Walmart encounter....

[headcase]

Originally Posted by JBurton57

I'm not relying on data reported to the police. I'm questioning the validity of

this study

cited earlier in the thread. This study did not rely on data reported to the police. It generated data by telephone polls, randomly sampled from households in the US with phones. People answered anonymously, with no incentive to give a report.

The study polled around 5,000 people. This web site has about 9000 members. Therefore, the website should at least approximate the findings of the study, assuming that the study is true. If anything, we should find a higher concentration of defensive encounters, because it's quite likely that the members of this website are more likely to be firearms owners (seems reasonable). Therefore, they are more likely to be able to report a defensive encounter compared to the population (who may or may not own a firearm, and therefore be unable to report such an encounter).

However, we find by observing the website that the rate of self-defense encounters is far, far less. On the order of 1/5 the expected defensive encounters have been observed.

To explain this, we must conclude that either:

A) the members of this website have some quality that would skew the observations massively (remember, we're talking about 1/5 the expected defensive encounters observed on this website). This, despite the fact that there have been threads specifically dedicated to determining how many defensive encounters the members have been in (linked earlier, and originally supplied by EmptyMag)

or

B) the study cited is incorrect in its conclusions, possibly through sampling error, bias, or other faults in methodology and/or analysis.

Without compelling evidence for A, then it is reasonable to accept B.

I think you are missing a few very important factors that make your statistical aberration meaningless:

1. Those threads were popular mostly during membership of, from a quarter to three quarters of current numbers. We have had a membership explosion in the last two months of anywhere from 1500 to 3000 members

2. I would guess that only about 1000 members or less, are active posters. There are many members who register and never log in again. There are many who log in once a month, year....

3. If you want to get a better grasp on percentages, look at the amount of views, and try to extrapolate the amount of unique views, then look at the percentage of posts..... you get the idea.

Hopefully, this will allow you to see the actual percentages for what they are.