tlambert | October 1, 1996Sam A. Kersh writes:
No, it up to you to show that an 88% reduction in rapes, 35%
reduction in commercial robbery and an 84% reduction in
residential burglaries is insignificant. Proof, not an inane
assertion by Lambert as a citation.
Sam, you seem to lack the most basic understanding of the way
statistics is done. Changes are not assumed to be statistically
significant until proved otherwise. The burden of proof is on you:
present a statistical test for significance. I've asked you for this
several times now. You keep trying to avoid the issue. (Hint for
Sam: posting extracts from…
tlambert | September 29, 1996Peter H. Proctor writes:
If memory serves,
roughly half of all murders in the US are committed by blacks ( usually against
other blacks ), who represent about 14% of the US population.
If memory serves, if you discount this one population, the murder
rate in the US is below some European countries. This is counting
Hispanics ( who have a murder rate roughly double that for other US whites )
with the White population.
The US white homicide rate is about 5 per 100,000. The median homicide
rate for Western European countries is about 1.2 per 100,000. (Source
WHO Statistical Yearbook…
tlambert | September 27, 1996In Point Blank Gary Kleck writes:
The aggressor's possession of a handgun in a violent incident
apparently exerts a very slight net positive effect on the
likelihood of the victim's death. The linear probability
interpretation of the OLS coefficient implies that the presence of a
handgun increases the probability of the victim's death by 1.4%.
thus the violence-increasing and violence-suppressing effects of
gun possession and use almost exactly cancel each other out. This
small association is statistically significant, however, because of
the very large (n=14,922) sample size.
the effects…
tlambert | September 18, 1996Georgie Stanford writes:
The thesis is the following:
(1) Worldwide suicide rates are essentially the same regardless
of political factors such as availability of firearms
when matched for age and sex. Worldwide these are about
1.5% in all whole populations except for 2).
Really?
From the UN demographic yearbook I computed percentages of deaths that
were suicides:
El Salvador 4%
Japan 2.5%
Fiji 2%
Korea 1.5%
Nicaragua 1%
Mexico 0.5%
There seems to be quite a bit of variation there.
(2) Males of northern European extraction have a higher total
suicide rate of about 2.5% regardless of…
tlambert | August 18, 1996[Originally posted to firearmsreg Aug 19 1996]
Daniel Polsby writes:
McDowall very freely interprets his five-county study as suggestive
of causation. I tend to share the view that one should be slow to
change public policy on the basis of a single study, though one might
say of Lott-Mustard that it amounts to at least 610
McDowall-Loftin-Wiersema studies, as it covers that many times more
counties, to say nothing of controlling for a lot more variables. I
should say, however, that ordinarily the heavy lifting of causation
involves the existence of a theory which models how the world works…
tlambert | August 16, 1996[Originally posted to firearmsreg Aug 16 1996]
Daniel Polsby writes:
Mr. Lambert, and for that matter most others on this list, assume
that firearms are used defensively when they are brandished. All of
the endless back and forth about survey research techniques of
establishing how often this sort of thing happens has embedded this
assumption.
No, my comments were directed specifically at the deterrence
theory. IF concealed weapon permit holders used their weapons
frequently (say two or three times a week) and IF these incidents were
given wide publicity (so that criminals were made aware of…
tlambert | August 14, 1996[Originally posted to firearmreg on Aug 15 1996]
Daniel Polsby writes:
Lott's results are highly plausible and internally consistent.
Highly plausible? Lets look at Dade county:
Lott reckons that the carry law caused a reduction of 8% in murders,
5% in rapes, 7% in aggravated assaults and 2% in robberies. For Dade
county that translates to 1,500 fewer aggravated assaults, 450 fewer
robberies, 65 fewer rapes and 30 fewer murders each year. From Cramer
and Kopel's paper on CCW (TN Law Review v 62p733) one learns that "the
police kept track of every known incident involving [Dade] county's…
tlambert | August 12, 1996Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes:
Yes, I'm sure [Kleck] would dispute Annest, because he would assume injuries
not treated in emergency rooms, and he'd probably stick with an
estimate starting around 150,000 -- unless I've misunderstood
non-peer-reviewed conversations.
So how does he reconcile this with his earlier estimate of
10,000-20,000 such woundings? That estimate was computed from his
estimate of 1400-2800 self-defence killings and the estimate of 15%
wound mortality. Does he know believe that there are 30,000
self-defence killings or that wound mortality for defensive shootings
is only…
tlambert | August 8, 1996Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes:
The Annest et al. numbers are based on seeking medical treatment in
emergency rooms. And the figure for gunshot wounds is roughly 100,000
(which Phil Cook upped to 150,000 for the June JAMA by counting all
gun-related wounds including pistol whippings and air/BB/etc. guns).
Prior to that, estimates from (primarily anti-gunners) hovered in the
200-250,000 range (except for a few imaginative folk who assumed all
gun-related crimes resulted in injuries).
Kleck would dispute the Annest et al. NEISS-based figure on the theory
that criminals try to avoid medical…
tlambert | August 4, 1996Charles Scripter writes:
BTW, I notice that your web page still seems to purport that your
analysis was correct, even though your friends over in sci.stat.edu
pointed out that it was not correct;
That's an interesting interpretation of the discussion.
Perhaps you'd like to correct this "oversight".
No problem, here's something from one of my friends in sci.stat.edu:
Barry McDonald writes:
THE ARGUMENT ABOUT AUTOCORRELATION IN THE NSW HOMICIDE STATISTICS
One complaint by Scripter about your data was to do with the evident
autocorrelation in your data. It was this that was of interest to me…
tlambert | August 3, 1996Mark Gibson writes:
And Waller and Okihiro (1978, p. 31) reported
that 44% of burglarized Toronto residences were occupied during the
burglaries, with 21% of the burglaries resulting in confrontations between
victim and offender.
