Idaho toddler shoots mother dead in Walmart store.

[Brain357]

Looking at different studies...This post shows why the NCVS is flawed and not likely to get good results......

There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually. Why the huge discrepancy between this survey and fourteen others?

How Often Are Firearms Used in Self-Defense

QUOTE:

Dr. Kleck's Answer

Why is the NCVS an unacceptable estimate of annual DGU's? Dr. Kleck states, "Equally important, those who take the NCVS-based estimates seriously have consistently ignored the most pronounced limitations of the NCVS for estimating DGU frequency.

The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge.

Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.

In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."




"It is not hard for gun-using victims interviewed in the NCVS to withhold information about their use of a gun, especially since they are never directly asked whether they used a gun for self-protection.

They are asked only general questions about whether they did anything to protect themselves. In short, respondents are merely give the opportunity to volunteer the information that they have used a gun defensively. All it takes for a respondents to conceal a DGU is to simply refrain from mentioning it, i.e., to leave it out of what may be an otherwise accurate and complete account of the crime incident."


"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively.


Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

Kleck concludes his criticism of the NCVS saying it "was not designed to estimate how often people resist crime using a gun. It was designed primarily to estimate national victimization levels; it incidentally happens to include a few self-protection questions which include response categories covering resistance with a gun.

Its survey instrument has been carefully refined and evaluated over the years to do as good a job as possible in getting people to report illegal things which other people have done to them. This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done.

Therefore, it is neither surprising, nor a reflection on the survey's designers, to note that the NCVS is singularly ill-suited for estimating the prevalence or incidence of DGU. It is not credible to regard this survey as an acceptable basis for establishing, in even the roughest way, how often Americans use guns for self-protection."

This is interesting:
"This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done."

Illegal things? Does he count something that was illegal as a DGU?

No, but if you are in any doubt that what you did was legal then why would you confess to doing it if you didn't have to? Or for example....there have been 3 recent shootings in bars...in two cases the victim who shot back disappeared before the police arrived...why? Because it was illegal to have a gun in the bar...in the other one, it was a cop bar...and the cop shot the criminal, but being a cop he wasn't breaking the law...or he may have been to....

this is a point that Kleck makes about the NCVS....in relation to your question....

The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge.

Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.

In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively.

Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

So, if they are outside of their home and used the gun to scare off a criminal.....they could be facing a brandishing charge....and lose their ability to carry the gun in the future....and if no one was shot, and no shots were fired....why would they admit to it to a badge carrying government agent....?

Who wants to take the risk that a viable self defense action becomes a reason to have to get a lawyer to explain that action....especially nothing happened beyond scaring off the criminal....?

This seems far more likely:
Hemenway noted that respondents may also have a distorted view of “self-defense”—e.g., mistakenly thinking they are legally defending themselves when they draw a gun during a minor altercation. As the Harvard researcher and his co-authors in another study pointed out (Injury Prevention, 12/00): “Guns are used to threaten and intimidate far more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported self-defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society.”

And based on the Kleck statement he is aware that many defenses are illegal. So maybe what we have are 2.5 million criminals defending themselves against other criminals?

 

[Brain357]

Vandal...you are being dihiponest, or you need to re read what you posted....you said that people who carry are doing it in fear and terror, and brought up Starbucks....people who carry daily don't do so in fear and terror, they simply understand that as remote as the possibility is that they may be attacked by a criminal....that reality actually does exist...and on the off chance that it does, they will have a gun to deal with it.....there is no fear or terror involved...it is about the same emotional level as checking your tires,for proper inflation.....before you leave the driveway....

carrying a loaded gun in a crowded store is like CHECKING YOUR TIRE PRESSURE BEFORE DRIVING TO THE STORE? So, a person who routinely checks his tire pressure before driving his car, and routinely packs heat before going to the store would also routinely pack heat before going to church, his daughter's piano recital, and a PTA meeting, right?

Bill, I never figured you to have a sense of humor, until now.....

Okay Vandal......packing heat before going to church....dumb idea....right....? You posted that, remember....?

So, a person who routinely checks his tire pressure before driving his car, and routinely packs heat before going to the store would also routinely pack heat before going to church,

So, as I said in a post responding to this....you never know when you will find yourself in a bad situation....the victims of these attacks do not wake up in the morning knowing that that day is the day they will need their weapon to defend themselves.....even going to church......right Vandal?

Pastor Shoots Stops Attempted Murderer In Florida Church - Bearing Arms

A maintenance worker at a Florida church pulled a weapon and began shooting at the members of the church committee that was convened to terminate him, forcing the pastor of the church to pull his own weapon and return fire, wounding the attacker in what authorities consider a clear case of self-defense:

Deputies said an Osceola County church employee has been charged after he opened fire on a pastor, who then pulled out his own gun and shot the employee.

The exchange of gunfire happened at the Living Water Fellowship Church on Pleasant Hill Road around 8 a.m.

According to investigators, a meeting was taking place to terminate the employment of maintenance worker Benjamin Parangan, Jr. Deputies said Parangan, 47, pulled out a gun and fired several shots at Pastor Terry Howell.

Howell was not injured, but he returned fire with his own gun, striking Parangan. Parangan was taken to Osceola Regional Medical Center, where he is in stable condition.

Parangan has been charged with aggravated assault with intent to kill and will be taken to jail once he is released from the hospital. It is also worth noting that Living Water has a child care program on site, and that by accurately shooting Parangan and keeping him from firing any more shots, Pastor Howell reduced the threat to children and child care providers on site.

Protestant, Catholic and Jewish faiths all recognize that murder (unlawful killing of the innocent and the just) is to be avoided, but all recognize a right to both individual self-defense, defense of others, and defense of cultures and societies (“jus bellum iustum,” or just war theory).

Historically speaking, churches and other religious institutions have often been the targets of common criminals and mass killers both worldwide and in the United States, as have been their pastoral staff. Different denominations have differing views on firearms, and these policies can vary down to individual parishes or congregations.

So Vandal.....a little preparation, without fear or terror.....saved lives.....right?

The woman in this thread thought she was taking a little preparation. Didn't work out so well. Guns aren't for everybody.

 

[Brain357]

What is the Kleck response to this?
Hemenway put together facts from the well-regarded NCVS—that someone was known to be home in just 22 percent of burglaries (1.3 million), and that fewer than half of U.S. households have firearms—and pointed out that Kleck “asks us to believe that burglary victims in gun-owning households use their guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time.”

 

[Brain357]

Looking at different studies...This post shows why the NCVS is flawed and not likely to get good results......

There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually. Why the huge discrepancy between this survey and fourteen others?

How Often Are Firearms Used in Self-Defense

QUOTE:

Dr. Kleck's Answer

Why is the NCVS an unacceptable estimate of annual DGU's? Dr. Kleck states, "Equally important, those who take the NCVS-based estimates seriously have consistently ignored the most pronounced limitations of the NCVS for estimating DGU frequency.

The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge.

Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.

In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."




