I did mention that Kleck’s number is disputed by some and the page to which I linked does include links to some of that criticism.
In his book, Kleck, a professor of Criminology, draws not only on his own survey, but also draws heavily on surveys by sources such as the FBI and US Department of Justice. His book reads like typical scientific research.
Hemenway, an Economist, appears to reject all actual studies and surveys, attacking with mathematical obfuscation that few would ever bother to check, calling the researchers too stupid to understand their own data, and resorting to ridicule such as the ‘aliens’ thing. His stuff reads like typical emotional button pushing agenda driven propaganda.
As far as I am aware, the Zimmerman case has been decided only by the likes of Nancy Grace and MSNBC – more emotional button pushing.
**“A majority of the reported self-defense gun uses were rated as probably illegal by a majority of judges,” they found. **
Kleck covers situations like this. The vast majority of murders are committed by young males who have criminal records (or at least previous contact with police) against other young males who also have previous criminal activity. In other words, most murders are gang members, thugs, and hoodlums killing other gang members, thugs and hoodlums. Murders of and by middle-aged middle-class citizens who don’t have previous criminal records are very rare.
My daugher had a good friend who was a police woman( working under cover in a high school trying to find the sorce of the drugs), This was in the 70’s. she was found sitting on her couch and it was never determined how she had died, her new husband found her dead with her gun beside of her,they had no way of knowing if it was an accident, but her husband said there was no way she could have tried to clean a gun, with out first checking to make sure if it were loaded or not.
It was legal for his mother to purchase the guns, and he killed her in her bed, then used the guns to kill others,so weither he had a gun legally or not isn’t the important point to me, it would not have been availible if it were not in his home. My point is that the reason the mother bought the guns were to protect her and her family but in this case( and in some others) it didn’t help her, her family or others.
I haven’t read his book, but reading sources such as Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms, authored by the National Institute of Justice is also pretty critical of studies of defensive gun uses, and includes some of the basic arguments for why studies, including Kleck and Gertz’s have flaws. They also discuss the problem of false positives.
They note:
Yup. Pretty much. Which is why any statistic about supposed DGU must be considered in that light. Given that violent crime in general in a problem much more with underclasses, the idea that there are hundred of thousands of righteous DGU annually seems unlikely.
Why? Plenty of law-abiding people who live in bad neighborhoods own guns (and I can’t blame them). And most DGU involves just showing the weapon to the criminal, at which point he suddenly recalls he has urgent business elsewhere. It’s hard to get an accurate estimate of how often that happens, as most of those incidents are never reported (since no actual crime took place).
With all due respect, having a gun protected your property, for sure, but did it protect your life? Of course, your case is the best possible reason to own a gun, but to say you would have died without it is stretching it a bit, IMHO.
IMHO, you have no idea whatsoever whether or not he would have died without it. The only person who could possibly have known was the intruder. That is why counting Defensive Gun Uses is so difficult.
Whether or not the legality of him having a gun is important to you, or even important to your argument is not at issue. You still made the statement. I am just clarifying the presumptions in your setup. I didn’t ask to be a dick. I wasn’t sure if there was information about his mental health history or prior felony convictions or something else that would have made it illegal for him to have a gun.
And my point is simply that your statement is incorrect. You said, “Yes, it was illegal for her son to have a gun…” It was not illegal for him to have a gun. It was illegal for him to steal a gun, to have a gun that he stole, and to use those guns to kill people. But it was not illegal for him “to have a gun”.
The major problem I see is that self-reporting is notoriously difficult to verify and that the people who are purchasing guns for protection are going to be more likely worried, justifiably or not, than the general public. There was a post here on the Dope where IIRC, a man said he brandished a gun in a parking lot of a store because he felt that the behavior of another person was suspicious for approaching him to ask him about a purchase he had made. He felt the guy was up to no good.
I wouldn’t doubt that he would report that as a righteous DGU, where others would disagree.
The study I linked to point out that some of the reports of DGU show numbers as great as the numbers of actual crimes. That’s simply laughable.
As I’ve said in this tread, I don’t see how to get good numbers. The numbers being shown are from surveys which seem to have serious flaws. I haven’t seen any systematic gathering of statistics on actual events such as DGU during break-ins to help extrapolate into estimations of other situations.
I can’t dispute your argument, but it was my understanding that he took his mother’s gun without permission, and didn’t get one legally. At any rate the gun didn’t protect the mother the other innocent victums or even the son who took his own life.