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Violent Crime and the Victim’s Marital Status

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) keeps track of the victim’s marital status. There are several possible values for it:

  • Never married
  • Married
  • Widowed
  • Divorced
  • Separated

These are mostly self-explanatory. However, an essential point is that “Never married” does not mean single. Another critical item is that this value has no relationship to the offender. It simply is the victim’s marital status. As an example, a victim’s marital status of married doesn’t mean the offender was their spouse.

“Never Married” has a few of correlations:

  • Violent crime offenders are often young males. They often assault young males or young females.
  • Youth correlates with not being married.
  • Youth correlates with the willingness to take risks.

One item that the NCVS does not record is whether the victim had a child (or children) under the age of 18 when the crime was committed. If the victim were a woman, it would also help to know if she was pregnant. When combined with the marital status of “Never Married,” this data would allow us to understand single-parent crime victims and their circumstances. Why is that important?

Single parenthood has dramatically increased since the 1960s. Many single women parents have dropped out of high school or college. These women are often in financial difficulties, and there are various government programs to help them. If the woman does meet a person they want to marry, these programs may end when the marriage is finalized. A couple will earn less than they did as a girlfriend and boyfriend. Realizing this situation, a couple may choose not to get married for financial reasons.

Sadly, couples who don’t need government help have picked up on this situation. Some unmarried couples raising children exploit government benefits by staying single. For instance, a woman may rent a place from her boyfriend’s parents or friends, file as a single mother, take advantage of all the government programs, and get to live with her boyfriend. The boyfriend files as single and says he lives with his parents. Their resources are distributed among family members to hide income and perpetuate government benefits. Unless government workers actually visit homes and engage in surveillance of the beneficiaries, this fraud will go undetected. Not even in anonymous surveys will these people admit to what they are doing. In short, we can say:

  • There can be relationship complexity for Never Married couples.
  • There can be relationship complexity for Never Married women with a child or children.

Considering these five things, perhaps it does make sense that “Never Married” is the most common marital status among violent crime victims. However, one thing that bothers me is that if you ask people about a domestic violence situation, many people will answer that the victim’s marital status will be “Married.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should run out and get married to prevent being a victim of violent crime. However, what it does mean is that if you are ready to get married and your instincts tell you that you are with the right person, you shouldn’t hesitate because you are worried about violent crime (e.g., domestic violence). Any given domestic situation will likely be more complex without the legal protections of marriage. After all, in the old days, couples would consider murdering their spouse before considering divorce! That doesn’t help much around violent crime, but it speaks to the commitment many people felt about marriage!

Obviously, things change. You may find your marriage is wrong and need to get out of it. What do the violent crime statistics say about divorce? Well, another shocker is that violent crime from divorced couples is even lower than from married couples. Here are the actual statistics from 1993 to 2021 from the NCVS (95 percent confidence intervals are in parenthesis):

  • Aggravated Assault, Victim Not Injured (men primarily the victim sex, public places common, offenders are more often strangers. i.e., more likely to be things like road rage)
    • Never Married: 50.62% (48.50-52.74)
    • Married: 29.86% (27.59-32.13)
    • Divorced: 12.43% (11.23-13.63)
  • Aggravated Assault, Victim Injured (men/women about equal for victim sex, the location of a home is common, offender more likely to be someone the victim knows. i.e., more likely to be domestic violence)
    • Never Married: 57.17% (54.02-60.33)
    • Married: 18.47% (15.89-21.06)
    • Divorced: 13.19% (11.05-15.34)

Perhaps it is time to think about our perceptions of domestic violence and the victim’s marital status. They may be leading us away from reality.

The Intentional Measurement Swindle

This post has a long introduction – please be patient. After the introduction, I’ll show how it relates to gun rights and self-defense. However, you need to understand the methodology detailed in the introduction.

Introduction

I have a technology background. The term “balloon effect” is used when a fix is made to a complex system, resulting in another problem popping up in a different part of the system. Here, the balloon represents any problem, not just the original one. Hence, you push down on the balloon in one area (i.e., fixing a problem), and the balloon expands into another (i.e., creating a new issue).