"It is not hard for gun-using victims interviewed in the NCVS to withhold information about their use of a gun, especially since they are never directly asked whether they used a gun for self-protection.

They are asked only general questions about whether they did anything to protect themselves. In short, respondents are merely give the opportunity to volunteer the information that they have used a gun defensively. All it takes for a respondents to conceal a DGU is to simply refrain from mentioning it, i.e., to leave it out of what may be an otherwise accurate and complete account of the crime incident."


"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively.


Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

Kleck concludes his criticism of the NCVS saying it "was not designed to estimate how often people resist crime using a gun. It was designed primarily to estimate national victimization levels; it incidentally happens to include a few self-protection questions which include response categories covering resistance with a gun.

Its survey instrument has been carefully refined and evaluated over the years to do as good a job as possible in getting people to report illegal things which other people have done to them. This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done.

Therefore, it is neither surprising, nor a reflection on the survey's designers, to note that the NCVS is singularly ill-suited for estimating the prevalence or incidence of DGU. It is not credible to regard this survey as an acceptable basis for establishing, in even the roughest way, how often Americans use guns for self-protection."

This is interesting:
"This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done."

Illegal things? Does he count something that was illegal as a DGU?

No, but if you are in any doubt that what you did was legal then why would you confess to doing it if you didn't have to? Or for example....there have been 3 recent shootings in bars...in two cases the victim who shot back disappeared before the police arrived...why? Because it was illegal to have a gun in the bar...in the other one, it was a cop bar...and the cop shot the criminal, but being a cop he wasn't breaking the law...or he may have been to....

this is a point that Kleck makes about the NCVS....in relation to your question....

The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge.

Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.

In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively.

Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

So, if they are outside of their home and used the gun to scare off a criminal.....they could be facing a brandishing charge....and lose their ability to carry the gun in the future....and if no one was shot, and no shots were fired....why would they admit to it to a badge carrying government agent....?

Who wants to take the risk that a viable self defense action becomes a reason to have to get a lawyer to explain that action....especially nothing happened beyond scaring off the criminal....?

Out of curiosity, why is it you cling to the easily debunked millions number anyway? 100,000 seems like a pretty big number to me and is much more accepted.

 

[2aguy]

One thing is for sure, Bill. If I am ever in church, and they want me to bow my head and close my eyes for prayer, I will know better, now that I have read your post. It is most likely just an ambush.

Do you sleep with your Glock under the pillow? Also, be sure to carry it to the john. I am sure that you saw what happened to john Travolta in "Pulp Fiction".

Notice...in Pulp fiction, they were all criminals and they all carried guns...and the gun that killed Travolta....fully automatic.....meaning even more laws were broken.....

 

[2aguy]

Looking at different studies...This post shows why the NCVS is flawed and not likely to get good results......

There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually. Why the huge discrepancy between this survey and fourteen others?

How Often Are Firearms Used in Self-Defense

QUOTE:

Dr. Kleck's Answer

Why is the NCVS an unacceptable estimate of annual DGU's? Dr. Kleck states, "Equally important, those who take the NCVS-based estimates seriously have consistently ignored the most pronounced limitations of the NCVS for estimating DGU frequency.

The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge.

Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.

In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."




"It is not hard for gun-using victims interviewed in the NCVS to withhold information about their use of a gun, especially since they are never directly asked whether they used a gun for self-protection.

They are asked only general questions about whether they did anything to protect themselves. In short, respondents are merely give the opportunity to volunteer the information that they have used a gun defensively. All it takes for a respondents to conceal a DGU is to simply refrain from mentioning it, i.e., to leave it out of what may be an otherwise accurate and complete account of the crime incident."


"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively.


Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

Kleck concludes his criticism of the NCVS saying it "was not designed to estimate how often people resist crime using a gun. It was designed primarily to estimate national victimization levels; it incidentally happens to include a few self-protection questions which include response categories covering resistance with a gun.

Its survey instrument has been carefully refined and evaluated over the years to do as good a job as possible in getting people to report illegal things which other people have done to them. This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done.

Therefore, it is neither surprising, nor a reflection on the survey's designers, to note that the NCVS is singularly ill-suited for estimating the prevalence or incidence of DGU. It is not credible to regard this survey as an acceptable basis for establishing, in even the roughest way, how often Americans use guns for self-protection."

This is interesting:
"This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done."

Illegal things? Does he count something that was illegal as a DGU?

No, but if you are in any doubt that what you did was legal then why would you confess to doing it if you didn't have to? Or for example....there have been 3 recent shootings in bars...in two cases the victim who shot back disappeared before the police arrived...why? Because it was illegal to have a gun in the bar...in the other one, it was a cop bar...and the cop shot the criminal, but being a cop he wasn't breaking the law...or he may have been to....

this is a point that Kleck makes about the NCVS....in relation to your question....

The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge.

Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.

In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively.

Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

So, if they are outside of their home and used the gun to scare off a criminal.....they could be facing a brandishing charge....and lose their ability to carry the gun in the future....and if no one was shot, and no shots were fired....why would they admit to it to a badge carrying government agent....?

Who wants to take the risk that a viable self defense action becomes a reason to have to get a lawyer to explain that action....especially nothing happened beyond scaring off the criminal....?

Out of curiosity, why is it you cling to the easily debunked millions number anyway? 100,000 seems like a pretty big number to me and is much more accepted.

Brain....you don't know....and none of the studies except for the NCVS even comes close to only 100,000....the lowest of them puts the number, at the lowest, at 760,000....you are making things up when you say 100,000 sounds reasonable....

 

[2aguy]

Brain...here is a lot on Kleck....find out yourself....

Klecks defense of his study

http://www.rkba.org/research/kleck/md-rebuttal.3sep95

----------------------------------------
another interview with kleck defending his study...

