Deltoid

J. Neil Schulman writes:

So this data has been peer-reviewed by a top criminologist in this country who was prejudiced in advance against its results, and even HE found the scientific evidence overwhelmingly convincing.

This is untrue. Wolfgang writes:

“The usual criticisms of survey research, such as that done by Kleck and Gertz, also apply to their research. The problems of small numbers and extrapolating from relatively small samples to the universe are common criticisms of all survey research, including theirs. I did not mention this specifically in my printed comments because I thought that this was obvious; within the specific limitations of their research is what I meant by a lack of criticism methodologically.” (J of Criminal Law and Criminology 86:2 p617-8)

One of the limitations of survey research that Wolfgang considered too obvious to be necessary to point out is there is no guarantee that all respondents told the truth. Mr Schulman is perhaps unaware of this fact.

Ray wrote:

They promise confidentiality, and back it up with a law that’s at the top of every survey: “NOTICE: Your report to the Census Bureau is confidential by law (US Code 42, Sections 3789g and 3735). All identifiable information will be used only by persons engaged in and for the purposes of the survey, and may not be disclosed or released to others for any purpose.”

John Briggs writes:

No doubt these data will be as secure as your FBI files and will be closely held by the BOC and DOJ and the White House security office…

(Well, there are people who don’t particularly trust the government even when they get a guarantee in writing. Look what the government has done to the guarantee known as the 2nd Amendment.)

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.

Ray:

Schulman/Kleck would have us believe that it’s poor technique to ascertain that a crime was attempted, before asking if the respondent resisted it. Actually, this technique cuts back on boastful respondents who want to exaggerate and lie about their use of guns defensively.

Briggs:

Ignoring your tendentious phraseology, the concern is that one who successfully defended oneself might not see oneself as a “victim” (even though they would qualify as a victim of an attempted crime or at least an assault). The technique may weed out those who lie but it should not weed out those who refuse to see themselves as victims.

You are evidently unfamiliar with the questions used by the NCVS. There are no questions which would weed out those who refuse to see themselves as victims. If you claim that there are, I suggest you post the exact wording.

Ray:

Schulman/Kleck begin by claiming that the NCVS must be wrong, because all other (pro-gun) surveys are right. This is the weakest argument of all. The fact is that the NCVS is the most comprehensive, complete, accurate crime survey ever done.

Briggs:

Even accepting your assertion, so what? As Kleck suggests, the NCVS is not designed to elicit information specifically about DGU’s, although the NCVS is used (some would say, abused] for that purpose.

Used for that purpose by Kleck himself when it suits his purposes.

That is what Kleck focuses on. He notes that independent (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.

Schulman quotes Kleck:

The health system cannot shed much light on this phenomenon either, since very few of these incidents involve anyone, defender or criminal, being injured.53 In the rare cases where anyone is hurt, it is usually the criminal, who is unlikely to seek medical attention for any but the most life-threatening gunshot wounds, since this would ordinarily result in a police interrogation. …

Ray:

Lets see. Schulman/Kleck are claiming that criminals don’t go to hospitals when they get shot (maybe they go to the North Pole instead?). How ridiculous. Besides, the NCVS does NOT use hospital data, so this claim is irrelevant as well.

Briggs:

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 wounds are so serious that the criminals overcome their fear of apprehension and seek medical care. Since gunshot wounds are often only flesh wounds they are often treatable with OTC antiseptics and bandages. Painkillers, OTC or more potent, are readily available without a doctor’s prescription. Do all criminals go to the emergency room for all of their crime related injuries? You imply they do. Kleck argues, more reasonably, that all do not.

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% of people with gun-shot wounds get hospital treatment. That suggest there are about 60,000 gun-shot wounds altogether. 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? … Schulman:

And Kleck, in my September, 1993 interview with him, himself downplays that part of the database, saying: “Keep in mind that the 8 percent figure is based on so few cases that you have to interpret it with great caution.”

Ray:

So Kleck admits that the individual pieces of his finding were wrong, but that the 2.4 million figure is right? Yeah, sure.

Briggs:

No, he doesn’t admit any pieces are wrong; he says pieces are less certain, i.e., more likely to be other than he estimates, because they involve a smaller number of cases, thus suffer from greater uncertainty.

Yep. A 95% confidence interval is 100,000 to 300,000 wounded criminals. Even the lower end of the interval is flat out impossible.

Ray:

Kleck’s survey also alleges that 23% of the 2.4 million self defenses were against robbery. Do the math, and you get 552,000 Kleckonian self defenses with guns against robbery a year. But according to FBI figures, there are only about 600,000 robberies of all types a year. Kleck would have us believe 90% of all robberies are defended with guns. >Impossible.

Kleck seems to be saying that there were hundreds of thousands more robberies than ANY survey has discovered. In fact, Kleck’s excuse is that HE has discovered a huge NEW category of crime. Robberies no one else knew about.

Schulman:

Kleck already handled that question. Rapes are vastly underreported.