Unlike a balloon, this relationship can be complicated to track. You attempt to address an issue and seemingly do so. Then, it turns into a completely different issue, whose connection to the original issue and fix is not apparent. For example, many software fixes are checked in a development cycle. When another problem emerges, it may not be clear which fix caused it. Furthermore, if new code is still being added, this code could have defects that cause problems in other parts of the system. In short, it becomes messy to try and find out what caused this new issue.

The number of defects a software product has is a typical measure of its quality. Software companies have a testing or quality assurance organization responsible for finding and reporting defects. Testing occurs at almost every step of the software development process. Often, the number of outstanding defects is a criterion for releasing a software product to customers. This measurement can be manipulated. For example, imagine if there was tremendous company pressure to release a software product to customers. The CEO calls the test manager in and tells the test manager to quit testing the product or be fired. The test manager complies. The number of reported defects drops because no one is testing, and the product can ship without reported outstanding defects. This behavior, of course, is unethical. It also shows how the measurement process can be gamed.

What keeps this situation from happening all the time? The “problem” with our defect example is that ethical people raise hell because what is going on is obvious. Employees who care about the quality of the product may resign or take another job elsewhere. Customers who receive a buggy product complain, and the customer support group takes issue with the process.

Unfortunately, there is another unethical method of getting your way. It keeps measuring the same thing, just like our defect example, but pushes the actual costs to the unmeasurable, and, significantly, it is not apparent at all. I call this the Intentional Measurement Swindle.

To illustrate this better, let’s move to another example. In technology companies, it is common to hire “cost-cutter” types to come in and help streamline the company. One of the most common things was centralizing departments or organizations to save money. Consider the Information Technology (IT) department of a company. The IT department typically handles employee computer, network, and access problems (and many other things). Here is what I’ve seen happen:

  • The “cost-cutter” comes in and adds up the costs of having decentralized IT departments. Often, the company has a local IT department at every reasonably sized site. For instance, there is a site in Denver with its IT department, one in Dallas with its own, and so forth.
  • The “cost-cutter” tells the company that the IT department needs to centralize to save money.
  • The “cost-cutter” then implements an IT self-help process and online documentation that the employees must follow if they have trouble with their computer, password, or whatever. Since most online help and documentation are outsourced, only a few people are on the centralized IT budget.
  • The “cost-cutter” then shows the budget of the new centralized IT department and compares it to the previous budget of the decentralized IT departments. It is much less.
  • The “cost-cutter” gets a large pay bonus.

This process seems reasonable. The “cost-cutter” took an easily measured activity and made it the evaluation metric. A higher number meant failure, and a lower number suggested success. Again, this seems reasonable. However, what happened is that the actual costs were pushed out to something hard to measure and unobvious. What is it that is hard to measure? In the centralized IT model with the self-help center, the IT work is pushed out to all company employees! Some of these employees may be high-salaried employees. Now, you have a software architect making six figures a year and spending hours going through self-help trying to fix their laptop. In the decentralized model, an IT person would fix the computer for the software architect. In sum, the decentralized IT department allowed the software architect to do other things – like go to unproductive meetings (almost kidding).

Tracking the time each employee spends on their job, down to the hour level, is difficult. If you tried to track it to that detail, each employee would have to spend an hour a week just reporting how they spent the other hours of the week—hardly an efficient strategy. The unethical “cost-cutter” uses this fact to hide the actual costs of the new implementation. What needs to be noticed is that the company’s employees have differing job responsibilities between the two models. The more responsibility an employee has that doesn’t relate to their job (IT work), the less efficient they are at the job they were hired for (e.g., software architecture).

I’ve used the IT department as an example, but trust me, an unethical “cost-cutter” can size up almost any “improvements” on this basis. They are thinking: “How can I implement a change that is easily measured for my benefit yet push out the actual costs to areas that are almost impossible to measure and so granularly distributed that those costs are not obvious?”