Private Guns Stop Crime 2.5M Times A Year In US

SCHULMAN: Okay. Let's ask the "one year" question since you say that's based on better recollections. In the last year how many people who responded to the questionnaire said that they had used a firearm to defend themselves against an actual confrontation from a human being attempting a crime?
KLECK: Well, as a percentage it's 1.33 percent of the respondents. When you extrapolate that to the general population, it works out to be 2.4 million defensive uses of guns of some kind -- not just handguns but any kind of a gun -- within that previous year, which would have been roughly from Spring of 1992 through Spring of 1993.
SCHULMAN: And if you focus solely on handguns?
KLECK: It's about 1.9 million, based on personal, individual recollections.
SCHULMAN: And what percentage of the respondents is that? Just handguns?
KLECK: That would be 1.03 percent.
SCHULMAN: How many respondents did you have total?
KLECK: We had a total of 4,978 completed interviews, that is, where we had a response on the key question of whether or not there had been a defensive gun use.
SCHULMAN: So roughly 50 people out of 5000 responded that in the last year they had had to use their firearms in an actual confrontation against a human being attempting a crime?
KLECK: Handguns, yes.
SCHULMAN: Had used a handgun. And slightly more than that had used any gun.
KLECK: Right.
SCHULMAN: So that would be maybe 55, 56 people?
KLECK: Something like that, yeah.
SCHULMAN: Okay. I can just hear critics saying that 50 or 55 people responding that they used their gun and you're projecting it out to figures of around 2 million, 2-1/2 million gun defenses. Why is that statistically valid?
KLECK: Well, that's one reason why we also had a five-year recollection period. We get a much larger raw number of people saying, "Yes, I had a defensive use." It doesn't work out to be as many per year because people are presumably not remembering as completely, but the raw numbers of people who remember some kind of defensive use over the previous five years, that worked out to be on the order of 200 sample cases. So it's really a small raw number only if you limit your attention to those who are reporting an incident just in the previous year. Statistically, it's strictly the raw numbers that are relevant to the issue.
SCHULMAN: So if between 1 percent to 1-1/3 percent of your respondents are saying that they defended themselves with a gun, how does this compare, for example, to the number of people who would respond that they had suffered from a crime during that period?
KLECK: I really couldn't say. We didn't ask that and I don't think there are really any comparable figures. You could look at the National Crime Surveys for relatively recent years and I guess you could take the share of the population that had been the victims of some kind of violent crime because most of these apparently are responses to violent crimes. Ummm, let's see. The latest year for which I have any data, 1991, would be about 9 percent of the population had suffered a personal crime -- that's a crime with personal contact. And so, to say that 1 percent of the population had defended themselves with a handgun is obviously still well within what you would expect based on the share of the population that had suffered a personal crime of some kind. Plus a number of these defensive uses were against burglars, which isn't considered a personal crime according to the National Crime Survey. But you can add in maybe another 5 percent who'd been a victim of a household burglary.
SCHULMAN: Let's break down some of these gun defenses if we can. How many are against armed robbers? How many are against burglars? How many are against people committing a rape or an assault?
KLECK: About 8 percent of the defensive uses involved a sexual crime such as an attempted sexual assault. About 29 percent involved some sort of assault other than sexual assault. Thirty-three percent involved a burglary or some other theft at home. Twenty-two percent involved robbery. Sixteen percent involved trespassing. Note that some incidents could involve more than one crime.
SCHULMAN: Do you have a breakdown of how many occurred on somebody's property and how many occurred, let's say, off somebody's property where somebody would have had to have been carrying a gun with them on their person or in their car?
KLECK: Yes. We asked where the incident took place. Seventy-two percent took place in or near the home, where the gun wouldn't have to be "carried" in a legal sense. And then some of the remainder, maybe another 4 percent, occurred in a friend's home where that might not necessarily involve carrying. Also, some of these incidents may have occurred in a vehicle in a parking lot and that's another 4 percent or so. So some of those incidents may have involved a less-regulated kind of carrying. In many states, for example, it doesn't require a license to carry a gun in your vehicle so I'd say that the share that involved carrying in a legal sense is probably less than a quarter of the incidents. I won't commit myself to anything more than that because we don't have the specifics of whether or not some of these away-from-home incidents occurred while a person was in a car.
SCHULMAN: All right. Well, does that mean that approximately a half million times a year somebody carrying a gun away from home uses it to defend himself or herself?
KLECK: That's what it would imply, yes.
SCHULMAN: All right. As many as one-half million times every year somebody carrying a gun away from home defends himself or herself.
KLECK: Yes, about that. It could be as high as that. I have many different estimates and some of the estimates are deliberately more conservative in that they exclude from our sample any cases where it was not absolutely clear that there was a genuine defensive gun use being reported.
SCHULMAN: Were any of these gun uses done by anyone under the age of 21 or under the age of 18?
KLECK: Well we don't have any coverage of persons under the age of 18. Like most national surveys we cover only adults age 18 and up.
SCHULMAN: Did you have any between the ages of 18 and 21?
KLECK: I haven't analyzed the cross tabulation of age with defensive gun use so I couldn't say at this point.
SCHULMAN: Okay. Was this survey representative just of Florida or is it representative of the entire United States?
KLECK: It's representative of the lower 48 states.
SCHULMAN: And that means that there was calling throughout all the different states?
KLECK: Yes, except Alaska and Hawaii, and that's also standard practice for national surveys; because of the expense they usually aren't contacted.
SCHULMAN: How do these surveys make their choices, for example, between high-crime urban areas and less-crime rural areas?
KLECK: Well, there isn't a choice made in that sense. It's a telephone survey and the telephone numbers are randomly chosen by computer so that it works out that every residential telephone number in the lower 48 states had an equal chance of being picked, except that we deliberately oversampled from the South and the West and then adjusted after the fact for that overrepresentation. It results in no biasing. The results are representative of the entire United States, but it yields a larger number of sample cases of defensive gun uses. They are, however, weighted back down so that they properly represent the correct percent of the population that's had a defensive gun use.
SCHULMAN: Why is it that the results of your survey are so counter-intuitive compared to police experience?
KLECK: For starters, there are substantial reasons for people not to report defensive gun uses to the police or, for that matter, even to interviewers working for researchers like me -- the reason simply being that a lot of the times people either don't know whether their defensive act was legal or even if they think that was legal, they're not sure that possessing a gun at that particular place and time was legal. They may have a gun that's supposed to be registered and it's not or maybe it's totally legally owned but they're not supposed to be walking around on the streets with it.
SCHULMAN: Did your survey ask the question of whether people carrying guns had licenses to do so?
KLECK: No, we did not. We thought that would be way too sensitive a question to ask people.
SCHULMAN: Okay. Let's talk about how the guns were actually used in order to accomplish the defense. How many people, for example, had to merely show the gun, as opposed to how many had to fire a warning shot, as to how many actually had to attempt to shoot or shoot their attacker?
KLECK: We got all of the details about everything that people could have done with a gun from as mild an action as merely verbally referring to the gun on up to actually shooting somebody.
SCHULMAN: Could you give me the percentages?
KLECK: Yes. You have to keep in mind that it's quite possible for people to have done more than one of these things since they could obviously both verbally refer to the gun and point it at somebody or even shoot it.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
KLECK: Fifty-four percent of the defensive gun uses involved somebody verbally referring to the gun. Forty-seven percent involved the gun being pointed at the criminal. Twenty-two percent involved the gun being fired. Fourteen percent involved the gun being fired at somebody, meaning it wasn't just a warning shot; the defender was trying to shoot the criminal. Whether they succeeded or not is another matter but they were trying to shoot a criminal. And then in 8 percent they actually did wound or kill the offender.
SCHULMAN: In 8 percent, wounded or killed. You don't have it broken down beyond that?
KLECK: Wound versus kill? No. Again that was thought to be too sensitive a question. Although we did have, I think, two people who freely offered the information that they had, indeed, killed someone. Keep in mind that the 8 percent figure is based on so few cases that you have to interpret it with great caution.


_________________________

Defending the 2.5 million number...

Myth 3 - 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year can t be accurate Buckeye Firearms Association

 

[Brain357]

Looking at different studies...This post shows why the NCVS is flawed and not likely to get good results......

