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tlambert | March 27, 1996Steve 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 much as a factor of 12, and rapes by a factor of 33.
Err, no. He said it might undercount them by this much.
Criminologists do agree that NCVS significantly undercounts
non-stranger crimes. It does not follow that it undercounts stranger
crimes. Since the uses reported to Kleck were mostly…
tlambert | March 27, 1996Steve 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 pretty massive scale, wouldn't you?
The NCVS has been around for long enough for criminologists to be
aware of crimes that it undercounts. It is known to significantly
undercount non-stranger crimes, but no-one until now has suggested
that it massively undercounts stranger crimes like robbery and…
tlambert | January 22, 1996Eugene 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 adequate for measuring DGUs (because the NCVS undercounts some
crimes) and then a few pages later uses the NCVS to measure the
effectiveness of defensive gun use. I don't see how he can have his
cake and eat it.
Another disturbing thing about his treatment of the NCVS in "Point
Blank" is that he…
tlambert | January 18, 1996"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-mannered Frank Warren other than to note that argument ad hominem
is a fallacy, as is arguing from authority ("Kleck is infallible" type
arguments) and as are straw man arguments (falsely claiming that I have
asserted that Kleck is lying or asserted that guns are pointless.) I
think critical…
tlambert | July 4, 1995The 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 underestimate" unless almost all
defensive gun uses are conducted with illegal weapons.
David Veal writes:
Considering the problems occasionally (and well publicized)
encountered by people using armed resistance to crime, it is possible
that people would be hesitant to talk to a government official…
tlambert | October 19, 1994T. 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-defense, we could still be talking about over 13,000
lives saved each year by armed citizens.
Except that 16% of violent crimes do not result in the victim's death.
In fact, only 0.35% of assaults result in death (Kleck table 5.8).
0.35%*80,000=300 lives saved with guns each year. This is an…
tlambert | June 3, 1994Pim 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 prevented for instance. Sounds like inflated
statistics to me.
C. D. Tavares said:
Well, Pim, the fact that you personally find this data hard to accept
is going to make me run right out and reconsider it from the ground up.
I mean, heavens --- it doesn't even come close to agreeing with the
stone…
tlambert | April 20, 1994
Method of % Completed % Attacked % Injured Num Times
Self Protection Used(a)
Used gun 30.9 25.2 17.4 89,009
Used Knife 35.2 55.6 40.3 59,813
Used other weapon 28.9 41.5 22.0 104,700
Used physical force 50.1 75.6 50.8 1,653,880
Tried to get help
or frighten offender 63.9 73.5 48.9 1,516,141
Threatened or reasoned
with offender 53.7…
tlambert | October 5, 1993Alfred A. Hambidge, Jr. said:
For the benefit of those trying to follow this thread, could you post
the NCS questions in question?
There are 20 screening questions. I'm not going to type them all in
-- the following are just the ones that relate to to assault and
robbery.
(37) Did anyone take something directly from you by using force, such
as by a stickup, mugging or threat?
(38) Did anyone TRY to rob you by using force or threatening to harm
you?
(39) Did anyone beat you up, attack you or hit you with something, such
as a rock or a bottle?
(40) Were you knifed, shot at, or attacked with…
tlambert | September 22, 1993Jon Buck said:
NCS didn't do a very good job of asking; they only asked about
defensive weapon use after the respondent answered positively to
having been a victim of a crime.
Right, so cases where someone whipped out a gun without being
threatened with violence weren't counted.
Kleck makes this criticism of the NCS (in "Point Blank", if I
remember correctly). This leaves out the case of successful
self-defense, in which the intended victim was not victimized
because they used a gun in self-defense;
No it doesn't. Such a person is still a victim of the crime of
attempted robbery, or…
tlambert | September 21, 1993Michael J. Phelps said:
Is it not possible that many unsuccessful robberies are not reported, thus
not included in the NCS data?
NCS data is not based on reports, but a very extensive survey.
Consider that a person who is on the
receiving end of an attempted robbery didn't loose anything [so what are
they reporting?], may not consider themselves a victim [after all, the
crime wasn't completed], and doesn't see what benefit there would be in
spending the time reporting the attempt.