I refer to this process as the Intentional Measurement Swindle.

Firearm Rights and Self-Defense

In a previous post on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I talked about how I found it odd that the CDC didn’t seem to have any partnerships with the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), or the National Firearm Survey (NFS). I also pointed out in another post that the CDC does not seem to be involved with the National Shooting Sports Foundation and its work on suicide prevention. Given the CDC’s stance on its “Fast Facts: Firearm Violence and Injury Prevention” page and declaring firearm violence a public health issue, these lapses seem pretty odd.

Other things seem odd as well:

  • On their Fast Facts page, the CDC divorces intent from firearm deaths. Suicides, murder, justified homicides, and criminals killing other criminals are all lumped together. They use this information, along with much lower-quality information on firearm injuries, to justify declaring that firearm violence is a public health problem.
  • If you read my book, you know that 98 percent of all violent crime is aggravated assault, robbery, and rape. Here is a Fast Fact that the CDC doesn’t mention: If you are injured in one of those crimes, firearms are rarely used.
  • The CDC no longer publishes defensive gun use statistics.

In declaring firearm violence to be a public health issue, the CDC is hoping to get new powers. These powers could very well lead to things like restrictions on firearms, federal lawsuits to put gun manufacturers out of business (in the name of public health!), and so forth. Let’s assume that severe firearms restrictions are passed in the name of public health. The next question would be: Are these restrictions successful? To determine that, you have to measure.

Currently, the CDC’s gold standard of measurement is the number of firearm deaths per day. What would happen if these severe firearm restrictions were reasonably successful? Well, the number of firearm deaths per day would go down. If it does, it seems like a success! But wait, there’s more…

  • The number of defensive gun uses would also go down. Around 82 percent of the time, the firearm is not discharged in defensive gun uses. This fact implies that the offenders weren’t armed with firearms, or there would likely be a shoot-out. We also know from my book that 98 percent of violent crime is aggravated assault, robbery, and rape. When the victim is injured in these crimes, the offender rarely uses firearms. Because there are an estimated 1.67 million defensive gun uses a year, there would be a dramatic uptick in non-firearm violent crime injuries if potential victims were not able to secure a firearm to defend themselves.
  • The number of suicides by firearm would likely decrease. However, we know from my book that 50 percent of the time, suicide victims don’t use a gun. Assuming that a suicidal individual couldn’t access a firearm due to these restrictions, there is a good chance that they would find another means to take their life. Thus, I suspect that the number of suicides would remain the same even though the number of suicides by firearm would decrease.

In short, severe firearm restrictions might lead to fewer firearm deaths per day, but actual suicides would be about the same, and there would be a dramatic uptick in non-firearm violent victimizations. These effects would not be detected by simply looking at firearm deaths per day. Thus, the CDC could claim success if its only measurement was firearm deaths per day.

This process is no different than what happened during alcohol Prohibition. If your only measure of success is the amount of alcohol consumed each day, then Prohibition was wildly successful. The reason Prohibition wasn’t successful was the significant amount of violent crime that increased due to it. This violent crime uptick was primarily carried out by gangsters who were intent on buying, selling, and distributing illegal alcohol. Fortunately, these violent crimes were well reported, and the nation’s citizens were informed of them. Hence, one of the reasons Prohibition was repealed was to take the money out of the illegal alcohol trade and reduce gangster violence.

Non-firearm violent crime victimization, I would wager, would not have the same impact as it would be finely granulated across all the residents of the country. Today, murder dominates the headlines, yet it is less than two percent of all violent crimes. I doubt very seriously that dangerous, violent crimes that don’t involve death and firearms will get any media attention. After all, it doesn’t today.

In short, the CDC is set up for an Intentional Measurement Swindle.

Preventative Medical Scans

As a follow-up to my last post on fact boxes….

A recent article in the New Yorker on Full Body MRI Scans shows some of the complexities with too much information. Here is a quote, but I urge you to read the article in its entirety.

