Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
It is disingenous for Kleck to take a quotation of Kellerman's out of context to make it appear that Kellermann was asserting that only 2% of of homicides were lawful defensive homicides.
Dan Day wrote:
Well, your own summary isn't entirely accurate either. Here's the passage in question:
Less than 2 percent of homicides nationally are considered legally justifiable. [11,13] Although justifiable homicides do not include homicides committed in self-defense, the combined total in our study was still less than one fourth the number of criminal homicides involving a gun kept in the home.
I've reread that a number of times and still can't figure out exactly what Kellermann is trying to say. The best I can make out is that Kellermann is claiming that self-defense homicides are not legally justifiable (?)
You missed the bit where he defined the meaning of those terms: "Self-protection homicides were considered "justifiable" if they involved the killing of a felon during the commision of a crime; they were considered "self-defense" if that was the determination of the investigating police department anf the King County prosecutor's office.[11]" Reference 11 is the FBI definition of "justifiable homicide".
Given how Kellermann contrasts "legally justifiable" homicides with "self-defense" homicides, and the passage as written, the point that Kellermann underplayed the number of "lawful defensive" homicides seems a valid one, since it appears he tried to imply that the defensive homicides which fall outside the 2% "legally justifiable" category weren't in fact lawful.
No, he was pointing out that were lawful homicides that fall outside the 2% legally justifiable.
