Deltoid

Dan Day wrote:

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".

No, I saw that (upper left on page 1558 of the NEJM publication). I didn't see as how that clarified Kellermann's choice of wording on page 1559. And it still leaves open the following questions:

(1) Why the distinction between "self-protection homicides" which are "considered 'justifiable'", versus "self-defense"? Ask five different people and you're likely to get five different opinions on which homicides fall into which category.

Because the FBI and the police make the distinction. The only national data available is for "justifiable homicides" and you can't refer to that without making the distinction.

(2) Why are only "self-defense" homicides which the prosecutor's office determined to be self-defense counted as self-defense? Why not the court's decision?

Because criminal courts are biased towards making sure that people are not punished for crimes they do not commit. So, someone who was probably guilty of criminal homicide, but not guilty beyond reasonable doubt could be found not guilty with a defence of self-defence. That's fine, but if we are trying to get the best possible estimate of the number of self-defence homicides we should use the standard of civil courts --- "more probable" rather than "beyond reasonable doubt". The decision of the prosecuter's office seems are reasonable way to estimate whether someone is more likely to be guilty or not.

(3) Why are "all homicides resulting in criminal charges" considered "criminal homicides", when surely many of them were later found to be justifiable by the courts? (Even many clear-cut cases of defense are referred to the courts by prosecutors because it's the court's job to sort out such things, not the prosecutor's job).

(4) Getting back to the core of the original issue, why did Kellermann choose to word his passage on page 1559 as "Less than 2 percent of homicides nationally are considered legally justifiable"? Most readers, it seems to me, would take this to mean that 98+% of homicides are not considered "legally justifiable" -- that is, they're illegal, or they're unjustifiable, or both.

I'm sorry, but I see no other way to refer to justifiable homicides, as defined by the FBI, other than to use the term used by the FBI. Not only does Kellermann give the FBI definition (on page 1558), on each of the three occasion when he uses the term, he provides a cite to the FBI definition (cite 11). Furthermore, underneath the passage in question you can see a table classifying the deaths and it is quite clear that the 2 justifiable homicides in the study are a subset of the 9 self-protection homicides.

If, after all this, a reader still manages to misunderstand, I don't think it is Kellermann's fault.

And, in any case, this is still no excuse for Kleck's misrepresentation --- Kleck, at least, is well aware of what the FBI mean by "justifiable homicides".

The final sentence in that paragraph ("A majority of these homicide victims were residents of the house or apartment in which the shooting occurred") throws further confusion into the mix, seeming to imply (by juxtaposition with the preceding) that if you're a "resident of the house", you can't be the result of a self-defense homicide.

I find your reading of that sentence truly bizarre. Why not take it to mean what it says, and not something else?