, unfortunately, as the charts themselves show, it's not.

Quote:
The bottom line is that to do a realistic/accurate comparison, the comparison needs to be of similar statistics.
No, the bottom line is that there is no realistic/accurate comparison, because circumstances are not similar.
It's simple: you can't compare them because, while the US cities in the Top50 make up less than 5% of the US population, those 7 cities in Venezuela are almost 28.5% of the country.

Quote:
Quote:
I can actually guarantee you, without a shadow of a doubt, that if you flash a $100 bill in public, almost anywhere in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, you will get mugged, and probably killed in the process. Yet Buenos Aires is not in the "Top 50", and Argentina is #83 and has a 6.53 murder rate.
That sounds like a dangerous place.

And yet you're arguing that Venezuela, where even the parts of the country that aren't on the top 50 list of the most dangerous cities in the world have a murder rate around 5 times higher than Buenos Aires is not a dangerous place? I don't follow that logic.
No, you don't, because you're too busy fighting it.
I'm arguing that Venezuela is not a monolithic entity, that can be judged by a single number.
I'm arguing that if you judged Buenos Aires by the same statistics you're using on Venezuela, you'd come to the conclusion that it's a really safe place, and you'd be just as wrong.



Quote:
Quote:
Took me a couple of days to realize maybe the US wasn't as they said.
You should have looked at the statistics and you would have seen that the violent crime rate is actually quite low overall--below that of even Argentina which has one of the lowest violent crime rates in Latin America.
Yep. And when I was born, my parents should've made a video of my birth with their smartphones, and put it on youtube. Unfortunately, smartphones didn't exist 52 years ago, and neither did youtube.
And that was about the same with internet in my country, in 2000.

Quote:
The statistic would have shown that even though the U.S. makes up about 4% of the world, only 8% of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in the U.S. Compared, for example to Venezuela which makes up 0.4% of the world and yet has 14% of the 50 most violent cities in the world. Or compared to Brazil which makes up only about 3% of the world population but has 38% of the world's 50 most violent cities.
Funny you should mention Brazil.
A country that's NOT among the 20 most dangerous countries, and which, despite having 19 CITIES in the "Top 50", still has a much lower (actually about half) murder rate than Venezuela.
What does that tell you about the validity of those statistics?

BTW: thank you briandg for understanding. Really, it does mean a lot to me.
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Old December 12, 2017, 07:01 AM   #47
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Well, at least briandg did understand.
Sometimes sarcasm doesn't come across clearly in print.
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Funny you should mention Brazil.
A country that's NOT among the 20 most dangerous countries...
Brazil has the 14th highest murder rate in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._homicide_rate
Quote:
What does that tell you about the validity of those statistics?
Sometimes it's worthwhile to take a step back and look at the big picture. You introduced the idea of using murder rate statistics to compare various areas. It doesn't make sense to now claim that the statistics aren't valid simply because it transpires that those statistics, even after having been manipulated, don't support your argument.

It can't work both ways. If the statistics are NOT representative, then it wouldn't make sense to bring them up and to continue to use and manipulate them as a way to prove a point. And if they ARE representative then it doesn't make sense to object to others using them.
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I'm arguing that Venezuela is not a monolithic entity, that can be judged by a single number.
Yet you continue to use single numbers for other countries and continue manipulating the Venezuela data to come up with a single number to represent it. These actions indicate that there isn't a problem with judging countries (including Venezuela) by single numbers. The objection isn't to the single numbers themselves, it's to someone else using those single numbers to demonstrate that your arguments are flawed.
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...those 7 cities in Venezuela are almost 28.5% of the country.
Correct. And even after removing them, EVERY country in the world with only three exceptions STILL had a lower murder rate.
Quote:
No, unfortunately, as the charts themselves show, it's not.
After removing all the high-murder rate urban areas in Venezuela, the rest of the country still ended up having the fourth* highest murder rate in the world--when compared to other countries which did NOT have all their high-murder rate urban areas removed from the statistic.

That would be a high murder rate even if the statistics hadn't been manipulated by removing the 7 areas with the highest murder rates. The fact that it ranks that high even after removing over a quarter of the population of the country with all the highest murder-rate areas is actually quite alarming.

Furthermore, it's important to note that the manipulation performed to prove how skewed the overall murder rate statistic for Venezuela is, only moved it a SINGLE position in the world rankings. From third most dangerous in the world to fourth most dangerous in the world.

If your own manipulation of the statistics only moves Venezuela's ranking by a single position, how can it reasonably be argued that the original number significantly misrepresents reality?

If the manipulation had dropped Venezuela down a significant number of places--especially when compared to similarly manipulated statistics for other countries--then there might be a valid point. As it is, it hardly changes the rankings at all--in spite of the fact that it's comparing a manipulated statistic to unmanipulated statistics for the rest of the world's countries.


*When I said it was the fifth highest initially, I forgot that one of those above it was Venezuela itself. The manipulated statistic removing the seven highest murder-rate areas in the country places it fourth highest when compared against overall murder rate statistics for other countries.
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Old December 12, 2017, 09:10 AM   #48
briandg
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I think that it was the cia report that listed danger from crime as "critical".

My brother in law lives in saint Louis, and he has told me numerous times that crime isn't really a problem there, he never sees anything. I think that he never sees a gang murder because he lives in saint Charles county, not actually in saint Louis proper. He never sees st Louis except from an interstate.

This part of the thread has seriously jumped the shark flying like a concord and outlived its usefulness.

One of my Spanish teachers immigrated from Venezuela and told us several times that it was a nice, very pretty country, yet she still left her homeland.

I actually considered retiring to south America when I was as younger,to the mountains. Thank God for the internet.
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Old December 12, 2017, 08:56 PM   #49
BOOGIE the oily
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"None more blind than that who refuses to see"...

Ok John, I realize that I could keep trying to explain myself to you, only to have you cherry pick and twist my words to suit your agenda, whatever that may be. So I'm done.
I've made my point abundantly clear, for anybody who may be interested in making an informed decision, to do so.
So you've won a forum discussion! Congratulations!

Quote:
Quote:
Well, at least briandg did understand.
Sometimes sarcasm doesn't come across clearly in print.
Yet sometimes it does.

Quote:
One of my Spanish teachers immigrated from Venezuela and told us several times that it was a nice, very pretty country, yet she still left her homeland.

I actually considered retiring to south America when I was as younger,to the mountains. Thank God for the internet.
So you decided, instead of taking your teacher's advise, to follow the internet. And if that's good enough for you, then, great!
Of course, you could've also taken a few days vacation to Venezuela (or any other place, FWIW) and seen the place for yourself, to then make an informed decision based on your own experience.
Would you have been happier somewhere else? Who knows? Then again, you seem satisfied with your decision, and that's all that matters, everyone has a right to choose their own path.
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Old December 12, 2017, 09:22 PM   #50
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Quote:
...only to have you cherry pick...
The irony here is pretty thick.

Although I used only the basic statistics (of the type that you initially introduced to the thread) without trying to alter or manipulate them in any way you accuse me of cherry-picking.

On the other hand, your initial use of the statistics compared the statistic for the single highest murder rate city in one country against the overall statistic for murder rate of another country and then the second comparison removed the statistics for the high murder rate areas in one country and compared that statistic against the overall unaltered statistics for other countries. Both of those are, in fact, the precise definition of cherry-picking and yet you do not see either one of them for what they are.
Quote:
So you've won a forum discussion!
This clarifies the issue and presents the crux of the matter explicitly. The idea that this discussion was a contest to be won or lost misses the point entirely. Your goal should not have been to win, it should have been the same as mine--to find the truth.
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