2 men shot - confrontation at campground

FreeLanceing wrote:
Choose your hours, friends, and location wisely and your chances will greatly improve. Its the bears I worry about, simply because I know nothing about bears.

As the cop on "Alaska State Troopers" said last night, bears are a lot more predictable than people. I meet bears fairly often and only one has ever done anything that surprised me (and scared the******out of me :) ).

FreeLanceing wrote:
Just to back up a bit, make no mistake everything you see on TV is doctored, edited recreated, its not real. Its entertainment. I work in the building industry and those "reality shows" are not real at all. The hosts are actors/actresses and its all scripted.

WRONG, wrong, wrong. The "host are NOT actors/actresses, but are real people that work in the profession being portrayed. Yes, the end result is edited, but the actual footage is real people doing the job they normally do.

Just to back up a bit, make no mistake everything you see on TV is doctored, edited recreated, its not real. Its entertainment. I work in the building industry and those "reality shows" are not real at all. The hosts are actors/actresses and its all scripted. I have not been to Alaska in a long time. I think I would feel safer walking through a campground in Alaska than a street on the SS of Chicago. The police there will openly warn you do not tread. We recently had 2 middle age white men kill each other in a parking lot over a road range incedent. Booze, drugs and guns are everywhere. Choose your hours, friends, and location wisely and your chances will greatly improve. Its the bears I worry about, simply because I know nothing about bears.

Thanks for the link, Francesca. Statistics have always fascinated me and I read the article. I’ve taken statistics classes but I only know enough to be dangerous.:) But I did learn how hard it is to make a truly good study and how easy it is to make a biased or fraudulent one. Thus I view all statistics from any source with a jaundiced eye unless I’ve managed to get some of the hard data to show otherwise. My dad’s retort to someone who threw statistics at him was “figures lie and liars figure”. I never gave him credit for how smart he really was until I learned more about it.

In that WSJ report one group could claim the availability of guns is the core problem. Another might claim the high percentage of Native Americans is, the majority of rape victims are Native American. The disparity between the population of men vs women, the remoteness and scarcity of law enforcement, and so on. The point being that someone with an agenda can come up with a study to support it. Granted, the report isn’t a study, merely statistics. But it’s the sort of thing that generates studies. And we poor peons have to try to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

rfryer wrote:

An incident like that and the perception it's representative of an area, or a group, is a stretch, Francesca.

I wasn't attempting to draw any such conclusion- just mentioned it as another shootout in the same 24hr. period, this time between a Trooper and a citizen.

But since you bring the subject of conclusions up and if you're interested in actual statistics/facts:
Take a gander at this Wall Street Journal report that concludes that when the report was done in 2010 Alaska was second only to Tennessee for most violent State in the U.S.A....this despite very different demographics from those typically associated with such high rates.

Wall Street Journal wrote:

#2. Alaska:
> Violent crime rate per 100,000: 606.5
> Pct. below poverty line: 10.5% (4th lowest)
> Pct. less than high school education: 8.3% (4th lowest)
> Property crime rate per 100,000: 2,632.8 (23rd lowest)

Alaska does not share many characteristics with other violent states. It has the second-highest median household income in the country, as well as the fourth-lowest poverty rate. Nevertheless, Alaska had the nation’s highest rate of aggravated assault by a large margin last year, with more than 464 incidents per 100,000 people. There were also more than 58 reported forcible rapes per 100,000 people in 2011, the second-highest rate for such crimes in the nation, but down from 73.3 reported cases per 100,000 in 2010.

Here's hopin' things have improved since then...

Francesca Knowles wrote:

PA12DRVR wrote:
Alaska State Troopers is edited/reviewed for what gets shown on TV....it is not a complete and accurate representation of a day in the life of a Palmer or Fairbanks trooper nor an MOA police officer

Speaking of actual, real Alaska State Troopers- here's what happened to one outside Anchorage the day before this thread's two idiot subjects opened fire on each other:

News Report wrote:

ANCHORAGE -
Alaska State Troopers have identified the trooper fired on by a man he tried to speak with near Cooper Landing Sunday, before returning fire and taking the man into custody on attempted-murder charges.

A Wednesday dispatch names Trooper Kevin Gill, who has been with AST’s Soldotna Patrol Unit since August, as the trooper involved in the exchange of fire with 30-year-old Timothy J. Lange. No injuries occurred during the incident.

Troopers had received a report Sunday afternoon that a man was standing alongside Mile 55 of the Sterling Highway holding a gun. When Gill arrived at the scene and found Lange at about 2:40 p.m., Lange allegedly opened fire on Gill with a handgun, with Gill using a sidearm to fire back at him.

Link to source

An incident like that and the perception it's representative of an area, or a group, is a stretch, Francesca. I've probably had far more incidents than most people where a gun, or the potential for the use of one has occurred. But it's not representative of where I live or my real life by a long shot.If you look at the crime issue, three things jump out at you. Young males, ghettos/gangs, and drugs. We can't do anything about the males or the ghettos, but we could make life very unpleasant for the "recreational drug users". But the powers that be don't, maybe they're part of the problem rather than the solution. And the person in your post could likely be thrown in with the druggies. :)

PA12DRVR wrote:
Alaska State Troopers is edited/reviewed for what gets shown on TV....it is not a complete and accurate representation of a day in the life of a Palmer or Fairbanks trooper nor an MOA police officer

Speaking of actual, real Alaska State Troopers- here's what happened to one outside Anchorage the day before this thread's two idiot subjects opened fire on each other:

News Report wrote:

ANCHORAGE -
Alaska State Troopers have identified the trooper fired on by a man he tried to speak with near Cooper Landing Sunday, before returning fire and taking the man into custody on attempted-murder charges.

A Wednesday dispatch names Trooper Kevin Gill, who has been with AST’s Soldotna Patrol Unit since August, as the trooper involved in the exchange of fire with 30-year-old Timothy J. Lange. No injuries occurred during the incident.

Troopers had received a report Sunday afternoon that a man was standing alongside Mile 55 of the Sterling Highway holding a gun. When Gill arrived at the scene and found Lange at about 2:40 p.m., Lange allegedly opened fire on Gill with a handgun, with Gill using a sidearm to fire back at him.

Link to source

Alaska State Troopers is edited/reviewed for what gets shown on TV....it is not a complete and accurate representation of a day in the life of a Palmer or Fairbanks trooper nor an MOA police officer ....and much, not all, of what gets shown on TV is filmed after the fact.

I repeat again, from a perspective of having more time and involvement in Alaska than all except 1-2 on this forum, that the shows about Alaska, and the attitudes they engender, are not representative of Alaska.

So, should we assume that "Alaska State Troopers " is not factual ? I don't think it is scripted, do you ?

Seriously, Alaska has a huge alcohol and drug use problem, that is just amplified by the availability of guns.

Jim B.

Toronto.

In Alaska, a state with an estimated 730,000 population, 729,998 of the population didn't shoot at each other.

The attitude of "It's Alaska, what do you expect" is fueled by the bogus shows (such as "Alaska Bush People" and all the other "reality shows") about Alaska. It's unfortunate because the real Alaska is not what is portrayed in the media.