Ray:

Only in Kleck’s dreams

Briggs:

It is widely accepted that rapes are indeed underreported. This may be due to fashion, political correctness, feminism or it may be true. Kleck is hardly alone in believing this. It is not just pulled out of thin air as are so many of your criticisms.

Of course, the quote above is about robberies. The NCVS was specifically designed to measure robberies and attempted robberies. The criminological community have helped refine the questions and methodology over the 25 years it has been operating. It seems unlikely that Kleck has discovered a whole New World of robberies that no other criminologist suspected existed.

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…

J. Neil Schulman writes:

When a dozen surveys which are specifically attempting to quantify DGU’s finds DGU’s an order of magnitude larger than the NCVS, then you have your answer.

None of those surveys other than Kleck’s were designed to quantify DGU’s and they all have problems when used for that purpose. See Kleck’s paper.

And even if those surveys were designed like Kleck’s, what you have then is just a larger sample size, still much smaller than the NCVS.

since (a) the NCVS wasn’t properly designed to get an accurate count of DGU’s and

The professional criminologists in the BJS don’t seem to agree with you.

If the criminologists at the BJS think so little of Kleck’s abilities to do accurate surveys, then why do they contract with him to do surveys for them?

Non sequiter. Please consult report NCJ-147003

Here’s an extract:

                      Average annual number of victimizations
                      in which victims used firearms to defend
                      themselves or their property                
                      ________________________________________
                                    Attacked       Threatened
                      Total         offender         offender     
                      ________________________________________
  All crimes          82,500         30,600           51,900  

If BJS criminologists don’t think that the NCVS provides any meaningful estimate of DGUs, why did they publish this report?

It may be that Kleck is right and 97% of gun-defenders lied to the NCVS. Or it may be that the NCVS is right and 4% of those who did not use a gun defensively lied to Kleck. If only a small percentage lie on surveys then it follows that Kleck is wrong.

Provide me a plausible explanation for people inflating their DGU claims — when every incentive is to minimize it to avoid legal problems — and you might have an argument.

1. It is well known that people in surveys often try to tell the surveyors what they believe the surveyors want to hear. Conduct a survey about DGU and some people will make up a DGU to make you happy. Conduct a survey about alien abductions and some people will tell about being abducted (2% in a 91 survey of adult Americans.)

2. In his essay “A Nation Of Cowards” Jeffrey Snyder argues that it is a citizen’s civic duty to fight back against crime with a gun, and it is cowardly not to. In answering surveys people tend to give answers that make themselves look good. Someone who did not want to be thought a coward might invent a DGU, or appropriate someone else’s.

3. Someone who was politically opposed to gun control has an incentive to make DGUs look more common.

4. Some people might consider a DGU to be an exciting macho experience and brag about it, even though they did not have one.

5. Some people will lie just for the hell of it.

Bear in mind that only a very small percentage have to make up or change the details of a DGU to account for Kleck’s result.

Yes? Tell me precisely by what method the NCVS has been “validated”?

I’m not going to explain elementary stuff to you. Try reading Biderman’s book on the NCVS.

You impudent jerk. I find myself responsing to your ad hominem with more ad hominem because it seems to be the only thing you’re capable of understanding through the barriers of your superstitions.

You asked a technical question about the NCVS. I’ve told you where you can find the answer. You indulge in yet another of your bouts of name-calling.

My father defended himself with his gun five times. Not once was he ever surveyed by the NCVS.

Oh good grief. You don’t even understand the most basic principle of random sampling — that you don’t have to survey the entire population.

And “good grief” back at you. You are congenitally incapable of reading a comment within the intended context.

Listen: you are arguing that a survey database is “real.”

No I am not. I joined this thread when you claimed that a survey database was “overwhelmingly convincing” scientific evidence. I pointed out that survey research has limitations. You then claimed that I wanted to throw out all of social science…

My father’s experience may be an anecdote to you. But when one man can use a gun in a DGU five times and NEVER have a policeman show up to take a report … when such a man wouldn’t have admitted he owned a gun to ANYONE taking a survey … and when I have run into hundreds of people just like my father as a consequence of writing a book on gun rights (which means that gun defenders will talk to me who wouldn’t talk either to the NCVS or Kleck in a million years), THEN, yes, I have a base of anecdotal evidence that gives me expectations of what I would expect science to find.

Yes, surveys aren’t going to find gun defenders that are unwillingly to talk to strangers about it. This is hardly an argument for the accuracy of one survey over another.

When it does confirm it, not once but dozens of times

Huh? You claim that these people wouldn’t talk to Kleck. How can his survey confirm their experiences?

— and when there is a rational explanation of why NCVS would fail to reify the dozen other surveys

There is no such rational explanation. To quote Philip Cook: “I don’t understand why people would be so much more forthcoming with Kleck’s survey callers than the government’s. I find that absurd.”

