tlambert | May 28, 2001Mary Woods wrote:
Kellermann also used a control case study, limiting his cases to the
following criteria; "Any death ruled a homicide was included, regardless
of the method used. Assault related injuries that were not immediately
fatal were included if death followed within three months." ( NEMJ
vol.329, no.15, pg. 1084). Right there, that raised a red flag in my
mind. If the case studies included deaths occurring three months after
an assault, one has to question the validity of those cases. The
questions that come to mind were; what were the cause of death for those
who were…
tlambert | May 24, 2001circe wrote:
In homes with guns the homicide of a household member is three times
more likely to occur than in homes without guns. New England Journal
1993;329.1084-1091.
David Friedman writes:
You may also have noticed that the death rate in hospitals is much
higher than in hotels. So if only we abolished the hospitals ... .
But the study controlled for a variety of factors such as age, sex,
neighbourhood, criminal record, drug use etc etc. If take your
hospitals/hotels analogy and control for severity of disease/trauma we
would find that hospitals are safer. For example, if you just…
tlambert | April 12, 2001Lott grossly misrepresents Kellermann's study. He states that "they fail to
report that in only 8 of these 444 homicide cases could it be established
that the gun involved had been kept in the home." Kellermann et al do indeed
fail to report that, but that is because it is not true. They do note that
in 8 out of a subset of 14 cases the police report stated that the gun
involved had been kept in the home. Needless to say, 14 is not equal to 444.
Lott goes on to claim that "all or virtually all the homicide victims were
killed by weapons brought into their homes by intruders". This claim is…
tlambert | September 1, 2000(from The Criminologist Vol 25, No 5 Sep/Oct 2000 pp 1,6)
In a recent issue of the Criminologist, Otis Duncan raises concerns about my writings. He discusses a wide range of issues from the estimated number of defensive gun uses and the rate at which defensive uses result in the gun being fired to even the significance of why the NRA doesn't cite certain aspects of my research. Let me go through the different points raised by Duncan:
In discussing my op-ed pieces, Duncan notes that "It is especially noteworthy that Lott does not credit Kleck with the estimate of 2.5 million." (p. 5)…
tlambert | January 1, 2000This post contains extracts from Chapter 23 Private Defence of Textbook of Criminal Law by Glanville L Williams (2nd Ed 1983).
Summary
In general, private defence is an excuse for any crime against the person or property. It probably applies to the defence even of a stranger, and may be used not only against culpable but against innocent aggressors.
In general, defence is allowed only when it is immediately necessary against threatened violence. A person who acts under a mistaken belief in the need for defence is protected, except that the courts hold that the mistake must be…
tlambert | January 1, 2000Otis Dudley Duncan, University of California, Santa Barbara
(from The Criminologist Vol 25, No 1 Jan/Feb 2000 pp 1-7)
We who work hard to produce statistics for public consumption would do well to acquire a little historical perspective. Theodore Porter's wide-ranging Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (1995) takes note of 19th-century developments illustrating the "creative power of statistics.... Every category has the potential to become a new thing." Crime did not originate in that century, but "it may be doubted whether there were crime rates"…
tlambert | June 22, 1999Ray writes:
Danny's obvious reading disability has not allowed him to
read this when I posted it before. Maybe he can get a friend to
read it to him this time:
W A Collier writes:
Ray, one question for you: If all these other folks including Marvin E.
Wolfgang (widely acclaimed as a statistician) found no fault serious
enough to invalidate the methodology of Kleck, then how do you account
for your posting? Are you a better analyst than Wolfgang and Kleck/Gertz
- or are you simply making up a some of this, cutting bits and pieces
from their contexts, and then changing contexts (as I have…
tlambert | June 22, 1999W A Collier writes:
How the NCVS miscounted DGUs
Undersized sample, poor methodology, bias in the questions, unsound
methods and procedures in eliminating bias, and unlike Kleck, they
started with the conclusion (there are only a small number of gun
defenses) as an objective to be proven (not the scientific method)
whereas Kleck started with the question (How many DGUs are there) and let
the numbers supply the answer, pro or con.
You need to inform yourself better about the NCVS.
The sample size is about 100 times that of Kleck's survey.
The NCVS methodology has been refined over 25 years…
tlambert | June 11, 1999I argued that the estimate of 200,000 DG woundings derived from
Kleck's survey (p163 of TG) was inconsistent the estimate of
7700-18,500 DG woundings on page 164 of TG. Kleck accuses me of
sloppy reading for not noting that the p 164 estimate is for medically
treated wounds only. However, even if we accept Kleck's generous
estimate that there are as many untreated gunshot wounds as treated
ones (chapter 1 of TG), it is quite clear that if we multiply the page
164 estimate by two to allow for this possibility, that it is still
not at all close to the estimate from Kleck's survey.
In any case…
tlambert | June 10, 1999Gary Kleck writes:
my position that estimates of DGUs with a wounding are unstable is
correct. The prevalence of DGUs with a wounding in the Kleck-Gertz
(K-G) survey was 0.0011 (1.326% of U.S. adults had a DGU of some
kind in the previous year, and 8.3% of DGUs involved a wounding --
see pp. 184-185 of K-G article; 0.083 x 0.01326 = 0.00110058).
Assuming simple random sampling, the 95% confidence interval
estimate of the national annual prevalence of DGUs with a wounding
would be 0.0011 +/- 1.96((.0011 x .9989)/4,977)) = 0.0011 +/- 0.0009,
or 0.000179-0.00202.
