Another Shooting: Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California

[Muse]

update: Gilroy Garlic Festival shooter killed himself, coroner says, contradicting police version of events

https://www.latimes.com/california/...-festival-shooter-killed-himself-coroner-says


of course the cops lied. lol. They didnt do shit.

News on TV tonight had the police chief saying that the three cops had shot the killer multiple times and that only then did he shoot himself in the head. Police chief said vehemently that this revelation contradicts nothing concerning the events as previously explained.

 

[Muse]

Why would you go there?

It is known to be common for shooters to off themselves when confronted by police. When their game is up.

Him doing that does NOT discount their fast and effective response.

Indeed, and after having been shot multiple times he might welcome a swift death... self inflicted. He likely didn't want to wind up in a hospital OR a court of law OR prison. And he'd just found out bigtime that "it ain't no fun to get shot with a gun." He knew way before the big day that he'd very likely put a bullet in his own head at the end.

 

[JSt0rm]

Why would you go there?

It is known to be common for shooters to off themselves when confronted by police. When their game is up.

Him doing that does NOT discount their fast and effective response.

because the cops said they shot him?

 

[JSt0rm]

News on TV tonight had the police chief saying that the three cops had shot the killer multiple times and that only then did he shoot himself in the head. Police chief said vehemently that this revelation contradicts nothing concerning the events as previously explained.

the police chief is a bitch.

 

[Muse]

the police chief is a bitch.

OK, enlighten me please, what makes you think that and what makes you think those 3 cops lied about what happened, what they did?

 

[Muse]

because the cops said they shot him?

He shot himself in the head. Presumably the coroner's report will show other gunshot wounds that were not self inflicted. It's pretty straight up. What are you basing your statements on?

 

[Lanyap]

He shot himself in the head. Presumably the coroner's report will show other gunshot wounds that were not self inflicted. It's pretty straight up. What are you basing your statements on?

It is kind of odd that the coroner just mentions the fatal shot. He could have at least been more specific. If the coroner found multiple gunshot wounds he could have said that and then said the fatal shot was self inflicted. Something is going on behind the scenes. The police should know if the kid was shot multiple times. I guess the details will come out later when the coroner's report is finalized.

It should be one of three scenarios.

1) The kid killed himself before the police got a chance to shoot him

2) The police shot him and wounded him and then he killed himself

3) The kid killed himself and then the police shot him after he was dead.

 

[Muse]

Seems to me it might be hard to tell if shots by the cops were fired before or after the fatal self inflicted shot to the head.

However, it seems unlikely to me that he would shoot himself before he was hit or at least under fire.

 

[tiggers]

Sure thing!

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-014-9865-8


https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302703

I can also show similar effects with suicide risk if you're interested. Now that you're armed with this new information and are surely a person who reasons logically rather than emotionally how does this information change your opinion about gun laws?

I've actually read those reports, and the peer/researcher opinions as well. And the abstracts don't exactly follow what the actual research shows.

For example: the abstract (and news coverage of the report) makes it sound as if the homicide rate shot up in Missouri after repealing the handgun licensing law (basically removed a bureaucratic step at the local sheriffs office level. Background checks for purchases were still in place). But when you actually read the report, some rather interesting items pop out. Take the spike that occured in 2007. The increase in homicides started happening 3 years prior to the spike and rescinding the licensing law. If you drill down into the year that the licensing law was no longer in effect (August 2007), the peak occurred just a few months after wards. And has been down sharply almost every year since. That's right: about 95% of the 'spike' occurred prior to the licensing law being rescinded. Yet it is blamed for the spike. Using the researchers "logic", it would be just as valid to state that recinsinding the law caused a sharp DECREASE of homicides, and thereby saving lives.

But wait! There's more! buried further in the paper is a table comparing Missouri's % increase with border states. All other states have very low % changes (some decreases, some increases). Except one; Indiana had a 30% increase compared to Missouri's 2x% (there have been multiple revisions of the paper as math errors were uncovered. But the increase has always been in the 20% range). What is special about Indiana? It's one of those states that retained it's handgun licensing law. Somehow the researchers "missed" that stat. If you googled what local news was describing crime as in and around 2007 when the spike occurred, and the country was facing a major recession and a fair number of reports blaming the crime wave on gang violence in and around St. Louis.

The truth is; it made no difference. But that doesn't make for good news coverage.


Oh, but then there is the "Association Between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides" paper, claiming a 40% reduction in homicides in the state as a result. The researchers constructed a virtual state of CT to do the comparison. But they seemed to side step that the entire country of the USA had a similar, real world 40% reduction as well. That's including states with "lax" gun laws. That includes states with low homicide rates below the national average, just like CT's (but without the laws being championed). And then there are the interviews with the researchers and peers who, buried down in the later half of the articles, basically say in layman's terms " these things happened at the same time, but we really couldn't find any link if one was affecting the other". But the news reports it as if it did.

But the most egregious "oversight" is that the researchers cut off the end of the post analysis just as the homicide rate being measured started to climb. It actually peeks at a rate a few years later slightly higher than when the law was enacted. It's easy to look up in the CDC WISQUARS or WONDER data retrieval systems.

Could you imagine the outcry if AnandTech tried to get away with this in their graphics card reviews to push a favored brand of card? If he just declared a card is the best, and people accepting it without actually seeing the data behind the decision? Or even worse, dropping tests that showed unfavorable results? That is essentially what these researchers did. Which is a shame as, in the quest to actually reduce violence and get it under control, it only convolutes the whole problem solving analysis, and good solutions end up being ignored or forgotten.

 

[fskimospy]

I've actually read those reports, and the peer/researcher opinions as well. And the abstracts don't exactly follow what the actual research shows.

