Panera Bread makes non-statement re: guns in their stores

[xBiffx]

You cant avoid becoming a victim, you can only become one. That aside what is important about the number of times you "avoided" being a victim other than in comparison to something else? If you avoided 99 times becoming a victim in a day because you had a gun but were mugged once anyways, and I avoided 98 without one and got mugged twice the only thing that dealing with the other incidences of non events can do is make your position weaker. You had 2% avoidance rate and I had a 1% avoidance rate, that only gives you a 1% difference. If we take out all the missed muggings you are all of a sudden 50% less likely to be victimized than me.

Sure you can. If a would be attacker sees that I am carrying a weapon or perceives that I might carry a weapon, they chose not to attack. I have essentially avoided being victimized by that attacker but its not going down in any statistic. Why, because a victimization never happened, and that's all the numbers we have show. That fact is important if you are looking at the role of a firearm when trying to enhance safety/avoid being a victim.

But as you said, its not about the numbers.

 

[fskimospy]

You cant avoid becoming a victim, you can only become one. That aside what is important about the number of times you "avoided" being a victim other than in comparison to something else? If you avoided 99 times becoming a victim in a day because you had a gun but were mugged once anyways, and I avoided 98 without one and got mugged twice the only thing that dealing with the other incidences of non events can do is make your position weaker. You had 2% avoidance rate and I had a 1% avoidance rate, that only gives you a 1% difference. If we take out all the missed muggings you are all of a sudden 50% less likely to be victimized than me.

The only way his argument would make sense is if the act of getting a permit itself made it more likely for people to attack you. (Cowboys looking for a gunfight at high noon?)

Otherwise the normal distribution renders that argument pointless.

 

[xBiffx]

The only way his argument would make sense is if the act of getting a permit itself made it more likely for people to attack you. (Cowboys looking for a gunfight at high noon?)

Otherwise the normal distribution renders that argument pointless.

Nope. Normal distribution does not include the opposite meaning of the numbers you are looking at.

 

[fskimospy]

Nope. Normal distribution does not include the opposite meaning of the numbers you are looking at.

I don't think you're thinking through this clearly. The normal distribution accounts for literally every objection you have brought up.

 

[xBiffx]

I don't think you're thinking through this clearly. The normal distribution accounts for literally every objection you have brought up.

Nope. Sorry, it doesn't. You can keep throwing it out there but normal distribution have nothing to do with including what doesn't happen in this case, only what does.

 

[fskimospy]

Nope. Sorry, it doesn't. You can keep throwing it out there but normal distribution have nothing to do with including what doesn't happen in this case, only what does.

It has everything to do with it. If you understood what I'm talking about you wouldn't be making arguments like "some people might have more attempted victimizations than others".

I mean that's literally the whole point of ensuring a normally distributed population and a random sample (as well as control variables). You clearly don't get that, so I don't know why you're continuing to try and argue this.

 

[Rebel_L]

Sure you can. If a would be attacker sees that I am carrying a weapon or perceives that I might carry a weapon, they chose not to attack. I have essentially avoided being victimized by that attacker but its not going down in any statistic. Why, because a victimization never happened, and that's all the numbers we have show. That fact is important if you are looking at the role of a firearm when trying to enhance safety/avoid being a victim.

But as you said, its not about the numbers.

Everyone who sees you in a day has the potential to make an effort to attack you, but what if it was your courteous manner or your big muscles that made them not attack you? How can you tell if it was the gun vs something else? They might have decided not to attack you before even seeing that you have a gun. The amount of attacks the gun specifically prevents has to represented by how many more times you get attacked with and without the gun. If you want to view everyone who sees you in a day as a potential attacker all you are doing with the math is diluting the effectiveness of the gun in making you safer. Apparently not having a gun is very effective in preventing you from being attacked as well, think of all the people that everyone sees every day, yet we have so very few attacks compared to that. When I walk through a crowded mall I am seen by hundreds of people and I avoid all those attacks without ever having a gun.

 

[xBiffx]

Everyone who sees you in a day has the potential to make an effort to attack you, but what if it was your courteous manner or your big muscles that made them not attack you? How can you tell if it was the gun vs something else? They might have decided not to attack you before even seeing that you have a gun. The amount of attacks the gun specifically prevents has to represented by how many more times you get attacked with and without the gun. If you want to view everyone who sees you in a day as a potential attacker all you are doing with the math is diluting the effectiveness of the gun in making you safer. Apparently not having a gun is very effective in preventing you from being attacked as well, think of all the people that everyone sees every day, yet we have so very few attacks compared to that. When I walk through a crowded mall I am seen by hundreds of people and I avoid all those attacks without ever having a gun.

I completely agree with you. That's why looking at just numbers is silly. There is more to it than a number. Like you said, peace of mind and such.

But you've nailed one thing, you must look at everyone as a potential threat, because you have no way on knowing otherwise.

 

[xBiffx]

It has everything to do with it. If you understood what I'm talking about you wouldn't be making arguments like "some people might have more attempted victimizations than others".