There were no visible problems in my lungs, liver, pancreas, or brain, the nurse said. My sinuses were a little swollen, probably from allergies. There was, however, a solitary spot on my prostate. Lesions are graded on a scale from one to five, she explained, based on their likelihood of being cancerous. “Your score is a three, smack dab in the middle,” she said.

[…]

Doctors have a word for accidental findings that produce more questions than answers: incidentaloma. I knew that I probably didn’t have prostate cancer, and that most prostate cancers don’t prove deadly. But I also knew that, because it is so common, it ranks as the second leading cause of death from cancer among men.

A few days later, I sheepishly informed my primary-care doctor that I’d had a full-body MRI. She graciously ordered a blood test; a urologist recommended a dedicated prostate MRI, and, if the results weren’t too alarming, regular follow-ups after that. The immediate cascade would probably cost several thousand dollars, split between me and my insurance. I thought about the other ways in which the money could be spent: months of insulin for diabetic patients; scores of inhalers for asthmatic children; colonoscopies that are proven to find cancer and save lives. When I told Davenport, the radiologist, he shook his head and face-palmed. “Prenuvo probably views your story as a success—I view your story as a tragedy,” he said. “They’ve created in your mind this uncertainty. You were a healthy person, and now you’ve become a patient.”

https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-medicine/will-a-full-body-mri-scan-help-you-or-hurt-you

Self-defense: Strategy, Context, and Tactics

In my book, I used the “fact box” to discuss the benefits and harms of concealed carry. The fact box was created by the Harding Center for Risk Literacy. I first read about them in the book Risk Savvy by Gerd Gigerenzer. They were developed to help people determine the risk of specific health tests, like early detection tests for cancer. I recommend you read all the books by Gerd Gigerenzer.

What could be wrong with early-detection cancer tests, such as mammograms? This could be explained in two words: False Positives. For example, assume you are diagnosed with cancer, but it is a non-progressive kind. It won’t kill you until you are 136 years old, long after your life expectancy. Unfortunately, many hospitals will treat this non-progressive cancer as though it were progressive. As many of you are aware, cancer treatment can be a horrible thing to go through. One should be sure that it is necessary.

The benefits of such early detection scans must outweigh the potential harms of false positives. For mammograms, the benefit is one out of every thousand women compared to women who do not get a mammogram. This is a small number. Furthermore, early detection scans promise more years of life for the patient. This extra life is a testable hypothesis. It turns out the same number of deaths occur over eleven years between early scan patients and those that do not get scanned. This is not a ringing endorsement, even for an early detection test as popular as mammograms.

The fact box is also an excellent idea for self-defense methods. Each self-defense method has benefits and harms. As long as we do good research on populating the fact box, it becomes an essential strategy for evaluating self-defense tactics. However, something important is missing, and that is context. Going back to our health example, a woman with hereditary risks of breast cancer would likely require different early detection processes or treatment options than a woman without those risks.

Context is especially relevant when considering self-defense tactics. Let’s consider an extreme example. Two countries are at war, and you are a spy with critical information that will turn the tide of the war in your country’s favor. You’ve memorized this information and destroyed the paper documents. However, if the enemy captures you, they may torture you and obtain that information. The enemy could easily win the war if they can force you to talk. The self-defense method you choose is to wear an explosive vest with the detonator already pushed in. If you are surprised and knocked unconscious, the vest will still explode, you’ll die, and the secret is safe. If you can make it to your leadership, you can tell them the information and hope they have an excellent bomb expert who can diffuse it before your thumb tires out.

Now, if a normal everyday person with the same violent crime risks as other normal everyday people were to tell you that they wear an explosive vest as their self-defense tactic against violent crime, you would not want to hang out with the guy. If he blows himself up, he’ll take you and anyone else in the vicinity, including the criminal. Worse, he might accidentally blow himself up and anyone else in the area buying groceries or getting fuel. The harms would outweigh the benefits for everyday civilians.