There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually. Why the huge discrepancy between this survey and fourteen others?

How Often Are Firearms Used in Self-Defense

QUOTE:

Dr. Kleck's Answer

Why is the NCVS an unacceptable estimate of annual DGU's? Dr. Kleck states, "Equally important, those who take the NCVS-based estimates seriously have consistently ignored the most pronounced limitations of the NCVS for estimating DGU frequency.

The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge.

Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.

In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."




"It is not hard for gun-using victims interviewed in the NCVS to withhold information about their use of a gun, especially since they are never directly asked whether they used a gun for self-protection.

They are asked only general questions about whether they did anything to protect themselves. In short, respondents are merely give the opportunity to volunteer the information that they have used a gun defensively. All it takes for a respondents to conceal a DGU is to simply refrain from mentioning it, i.e., to leave it out of what may be an otherwise accurate and complete account of the crime incident."


"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively.


Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

Kleck concludes his criticism of the NCVS saying it "was not designed to estimate how often people resist crime using a gun. It was designed primarily to estimate national victimization levels; it incidentally happens to include a few self-protection questions which include response categories covering resistance with a gun.

Its survey instrument has been carefully refined and evaluated over the years to do as good a job as possible in getting people to report illegal things which other people have done to them. This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done.

Therefore, it is neither surprising, nor a reflection on the survey's designers, to note that the NCVS is singularly ill-suited for estimating the prevalence or incidence of DGU. It is not credible to regard this survey as an acceptable basis for establishing, in even the roughest way, how often Americans use guns for self-protection."

This is interesting:
"This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done."

Illegal things? Does he count something that was illegal as a DGU?

No, but if you are in any doubt that what you did was legal then why would you confess to doing it if you didn't have to? Or for example....there have been 3 recent shootings in bars...in two cases the victim who shot back disappeared before the police arrived...why? Because it was illegal to have a gun in the bar...in the other one, it was a cop bar...and the cop shot the criminal, but being a cop he wasn't breaking the law...or he may have been to....

this is a point that Kleck makes about the NCVS....in relation to your question....

The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge.

Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.

In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted."

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively.

Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

So, if they are outside of their home and used the gun to scare off a criminal.....they could be facing a brandishing charge....and lose their ability to carry the gun in the future....and if no one was shot, and no shots were fired....why would they admit to it to a badge carrying government agent....?

Who wants to take the risk that a viable self defense action becomes a reason to have to get a lawyer to explain that action....especially nothing happened beyond scaring off the criminal....?

Out of curiosity, why is it you cling to the easily debunked millions number anyway? 100,000 seems like a pretty big number to me and is much more accepted.

Brain....you don't know....and none of the studies except for the NCVS even comes close to only 100,000....the lowest of them puts the number, at the lowest, at 760,000....you are making things up when you say 100,000 sounds reasonable....

Not making things up at all. Based on the number of criminals killed in defense, how often defenses makes the news, personal experience, common sense.... It is clear that it's not a number in the millions. I've also read and posted many of the different ways those numbers have been debunked.

 

[Brain357]

Brain...here is a lot on Kleck....find out yourself....

Klecks defense of his study

http://www.rkba.org/research/kleck/md-rebuttal.3sep95
another interview with kleck defending his study...

Private Guns Stop Crime 2.5M Times A Year In US
Defending the 2.5 million number...

Myth 3 - 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year can t be accurate Buckeye Firearms Association

I have read him defending HIS study many times over. And I'm not buying it for all the reasons I have given. I think maybe it is in fact criminals defending against criminals. That would explain a lot, but I wouldn't count those at defenses, it's crime.

 

[Moonglow]

Let's face it, shit happens, yeah the broad coulda been safer about the gat, but was probably busy being a Mom....

 

[2aguy]

And again....Kleck's is the best study out there....and just one of 19....I am not sure why people focus on Kleck...considering there are 18 others out there that pretty much mirror his findings.....

 

[Brain357]

And again....Kleck's is the best study out there....and just one of 19....I am not sure why people focus on Kleck...considering there are 18 others out there that pretty much mirror his findings.....

Mirror? The findings run from 100k to 3 million. That is not mirroring. Some of them are off by a huge number.

 

[2aguy]

And some more on hemenway...

If Hemenway really did believe that the NCVS estimates are approximately accurate, he may well be the last scholar in this field to cling to this belief. After touting the NCVS estimates of DGU for years, even authors as strongly wedded to the rare-DGU position as Philip Cook (Cook 1991; Cook and Moore 1994) and David McDowall (McDowall and Weirsema 1994) have ceased portraying the NCVS estimates as valid. Instead, they have shifted to the agnostic views that (1) no survey, including the NCVS, can yield meaningful estimates (Cook and Ludwig 1996; 1997) or that (2) “the frequency of firearm self-defense is an issue that is far from settled” (McDowall 1995), views incompatible with the position that the NCVS estimates are at least approximately valid and therefore have settled the matter. By December of 1994, Cook had taken a position directly contradicting Hemenway’s seeming acceptance of the NCVS estimates, stating that there are “persuasive reasons for believing that the [NCVS] yields total incident figures that are much too low” (Kates et al. 1995, p. 537, quoting a December 20, 1994 letter from Cook). Echoing these views, another strongly pro-control scholar, Tom Smith, has written that “it appears that the [DGU] estimates of the NCVSs are too low” (1997, p. 1462).

Kleck and Gertz provided a detailed explanation of why the NCVS grossly underestimates DGU frequency, and noted that its DGU estimates had been repeatedly disconfirmed by other surveys (1995, pp. 153-157). Still, Hemenway gave the impression that he was using the NCVS estimates as a standard against which he judged the DGU estimates of other surveys (Hemenway 1997b, pp. 1431-1432). In this connection, he falsely claimed that the NCVS asks “about self-defense gun use” (p. 1432) when in fact, as Kleck and Gertz pointed out, one of the many problems with the NCVS as a vehicle for estimating DGU frequency is that it never directly asks respondents about DGU (1995, p. 155). Instead it merely provides respondents with an opportunity to volunteer information about a DGU in response to a general question about self-protection actions.

As Tom Smith, Director of the National Opinion Research Center, has noted, specifically in connection with the NCVS: “Indirect questions that rely on a respondent volunteering a specific element as part of a broad and unfocussed inquiry uniformly lead to undercounts of the particular of interest” (Smith 1997, pp. 1462-1463).



Nor did Hemenway acknowledge that the NCVS is the only survey that has ever yielded annual DGU estimates under 700,000, and that its estimates, centering around 80,000, are far below those generated by at least fifteen other surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 153-159). Instead, he inverted reality by falsely hinting that it was the NSDS estimate that was the deviant result.



