Deltoid

Steve D. Fischer writes:

I have no problem accepting the idea that respondents lie about reporting incidents to the police. From my own experience, I know that people tend to disbelieve a report of a DGU if you say you did not report it. The tendency to lie on this question is high. Because one lies about reporting to the police, it does NOT mean they made up the DGU.

Yes, just because Kleck's DG users gave untruthful answers on the questions of whether the incident was known to the police, on whether the perp was wounded, on whether the perp was killed, on whether someone would have died, and on whether the incident happened to the person first contacted (rather than some other household member) it doesn't necessarily follow they gave untruthful answers to other questions. On the other hand, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the veracity of the other answers.

The number of woundings is still an open question. There is a reference in the Kleck paper, which I don't have in front of me now, that suggests the number is greatly under-reported anyway. A criminal is only likely to seek hospital treatment for wounds that he/she considers life threatening.

Kleck has used the estimate that 15% of gunshot wounds are fatal. If criminals don't get treatment, the percentage will be even higher. So there should be 30,000 dead criminals every year. Where do all the bodies go?

Respondents call anything from a mere scratch to a near fatal shooting a "wounding." They could also simply be mistaken about having wounded the attacker ("I couldn't have missed him from THAT distance!").

Kleck's own estimate of the number of woundings associated with DGUs is 10,000-20,000. It would seem that 400,000 people fire at the perp and only 2.5%-5% actually hit. Mighty poor shooting.

The 97% figure is a bit deceptive, like your use of 90%. In actuality, 213 liars would constitute only 4.1% of Kleck's sample.
However, if 5.1% of the NCVS respondents suppressed a DGU, that would represent the 650 un-reported cases I referred to earlier. Therefore, a modest rate of lying or suppression could lead to widely divergent results in both polls.

This is very misleading. Whether you believe Kleck or the NCVS, most people have not had a DGU, so could not possible conceal it from the NCVS. The correct way to measure the percentage of liars is:

(Number who lied) / (Number who could have lied)

If Kleck is right and the NCVS is wrong that ratio is

(29,000) / (30,000) or 97%.

If the NCVS is right and Kleck is wrong then Kleck should have found 7 DG users and that ratio is

(194-7)/(4977-7) or 4%.

4% liars or 97% liars, take your pick.