I mean that's literally the whole point of ensuring a normally distributed population and a random sample (as well as control variables). You clearly don't get that, so I don't know why you're continuing to try and argue this.

You clearly don't get that you can't show what doesn't happen. You continue to argue but yet haven't been able to show how you can show what doesn't happen. Just keep throwing out terms and thinking they apply. It should be easy to explain, I mean, its just math and all.

 

[Pens1566]

Is this the "I carry a tiger repelling rock in my pocket and I've never been attacked by a tiger" argument? I can't tell ...

 

[fskimospy]

You clearly don't get that you can't show what doesn't happen. You continue to argue but yet haven't been able to show how you can show what doesn't happen. Just keep throwing out terms and thinking they apply. It should be easy to explain, I mean, its just math and all.

You realize that several posts back I went through and explained it to you in painstaking detail, right? I work with this sort of thing every day and I genuinely don't understand why you're continuing to argue this. You're right though, it is just math. Go look at the math and you'll understand why what you're saying is nonsensical.

By the way, using your logic it's also impossible to know if say... vaccines prevent disease in a population. We can only show the people who get the disease, we can't show all the people who didn't. Or if police prevent crime, or really anything else that you're attempting to show a preventative effect for.

EDIT:

Here is the explanation again in case you missed it:

Since our population is normally distributed and our sample is random, assuming a sufficient sample size the average person in our sample and the average person in the population will have an approximately equal number of victimizations.

According to our analysis the average american will be victimized by crime 10 times in a year with a standard deviation of 1 crime. If, after accounting for other salient variables, a CCW holder is victimized 7 or fewer times in a year (ie: more than 2 standard deviations from the mean) then we can say that gun ownership is highly likely (in this case ~97% likely) to lead to a lower rate of victimization. In this case we could also draw up a confidence interval to show you where the mean number of victimizations for a CCW holder should fall.

The number of avoided victimizations would be the difference between that mean and the population mean.

 

[fskimospy]

Is this the "I carry a tiger repelling rock in my pocket and I've never been attacked by a tiger" argument? I can't tell ...

His argument seems to be that you can't measure if gun ownership leads to lower crime victimization rates because some people might have been attacked more than others.

I've tried about five times to explain how basic statistics and basic research design take care of that, but he doesn't seem particularly interested in listening.

 

[xBiffx]

His argument seems to be that you can't measure if gun ownership leads to lower crime victimization rates because some people might have been attacked more than others.

I've tried about five times to explain how basic statistics and basic research design take care of that, but he doesn't seem particularly interested in listening.

I haven't been talking about attacks. I have been quiet clearly talking about non attacks. Numbers don't show how many times a person wasn't attacked. They only show how many times they were attacked.

Fuck it, it's useless, you continue to want to argue something else. Fine by me, enjoy yourself.

 

[xBiffx]

Is this the "I carry a tiger repelling rock in my pocket and I've never been attacked by a tiger" argument? I can't tell ...

No, it's the "how would you know how many times a tiger decided not to attack you argument." It's simple, you wouldn't.

However you would know how many times the tiger did attack you.

 

[fskimospy]

I haven't been talking about attacks. I have been quiet clearly talking about non attacks. Numbers don't show how many times a person wasn't attacked. They only show how many times they were attacked.

Fuck it, it's useless, you continue to want to argue something else. Fine by me, enjoy yourself.

With a normally distributed population, a representative sample, and control variables the average person from both groups will have an equal number of attacks and non-attacks. That's the whole point of having those things to begin with.

I do not understand what is so hard about this. This is math.

 

[WackyDan]

Why should they? they're a business. It's their decision what kind of official message they want to send (or not send).

unless you're a stockholder, you have no part to play in that decision.

You are late to the debate and clearly missed quite a bit of context.

 

[WackyDan]

Ever hear of a CCW holder accidentally discharging their weapon in public? Is it maybe possible that the president of Panera feels the risk of an accidental discharge at a Panera is greater than the benefit of an armed patron possibly stopping a robbery?

Accidental discharges happen when handling a weapon. A properly holstered firearm does not have an accidental discharge. The only scenario where a CCW would have their weapon unholstered is if they needed to use it. There is simply no other scenario where in a public place a weapon would be revealed.

So your scenario is primarily bunk. That said if someone isn't properly carrying they can have a discharge... Like the woman in Staples with a handgun loose in her purse. That happened and I cringed to think she was that stupid.

 

[Rebel_L]

I haven't been talking about attacks. I have been quiet clearly talking about non attacks. Numbers don't show how many times a person wasn't attacked. They only show how many times they were attacked.

Could you make up some pretend numbers and go through the math as if we could collect them to illustrate what exactly it is that you think knowing about the non attacks would be able to show that we cant know already as it relates to the advantages of having a gun. I am having trouble understanding what you think is missing and maybe if you lay it out as a numerical example it would make more sense to me.

