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.