Waller and Okihiro did not have enough money to conduct a full victim
survey of Toronto, so concentrated on some high crime areas. Their
results do not necessarily generalize to the whole city. A full
victim survey of Edmonton in 1987 found an at-home rate of 10%, which
is less than that for the US.
That would not explain why at-home burglary rates appear to be…
tlambert | August 3, 1996Jim Zoes was kind enough to send me the data on English homicide rates
that he obtained from the Home Office. I've typed it in and included
it at the end of this message.
The numbers are certainly higher than those recorded in the WHO
Statistical Yearbook. I'll try to find out why, but for now I think
we should consider the Home Office data to be more reliable.
Anyway, there is plenty of data to let us look at the question of
whether English homicide rates were lower before the introduction of
gun control than after. Fortunately, the answer turns out to be yes
and no, so debates here about…
tlambert | July 24, 1996James B. Clark writes:
Here's your table. You didn't include the data from 1967-1972, so I
have no idea what it looks like. If you pick 1975, 1976, 1977, or
1978 I would bet that a decline in the homicide rates would be
detected by the methods in the Loftin study.
Probably. All this means however, is that because the data is noisy,
statistics cannot tell us exactly when the drop occured.
Charles Scripter writes:
Curious. If the data is so noisy that one cannot determine exactly
when the "drop" occurred, then Pim certainly cannot claim that the
"drop" corresponds to the gun ban.
He…
tlambert | July 7, 1996Alternatively, a respondent making up a DGU, or describing a friend's
DGU as if it happened to someone in the respondent's household will
tend to make him or herself the defensive gun user.
Joel Friedman writes:
While I do not disagree, your estimate of 70% / 15% is just that an
estimate. It is also possible to argue that the numbers could be
50%/ 25% or 60 / 25% ? If this is not correct, please enlighten me
as to why the 70% / 15% is more correct?
Out of each 100 reported DGUs, 85 involved the respondent, and 15 some
other member of the household. The real numbers must be equal. Kleck…
tlambert | July 5, 1996Yes, the measure of shooting DGUs is inaccurate because of the small
number (16) of sample cases. A 95% confidence interval is 100,000
to 300,000 criminals are shot by armed citizens each year.
However, even allowing for the inaccuracy, the number does not seem
possible.
Eugene Volokh writes:
(2) Could it be that this figure is not that far off the mark
considering that a number of career criminal-career criminal
confrontations may accurately be called "defensive gun use"?
Criminals, after all, sometimes have to defend themselves, too, and
they might be quite honest when they say they…
tlambert | June 13, 1996Clayton Cramer wrote:
"The Offences Against The Person Act of 1861 only allows use of deadly
force against an attacker similarly armed.
Otherwise a firearm can only be used
with the intent of frightening an attacker -- even if the warning
shot accidentally hits the attacker.
For practical purposes, guns are seldom used defensively in
Britain because there are so few circumstances where it is
legal to do so. I doubt that a rape victim could use a gun
against a rapist in Britain unless he had a knife or a gun.
J.B. Hill, Weapons Law, (London: Waterlow Publishers, 1989),
p. 60.
The Nit Nurse…
tlambert | June 12, 1996Pim Vanmeurs wrote:
I think you'll find the Netherlands does a pretty good homicide rate.
Indeed 1.2/100,000 total and 0.3/100,000 firearms related
compared to
US 7.6/100,000 total and 4.5/100,000 firearms related
Netherlands 1.9% gun ownership
USA 48% gun ownership rates
source: Martin Killias international correlations between gun ownership
and rates of homicide ad suicide, Can Med Ass Journal may 15, 1993.
Kym Horsell writes:
The Economist Handbook 1994 quotes the 5-y average for Netherlands
at more than 10 per 100K (did seem a bit excessive).
From "Trends in Crime and…
tlambert | May 19, 1996The authors of the bibliography are quite correct when they state that a
case-control study could measure a net protective effect of firearms.
EdgarSuter writes:
"could" if death were the only legitimate measurement of the protective
benefits of guns.
Wrong. "could" if protection from death is a legitimate use of a
firearm.
Mr. Lambert's quibbling about the definition of "only rarely" bypasses the
main point of the letter.
Since an indisputable majority of Kellermann's homicides were not
committed using those scary "guns in the home," one must invoke magical
thinking to explain how these…
tlambert | May 17, 1996Edgar Suter writes:
In Kellermann's most recent study of homicide (Kellermann et al. "Gun
Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home." NEJM Oct 7, 1993;
329(15):1084-1091.) notes "Two hundred nine victims (49.8 percent) died from
gunshot wounds." Prof. Schaffer offers a robust [and successful] effort to
show that the "gun in the home" cannot be the actual homicide instrument in
every case. According to Table 1, mentioned by Mr. Lambert, this figure
includes 1% "unknown firearm" as "method of homicide." Let's charitably
imagine that these "unknown firearms" actually were the "gun…
tlambert | May 16, 1996The study controlled for literally dozens of other factors, including
criminality and illicit drugs. Furthermore the extra homicide risk
associated with firearm ownership was not from shootouts between drug
dealers or gangs, but domestic homicides.
Dr. Paul Blackman writes:
No. The study measured about 2.5 dozen items, but controlled for about
six -- with a number of items prevented from measurement by matching
the controls (race, age group, sex, etc.)
All right. They controlled for four factors by matching and another
six in the multivariate analysis. The other 2 dozen measured items…