Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes: But let's get back to the estimates of gun ownership by the cases and the controls. OK. Unlike Dr Suter's straw man argument this is a real threat to the study. If gun ownership of the cases is under-reported more than gun ownership of the controls is under-reported, the correlation between guns and homicide is weakened. If gun ownership of the cases is under-reported LESS than gun ownership of the controls is under-reported, the correlation between guns and homicide is strengthened. The cases were, of course, proxies for them. But the situation was that a…

A limitation on the earlier (43-1) study is not necessarily a limitation on the later case-control study. The authors of the bibliography are quite correct when they state that a case-control study could measure a net protective effect of firearms. Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes: The earlier study noted that one couldn't fully evaluate the protective value of firearms without knowing about their use in non-fatal protective situations. I.e., the authors recognized that a gun could be used for protection without producing a corpse. The later study did not note that one needed such complete…

Daniel D. Polsby writes: Unless I am seriously mistaken, one would find that crack cocaine dealers and other persistent criminals are disproportionately likely to possess firearms and to be murdered by others using firearms. To place firearms at the heart of this story is at best tendentious. The 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. Absent a controlled experiment (which is impossible)…

Edgar Suter writes: Dr. Kellermann's subsequent research "finding" that a gun in the home increases risk used a method that cannot distinguish between "cause" and "effect." Kellermann's illogical conclusion would be like finding more insulin in the homes of diabetics and so concluding that insulin "causes" diabetes. Interestingly Kellermann's own data show that when a homeowner is killed only rarely is the "gun in the home" the instrument of the homeowner's death. Untrue. See table 1 of the paper. How then can the gun "cause" the death? Does the gun magnetize murderers to the homeowner's…

Lawrence Kennon writes: The following documents exactly the kind of "junk science" being foisted off on the public by the medical profession, and in particular the CDC and the NEJM. It does nothing of sort. There are dozens of falsehoods, and dozens of claims that are extremely dubious. It would be possible to put these down as honest errors, caused by Suter's pro-gun bias, except for the following example which can only have resulted from blatant dishonesty on Suter's part: Edgar Suter writes: harmful and unconstitutional nostrums Crime and homicide rates are highest in jurisdictions,…

Steve D. Fischer writes: more threatening than a govt official sitting across a desk from you? (1) not sitting across a desk Irrelevant. The key is that they can look you in the eye and read your body language. Yet one more time: The NCVS used to be face to face but now most interviews are conducted by phone (except for interviews of people without phones, of course). (2) 97% of the people cooperate with the census NCS survey Co-operate does not mean tell truth. It simply means they agree to answer the questions. The sensible thing to do if you want to conceal something from the NCVS is…

Steve D. Fischer writes: I have no problem accepting the idea that respondents lie about reporting incidents to the police. From my own experience, I know that people tend to disbelieve a report of a DGU if you say you did not report it. The tendency to lie on this question is high. Because one lies about reporting to the police, it does NOT mean they made up the DGU. Yes, just because Kleck's DG users gave untruthful answers on the questions of whether the incident was known to the police, on whether the perp was wounded, on whether the perp was killed, on whether someone would have died…

kebarnes writes: Are Kleck's numbers concerning the self-reporting of robbery and burglary incidences from this survey out of line with the comparable NCVS results, for instance? Rs to Kleck's survey reported that 5.5% (274/4977 Rs) had been a burglary victim within the past year, and 2.5% (124/4977 Rs) had been a robbery victim within the past year. This would imply (if I'm correct) some 242,600 robberies and 533,800 burglaries. You dropped a decimal: it's 2.4 million robberies and 5.3 million burglaries. And 500,000 (20%) of robberies where a gun was used for defence. And 850,000 (16…