It is tempting to think that the NCVS estimates should be given greater credibility than any one survey because the NCVS has been continuously fielded since 1973, and thus could be regarded as, in some sense, a series of surveys rather than just one survey, which have provided independent confirmation of low DGU estimates. Hemenway himself, however, noted that “consistency of findings is irrelevant when the methodology among...the surveys is similar.” He made this point with respect to the DGU surveys, but it is far more applicable to the NCVS, since great care has been taken to keep the NCVS, despite periodic revisions, consistent over time. In contrast, there was, contrary to Hemenway’s claims, great diversity in methodology among the DGU surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 157-160).

The NCVS is more accurately viewed as a single ongoing survey, with interviews conducted monthly since 1973 by the same government agency, using methods intentionally kept extremely consistent from 1973 right up to a redesign in 1992. Thus, the flaws that afflicted the NCVS for measuring DGUs in 1973 were, for the most part, still with it in 1992 when the McDowall and Wiersema (1994) and Cook (1991) estimates that Hemenway favorably cited (1997b, p. 1432) were generated. We can only heartily agree with Hemenway that reproducing the same result over and over with the same flawed measurement tool does not provide much evidence about anything. Hemenway just got it wrong as to which surveys this observation is best applied to.

 

[Brain357]

And some more on hemenway...

If Hemenway really did believe that the NCVS estimates are approximately accurate, he may well be the last scholar in this field to cling to this belief. After touting the NCVS estimates of DGU for years, even authors as strongly wedded to the rare-DGU position as Philip Cook (Cook 1991; Cook and Moore 1994) and David McDowall (McDowall and Weirsema 1994) have ceased portraying the NCVS estimates as valid. Instead, they have shifted to the agnostic views that (1) no survey, including the NCVS, can yield meaningful estimates (Cook and Ludwig 1996; 1997) or that (2) “the frequency of firearm self-defense is an issue that is far from settled” (McDowall 1995), views incompatible with the position that the NCVS estimates are at least approximately valid and therefore have settled the matter. By December of 1994, Cook had taken a position directly contradicting Hemenway’s seeming acceptance of the NCVS estimates, stating that there are “persuasive reasons for believing that the [NCVS] yields total incident figures that are much too low” (Kates et al. 1995, p. 537, quoting a December 20, 1994 letter from Cook). Echoing these views, another strongly pro-control scholar, Tom Smith, has written that “it appears that the [DGU] estimates of the NCVSs are too low” (1997, p. 1462).

Kleck and Gertz provided a detailed explanation of why the NCVS grossly underestimates DGU frequency, and noted that its DGU estimates had been repeatedly disconfirmed by other surveys (1995, pp. 153-157). Still, Hemenway gave the impression that he was using the NCVS estimates as a standard against which he judged the DGU estimates of other surveys (Hemenway 1997b, pp. 1431-1432). In this connection, he falsely claimed that the NCVS asks “about self-defense gun use” (p. 1432) when in fact, as Kleck and Gertz pointed out, one of the many problems with the NCVS as a vehicle for estimating DGU frequency is that it never directly asks respondents about DGU (1995, p. 155). Instead it merely provides respondents with an opportunity to volunteer information about a DGU in response to a general question about self-protection actions.

As Tom Smith, Director of the National Opinion Research Center, has noted, specifically in connection with the NCVS: “Indirect questions that rely on a respondent volunteering a specific element as part of a broad and unfocussed inquiry uniformly lead to undercounts of the particular of interest” (Smith 1997, pp. 1462-1463).



Nor did Hemenway acknowledge that the NCVS is the only survey that has ever yielded annual DGU estimates under 700,000, and that its estimates, centering around 80,000, are far below those generated by at least fifteen other surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 153-159). Instead, he inverted reality by falsely hinting that it was the NSDS estimate that was the deviant result.



It is tempting to think that the NCVS estimates should be given greater credibility than any one survey because the NCVS has been continuously fielded since 1973, and thus could be regarded as, in some sense, a series of surveys rather than just one survey, which have provided independent confirmation of low DGU estimates. Hemenway himself, however, noted that “consistency of findings is irrelevant when the methodology among...the surveys is similar.” He made this point with respect to the DGU surveys, but it is far more applicable to the NCVS, since great care has been taken to keep the NCVS, despite periodic revisions, consistent over time. In contrast, there was, contrary to Hemenway’s claims, great diversity in methodology among the DGU surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 157-160).

The NCVS is more accurately viewed as a single ongoing survey, with interviews conducted monthly since 1973 by the same government agency, using methods intentionally kept extremely consistent from 1973 right up to a redesign in 1992. Thus, the flaws that afflicted the NCVS for measuring DGUs in 1973 were, for the most part, still with it in 1992 when the McDowall and Wiersema (1994) and Cook (1991) estimates that Hemenway favorably cited (1997b, p. 1432) were generated. We can only heartily agree with Hemenway that reproducing the same result over and over with the same flawed measurement tool does not provide much evidence about anything. Hemenway just got it wrong as to which surveys this observation is best applied to.

Again, where does he defend this:
Hemenway put together facts from the well-regarded NCVS—that someone was known to be home in just 22 percent of burglaries (1.3 million), and that fewer than half of U.S. households have firearms—and pointed out that Kleck “asks us to believe that burglary victims in gun-owning households use their guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time.”

You can't do something over 100 percent of the time...

 

[Brain357]

And again....Kleck's is the best study out there....and just one of 19....I am not sure why people focus on Kleck...considering there are 18 others out there that pretty much mirror his findings.....

Also shouldn't even your crazy estimate be lowered due to the lower crime rates now than when your surveys were done?

 

[2aguy]

again....the bottom column of the chart never wants to post so I give the name of the people or group doing the study, the year of the study and number of times they found guns were used to save lives and stop violent crime each year....

GunCite-Gun Control-How Often Are Guns Used in Self-Defense

GunCite Frequency of Defensive Gun Use in Previous Surveys

Field...1976....3,052,717
DMIa 1978...2,141,512
L.A. TIMES...1994...3,609,68
Kleck...2.5 million


From Obama's CDC...they spent 10 million dollars in 2013 for this study...

from slate.com an article on CDC obama's era...500-3 million defensive gun uses

Handguns suicides mass shootings deaths and self-defense Findings from a research report on gun violence.
7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.”
--------------------


Bordua...1977...1,414,544
DMIb...1978...1,098,409
Hart...1981...1.797,461
Mauser...1990...1,487,342
Gallup...1993...1,621,377
DEPT. OF JUSTICE...1994...1.5 million
Journal of Quantitative Criminology,"]Gun Control - Just Facts"]Gun Control - Just Facts[/url][17][/URL] U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year."



Ohio...1982...771,043
Gallup...1991...777,152
Tarrance... 1994... 764,036
Lawerence Southwich Jr. 400,000 fewer violent crimes and at least 800,000 violent crimes deterred..

.(Lawrence Southwick, Jr.,Guns and Justifiable Homicide: Deterrence and Defense-concludes there are at least 400,000 "fewer violent crimes due to civilian self-defense use of guns" and at least "800,000 violent crimes are deterred each year because of gun ownership and use by civilians."


