Why No One Trusts Experts

It is important when on TV to think before you speak because sometimes what you say can be misconstrued or add to sterotypes that lead others to discount expert opinions. a href=”http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/?p=915″Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell has a post/a and a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDZUSN8_o3Meurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esnowflakesinhell%2Ecom%2F”link to a CNN video /a showing a discussion of risk factors between three experts discussing pregnant women killed by boyfriends. One of the risk factors is men who own guns, says the commentator and asksa href=”http://patbrownprofiling.blogspot.com/” criminal profiler Pat Brown /ato comment. “Psychopaths are fascinated by weaponry ….If you are hooking up with a guy with a big gun collection or those big ninja knives it’s a big red flag, he’s not doing yoga….if he loses it with you or in his life–he may eliminate you.” A poor choice of words. br /br /It implies that men who own guns may be psychopaths who will kill you. That’s silly, and I hope that Ms. Brown did not mean to say this–it is false. Psychopaths are very rare anyway, and gun owners are common. The fact is that the majority of emlegal/em gun owners in this country are found to be more law abiding–not less. The a href=”http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/urdel.pdf”Department of Justice /adid a study and found that a href=”http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=563″”Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency /aand drug use (than boys who own illegal guns) and are even slightly less delinquent than non-owners of guns.” Ms. Brown would probably be careful to avoid smearing an entire racial group with charges of criminality, and I hope that next time she’ll be careful to avoid similar statements about gun owners.br /br /And by the way, a href=”http://www.saysuncle.com/archives/2007/06/26/ask_dr_helen”Say Uncle, in response to your question, am I psycho? /a Not for being a gunowner but that’s about all I can vouch for at the moment.br /br /strongUpdate:/strong Criminal Profiler Pat Brown responds in the comments:br /br /blockquoteWasn’t it just a few months ago when I got wailed on by the left during the Virginia Tech massacre for suggesting kids should carry guns to school to protect themselves? Sometime during the many interviews I did that week I said something to the effect that if we allowed concealed carry on campuses maybe someone would have taken Cho out. I am a big fan of concealed carry because I know criminals carry concealed weapons all the time and I would like to even the field with some honest citizens carrying a few themselves so criminals don’t think no one will shoot back. I think of how many lives would be saved if only someone in the school or company could defend against mass murderers instead of allowing these killers from mowing down a bunch of sitting ducks who are desperately try to hide behind furniture to save their lives.br /br /Now, after doing interviews on the Jesse Davis murder, those from the right are taking one statement out of context and going nuts about it. It seems they think that I believe any man who owns a gun is a danger to women. If I thought that, I guess I would be talking about my own father and my own son. They have guns for personal protection. For that matter, my daughter has guns for personal protection and I also own firearms for personal protection. I am all for gun ownership for personal protection. Clearly, I was not saying a man with a gun is a psychopath.br /br /Nor was I saying a man who might have a collection of guns is a psychopath. I know many of these men as well. They are hunters or lovers of antiques or do a lot of target shooting. What I was talking about during the Paula Zahn Show was the combination of psychopathic behavior and an obsession with weaponry as psychopath love weapons as it gives them a feeling of power and control. Psychopaths do indeed have a fascination with guns and knives and just because the rest of us might happen to own weapons or even have a number of them as a hobby doesn’t eliminate the fact that psychopaths may also be shopping at the gun store with us.br /br /Women must learn to differentiate between psychological healthy men and unpsychologically healthy men if they want to keep from getting into a dangerous life threatening situation. No one trait will be proof that an individual is a psychopath but add a bunch of traits together and this is a warning. A kind, honorable, honest man with a gun collection is not a psychopath or a danger to anyone but a lying, manipulative, arrogant creep who has a cache of twenty weapons is someone a woman wants to get the hell away from. A man who teaches history at the local junior high school and happens to have a collection of Asian swords is not someone a woman should be frightened of but a man who obsessively watches ninja flicks, brags about how he used to be in the CIA, can’t keep a job, calls women sluts and whores, and owns a huge collection of swords and daggers, now there is a guy a woman wants should avoid like the plague.br /br /Anyone who watched the actual Paula Zahn Show and paid attention to the whole conversation and intent would clearly know I was not labeling gun owners psychopaths. Unfortunately, when words are taken out of context and printed on the Internet, often the meaning of those words get misunderstood. I apologize to any gun owners (who aren’t psychopaths) who thought they were the target of my statements. I respect your constitutional rights to own firearms and would never want to see those taken away. I, like you, want to be sure I can protect myself and my family. I wouldn’t want it any other way.br /br /Criminal Profiler Pat Brown/blockquote