{"id":96298,"date":"2023-09-25T17:09:58","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T22:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=96298"},"modified":"2023-09-25T17:10:15","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T22:10:15","slug":"96298","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=96298","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Judge Benitez destroys the 2.2 rounds per DGU lie once and for all<\/a><\/p>\n

Over two years ago, I read through some court filings in\u00a0Duncan v. Bonta,<\/i>\u00a0the lawsuit against California\u2019s \u201clarge capacity\u201d magazine ban. I was left scratching my head at a claim from the State of California in support of their magazine ban, that the average Defensive Gun Use (DGU) incident involves discharging only 2.2 rounds. The more I looked into it, the more obvious it became that this was unsubstantiated.<\/p>\n

Since then,\u00a0Duncan v. Bonta<\/i>\u00a0made a trip to the Supreme Court, got GVR\u2019d after\u00a0NYSRPA v. Bruen,<\/i>\u00a0and sent back down the judicial hierarchy to the US District Court for the Southern District of California. The district court published its decision last Friday, in which Judge Roger Benitez completely took apart the 2.2 rounds per DGU canard (PDF pages 26-33<\/a>):<\/p>\n

C. The Invention of the 2.2 Shot Average<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026the State\u2019s statistic is suspect. California relies entirely on the opinion of its statistician for the hypothesis that defenders fire an average of only 2.2 shots in cases of confrontation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where does the 2.2 shot average originate? There is no national or state government data report on shots fired in self-defense events. There is no public government database. One would expect to see investigatory police reports as the most likely source to accurately capture data on shots fired or number of shell casings found, although not every use of a gun in self-defense is reported to the police. As between the two sides, while in the better position to collect and produce such reports, the State\u2019s Attorney General has not provided a single police report to the Court\u00a0or to his own expert<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Without investigatory reports, the State\u2019s expert turns to anecdotal statements, often from bystanders, reported in news media, and selectively studied. She indicates she conducted two studies. Based on these two studies of newspaper stories, she opines that it is statistically rare for a person to fire more than 10 rounds in self-defense and that only 2.2 shots are fired on average. Unfortunately, her opinion lacks classic indicia of\u00a0reliability and her two studies cannot be reproduced and are not peer-reviewed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cReliability and validity are two aspects of accuracy in measurement. In statistics,\u00a0reliability refers to reproducibility of results.\u201d Her studies cannot be tested because she has not disclosed her data. Her studies have not been replicated. In fact, the formula\u00a0used to select 200 news stories for the Factiva study is incomprehensible. [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n

For one study, Allen says she conducted a search of stories published in the NRA Institute for Legislative Action magazine (known as the Armed Citizen Database) between 2011 and 2017. There is no explanation for the choice to use 2011 for the beginning. After all, the collection of news stories goes back to 1958. Elsewhere in her declaration she studies mass shooting events but for that chooses a much longer time period reaching back to 1982. Likewise, there is no explanation for not updating the study after 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

[\u2026] details are completely absent. Allen does not list the 736 stories.\u00a0Nor does she reveal how she assigned the number of shots fired in self-defense when the news accounts use phrases like \u201cthe intruder was shot\u201d but no number of shots was reported, or \u201cthere was an exchange of gunfire,\u201d or \u201cmultiple rounds were fired.\u201d<\/b>\u00a0She includes in her 2.2 average of defensive shots fired, incidents where no shots were fired. [\u2026] She does not reveal the imputed number substitute value that she used where the exact number of shots fired was not specified, so her result cannot be reproduced. [\u2026] For example, this Court randomly selected two pages from Allen\u2019s mass shooting table: pages 10 and 14. From looking at these two pages (assuming that the sources for the reports were accurate and unbiased) the Court is able to make statistical observations, including the observation that\u00a0the number of shots fired were unknown 69.04% of the time.<\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The foundation of the claim was not real data but \u201canecdata,\u201d which don\u2019t cover nearly as many incidents as actual police reports do. (Not every incident is reported, so even police data is incomplete.)<\/p>\n

Second, the sampled news reports were randomly selected. It isn\u2019t clear if there were any process safeguards to prevent cherry picking, and there is no transparency about the included incidents.<\/p>\n

Third, the selected timeframes look arbitrary.<\/p>\n

Fourth, as Judge Benitez points out, including zero-shot incidents will obviously bring the average down, so it\u2019s questionable.<\/p>\n

The most devastating critique is that the expert assigned\u00a0an arbitrary number<\/em>\u00a0of shots fired when news stories didn\u2019t include that crucial detail.<\/p>\n

The Court is aware of its obligation to act as a gatekeeper to keep out\u00a0junk science<\/strong>\u00a0where it does not meet the reliability standard of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. [\u2026] while questionable expert testimony was admitted, it has now been weighed in light of all of the evidence.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Using interest-balancing, the en banc 9th Circuit shamelessly rubber-stamped California\u2019s infringement using this pathetic junk science. It\u2019s gratifying to see interest-balancing tossed into the garbage alongside this junk science under the new\u00a0Bruen<\/i>\u00a0standard.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judge Benitez destroys the 2.2 rounds per DGU lie once and for all Over two years ago, I read through some court filings in\u00a0Duncan v. Bonta,\u00a0the lawsuit against California\u2019s \u201clarge capacity\u201d magazine ban. I was left scratching my head at a claim from the State of California in support of their magazine ban, that the … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,50,8,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-goobermint","category-rkba","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96299,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96298\/revisions\/96299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}