tlambert

Pim van Meurs writes: How can you claim it to be a better estimate when the same data show inflated statistics (often 10 fold) in several other areas as well ? How can you claim that at survey which restricts definition of gun used in self defense ends up finding far more than ever found before ?…

Steve D. Fischer writes: While you're at it, keep in mind that one of Pim's favorite scientists (i.e. one who also hates guns), Colin Loftin, has said publically that the NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) survey - the "Gold Standard" (guffaw) of surveys - undercounts spousal abuses by as…

Steve D. Fischer writes: The NCVS is clearly the most lied-to study in the manifold of studies we have available to date. Even your pal, Colin Loftin has accused it of undercounting your "direct family" spousal abuses by a factor of 12 and rapes by a clean factor of 33. I'd call that lying of a…

Don B Kates, Jr. writes: Having been out of town on two different trips, I have not had a chance to finish my response to Mr. Lambert's latest screed to me. But I note his comment that Ed Suter has offered, "the same incorrect citation as in Kates' paper. Doesn't anyone check their references…

Frank Warren writes: You argue your own straw man here, as though a very young [...] person, has a realistic option besides a firearm. Now there's an idea for the anti-spanking crowd: Arm the very young and their parents will have second thoughts about spanking them. I can see the placards at…

Someone writes: TO List Supervisor, Prof. Volokh: Mendacious, Fabrication, Falsity, Untrue. These words used by Mr. Lambert to describe Mr. Kates's arguments. Is it permissible to call a list member a liar if you use a thesaurus? No. The only people you are allowed to call liars are those not in…

[Writing to Don Kates] You asserted that handguns are involved in less than 50% of criminal firearm injuries. You dismissed my calculation that the data in your paper implied that the percentage was 90-97% as some sort of trick. Could you please tell me what you consider the correct value of this…

Don B Kates, Jr. writes: In vol. 62 # 3 (1995) of the TN Law Rev, Henry Schaffer, three professors at Harvard and Columbia Medical Schools, and I have an article evaluating the medical/public health literature on firearms. Our general conclusion goes beyond simple negativity. We conclude that it is…

Eugene Volokh writes: (Incidentally, am I mistaken in thinking that it's the NCVS numbers which are usually cited to show that self-defense with a firearm decreases the likelihood of injury, compared to no self-defense?) No, you are not mistaken. In "Point Blank" Kleck dismisses the NCVS as not…

"Eugene Volokh" writes: Please, please, let's take special care to be polite in these exchanges. This is a sensitive subject, but even when we think the other person is dead wrong, it's better to say this in a subtler way. OK, I'll do my best to be polite. I won't say anything in reply to the ill…

You can check Suter's Graph 16 "International Homicide Rates Comparisons" against the source he claims for this data (World Health Statistics 1989). You will discover that the homicide rates for many countries have been grossly overstated (for example, East Germany is given as 36.7 (over three…

D. Deming wrote: For those interested in statistical criminology, there is an interesting article that appeared in the scholarly journal "The Mankind Quarterly", vol. 35, no. 4, summer, 1995. The article is titled "Ideology and Censorship in Behavior Genetics" by Glayde Whitney of Florida State…

Dan Day writes: See Suter, Edgar, M.D., "Guns in the Medical Literature--A Failure of Peer Review", Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia, March, 1994. And note those 81 references at the end. This, Buddy, is what actual support for ones claims looks like. No, it's what a pack of lies…

In article fkk@leland.stanford.edu writes: In a recent post Pim cites Tim Lambert as support for his position on the Florida data. I'm sorry but Lambert's analysis is flawed at its core. No it isn't. It appears that you don't understand what statistical hypothesis testing is, or what it means.…

In article none+1 stratos@crl.com Janine K. Johnson wrote: Recently, several postings discussed the Orlando Florida phenomena of 1966/67, in which a drop in the rape rate was noted after a much publicized program co sponsored by the local police and the Orlando Sentinel, in which 6,000 women were…

On pages 136-138 of "Point Blank" Kleck discusses Kennesaw burglaries. He states that after Kennesaw passed a (purely symbolic) law requiring a gun in every household, residential burglaries fell by 89%. His explanation for this decrease is that publicity about the law reminded criminals of the…

The survey is confidential. The person surveyed cannot get into trouble for mentioning a defensive use with an illegal weapon. Nonetheless someone is less likely to report such a use, so the NCVS will likely underestimate such uses. However, this hardly supports your claim that it is a "gross…

You said that they failed to take into account the possibility that "violent people (gang members for example) are both more likely to get firearms and are more likely to get themselves killed". Kellermann et al (in the abstract) "case households more commonly contained an illicit-drug user, a…

No I have not. I quote from page 173: "there is a positive relationship [of firearms ownership] with firearms murder but not with criminal homicide generally." See table 9.2 on page 174. I should note again that Bordua felt that this relation was spurious but that his reasoning was faulty. In…

Pim van Meurs writes: Of course there will always be an uncertainty in the findings that's why there are statistical error bounds and statistical significance bounds. However in case of gun ownership at city level Kleck showed the causal direction of gun ownership increasing the use of guns in…

The study found that having a gun in the home was not associated with any increased risk of non-gun homicide, only with gun homicide. Dan Day writes: Gun homicide in the home of the victim, Tim, which is what the study examined. So now we have the totally unremarkable finding that if you get shot…

Richard A. De Castro writes: So, in addition to getting the (perhaps, perhaps not) Dr. Van Meurs thrown out of the country png (persona non gratia), which means that he would probably never (ever) be allowed back in, another tactic would be to get him banned from the NSF-net side of the internet.…

Dennis O'Connor writes: The issue of wether Dutch Naval Lt. Van Muers is actually a foriegn agent illegally operating under the guise of a student visa will be resolved by the FBI and State Department. It is not relevant to the charter of talk.politics.guns. I had considered Dennis to be a…

T. Mark Gibson writes: As the saying goes, "If it saves only one life..." I think that something like 1/6th of people who use guns in defense believe that they saved an innocent life by doing so. So even if we were to accept the gross underestimate of the number of times people use guns in self-…

C. D. Tavares writes: Go check out the effect of your lovely gun controls on your suicide rate. Suicide by gun went down. Suicide by other means went up precisely enough to compensate. Not true. See Am J Psychiatry 151:4 606-608 (1994). Abstract: " To assess the impact of the 1978 Canadian gun…

Orion writes: Statscan tells us that of all violent assaults that are not immediately fatal your odds of survival are better if you are shot rather than stabbed (some people aren't even immediately aware that they have been shot!). Knife wounds tend to be large, ugly and tough to repair ass…

Cristina Yu wrote: You didn't mention Japan. Japan's such a safe place that they're murder rate is almost as low as the murder rate for Americans of Japanese descent. Almost, but not quite. Wrong. Kleck says this on page 189 of "Point Blank", but he looked up the wrong number (2.45) for the…

hollombe writes: Violent Crime Rate/100,000 Pop.: Year US' Rate Canada's Rate. 91 758 1099 Since "Violent Crime Rate" is defined differently in Canada and the US, the comparison is meaningless.

Pim van Meurs writes: and since you brought up the 2 M number I assume that you are referring to Kleck's latest poll ? I assume that you realize that other measures of crime as measured by this survey seem quite inflated, 200,000 criminals injured or killed in self defense and 800,000 burglaries…

hambidge writes: There is no real correlation with total homicide. Why do you say 14 countries? Didn't they leave out N. Ireland, and cook the numbers for Switzerland? Since much disagreement surrounds the use of those two countries, do the analysis again with the remaining 12. One gets a…