The NCS asks "did anyone try to rob you?"
On a personal note, 5 guys tried
to rob me some years ago; they didn'…
tlambert | September 21, 1993Kleck's survey:
(1) 2,500,000 defensive uses
(2) 8% of these involve wounding/killing a criminal.
Therefore:
8% of 2,500,000 = 200,000 defensive uses involve wounding/killing a
criminal.
Kleck's earlier research:
(3) 15% of gunshot wounds are fatal.
David Barton said:
I strongly suspect a combination of 2 and 3. Note that (as I recall,
in the dim recesses of my memory; I would appreciate correction) Kleck
arrived at the 15% figure by dividing reported gun woundings against
reported fatalities. I suspect that: eyewitness reports by those
involved in incidents will over-report woundings (…
tlambert | September 20, 1993Larry Cipriani said:
KLECK: About 8 percent of the defensive uses involved a
sexual crime such as an attempted sexual assault. About 29
percent involved some sort of assault other than sexual assault.
Thirty-three percent involved a burglary or some other theft at
home.
33% of 2,500,000 is 825,000. NCS data gives 1,000,000 burglaries each
year when there is someone at home. So in 83% of these burglaries a
gun was used for defence?? NCS asked: 3% said they used a gun for
self-defence.
Twenty-two percent involved robbery.
22% of 2,500,000 is 550,000. NCS data gives about 1,000,000…
tlambert | January 28, 1993In other words, the NCS only counts defensive uses against crimes.
Andy Freeman said:
Wrong. NCS doesn't get into defensive uses unless the victim thinks
that a crime occurred even if it was successfully self-defended
against. As in "Have you been the victim of a crime?" Someone who
successfully self-defended against an armed robber might well answer
"no". They weren't a victim. Yet, that's a self-defense against
crime, one that the NCS wouldn't ever find out about.
In fact the NCS does not ask "Have you been the victim of a crime?".
Andy appears to have made that question up. The…
tlambert | May 26, 1992Wright & Rossi's survey of criminals showed that the main
reason why criminals carry guns is self-defence, so a large number of
the 500,000 gun assaults may be illegal self-defence uses.
Rick Bressler said:
I have a problem with confusing an assault with a defense. The two are
mutually exclusive. At least under US law, an assault is a crime, a
defense is not....
There are two meanings to the term "self-defence" in my dictionary:
1. the act of defending one's own person, reputation, etc
2. (Law) the use of reasonable force against an attacker, constituting
a defence in criminal law and…
tlambert | May 6, 1992About 2/3 of the crimes where guns are used for self defence are
assaults, so this is the death rate that we should use.
Frank Crary said:
Why? As I said, attempted murders/murders would have a much (as in,
order of magnitude) higher. Even if they are only a small fraction of
violent crimes, their contribution would still be as great as that
from assaults.
Let's see, if attempted murder/murder is 5% fatal, then there must be
500,000 of them to get the same contribution as I have assumed from
assaults. That gives 25,000 homicides from attempted murder/murder
and 25,000 from assaults. Oops…
tlambert | May 3, 1992The death rate from robberies is about 1.5 per thousand robberies. If
the same death rate occurs in other crimes, then guns save 1.5*65, or
about 100 lives per year.
Frank Crary said:
What makes you think that the death rate from robberies is typical? It
certainly isn't for, say, murders or attempted murders. I'd expect it to
be much higher for other crimes, such as rape (although there is a selection
effect, about half the rapes reported by the local news are rape/murders.)
By selecting robberies, and using 1.5/1000 as the death rate, your estimate
is low by possibly as much as a factor of…
tlambert | April 13, 1992Greg Booth said:
A 1979 US Justice Department study of 32,000 attempted
rapes show that overall, when rape is attempted, the
completion rate is 36%. But when a woman defends herself
with a gun, the completion rate drops to 3%.
"Rape victimization in 26 American Cities" is indeed a US Justice
Department study, so I can correct all the inaccuracies in the above
paragraph.
32,000 is the estimated number of rapes and attempted rapes by
strangers in the 26 cities surveyed. The number of rapes and
attempted rapes by strangers in the sample was about 1600.
The completion rate for rapes by…