— then it’s no longer an interesting question to me, except to throw it in the faces of cranks and crackpots who keep pushing gun control laws WHEN THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FROM ANY PLACE ON EARTH THAT IT DOES ANYTHING BUT TEND TO INCREASE VIOLENT CRIME.

Yeah right. Let me speculate: If a correlation is found between gun control and less violent crime you’ll claim that is not scientific evidence because “other factor” caused it. Or you’ll claim the whole thing was a fraud. On the other hand, if a correlation is found between gun control and more violent crime, then that’s proof that gun control causes more violent crime. How am I doing?

And that is my last word on this subject. I don’t enjoy debating with people who are only interested in scoring points by any means possible, and have no actual interest in the truth.

Nor I.

Tim Starr writes:

Japan classifies cases of husbands murdering their wives & kids then killing themselves as all suicides, no homicides, thus skewing their statistics in favor of suicides & against homicides.

This claim is easily seen to be false: You just have to look at the Japanese suicide statistics. There are no recorded suicides of small children.

That doesn’t necessarily falsify the claim. How are “small children” defined?

Under 5. And the suicide rate for 5-14 year olds is half of the US rate.

How do you know that “family suicides” in Japan don’t usually take place when the children are no longer “small”?

Because I’ve actually read something on the subject. A typical “family suicide” involves a mother of small children killing her children and herself. Just because the literal translation of the Japanese word for this is “family suicide”, it does not follow that the homicide of the children is officially recorded as suicide.

See: R, Markman & D. Bosco, “Alone with the Devil,” 342ff (1989). Iga, Mamoru “The thorn in the chrysanthemum : suicide and economic
success in modern Japan”

J. Neil Schulman writes:

If you start a survey by asking “Have you ever been a crime victim?” and do not survey people who answer NO because (a) their DGU prevented them from being damaged so they don’t think of themselves as victims, therefore they are telling the truth but don’t get counted AND

The NCVS does not ask any question like “Have you ever been a crime victim?”. You haven’t actually read the questions in the NCVS have you?

This is the current screening used by the NCVS for their violent crimes survey. It replaces one which was even more crime-oriented than threat-oriented, in use for fifty percent of households as recently as the 1994 NCVS.

---

Violent crime screener questions

New

1. Has anyone attacked or threatened you in any of these ways –

   a. With any weapon, for instance, a gun or knife —

   b. With anything like a baseball bat, frying pan, scissors, or stick –

   c. By something thrown, such as a rock or bottle —

   d. Include any grabbing, punching, or choking,

   e. Any rape, attempted rape or other type of sexual attack –

   f. Any face to face threats –

   OR

   g. Any attack or threat or use of force by anyone at all? Please mention it even if you are not certain it was a crime.

2. Incidents involving forced or unwanted sexual acts are often difficult to talk about. Have you been forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity by —

   a. someone you didn’t know before

   b. a casual acquaintance OR

   c. someone you know well

Notice that the question “Have you ever been a crime victim?” does not appear. I would have thought that Mr Schulman would apologize for misleading the readers of the newsgroup, but he didn’t.

Now, I just used that screening on my father, who as I said, defended himself five times.

His answer was “No” to these questions, and the survey would have ended there.

My father would not have been surveyed because in all his DGU’s, he perceived the threat early enough not to be taken by surprise, and pre-empted it by letting the potential attackers know that he was armed.

Huh? Question 1g asks about any sort of threat at all. Yet you say he “perceived the threat”. Was there or was there not a threat?

The National Self Defense Survey, by focusing on the act of defense itself in its screening, is designed to detect them. The NCVS — as Kleck and Wolfgang have written — does not.

Utterly false. Kleck only counted cases where “the defender could state a specific crime that was being committed at the time of the incident” (p162). You would expect such an incident to show up when the NCVS asks questions about that specific crime.

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 authorities find out about the DGU. And yet 64.2% said that the police were aware of the incident. (Table 3) Doesn’t make sense…

Steve D. Fischer writes:

D’uh!!!! Since when does “police were aware of the incident” translate into “I reported the incident to the police?” The Kleck paper (page 186) says:

“L. Were Police Informed of the Incident OR OTHERWISE FIND OUT?”

You have to be assuming that most of those 64.2% reported the incident. There is no justification for that. Most of the respondents could have been referring to “OTHERWISE FIND OUT.!”

Ridiculous. Maybe one or two, but it is ridiculous to suppose most. The typical incident was a burglary where no shots were fired. How are the police going to find out unless the respondent or family member reports it?

If someone gets shot, they often end up in the hospital where the cops will find out about it. If gunshots are fired, neighbors may report hearing them.

Even this scenario doesn’t make sense. The respondent has to find out that the neighbours reported the shots, so let’s suppose the police come round asking questions:

Police: A neighbour reported gun shots coming from your house last night. Do you know anything about it?

R: No. Must have been the next house. (because the gun is illegal or something)

Now six months later:

Surveyer: Have you used a gun, even if it was not fired, for self-protection or for the protection of property?

R thinks: (must be those police trying to trick me)
R: No.