This is not the correct way to…
tlambert | April 18, 1999Dan Z wrote:
Yeah, that's really odd. According to figures published in the
International
Journal of Epidemiology, in 1994, Northern Ireland had an adjusted
homicide
rate of 5.85 and Scotland was 2.24. It looks to me like the rate for
Northern
Ireland is greater
What does "adjusted" mean here?
RD Thompson writes:
They removed all the political homicides.
Wrong. Political homicides were included. "Adjusted" refers to
controlling for demographic differences --- younger people are more
likely to be murdered than older people, so if you want to see if a
difference is homicide rates is…
tlambert | November 23, 1998Gun Control Advocates Purvey Deadly Myths
Wall Street Journal, 11 Nov. 1998
By John R. Lott Jr.
The family gun is more likely to kill you or someone
you know than to kill in self-defense. The 1993 study
yielding such numbers, published in the New England
Journal of Medicine, never actually inquired as to
whose gun was used in the killing. Instead, if a
household owned a gun and if a person in that household
or someone he knew was shot to death while in the home,
the gun in the household was blamed. In fact, virtual-
ly all the killings in the study were committed…
tlambert | November 19, 1998Gun Control Advocates Purvey Deadly Myths
Wall Street Journal, 11 Nov. 1998
By John R. Lott JR.
The U.S. has a high murder rate because Americans own
so many guns. There is no international evidence
backing this up. The Swiss, New Zealanders and Finns
all own guns as frequently as Americans, yet in 1995
Switzerland had a murder rate 40% lower than Germany's,
and New Zealand had one lower than Australia's. Fin-
land and Sweden have very different gun ownership
rates, but very similar murder rates. Israel, with a
higher gun ownership rate than the U.S., has a…
tlambert | July 29, 1998I used to believe that Kleck's estimate of DGU's was correct, but
overwhelming evidence to the contrary has convinced me otherwise.
Sam A. Kersh writes:
To the best of my knowledge, you have never accepted Kleck's DGU
estimates. At least not in the last 5 years that you and I (and Pim)
have debated guns, crime and 'Point Blank.'
Here's what I wrote about it back in 1991:
A most interesting paper! Like any good scientific paper it raises a lot of
questions. The estimate of 1M defensive uses arises from about 50 (4% of
1228) yes respondants. Don't you just want to have a follow-up survey…
tlambert | June 22, 1998bob (really Edgar Suter?) writes:
From an early DRAFT of Gary Kleck's TARGETING GUNS : FIREARMS AND
THEIR CONTROL scheduled to be published this month:
The Medical/Public Health Literature on Guns and Violence
False Citation of Prior Research
One final problem in the medical/public health literature on
guns-violence links is so widespread, serious, and misleading that
it deserves extended attention: the false citation of previous
research as supporting anti-gun/pro-control conclusions, buttressing
the author's current findings, when the studies actually did no such
thing. There is probably no…
tlambert | June 5, 1998Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes:
Just a very few comments: Folks can report an incident to the police
without reporting gun use. I once fetched a gun to encourage some
burglars to leave, and reported the burglary but not the gun use,
since the gun possession was unlawful.
The Kleck estimate is not just inconsistent with police records of gun
use against crime, but with police records of crime. There were
300,000 DGUs amongst the robberies known to the police? Are we to
suppose that criminals seek out armed victims.
Kleck/Gertz have a nice response to the ludicrous Hemenway reliance
on…
tlambert | June 3, 19980. Introduction
Volume 87:4 of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology contains
three articles on the issue of the frequency of defensive gun use.
The first presents David Hemenway's critique of Gary Kleck's 2.5
million estimate, the second is Kleck and Gertz's reply and finally
Tom Smith of the National Opinion Research Center comments on both
papers.
I'll try to summarize the arguments and comment where I think they are
wrong.
1. Hemenway's critique
1a. False Positives
Hemenway's critique has two main arguments. The first is the problem
of false positives. Let me define some terms…
tlambert | May 8, 1998John Briggs writes:
Also, the Crime Incident Report that follows the Basic Screen Questionnaire
seems to elicit details (including defensive responses) regarding only the
most recent of multiple similar reported crime incidents. Questions 2 and 3
ask about the when and where of "this/the first incident" and question 4
asks "Altogether, how many times did this type of incident happen during
the last 6 months?" Then, item 5a states "The following questions refer
only to the most recent incident" and the rest of the questions in the CIR,
including those regarding defensive actions, appear to be…
tlambert | May 7, 1998Note that even if you are in love with Kleck's estimate for DGUs, you
can't honestly compare it with the NCVS estimate for gun crimes, since
it is not possible for both Kleck's estimate for DGUs and the NCVS
estimate for gun crimes to be correct.
Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes:
Why not? NCVS's purpose is to measure crimes, not defensive gun
uses. Why can't one think the NCVS does a pretty good job measuring
what it's trying to measure, and Kleck-Gertz did a pretty good job
measuring what they were trying to measure? Kleck did, of course;
Kleck does not seem to have noticed that his "generous…
tlambert | December 18, 1997" THE 'PSYCHIC COST' OF HOLIDAY GIFT-GIVING"
By Dr. Paul Gallant and David Kopel
The approach of the holiday season brings a perennial problem:
what to give the relative or good friend who already has a VCR?
For many American gift-givers the answer has often been a
high-quality firearm. Perhaps that long-admired hunting rifle, for him?
Maybe a LadySmith revolver for her?
"Don't do it --- you'll frighten your neighbors!" warn some latter-day
Scrooges, citing an article "Firearms and Community Feelings of
Safety," from the Journal on Criminal Law and Criminology. Polling
information "provides…