Steve D. Fischer writes: Now, you've got 100 lines to convince me WHY I should risk getting myself into trouble with the law, when all I wanted to do was report a crime that happened to me. The trouble is that Kleck would have you believe that this accounts for the discrepancy between his survey, that is, 97% of DGUs are by people who think they would get in trouble for it AND that these people would tell his interviewer but not one working for the NCVS. That is 97% of the population simultaneously believe that the government will lie to them (by promising confidentiality) and that the…

Steve D. Fischer writes: There are two kinds of lies to worry about. The first is making up defensive gun usages (DGUs) which never occurred, or which did not occur within the 1 year time period. The second is concealing DGUs that did occur because you feared that your DGU might have been of question- able legality. We've talked at length about the second circumstance. Let's look only at the first, then. Kleck reported 213 DGUs in a sample of 5,000. Assuming 59 million gun owners, that leads to about 2.5 million DGUs per year. The NCVS estimated 80,000 DGUs in that same gun-owning…

Pim van Meurs writes: How can you claim it to be a better estimate when the same data show inflated statistics (often 10 fold) in several other areas as well ? How can you claim that at survey which restricts definition of gun used in self defense ends up finding far more than ever found before ? Not that much was changed in the methodology to account for such a jump and certainly the study should be compared to other surveys like the NCS. Kleck deals with the jump by "adjusting" the earlier estimates. Apparently the Hart poll now implies exactly 1,797,461 defensive. gun uses. (page 182 of…

Steve 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…

Steve 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…

Don B Kates, Jr. writes: Having been out of town on two different trips, I have not had a chance to finish my response to Mr. Lambert's latest screed to me. But I note his comment that Ed Suter has offered, "the same incorrect citation as in Kates' paper. Doesn't anyone check their references these days?" As I have noted, this is a mere quibble. Because of editorial error, the LAW REVIEW's editors dropped the citation I supplied them. I have supplied it to Mr. L who, however reluctantly, has been forced to acknowledge that Dr. Schetky made the remark which I (and, following me, Ed Suter)…

Frank Warren writes: You argue your own straw man here, as though a very young [...] person, has a realistic option besides a firearm. Now there's an idea for the anti-spanking crowd: Arm the very young and their parents will have second thoughts about spanking them. I can see the placards at the next gun-rights demonstration now: "GUN RIGHTS FOR KIDS" "KIDS HAVE A RIGHT TO SELF DEFENCE" "NO MORE HOMEWORK" Gun manufacturers will finally take into account this market segment in their product design: smaller guns for smaller hands, lighter trigger pulls, bright colours, tie ins with…

Someone writes: TO List Supervisor, Prof. Volokh: Mendacious, Fabrication, Falsity, Untrue. These words used by Mr. Lambert to describe Mr. Kates's arguments. Is it permissible to call a list member a liar if you use a thesaurus? No. The only people you are allowed to call liars are those not in a position to defend themselves (that is, those people who are not list members). I was unaware of this list rule. It seems to me that anyway you say them, these words still mean liar, No. "mendacious" and "fabrication" are the only ones that imply deceit. I only used the word "mendacious" in a…

[Writing to Don Kates] You asserted that handguns are involved in less than 50% of criminal firearm injuries. You dismissed my calculation that the data in your paper implied that the percentage was 90-97% as some sort of trick. Could you please tell me what you consider the correct value of this percentage to be? Don B Kates, Jr. writes: I answer: The correct value is determinable only from actual statistics. So far as I know, no statistics are available on the percentage of injuries involving handgun versus long gun crime. (Conceivably, the NCVS have such data, but I am not aware of it.…

Don B Kates, Jr. writes: In vol. 62 # 3 (1995) of the TN Law Rev, Henry Schaffer, three professors at Harvard and Columbia Medical Schools, and I have an article evaluating the medical/public health literature on firearms. Our general conclusion goes beyond simple negativity. We conclude that it is not just methodologically incompetent, but an ideologically based "literature of deceit." In almost 90 pages and with over 360 footnotes we document that the literature meets the specification of a model based on the law of actionable fraud, including overt misrepresentations, partial statements…

Eugene 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…

"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…