So far, context is about determining your threats and your level of risk. There is another thing to watch out for, which is context-shift. This shift is common in self-defense methods. For example, many self-defense advocates will glean everything they can from tactical law enforcement teams. However, these teams are focused on something other than self-defense. After all, they may be raiding a house or stopping a bank robbery. These are offensive missions. As such, it is often an untested assumption that what is suitable for offensive missions must also be good for self-defense. This assumption may not be valid when comparing S.W.A.T. teams to everyday ordinary civilians.

Another factor in context is the laws of your state. Many laws receive public support because they are “tough on crime.” This often means for drug or gun crimes, there are mandatory prison sentences. Regarding mandatory sentencing laws around guns, there can be a problem. For example, what a concealed carrier thinks is a defensive gun use could end up being an aggravated assault charge. Depending on your state, an aggravated assault with a firearm could result in a mandatory prison sentence if convicted. Because of this extreme penalty, most civilians will want to avoid a jury trial, hoping for a plea bargain. The reason is that if a jury convicts, the judge cannot do anything because of the mandatory sentence law. It is another reason why civilian defensive gun use often goes unreported. If the offender runs away without injury to him or you, why invite further scrutiny, especially if it can land you in prison?

Ultimately, that gets us to tactics. You can choose one or more self-defense tactics based on the fact box and context. I go through a preliminary fact box for concealed carry in my book. However, you can create one for any self-defense method or tactic. Unfortunately, most individuals focus on weapon-specific issues, like ease of concealment, number of rounds, cartridge, and so on. For ordinary civilians, there are some other key questions you should answer as well:

  • Are there any laws restricting the weapon or its capability?
  • Can there be valid business restrictions against the weapon?
  • If you have the weapon on your person, what would be the experience if you were pulled over by law enforcement for a traffic violation?
  • Are there any travel restrictions regarding the weapon?
  • Are there weapon-specific mandatory sentences regarding the use of the weapon?

Remember that ordinary everyday civilians will likely never experience a violent crime. These five basic questions represent what they will need to deal with much more often. For example, making a mistake with a firearm during a traffic stop (e.g., reaching for your wallet and the law enforcement officer sees your gun) could have life-altering ramifications.

Ultimately, a self-defense method should result in either a neutral or positive value for you and your loved ones. Perhaps it saves a life or prevents a criminal victimization. However, it should not have any negative value for you or your family. There should be no increased risk of suicide or horrible accidents. Much like the health fact box looks at several years, your self-defense fact box should as well. The positive or negative value your self-defense method has on your life and the lives of your loved ones is a testable hypothesis.

Memes

I like memes!

For a wide variety of reasons, when I am traveling, I carry a 1911 in condition 3, which means I have to rack the slide to shoot. I’m an ordinary civilian with a normal threat level. I’m mostly concerned to minimize opportunities for negligent discharges and being able to easily separate my magazine/ammo from my gun and put both in secure storage. This way, I’m good legal standing wherever I travel. The bottom line is that ordinary civilians will be stopped by law enforcement more times than they’ll be in a violent crime. Also, they will experience more negligent discharges than violent crimes. It makes sense to make law enforcement stops safer (your magazine in one lock box and your unloaded gun in another) as well as reduce the likelihood of a negligent discharge by a drastic amount.

An obvious downside is that drawing and racking the slide increases your time to shoot by a half a second or so (assuming you practice). Is it critical? It could be. But guess what else is critical: the draw from the concealed carry holster. If you are worried about half a second, you should be open carrying with a holster designed for a quick and smooth draw. The time difference between a concealed carry draw and an open carry draw is far more significant than drawing concealed and drawing concealed plus racking a slide. By choosing to concealed carry rather than open carry, you are, implicitly most of the time, saying the increase in draw time doesn’t matter in order to have the advantages of concealed carry. In other words, the title of this meme could also be: “When you thought you had time to draw from a concealed carry holster.”

