Meanwhile, CNSNews.com seems to be blissfully unaware of the Lott affair, with this story reporting:
"Surveys Lott conducted in January 1997 indicated that guns are used more than two million times a year in self-defense, either by threatening to use a gun, brandishing it, firing a warning shot or actually shooting a criminal."
Mitch Berg defends Lott against Laura Billing's criticism:
For instance, critics of his have long wondered where he came across a "national survey" cited in his book claiming that "98 percent of the time people use guns defensively, they merely have to brandish a weapon to break off an attack."That's easy. It's a conclusion reached by Gary Kleck in his seminal "Point Blank", the biggest and most thorough survey of firearms use in the United States.
While the 98% figure does appear in "Point Blank", it includes warning shots and misses. Lott specifically denies getting the number from Kleck.
More like this
[On Sep 27 2002 I posted this to firearmsregprof and emailed it to Lott.]
Peter Boucher, replying to this post, writes:
I don't have a copy of Point Blank handy, but I seem to recall the 98% figure either explicitly in the text of that book, or directly derivable from the figures in…
[On Sep 14 2002 I posted this to firearmsregprof. I also emailed it to John Lott. ]
Way back in 1993 in talk.politics.guns, C. D. Tavares wrote:
The answer is that the gun never needs to be fired in 98% of the instances of a successful self-defense with a gun. The criminals just leave…
compiled by Otis Dudley Duncan and Tim Lambert revised 23 Oct 2005 by Tim Lambert
Note: With the exception of academic publications, some tapes and some found by LexisNexis search, these were found on the Internet. The web is, of course, not perfectly reliable, and items appearing there…
Lott's reply to Duncan's article raises some disturbing questions about Lott's honesty. See also James Lindgren's report on his attempt to find some evidence that Lott actually conducted a DGU survey.
Where did that 98 percent come from?
98 percent claims before 1997
Way back in 1993 in…