Deltoid

Note 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” NCVS derived estimate of 550,000 gun crimes is inconsistent with his survey’s finding of 450,000 DGUs against gun crimes. It is absurd to suppose that more than 90% of gun criminals encounter armed victims.

It is possible that the NCVS measures crimes accurately. It is possible that Kleck’s survey measures DGUs accurately. It is not possible for both to be accurate.

with the caveat that NCVS gun-related crimes will include things perceived as gun-related crimes which were not. (For example, Charlie Orasin, who founded what is now Handgun Control, Inc., did so following his being the victim of a robbery where the robber made reference to a gun but Charlie never saw it, and doesn’t know if there really was one. If asked by NCVS, that would have been a gun-related crime, as would others at zucchini- or banana-point, etc.)

If you want to exclude those, then you shouldn’t count DGUs where the criminal didn’t see the gun. (25% of the total in Kleck’s survey.)

John 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 constrained by this limitaion. Would this not necessarily undercount DGUs?

No, though it may result in an overcount.

If a respondent had been mugged twice in the six month survey period any DGU in the first incident would be uncounted (because of the 5a limitation) even though both muggings would be counted by question 4.

But any DGU in the second incident would be counted twice. Collecting details on only one incident and letting it stand for all the others will tend to give more accurate answers since the most recent one will probably be recalled more accurately.

However, this could result in an overcount, since a robbery victim may respond to a robbery by deciding to carry a gun, thus making it more likely for them to use a gun for defence in a second robbery within the six month period than in the first one.