Another downside: It requires two hands to rack the slide. This objection is better. Carrying in condition 3, for all practical purposes, does require both hands. I’m okay with this requirement. Others may not be. I’m making an explicit risk management decision. I’m saying I want the advantages of concealed carry and the advantages of safety. I’m deliberately choosing to have the disadvantage of draw time and requiring two hands to gain those advantages.

In my book, I try to make self-defense a risk management decision. Only by being honest about the benefits and harms of self-defense methods can someone properly evaluate them. Also, I try to make self-defense holistic. There are many ways to dramatically decrease your risk of violent crime. These methods are not mutually exclusive to say, carrying a firearm, but can complement them. For example, many states have increased penalties for crimes committed with a firearm. In Arizona, a negligent discharage in a municipality is a felony and you can see prison time if convicted. The law doesn’t care if you are a criminal using a firearm to rob someone or a concealed carrier who has a negligent discharge in a grocery store parking lot. If you don’t feel you can provide for your family in prison, you may want to evalute the benefits and harms of carrying a handgun with a loaded chamber in Arizona.

What works for me may not work for you. I certainly don’t try to convince people that what I do is what they should do. I do try to convince them that they should evaluate their self-defense method holistically and regarding benefits and harms. A person who properly evaluates their self-defense method in such a way is in far better shape than someone who doesn’t.

Memes like this one are funny and have a grain of truth. Let that grain of truth make you think deeply about the choices you make for self-defense.

A Popular Topic

In the March/April 2024 Combat Handguns magazine, we have another article called “What To Say To The Police” by the vetran Massad Ayoob. Ayoob writes great thought provoking articles and his experience provides him great insight.

I’ve written about this topic in the past here and here, so I’ll try and focus on a couple of different aspects. In general, this is a controversial topic that elicits emotional responses. What concealed carriers want to know is what to say. Quoting from the article: “Andrew [Branca] agrees that a brief statement can be helpful, but worries you may not be thinking straight under stress. […] Andrew says getting arrested is the least of concerns; the point is not to spend your life in prison.”

Unfortunately, in a caption to an Armed Citizen article, the following is stated: “Notice how many people in the “Armed Citizen” column aren’t even arrested? Does anyone think that would have been the case if the “didn’t say anything to the police” after shooting someone?”

I feel this caption is very misleading (it is also repeated in the article). The only way to properly understand if the people in the “Armed Citizen” column did the right thing is to create a report where the people and location where protected (i.e., made anonymous), provide a transcript of the discussion with law enforcement, elminate the outcome (e.g., arrested, not arrested, or criminally charged), and provide this report to various criminal defense attorneys. Ask the attorneys if the suspect said too much to law enforcement. If you read my blog post on Annie Duke’s book, you’ll know that making a bad decision and getting a good outcome is still a bad decision. How many of these “Armed Citizen” suspects talked too much with law enforcement in the opinion of criminal defense attorneys?

Also in the article, there is a discussion about Marc Victor and a brief statement. It is stated that both Victor and Ayoob recommend a brief statement if it was a “good shoot.” The following is then stated. “If someone doesn’t know what constitutes a good shoot, why are they carrying a gun?” Again, I find this misleading. It isn’t whether you think it is a good shoot, it is a question of how it is presented to a group of reasonable people and whether they think it is a good shoot. The whole point of saying nothing, giving a brief statement, or spilling your guts to law enforcement is about that.

Lastly, there is this statement in the article: “At the start, let’s be clear that speaking ot the police is good avice only for those who have acted justifiably. It is certainly not the advice that defense lawyers give to their general clientele, who a high percentage of the time are in fact guily of the crime or at least some lesser included offenses.” Unfortunately, I can use this statement to justify not talking to law enforcement. Guess who law enforcement mostly deals with? Guilty people. The more information you give them, the more the confirmation bias kicks in – they started out assuming you were guilty of a crime and everything you say confirms their initial suspicion! Also, what you think is justified versus what reasonable people think is justified could be very different.