Notice, the 3 different groupings of stats from the research listed so far.....not one of them approaches the NCVS number of 100,000.....yet you claim to know that is the correct number....

 

[2aguy]

And some more on hemenway...

If Hemenway really did believe that the NCVS estimates are approximately accurate, he may well be the last scholar in this field to cling to this belief. After touting the NCVS estimates of DGU for years, even authors as strongly wedded to the rare-DGU position as Philip Cook (Cook 1991; Cook and Moore 1994) and David McDowall (McDowall and Weirsema 1994) have ceased portraying the NCVS estimates as valid. Instead, they have shifted to the agnostic views that (1) no survey, including the NCVS, can yield meaningful estimates (Cook and Ludwig 1996; 1997) or that (2) “the frequency of firearm self-defense is an issue that is far from settled” (McDowall 1995), views incompatible with the position that the NCVS estimates are at least approximately valid and therefore have settled the matter. By December of 1994, Cook had taken a position directly contradicting Hemenway’s seeming acceptance of the NCVS estimates, stating that there are “persuasive reasons for believing that the [NCVS] yields total incident figures that are much too low” (Kates et al. 1995, p. 537, quoting a December 20, 1994 letter from Cook). Echoing these views, another strongly pro-control scholar, Tom Smith, has written that “it appears that the [DGU] estimates of the NCVSs are too low” (1997, p. 1462).

Kleck and Gertz provided a detailed explanation of why the NCVS grossly underestimates DGU frequency, and noted that its DGU estimates had been repeatedly disconfirmed by other surveys (1995, pp. 153-157). Still, Hemenway gave the impression that he was using the NCVS estimates as a standard against which he judged the DGU estimates of other surveys (Hemenway 1997b, pp. 1431-1432). In this connection, he falsely claimed that the NCVS asks “about self-defense gun use” (p. 1432) when in fact, as Kleck and Gertz pointed out, one of the many problems with the NCVS as a vehicle for estimating DGU frequency is that it never directly asks respondents about DGU (1995, p. 155). Instead it merely provides respondents with an opportunity to volunteer information about a DGU in response to a general question about self-protection actions.

As Tom Smith, Director of the National Opinion Research Center, has noted, specifically in connection with the NCVS: “Indirect questions that rely on a respondent volunteering a specific element as part of a broad and unfocussed inquiry uniformly lead to undercounts of the particular of interest” (Smith 1997, pp. 1462-1463).



Nor did Hemenway acknowledge that the NCVS is the only survey that has ever yielded annual DGU estimates under 700,000, and that its estimates, centering around 80,000, are far below those generated by at least fifteen other surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 153-159). Instead, he inverted reality by falsely hinting that it was the NSDS estimate that was the deviant result.



It is tempting to think that the NCVS estimates should be given greater credibility than any one survey because the NCVS has been continuously fielded since 1973, and thus could be regarded as, in some sense, a series of surveys rather than just one survey, which have provided independent confirmation of low DGU estimates. Hemenway himself, however, noted that “consistency of findings is irrelevant when the methodology among...the surveys is similar.” He made this point with respect to the DGU surveys, but it is far more applicable to the NCVS, since great care has been taken to keep the NCVS, despite periodic revisions, consistent over time. In contrast, there was, contrary to Hemenway’s claims, great diversity in methodology among the DGU surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 157-160).

The NCVS is more accurately viewed as a single ongoing survey, with interviews conducted monthly since 1973 by the same government agency, using methods intentionally kept extremely consistent from 1973 right up to a redesign in 1992. Thus, the flaws that afflicted the NCVS for measuring DGUs in 1973 were, for the most part, still with it in 1992 when the McDowall and Wiersema (1994) and Cook (1991) estimates that Hemenway favorably cited (1997b, p. 1432) were generated. We can only heartily agree with Hemenway that reproducing the same result over and over with the same flawed measurement tool does not provide much evidence about anything. Hemenway just got it wrong as to which surveys this observation is best applied to.

Again, where does he defend this:
Hemenway put together facts from the well-regarded NCVS—that someone was known to be home in just 22 percent of burglaries (1.3 million), and that fewer than half of U.S. households have firearms—and pointed out that Kleck “asks us to believe that burglary victims in gun-owning households use their guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time.”

You can't do something over 100 percent of the time...

I don't trust that representation.....show me in Kleck's actual work....that he says this...hemenway has been shown to be....innaccurate in his criticism and biased in his research.....he has ties to anti gun organization while Kleck does not have ties to any pro gun organizations....

 

[2aguy]

and on hemenway....

Although we systematically rebut each of Hemenwayls H claims we


9. Raising the Dead: Resuscitating the NCVS Estimates of DGU

Hemenway (1997b, pp. 1431-1432) contrasted NCVS (victim survey) estimates of DGU with the NSDS estimates, but was evasive as to exactly why he did this. He never explicitly stated that he considered the NCVS estimates to be even approximately accurate, perhaps because he knew that this position was indefensible. He made no effort to rebut Kleck and Gertz’ detailed explanation (1995, pp. 153-157) of why the NCVS grossly underestimates DGU frequency, and did not even discuss or mention most of their arguments or evidence. Thus, the assertion that the NCVS estimate is far too low remains unrebutted. But if the NCVS estimates are not accurate, what was point of Hemenway citing them in the context of a challenge to the very different NSDS estimates?

Exploiting the tactic of “maintaining deniability,” Hemenway did not explicitly state that he thought that the NCVS provides an accurate estimate of DGU frequency, but this is bound to be the meaning that was communicated to some readers by his use of the NCVS results. We can see only two possibilities.


Either (1) Hemenway recognized that the DGU estimates derived from the NCVS are grossly inaccurate, but dishonestly presented them to readers as if they were reasonably accurate, or (2) he continued to believe they are fairly accurate, despite his inability to rebut Kleck and Gertz’ case for their inaccuracy, but was unwilling to explicitly commit himself to the accurate-NCVS position.


In short, he wanted to have it both ways, using the invalid NCVS estimates to cast doubt on large DGU estimates, while preserving the option of later claiming that he was not naive enough to think the NCVS estimates were even approximately correct.

 

[Brain357]

And some more on hemenway...

If Hemenway really did believe that the NCVS estimates are approximately accurate, he may well be the last scholar in this field to cling to this belief. After touting the NCVS estimates of DGU for years, even authors as strongly wedded to the rare-DGU position as Philip Cook (Cook 1991; Cook and Moore 1994) and David McDowall (McDowall and Weirsema 1994) have ceased portraying the NCVS estimates as valid. Instead, they have shifted to the agnostic views that (1) no survey, including the NCVS, can yield meaningful estimates (Cook and Ludwig 1996; 1997) or that (2) “the frequency of firearm self-defense is an issue that is far from settled” (McDowall 1995), views incompatible with the position that the NCVS estimates are at least approximately valid and therefore have settled the matter. By December of 1994, Cook had taken a position directly contradicting Hemenway’s seeming acceptance of the NCVS estimates, stating that there are “persuasive reasons for believing that the [NCVS] yields total incident figures that are much too low” (Kates et al. 1995, p. 537, quoting a December 20, 1994 letter from Cook). Echoing these views, another strongly pro-control scholar, Tom Smith, has written that “it appears that the [DGU] estimates of the NCVSs are too low” (1997, p. 1462).

