Kleck reckons that 97% of defensive gun users lie to the census bureau
about it. Are we to suppose that 97% of the people don't believe
legal guarantee of confidentiality? And yet those same people will
tell a complete stranger (who may be a government agent posing as a
pollster working for Kleck) about it? Come now.
John Briggs writes:
Careful, please, I cite you in another post. Are you saying that Kleck
actually says this or are you interpreting his criticisms of the NCVS
as compelling this conclusion about his "reckonings".
p 168 Kleck says "only about 3% of DGUs among NCVS Rs are reported to
interviewers." On pp 154-6 he argues that this is because Rs are
worried they might get into trouble if the authorites find out about
the DGU. And yet 64.2% said that the police were aware of the
incident. (Table 3) Doesn't make sense...
The fact is that the NCVS is the most comprehensive, complete,
accurate crime survey ever done.
Even accepting your assertion, so what? As Kleck suggests, the NCVS is
not designed to elicit information specifically about DGU's,
Oh, another point. Kleck's survey is inconsistent with NCVS measures
of crime, not just of DGUs. For example, Kleck's estimate of the
number of DGUs against robbery is only slightly less that the NCVS
estimate for ALL robberies and attempted robberies.
although the NCVS is used (some would say, abused] for that purpose.
Used for that purpose by Kleck himself when it suits his purposes.
Yes. The question is not use but abuse.
Well he uses the NCVS to argue that guns are the most effective means
of resistance. He can't have his cake and eat it. If the NCVS only
finds 3% of DGUs then it is useless for measuring the effectiveness of
DGU.
Where are their boundaries? Of
course, the DGU surveys are also subect to abuse. Not that it matters
to anyone but I have never referred to Kleck's 2.4 million number
conclusive even as to the order of magnitude of DGU's. The clustering
of DGU surveys at an order of magnitude greater than that derived from
the NCVS survey interests me more than Klecks 2x number compared to
other DGU surveys. The fact that he tried to avoid the problems that
attend those sorts of surveys is no guarantee that he succeded.
I'm not sure if clustering is the right word. Most of them can't be
used to produce any sort of estimate unless a lot of fudge factors are
applied, and different fudge factors produce wildly different
numbers. For example, Kleck has derived estimates ranging from
340,000 to 1.7M from the Hart poll. About the best you can say is
that these other surveys yield estimates somewhere between 300,000 and
3 million. Over the 25 years that it has been running, the NCVS has
consistently given estimates under 100,000. I don't think either
the high or low number can be dismissed as an aberration --- we need
some reasonable explanation as to why the NCVS can be consistently
wrong, or why the other surveys can be somewhat consistently wrong.
That is what Kleck focuses on. He notes that indpendent (of each other
and of the government) surveys, some by pro-gun, some by pro-control,
some by neutral groups, are all wildly at variance with the NCVS.
These should at least raise questions about the NCVS, just as the NCVS
should raise questions about the various DGU surveys.
Yes, it should, but it doesn't prove the NCVS to be wrong as Kleck
claims.
I agree. I do not regard Kleck as infallible. But, he is not the only
critic of the NCVS. Let us say I am leery about the "conclusiveness"
of the NCVS with respect to something it is not even intended to
measure when criticisms have been leveled against it with repect to,
e.g., rape and domestic violence, which it is designed to measure. I
have my doubts about some of the research on both sides of this issue.
I don't believe that the NCVS is conclusive. It's not going to count
DGUs that people don't want to talk about. Trouble is, Kleck's study
isn't going to pick those up either.
Since I have my own pro-gun-rights biases I try to listen more
carefully to the antis. On the legal/constitutional questions I am
probably beyond hope -- I are a law skool graduate. I have enough
experience in practice and reading of law to evaluate the arguments of
judges and commentators. But, then any reasonably literate person is
pretty much qualified to follow the legal arguments. At the risk of
drastic oversimplification, the NRA is right, HCI doesn't know squat.
Gee, the constitutional stuff seems pretty simple to me. The state
parliament has the power to control guns, the federal parliament does
not. Mind you, the feds are slugging me for an extra $100 to fund the
gun buy back component of the stupid new gun laws.
Do you deny that criminals have strong incentives to avoid contact
with doctors who will report the gunshot wound? It is not ridiculous
at all. The question is how many ...
Let's look at some numbers:
Medical data indicate that about 50,000 gun-shot wounds from assaults
are treated in hospitals each year. The NCVS indicates that about 80%
The accuracy of these with respect to woundings as a result of a DGU
are probably lower than woundings of crime victims as the result of a
crime. The criminal is less likely to check in to a hospital. The
criminal is also less likely to give accurate answers should they wind
up being interviewed by a government agent, even one from the Census
Bureau. I think you understate the uncertainty.
of people with gun-shot wounds get hospital treatment. That suggest
there are about 60,000 gun-shot wounds altogther. With roughly 10,000
homicides that means that the death rate from gun-shot wounds is
around 15%. If criminals avoid medical treatment, their death rate
will be somewhat higher. Kleck's survey implies that 200,000
criminals are shot each year which should produce at least 30,000 dead
criminals. Where are the bodies?
Your 200,000 figure is, as you have said, 100,000 to 300,000 if all of
Kleck's respondents were accurate in their assessment of the results
of their shootings. You account for statistical variance due to
sampling error. What I am quite willing to agree is that some of that
small number who reported killing or wounding their assailants were
wrong.
Almost all of them must have been wrong. Kleck's own estimate (in
"Point Blank") of the number of criminals shot is 10,000 to 20,000.
That means that you would only expect one or two Rs who really did
shoot the perp.
You and RR say they were all lying so none of Kleck's
conclusions are warranted, even as regards DGU more broadly defined
and reported.
I say nothing of the sort. This particular point only shows that most
of those that reported shooting the perp did not tell the truth.
There are many other problems - inconstency with NCVS measures of
burglaries and robberies, UCR records of these, surveys with
criminals, a wildly disproportinate number of DGUs by the R as
compared to the number by another household member and so on.
I say that the accuracy of a response of some DGU is
much higher (because less uncertain -- respondent will unlikely be
wrong about whether they drew a gun and fired) than is the specific
response (I hit him, he died). Everybody, police, civilians, fighter
pilots, overstates their marksmanship. But they are all more accurate
in their report that they got into some sort of a fight. A five- or
even ten-fold overstate of woundings/killings would not surprise me. A
hundred-fold overstatement would.
If the discrepency is just because they mistakenly thought they hit
when they missed, that implies the hit rate when DGUs tried to shoot
the perp was around 3%. It might be safer being the target rather
than a bystander...