The bottom line is that a veteran law enforcement officer will get any ordinary civilian in stressful circumstances (more than likely, their first time in such circumstances) to sing like a canary. Really the only way to get this resolved is to print out something on the back of your lawyer’s card (if you carry a gun, you should have an attorny on retainer) that you can simply repeat over and over to the law enforcment officer. Marc J. Victor has such a card, but whether law enforcement and other criminal defense attorneys agree with what he writes is another matter.

In the end, the back and forth between law enforcement and criminal defense attorneys on this matter should be enough to convince a law-abiding ordinary civilian to seriously evaluate less-than-lethal options for self-defense.

Traffic & Methodology

In my book, I chose to start off with the topic of Perceptions. Violent crime is not as common as property crime or crimes involving drugs and alcohol. We find out about violent crime via the television, social media, or news websites. Due to the Engagement Bias, much of what we “know” about violent crime is not very probable. Hence, the next section in my book is about analyzing our best statistics so our perceptions actually track probable reality.

Are there other topics that could benefit from a similar analysis? I believe there is. In this post, I have a PDF where I investigated are best statistics about vehicle crashes. Prior to reading it, you should think through what your existing perceptions are about vehicle crashes. After reading my report, compare and contrast your original perceptions with what the report says.

Enjoy!

traffic-blog-post-v1.2Download

Complex Problems and the Myth of the Simple Cause

In the Nov/Dec 2023 issue of Tactical Life magazine, there is an article entitled “GUNS or DRUGS?” by Lee Williams. The main thrust at the end of the article is a call to conduct further research on Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of anti-depressants, and links to mass shootings. I certainly have no qualms about the conclusion. However, the article doesn’t do enough justice to the complexity of this problem. In fact, presenting it as a choice between guns or drugs only makes the solution seem simple. I aim to show there isn’t a simple solution.

There is a particular class of problems that have hung around for a long time: violence, drug addiction, suicide, homelessness, and the like. In many cases, people jump on a single cause as the reason for the complex problem. Let’s take a look at violence. There is a class of people who believe that if guns are banned, violence goes away. If you read my book, you can see clearly that for injurious violent crimes (injurious aggravated assault, injurious robbery, and rape), firearms are used infrequently (keep in mind that aggravated assault, robbery, and rape make up 98 percent of violent crimes). Therefore, non-firearm violence would continue even if the policy of banning guns was successful. Furthermore, the latest statistics on Defensive Gun Use (National Firearms Survey 2021) show that they happen an estimated 1.6 million times a year, meaning that 1.6 million violent victimizations were avoided because of the victim being armed with a firearm. Of note is that 82 percent of the time, the firearm is not discharged, which is why surveys are necessary because the crime is not reported to law enforcement (see my book for reasons why). In short, a successful gun ban would dramatically increase violent crime by an estimated 1.6 million incidents per year over our existing violent crime rate while having a lot less impact on existing crime since most injurious violent crime doesn’t use firearms. In short, violence is a complex problem, and if you care about injurious victimization, banning guns is a simple but far worse answer, even if it could be done without sprouting up its own violent black market trade.

Let’s get back to SSRIs and violent crime. What type of study would be needed to determine a causal link? Let’s brainstorm a bit.

  • We would want to look at patients who were diagnosed with depression and prescribed SSRIs. There are many variables here. For one, we may only want to look at psychiatrists who prescribed them rather than non-psychiatrists. Based upon looking around the Internet, the most significant percentage of people prescribed SSRIs are older men and older women, with older women being the top category. Right away, we can see a challenge in that the top two categories of people prescribed SSRIs are not typically violent crime offenders (see my book).
  • We would need at least three groups: Control Group 1: People who have been evaluated and do not need SSRIs. Their age, race, sex, and ethnicity will need to match the test group. Control Group 2: People who have been evaluated and would be prescribed an SSRI but have not been (and will not be during the study). Their age, race, sex, and ethnicity will need to match the test group. This control group may be considered unethical due to being diagnosed and not prescribed. This may be mitigated via other treatment options, such as therapy, depending on if it will compromise the results. Test Group: People who have been evaluated and are prescribed an SSRI.
  • We would evaluate the violent crimes of all three groups over different periods of time.
  • Some Complications
    • SSRIs often have an adjustment period where different medications are tried until one works best for the patient. This time period should be handled separately from the time period when a single SSRI is used.
    • Some age groups, I’m thinking the younger age groups, may stop taking their medications and start back up again. This period of time could be in the adjustment period or after an SSRI is found to work best. Going on and off medication could be problematic.
    • Mixing alcohol and other drugs with SSRIs will need to be taken into account.
    • Some depressions are genetic. A group member whose family relatives have been diagnosed with depression along with violence (e.g., suicide or violent crime) may have to be handled with care in the results.