For example: the abstract (and news coverage of the report) makes it sound as if the homicide rate shot up in Missouri after repealing the handgun licensing law (basically removed a bureaucratic step at the local sheriffs office level. Background checks for purchases were still in place). But when you actually read the report, some rather interesting items pop out. Take the spike that occured in 2007. The increase in homicides started happening 3 years prior to the spike and rescinding the licensing law. If you drill down into the year that the licensing law was no longer in effect (August 2007), the peak occurred just a few months after wards. And has been down sharply almost every year since. That's right: about 95% of the 'spike' occurred prior to the licensing law being rescinded. Yet it is blamed for the spike. Using the researchers "logic", it would be just as valid to state that recinsinding the law caused a sharp DECREASE of homicides, and thereby saving lives.

But wait! There's more! buried further in the paper is a table comparing Missouri's % increase with border states. All other states have very low % changes (some decreases, some increases). Except one; Indiana had a 30% increase compared to Missouri's 2x% (there have been multiple revisions of the paper as math errors were uncovered. But the increase has always been in the 20% range). What is special about Indiana? It's one of those states that retained it's handgun licensing law. Somehow the researchers "missed" that stat. If you googled what local news was describing crime as in and around 2007 when the spike occurred, and the country was facing a major recession and a fair number of reports blaming the crime wave on gang violence in and around St. Louis.

The truth is; it made no difference. But that doesn't make for good news coverage.


Oh, but then there is the "Association Between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides" paper, claiming a 40% reduction in homicides in the state as a result. The researchers constructed a virtual state of CT to do the comparison. But they seemed to side step that the entire country of the USA had a similar, real world 40% reduction as well. That's including states with "lax" gun laws. That includes states with low homicide rates below the national average, just like CT's (but without the laws being championed). And then there are the interviews with the researchers and peers who, buried down in the later half of the articles, basically say in layman's terms " these things happened at the same time, but we really couldn't find any link if one was affecting the other". But the news reports it as if it did.

But the most egregious "oversight" is that the researchers cut off the end of the post analysis just as the homicide rate being measured started to climb. It actually peeks at a rate a few years later slightly higher than when the law was enacted. It's easy to look up in the CDC WISQUARS or WONDER data retrieval systems.

Could you imagine the outcry if AnandTech tried to get away with this in their graphics card reviews to push a favored brand of card? If he just declared a card is the best, and people accepting it without actually seeing the data behind the decision? Or even worse, dropping tests that showed unfavorable results? That is essentially what these researchers did. Which is a shame as, in the quest to actually reduce violence and get it under control, it only convolutes the whole problem solving analysis, and good solutions end up being ignored or forgotten.

Well I can get into the other errors in your post later but the one that stands out to me most egregiously is the ‘40% reduction’ one as it indicates you don’t understand what you are criticizing.

When you say that the study ignores that the rest of the country had a 40% reduction in homicides as well this misunderstands the conclusions of the study which is that it decreased homicide rates by 40% beyond what was experienced by the synthetic Connecticut, which if this were the cause of the decline and national trends are indeed national, would have wiped out the effect. That was the entire purpose of constructing a statistical counterfactual.

In fact, the study explicitly mentions this nationwide decline in homicide rates in its discussion and how it is compensated for which makes me question if you actually read them or how closely you did.

 

[fskimospy]

In addition, those two studies are simply part of a large volume of research that shows greater prevalence of guns is associated with a higher risk factor for homicide and suicide. It’s not like their results are particularly noteworthy, they are just representative of the larger body of gun control work which says - fewer guns, fewer homicides and suicides.

 

[tiggers]

I understand the purpose of the study (CT vs synthetic-CT), and appreciate the challenges to create an appropriate synthetic model to base their analysis, in order to estimate a prediction of what might have happened if the law wasn't in place. In CT. But their "nationwide trend" (never actually directly discussed in the study, btw) is heavily weighted by just one state for gun homicides in the synthetic group (RI). There are a handful of other states, but with far less weighting. Factoring in and comparing with the national trend wasn't a part of the study discussion. Just the handful of states used to construct the synthetic CT. My point is that, long term the real world data does not support the conclusion of the authors (gun homicides in real-CT went back up while many other states without the law stayed steady, or even went down). If they really wanted to show the law worked (and not just in CT), they would have repeated the study for other states as well by now. But maybe the law only works in CT?

 

[umbrella39]

Hey...


Where'd I leave that old account...

 

[fskimospy]

I understand the purpose of the study (CT vs synthetic-CT), and appreciate the challenges to create an appropriate synthetic model to base their analysis, in order to estimate a prediction of what might have happened if the law wasn't in place. In CT. But their "nationwide trend" (never actually directly discussed in the study, btw) is heavily weighted by just one state for gun homicides in the synthetic group (RI). There are a handful of other states, but with far less weighting. Factoring in and comparing with the national trend wasn't a part of the study discussion. Just the handful of states used to construct the synthetic CT. My point is that, long term the real world data does not support the conclusion of the authors (gun homicides in real-CT went back up while many other states without the law stayed steady, or even went down). If they really wanted to show the law worked (and not just in CT), they would have repeated the study for other states as well by now. But maybe the law only works in CT?

First, there’s nothing particularly wrong with giving another state heavy weighting in the synthetic state if its pre-law firearm murder rate tracked well with Connecticut and that it shares a lot of other demographic similarities that were used as covariates. It’s not particularly surprising that ones with close geographic proximity would do that.

All that aside like I said it’s not like these studies are unique or outliers. There is a great deal of research out there that points to a simple fact - reducing the prevalence of firearms reduces homicide and suicide rates. Gun control works and we need lots more of it.