 

[WackyDan]

mine might, but only because eventually you have to add extra coverage if you end up with too many

I have a rider just for the firearms which specifically is covering loss due to fire, theft. I have enough that I felt it was worth the small amount to insure. My core homeowners insurance wasn't even affected.

 

[WackyDan]

His argument seems to be that you can't measure if gun ownership leads to lower crime victimization rates because some people might have been attacked more than others.

I've tried about five times to explain how basic statistics and basic research design take care of that, but he doesn't seem particularly interested in listening.

I think the problem is the difficulty in quantifying the number of times gun owners use a firearm to defend themselves - be it by brandishing, or discharging of their weapon.

Some aren't likely to report brandishing their weapon because to them the problem resolved itself.

I'd like to know what states track self defense shootings by gun owners and if they even bother to track that by whether they had a CCW or not. In this time of big data it is amazing what we actually don't track.

 

[xBiffx]

Could you make up some pretend numbers and go through the math as if we could collect them to illustrate what exactly it is that you think knowing about the non attacks would be able to show that we cant know already as it relates to the advantages of having a gun. I am having trouble understanding what you think is missing and maybe if you lay it out as a numerical example it would make more sense to me.

Sure, no problem.

Say a firearms owner goes out 100 times (shopping whatever). Now statistics say that they will become a victim 10 times out that of 100, for example. However, what if on 20 of those outings, they were targeted by someone who was out to do no good but because that person knew they were carrying a firearm they chose not to engage on 10 of those. Well, they avoided being a victim 10 times. That number isn't recorded anywhere because no event took place. What we do know is that they did become a victim the 10 other times. In this example, a non firearms owner may have been victimized 15 of those 20 times. So they avoided it 5 times. Again, that 5 isn't recorded.

However, the firearm clearly aided the owner in avoiding more confrontations. We just can't nail down this exact number simply because there's no way to prove what didn't happen (proving a negative). But, to ignore that fact biases any conclusion that owning a firearm makes the owner less safe and makes that decision a bit one sided if you go by the victimization rates alone.

 

[fskimospy]

Sure, no problem.

Say a firearms owner goes out 100 times (shopping whatever). Now statistics say that they will become a victim 10 times out that of 100, for example. However, what if on 20 of those outings, they were targeted by someone who was out to do no good but because that person knew they were carrying a firearm they chose not to engage on 10 of those. Well, they avoided being a victim 10 times. That number isn't recorded anywhere because no event took place. What we do know is that they did become a victim the 10 other times. In this example, a non firearms owner may have been victimized 15 of those 20 times. So they avoided it 5 times. Again, that 5 isn't recorded.

Now I see where your misunderstanding is, hopefully I can clear up the source of the error.

If someone chooses not to engage with the person because they have a firearm that is precisely the difference we are trying to capture.

Long story short, with a sufficiently large sample the average amount of times people are targeted or victimized evens out. That means that in the aggregate for the population each person should expect to be targeted for attack say... 20 times regardless of whether or not you have a gun.

If there is a proportion of attackers who, upon seeing a gun decide not to engage, this will lead to CCW holders reporting a smaller number of total victimizations. Does that make sense?

It doesn't matter if one CCW holder happens to be really unlucky and get targeted a ton of times as the laws of statistics show that in a sufficiently large sample there will be another CCW holder who is really lucky and is targeted very few times.

This is why when you see a mean attack number that is more than 2 standard deviations away from the population mean you can say that yes guns are making you less likely to be victimized.

I hope this clears up the confusion.

However, the firearm clearly aided the owner in avoiding more confrontations. We just can't nail down this exact number simply because there's no way to prove what didn't happen (proving a negative). But, to ignore that fact biases any conclusion that owning a firearm makes the owner less safe and makes that decision a bit one sided if you go by the victimization rates alone.

I hope you see why this is inaccurate now.

 

[fskimospy]

I think the problem is the difficulty in quantifying the number of times gun owners use a firearm to defend themselves - be it by brandishing, or discharging of their weapon.

Some aren't likely to report brandishing their weapon because to them the problem resolved itself.

I'd like to know what states track self defense shootings by gun owners and if they even bother to track that by whether they had a CCW or not. In this time of big data it is amazing what we actually don't track.

As I explained in my other post, recording that isn't actually necessary.

As a side note though, many things that gun owners quantify as 'self defense' measures are often crimes in and of themselves. It's an interesting twist on the issue.

 

[xBiffx]

If someone chooses not to engage with the person because they have a firearm that is precisely the difference we are trying to capture.

Yes, and that's the point. However we can't directly capture that figure. All we can do is compare rates for the opposite, when someone does chose to engage. That's not telling us the whole story. Nor can numbers really ever tell us the whole story. That's the whole point.

 

[fskimospy]

Yes, and that's the point. However we can't directly capture that figure. All we can do is compare rates for the opposite, when someone does chose to engage. That's not telling us the whole story. Nor can numbers really ever tell us the whole story. That's the whole point.

You don't have to directly capture that figure, that's the whole point. With sufficiently large samples you can say that the difference in means is basically impossible to have happened by chance. That means you've found your answer.

It's all just math.