[On Sep 25 2002 I posted this to firearmsregprof. I also emailed it to John Lott. ]
I have replies to queries about Lott's survey from Tom Smith and Al Alschuler. Neither had heard anything about it. Other than Kleck, Tom Smith would be the logical person to discuss the survey design with---Lott acknowledges his assistance on other survey-related questions in MGLC. He'd also be a good source to obtain a CD of phone numbers from, but apparently Lott obtained this elsewhere.
Alschuler is in the U of Chicago Law School and wrote a reply to the paper where Lott first made the brandishing claim. He told me that the paper was due shortly after the conference it was presented to. That conference was held in mid November 1996. Consequently, this:
"Polls of American citizens undertaken by organizations like the Los Angeles Times and Gallup showing that Americans defend themselves with guns between 764,000 and 3.6 million times each year, with the vast majority of cases simply involving people brandishing a gun to prevent attack.[1]"
John Lott "Does Allowing Law-Abiding Citizens to Carry Concealed Handguns Save Lives?" Valparaiso University Law Review, 31(2): 355-63, Spring, 1997.
was written *before* Lott even started doing his survey. So how did he know that the "vast majority of cases" involved brandishing before he did this survey of his?
Now, in the quote above, he doesn't give the exact number, whereas in later version like this one:
"98% of the time when people use guns defensively simply brandishing a gun [is] sufficient to cause a criminal break off an attack. In less than 2% of the time is the gun fired. Most of those are warning shots. Less then one half of one percent of the time is the gun fired at the attacker. And only one out of every thousand times that people use guns defensively does it result in the death of the attacker. In the vast majority of these times simply brandishing a gun is sufficient to make a criminal break off an attack and run away."
John Lott on NPR's "Justice Talking" June 28, 1999 Audio available from http://www.justicetalking.org/getshow.asp?showid=97 Quote is at time 55:25 in the audio
he does, so it is possible that he only knew the number approximately in 1996 and his survey gave him a more precise estimate, but the question remains: "Where did the 1996 "vast majority" estimate come from?"
I would be most interested in any suggestions that readers have.