Kleck and Gertz provided a detailed explanation of why the NCVS grossly underestimates DGU frequency, and noted that its DGU estimates had been repeatedly disconfirmed by other surveys (1995, pp. 153-157). Still, Hemenway gave the impression that he was using the NCVS estimates as a standard against which he judged the DGU estimates of other surveys (Hemenway 1997b, pp. 1431-1432). In this connection, he falsely claimed that the NCVS asks “about self-defense gun use” (p. 1432) when in fact, as Kleck and Gertz pointed out, one of the many problems with the NCVS as a vehicle for estimating DGU frequency is that it never directly asks respondents about DGU (1995, p. 155). Instead it merely provides respondents with an opportunity to volunteer information about a DGU in response to a general question about self-protection actions.

As Tom Smith, Director of the National Opinion Research Center, has noted, specifically in connection with the NCVS: “Indirect questions that rely on a respondent volunteering a specific element as part of a broad and unfocussed inquiry uniformly lead to undercounts of the particular of interest” (Smith 1997, pp. 1462-1463).



Nor did Hemenway acknowledge that the NCVS is the only survey that has ever yielded annual DGU estimates under 700,000, and that its estimates, centering around 80,000, are far below those generated by at least fifteen other surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 153-159). Instead, he inverted reality by falsely hinting that it was the NSDS estimate that was the deviant result.



It is tempting to think that the NCVS estimates should be given greater credibility than any one survey because the NCVS has been continuously fielded since 1973, and thus could be regarded as, in some sense, a series of surveys rather than just one survey, which have provided independent confirmation of low DGU estimates. Hemenway himself, however, noted that “consistency of findings is irrelevant when the methodology among...the surveys is similar.” He made this point with respect to the DGU surveys, but it is far more applicable to the NCVS, since great care has been taken to keep the NCVS, despite periodic revisions, consistent over time. In contrast, there was, contrary to Hemenway’s claims, great diversity in methodology among the DGU surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 157-160).

The NCVS is more accurately viewed as a single ongoing survey, with interviews conducted monthly since 1973 by the same government agency, using methods intentionally kept extremely consistent from 1973 right up to a redesign in 1992. Thus, the flaws that afflicted the NCVS for measuring DGUs in 1973 were, for the most part, still with it in 1992 when the McDowall and Wiersema (1994) and Cook (1991) estimates that Hemenway favorably cited (1997b, p. 1432) were generated. We can only heartily agree with Hemenway that reproducing the same result over and over with the same flawed measurement tool does not provide much evidence about anything. Hemenway just got it wrong as to which surveys this observation is best applied to.

Again, where does he defend this:
Hemenway put together facts from the well-regarded NCVS—that someone was known to be home in just 22 percent of burglaries (1.3 million), and that fewer than half of U.S. households have firearms—and pointed out that Kleck “asks us to believe that burglary victims in gun-owning households use their guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time.”

You can't do something over 100 percent of the time...

I don't trust that representation.....show me in Kleck's actual work....that he says this...hemenway has been shown to be....innaccurate in his criticism and biased in his research.....he has ties to anti gun organization while Kleck does not have ties to any pro gun organizations....

I didn't think he could defend it.

 

[2aguy]

And some more on hemenway...

If Hemenway really did believe that the NCVS estimates are approximately accurate, he may well be the last scholar in this field to cling to this belief. After touting the NCVS estimates of DGU for years, even authors as strongly wedded to the rare-DGU position as Philip Cook (Cook 1991; Cook and Moore 1994) and David McDowall (McDowall and Weirsema 1994) have ceased portraying the NCVS estimates as valid. Instead, they have shifted to the agnostic views that (1) no survey, including the NCVS, can yield meaningful estimates (Cook and Ludwig 1996; 1997) or that (2) “the frequency of firearm self-defense is an issue that is far from settled” (McDowall 1995), views incompatible with the position that the NCVS estimates are at least approximately valid and therefore have settled the matter. By December of 1994, Cook had taken a position directly contradicting Hemenway’s seeming acceptance of the NCVS estimates, stating that there are “persuasive reasons for believing that the [NCVS] yields total incident figures that are much too low” (Kates et al. 1995, p. 537, quoting a December 20, 1994 letter from Cook). Echoing these views, another strongly pro-control scholar, Tom Smith, has written that “it appears that the [DGU] estimates of the NCVSs are too low” (1997, p. 1462).

Kleck and Gertz provided a detailed explanation of why the NCVS grossly underestimates DGU frequency, and noted that its DGU estimates had been repeatedly disconfirmed by other surveys (1995, pp. 153-157). Still, Hemenway gave the impression that he was using the NCVS estimates as a standard against which he judged the DGU estimates of other surveys (Hemenway 1997b, pp. 1431-1432). In this connection, he falsely claimed that the NCVS asks “about self-defense gun use” (p. 1432) when in fact, as Kleck and Gertz pointed out, one of the many problems with the NCVS as a vehicle for estimating DGU frequency is that it never directly asks respondents about DGU (1995, p. 155). Instead it merely provides respondents with an opportunity to volunteer information about a DGU in response to a general question about self-protection actions.

As Tom Smith, Director of the National Opinion Research Center, has noted, specifically in connection with the NCVS: “Indirect questions that rely on a respondent volunteering a specific element as part of a broad and unfocussed inquiry uniformly lead to undercounts of the particular of interest” (Smith 1997, pp. 1462-1463).



Nor did Hemenway acknowledge that the NCVS is the only survey that has ever yielded annual DGU estimates under 700,000, and that its estimates, centering around 80,000, are far below those generated by at least fifteen other surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 153-159). Instead, he inverted reality by falsely hinting that it was the NSDS estimate that was the deviant result.



It is tempting to think that the NCVS estimates should be given greater credibility than any one survey because the NCVS has been continuously fielded since 1973, and thus could be regarded as, in some sense, a series of surveys rather than just one survey, which have provided independent confirmation of low DGU estimates. Hemenway himself, however, noted that “consistency of findings is irrelevant when the methodology among...the surveys is similar.” He made this point with respect to the DGU surveys, but it is far more applicable to the NCVS, since great care has been taken to keep the NCVS, despite periodic revisions, consistent over time. In contrast, there was, contrary to Hemenway’s claims, great diversity in methodology among the DGU surveys (Kleck and Gertz 1995, pp. 157-160).

