Northern Colorado Gazette

Hudak's Statistics - A question of Truth

by Craig Masters
During Senate Judiciary Committee hearings Monday March 4, Westminster Democrat Senator, Evie Hudak, refuted the testimony of a rape victim by introducing “statistics” that she claimed were truthful. Her statistics, she claimed, were from an organization she named as Colorado Coalition Against Gun Violence. She claimed this organization had “statistics” which indicated that 83 women are killed for every one that successfully defends herself.

The victim, a young woman who was violently raped by an armed stranger, was trained and licensed to carry a concealed weapon. But for the fact that she was obeying the law on the campus where she was attending college, she would have been armed. The criminal who attacked her was armed. He was not obeying the law prohibiting weapons on the campus.

It was after the young woman asked how prohibiting her from being able to better defend herself would make the committee members feel safer that Hudak took offense and quoted her unverifiable statistics from what seems to be a ficticious source.

For those who weren’t able to view the hearings, Hudak responded to the young woman’s very pointed testimony by saying, “I just wanted to say that actually, statistics are not on your side even if you had a gun.” It was then that Hudak refers to a Colorado Coalition Against Gun Violence and makes the claim about the 83 to 1 ratio against survival.

In Hudak’s defense, The Denver Post did uncover a report by the leftist Violence Policy Center which drew some selected statistics from a 1998 FBI report dealing with INTIMATE ACQUAINTANCE crimes. And that report revealed that in cases where one person is murdered by the other “intimate acquaintance,” 83 women are killed for each man killed. The report has no bearing on rape defense whatsoever, and certainly Senator Hudak should have known this before she launched into her rebuttal of the young victim’s testimony.

But Hudak, illustrating how little she was actually paying attention to the reality of gun control facts from credible sources, continued her assault on rape victims by releasing the prepared statement about her response to the victims rhetorical question: “Amid this emotional testimony, my goal was to share research data about the increased danger of having a gun in an assault.”

“Research data” “Assault”

Sadly, the Denver Post accepted that prepared statement as an apology by writing, “The episode made Hudak look like she cared not a whit for a rape victim. We’re glad she at least had the good sense to apologize.”

Clearly Haduk’s example of refusing to understand the meaning or source of her own “research data” illustrates a serious problem in public education. Hadak has been active in the democrat party and education at the state level for some 20 years or more and is currently serving as vice-chair of the Senate Education committee, according to the Colorado Senate majority office website.

During the over twenty years she has been an educator and active democrat party supporter, the quality of education in the U.S. and Colorado has continuously fallen in comparison to other developed countries. For example, recent comparative math scores placed the U.S. at 25th out of 34 countries included in the evaluation, 17th in science and only 14th in reading skills among some 70 countries.

Perhaps a case study of educators would reveal if the poor quality of Senator Hadak to understand even the basic issue of truth and misuse of statistics for propaganda purposes is as widespread as her 86 to 1 ratio. In this study, however, the 86 might those that put party propaganda and union politics above truth and students’ knowledge. Safety, of course, will have to wait.

In one of the President’s recent speeches on gun control he made the point that if even one person is saved it would all be worth it. Applying that to Senator’s Hudak’s 1 in 83 as well, even if she had her statistics right, she is still wrong to condemn the one to the fate of the other 83!

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