These are just some of the things that need to be considered. Assuming a well-designed study was performed, what could statistically significant results tell us? Here are some results that are possible:

  • Violent crime victims are more numerous for Control Group 2 than for the Test Group.
  • Violent crime victims are the same for Control Group 2 and the Test Group.

These results would be difficult to act on because they are of the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” variety. Lack of SSRIs could contribute to victimization in depressed individuals just as much as SSRI use may contribute to victimization. In short, there is a lot to unpack in such a study. I agree with the author – a quality study needs to be done. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will happen in the US for various reasons, some of which the author and I concur. Let’s look at these reasons:

BigPharma trades on the distinction between “evidence of absence” and “absence of evidence.” The two are not the same. Not doing studies and showcasing that there is no “evidence” for harm is not a substitute for quality studies whose conclusion is that there is no evidence of harm. In short, as long as such studies are avoided, BigPharma can claim that there is no “evidence” for harm. Unfortunately, most Americans look to their evening news or government websites for information. Independent auditors of studies are needed for any SSRI study.

BigPharma also promotes studies that look at selective dates or evidence to advance their position. These studies are then crushed when a meta-analysis is done, which, unfortunately, happens years later. One can look at the Cochrane review on mask studies, which shows that there is no quality mask study showing masks work. Why is that important? I suspect an extensive correlation between mask use and mRNA vaccination. Fear helps sell. Another particularly horrible problem was the distinction between Vaccinated and Unvaccinated for COVID-19, where Vaccinated meant the two original shots had been completed. Everything else was considered “Unvaccinated.” Recent research from Italy has shown that between the first and second shots, the patient is actually more vulnerable to COVID-19 (this pattern continues with the boosters). What this means is that people who had one shot and got COVID-19 were considered Unvaccinated. It is an excellent way to downplay risks with your product but a horrible way to uphold public health, especially when studies are using your definitions. Some of the considerations I mentioned above could be manipulated to hide problems with SSRIs.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), incentives for hospitals and doctors around prescribing drugs, and BigPharma are not pursuing the good of public health. Personnel from the FDA often land BigPharam jobs. This pattern is typical of regulatory capture by private entities. It is a promise of a bribe after the work is done. This work is not in the public’s interest but in BigPharma’s interest. Also, BigPharma has incentives for doctors and hospitals to prescribe drugs. For example, the vast majority of prescriptions for anti-depressants are not written by psychiatrists. One wonders what the incentives are for a primary care provider (non-psychiatrist) to prescribe antidepressants.

Lastly, NIH funds a lot of scientific research in the US. Scientists must be very watchful about what type of studies they request funding for. If NIH feels that these studies undermine BigPharma, scientists could find their funding dry up, and no new funding for other projects will be approved either. For example, quality studies of mRNA impacts on the body are not being done in the US but in other countries. BigPharma and the NIH have US scientists running scared when it comes to quality studies on the impact of mRNA on the human body. It shouldn’t be a stretch to consider the large market for SSRIs to be protected in similar ways.

For further elaboration of these points, see the books:

  • Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe]
  • The Great American Healthcare Scam by David Belk, MD and Paul Belk, PhD
  • Political Capitalism by Randall G. Holcombe.