Sunday, November 27, 2011

"Are You Prepared? " OBRwG Flyer

Here's the official handout from OBRWG, in its entirety:
[Click to enlarge]
The paleface-in-a-ski-mask is probably a meme from the original Indianapolis Crimewatch logo, which featured a simplified drawing of an armed generic badguy in a similar pose and ski mask.

Then there are Indiana crime stats (sobering, but I have not double-checked them see below; time-between-crimes doesn't seem to square with the listed crime stats for last year if you do the arithmetic. Update: I had quick-checked on the only one that was wrong, see Karrde in Comments and footnote here).* The rest of the page covers how to get a License To Carry Handgun, advises the reader to get firearms training and lists several links.

I checked out all the websites listed. The first is a gun store in Shelbyville; looks like a nice place. The second, an online firearms forum. The third is a group supporting handgun carry rights. Fairly mainstream stuff.

One thing I haven't mentioned is that this kind of activity isn't easy for me. I'm terribly shy and don't speak very loudly; when Tam writes that I threw myself into it, it's because that the only way I can do it: take a deep breath, smile and start saying, "Hi! Here's information about self defense! Have a great night!" It's either that or nothing and I care too much about keeping Broad Ripple safe to stay home.
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* Indiana crime per year, raw numbers and rate here. 2010 raw numbers match the flyer. In.gov time-between-crime numbers here and most are a near match to the flyer numbers with one exception: in.gov lists one robbery every 83.7 minutes and one burglary every 12.8 minutes, the difference being (more or less: I Am Not A Lawyer!) burglary happens when nobody's there (a property crime), robbery involves personal contact and at least threat of force (a violent crime).
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8 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 27, 2011 at 9:45 AM

    It takes a lot of courage to get out and do this, Roberta...Cheers to you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tango JulietNovember 27, 2011 at 10:01 AM

    Way to go Bobbi! I can't think of a better spokesperson.

    ReplyDelete
  3. karrdeNovember 27, 2011 at 10:21 AM

    Congratulations!

    Perhaps I should get in touch with the local Open Carry group, and see if any of them would like to do something like this.

    Re: the numbers.

    I notice that the counts of crimes are in Indiana, and the per-minutes are...not labeled.

    When I turn the events-per-year into events-per-minute, I get small fractions. I can take the inverse of these fractions to get minutes-between-events. The results for minutes-between-rape and minutes-between-violent-crime are within a rounding error of the numbers given on the flier.

    But the robbery number given produces one robbery about every 85 minutes.

    (Sanity check: the number of robberies is more than 25% the number of violent crimes, but less than 33%. Thus, the occurs-every-so-many-minutes number for robbery should be between 3 and 4 times higher the number for violent crime. The number on the flier is much too small for minutes-between-robbery, and the value I got is in the right range.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Roberta XNovember 27, 2011 at 10:26 AM

    Karrde: Thank you! You've done better than me -- I had to go get both sets of numbers from other sources. Looks like the used the burglary numbers for the robbery figure; it happens, most people don't know which is which.

    ReplyDelete
  5. karrdeNovember 27, 2011 at 10:31 AM

    Good catch on the difference between robbery and burglary.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Bubblehead Les.November 27, 2011 at 11:47 AM

    : )

    ReplyDelete
  7. The JackNovember 27, 2011 at 12:18 PM

    Good on yah!

    Informing people is the first step. I think that flyer struck the right tone as a lot of people don't even know what the laws are.

    And good to hear that you Constable Visit'ed them up. Hope you're feeling all right after throwing yourself before the train.

    ReplyDelete
  8. JeffroNovember 27, 2011 at 2:34 PM

    It's not easy doing what you did, so you are to be commended for going against your natural inclinations. Even though your contribution was Indy specific, I cannot help but think this is another ripple in a long line of waves that affect us all.

    Thank you.

    ReplyDelete

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