The NCVS is more accurately viewed as a single ongoing survey, with interviews conducted monthly since 1973 by the same government agency, using methods intentionally kept extremely consistent from 1973 right up to a redesign in 1992. Thus, the flaws that afflicted the NCVS for measuring DGUs in 1973 were, for the most part, still with it in 1992 when the McDowall and Wiersema (1994) and Cook (1991) estimates that Hemenway favorably cited (1997b, p. 1432) were generated. We can only heartily agree with Hemenway that reproducing the same result over and over with the same flawed measurement tool does not provide much evidence about anything. Hemenway just got it wrong as to which surveys this observation is best applied to.

Again, where does he defend this:
Hemenway put together facts from the well-regarded NCVS—that someone was known to be home in just 22 percent of burglaries (1.3 million), and that fewer than half of U.S. households have firearms—and pointed out that Kleck “asks us to believe that burglary victims in gun-owning households use their guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time.”

You can't do something over 100 percent of the time...

This might help.....

Although we systematically rebut each of Hemenwayls H claims we

10. Fallacious Reasoning––Hemenway’s “Checks on External Validity”

In their original article, Kleck and Gertz cautioned against two kinds of fallacious reasoning. Instead of taking the warnings seriously, Hemenway seems to have treated them as signposts to deceptive arguments that might prove useful for propagandistic purposes. Both fallacious arguments involve a misapplication of reductio ad absurdum argumentation, based on the misperception that estimates from the NSDS were inconsistent with known crime counts and the erroneous assumption that the NCVS provides correct estimates of the absolute frequency of crime.

Hemenway argued that the NSDS estimates are implausible because this survey implied a number of DGUs occurring in connection with burglaries that exceeded the total number of burglaries of occupied residences estimated by the NCVS, and thus the DGU estimate was impossible, or at least implausibly high (p. 1441). This argument rested on an unstated assumption that the universe of DGU events sampled by the NSDS is a subset of the universe of crime events covered by the NCVS. However, Kleck and Gertz had explicitly warned in their paper that “a large share of the incidents covered by our survey are probably outside the scope of incidents that realistically are likely to be reported to the NCVS or police” (1995, p. 167). This is true because DGUs typically involve criminal behavior, such as unlawful gun possession, by the gun-using victim, who therefore is often unwilling to report the incident. Once it is recognized that many DGU events are outside the realm of crime incidents effectively covered by the NCVS, it is logically impossible to treat any NCVS estimates as imposing an upper limit on how many DGUs there plausibly could be.

Hemenway’s logic was also fallacious in assuming that one can cast doubt on conclusions based on a large body of data by deriving implausible implications from smaller subsets of the data. The NSDS estimates of total DGUs are likely to be fairly reliable partly because they are based on a very large (n=4,977) sample, while any estimates one might derive pertaining to one specific crime type are necessarily less reliable because they rely partly on a far smaller subsample, i.e. the c. 194 sample DGU cases, of which 40 were linked to burglaries.

Hemenway’s reductio ad absurdum logic is equivalent to arguing that Gallup presidential election polls cannot accurately estimate the share of the entire electorate voting for the Democratic candidate (something we know they can do, usually to within two percentage points––Gallup 1992) because they commonly yield implausible estimates for small subsets of the electorate, such as rural Hispanic Jews. One undoubtedly could obtain implausible estimates of voter preference for the Democratic candidate, such as 0% or 100%, based on a very small number of sample cases, for many subsets of the population. This would imply nothing, however, about the ability of the survey to estimate voter preferences in the entire population. Thus, even if estimates of DGUs linked to a given specific crime type were implausible, which they are not, this would imply nothing about whether estimates of the total number of DGUs, based on the full sample, are accurate.

Finally, even if one ignored these logical fallacies, Hemenway’s argument still would fail, because it depends on an indisputably erroneous assumption. Hemenway stated that “from the NCVS, we know that there were fewer than 6 million burglaries in 1992” (1997b, p. 1441), and made similar statements about rapes (p. 1442). In fact, we do not “know” any such thing. No competent criminologist believes that the NCVS provides complete coverage of all burglaries, or any other crimes, occurring in the U.S. And once one concedes that there may be far more crimes than the NCVS estimates, Hemenway’s argument collapses,


since it becomes impossible to argue that estimates of the number of DGUs linked to a given type of crime are implausibly high relative to the total number of crimes of that type––we simply do not know the latter number.

In a second variety of this fallacious line of reasoning, Hemenway cited estimates of the number of gunshot wound (GSW) victims treated in emergency rooms and falsely claimed that “K-G report that 207,000 times per year the gun defender thought he wounded or killed the offender” (1997b, p. 1442). In fact, Kleck and Gertz did not compute or report this 207,000 estimate. Quite the contrary––they specifically cautioned against using NSDS data to generate such an estimate because an estimate of defensive woundings would be based (unlike the estimates of DGU frequency in general) on a small sample (the approximately 200 respondents who reported a DGU) and because NSDS interviewers had done no detailed questioning of respondents regarding why they thought that they had wounded their adversaries.

In any case, there is nothing even mildly inconsistent about this GSW estimate and emergency room data on persons treated for GSWs. Hemenway necessarily made the implicit assumption that DGU-linked woundings are entirely a subset of woundings treated in medical facilities. If one more plausibly assumes that most less serious DGU-linked woundings are not medically treated, the number of medically treated GSWs cannot be used as an upper limit on the number of DGUs that result in a wounding, since DGU-linked woundings would exist largely outside the set of medically treated GSWs. If, for example, the total annual number of GSWs, treated or untreated, was 400,000, there would be nothing implausible about 200,000 of them being DGU-linked, especially in light of the fact that the vast majority of victims of medically treated GSWs linked to alleged “assaults” are known criminals (Kleck 1997, Chapter 1).

It is unlikely that a criminal wounded by a victim during the commission of a crime would seek medical attention for any but the most life-threatening GSWs, since medical personnel are required by law to report treatment of GSWs to the police. Less than a tenth of assault GSWs are life-threatening (Kleck 1997, Chapter 1). Thus, almost all of the DGU-linked woundings of criminals probably lie outside the universe of GSWs treated in emergency rooms and other medical facilities. The number of medically treated GSWs therefore cannot serve as an upper limit on either the total number of GSWs or on the number that occur in connection with a crime victim’s DGU. In sum, since we do not know the total number of crime victimizations such as rapes or burglaries, or the total number of GSWs, we cannot possibly know if any given DGU estimate is implausibly large relative to these unknown (and possibly unknowable) quantities.

It is worth stressing that crucial logical fallacies in Hemenway’s reductio ad absurdum arguments were explicitly noted in the original 1995 article by Kleck and Gertz (pp. 167-168, 172-174), before Hemenway presented them. Thus, because Kleck and Gertz had explicitly warned against making the very arguments that Hemenway would later make, Hemenway was clearly aware of the fatal flaws in his arguments. Since he did not rebut any of the arguments that Kleck and Gertz used to conclude that this line of reasoning was fallacious, it is reasonable to conclude that when Hemenway made his reductio ad absurdum arguments, he knew they were fallacious. Thus, his use of these arguments can be reasonably viewed as part of an intentional effort by Hemenway to deceive his readers, and not merely the product of sloppy thinking.