DingoMike: "When we start killing as many people with firearms in this country as we do with automobiles then you might convience me of a need for insurance."
"Death rates from guns, traffic accidents converging"
Kelly Kennedy, USA TODAY11:35 a.m. EST December 21, 2012
WASHINGTON — Deaths from traffic accidents have dropped dramatically over the last 10 years, while firearm-related fatalities rose for decades before leveling off in the past decade, a USA TODAY analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.
Meanwhile, the rate of firearms deaths has exceeded traffic fatalities in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Michigan, Nevada and Oregon, records show. The rate is equal in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In the United States in 2010, the rate of firearm deaths was 10 people per 100,000, while for traffic accidents it was 12 per 100,000. Firearm-related deaths totaled 31,672 in 2010.
In recent comments against gun control, bloggers, columnists and commentators have said, "More people are killed by cars than guns, but I don't see anyone calling for a ban on automobiles."
That argument was recently made by musician Ted Nugent in a column for the conservative Washington Times; Awr Hawkins, a blogger for Breitbart.com, made the same argument after stating three times as many people die in car accidents as in shootings; and it's a trend now in the comment section of every story about a car accident to ask why there's no request for a ban on vehicles. In fact, a quick Internet search comes up with half-a-million hits from people asking why no one calls for a car ban every time a person is killed in an automobile accident.
In 1999, 87 people intentionally killed themselves through car accidents; the number increased to 104 in 2009, according to the CDC. However, researchers at the Suicide Prevention Center have said as many as 2% of car accidents may be suicides, and that they are often reported as accidents.
The number of firearm deaths by "intentional self harm" was 16,599 in 1999, and 18,735 in 2009 – a 13% increase, according to the CDC.
In 2011, traffic deaths fell 2% to 32,367 from the previous year, making traffic deaths in 2011 at the lowest level since 1949 -- and a 26% decline since 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
We can now expect Dingo, et.al. to poo-poo this article because the statistics and numbers come from the CDC and the National Academy of Sciences, among others. When we all know that the only accurate numbers regarding firearms related fatalities come from Ted Nugent, the NRA, Breitbart, Rush, Glenn Beck.........
"Thus, it is of considerable interest and importance to check the reasonableness of the NSPOF estimates before embracing them. Because respondents were asked to describe only their most
recent defensive gun use, our comparisons comparisons are conservative, as they assume
only one defensive gun use per defender. The results still suggest that DGU estimates are far too high.
For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in
which a woman defended herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated from NCVS.
For other crimes...the results are almost as absurd: the NSPOF estimate of DGU robberies is
36 percent of all NCVS-estimated robberies, while the NSPOF estimate of DGU assaults is 19 percent of all aggravated assaults. If those percentages were close to accurate, crime would be
a risky business indeed!
NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics
on the number of gunshot cases."
In other words, several people in their phone interviews said they wounded or killed a criminal in the previous 12-month using a gun. Given the sample size, 2,568 people, and doing a straight line projection for the population as a whole (that's what the sample is for) we would expect to see 130,000 dead criminals. But we don't see 130,000 dead criminals, or 108,000 dead criminals because they aren't there! Just like there has to be fewer defensive uses of guns in rape cases than there are rape cases, the 130,000 dead criminal finding doesn't pass the "reasonableness" test.
The text of the Forbes article, the Cato Study, and Cook say what they say. And you read what they say. Forbes is simply wrong. You will recall that I said their finding was not sourced and nothing in Cato or Cook substantiates their finding. And I'm sorry, but you're simply misreading the Cato and Cook findings.
Forbes mistated the NCVS result. It found 108,000 DGU's for the year, not 108,000 criminals killed!
Obviously 108,000 is far less than the up to 2.5 million DGUs Kleck found, or even up to 1.5 million that Cook found. What Cook then did was a simple sample projection and came up with 130,000 criminals killed out of the 1.5 million. And that's what he wrote.
Here's Cooks sample: "Sample: Probability sample of 2,568 noninstitutionalized adults aged 18 and over who are fluent in English or Spanish and live in households with a telephone.
Here's his method: :Method: Telephone interview with one randomly selected adult from each household.:
Here's Cook's text in full on this matter. If you can't understand it, perhaps there's another intellectually honest conservative who can. If not, I give up. If you want to believe over 100,000 criminals are killed each year by citing Forbes, Cook, or Cato (which only found 28 justifialbe homicides a year using Time's data), go ahead, but I fear others may find that you are making a fool of yourself, and you're not a fool.
"Forty-five respondents reported a defensive gun use in 1994 against a person (exhibit 7). Given the sampling weights, these respondents constitute 1.6 percent of the sample and represent 3.1 million adults. Almost half of these respondents reported multiple DGUs during 1994, which provides
the basis for estimating the 1994 DGU incidence at 23 million. This surprising figure is caused in part by a few respondents reporting large numbers of defensive gun uses during the year;
for example, one woman reported 52!
Respondents were excluded on the basis of the most recent DGU description for any of the following reasons: the respondent did not see a perpetrator; the respondent could not state a specific crime that was involved in the incident; or the respondent did not actually display the gun or mention it to the perpetrator. Applying those restrictions leaves 19 NSPOF respondents (0.8 percent of the sample), representing 1.5 million defensive users. This estimate is directly comparable to the well-known estimate of Kleck and Gertz... While the NSPOF [this is Cook's data] estimate is smaller, it is statistically plausible that the difference is due to sampling error. Inclusion of multiple DGUs reported by half of the 19 NSPOF respondents increases the estimate to 4.7 million DGUs
Some troubling comparisons. If the DGU numbers are in the right ballpark, millions of attempted assaults,thefts, and break-ins were foiled by armed citizens during the 12-period. According to these results,guns are used far more often to defend against crime than to perpetrate crime. (Firearms were used by perpetrators in 1.07 million incidents of violent crime in 1994, according to NCVS data.).
Thatcher, my point is that Cook and Ludwig do NOT believe that over 100,000 criminals are killed annually by gun toting legal gun owners engaging in DGUs. If Forbes cited them, and they did, they failed to note the skepticism of the authors that this figure is reliable. Cato NEVER suggested that 100,000 criminals are killed in DGUs annually. The best they could come up with is that 14 "murder" indictments were reclassified as justifiable/excusable homicides in one week based on Time magazines follow-up, generating about 730 additional justifiable/excusable homicides a year. I'm not shooting the messenger, I'm asking the messenger to reread and then think about his sources for his 100k figure. Being a reasonable person, and intelligent to boot, I'm sure he'll reevalute his initial statement and acknowledge that the 100k figure is ludicrous.
Thatcher, Jim Heim can defend himself without my help. I'm focused on your assertion that 100,000 criminals, more or less, are killed each year in defensive gun uses (DGU). Don't change the subject.
Remember you wrote:" jimt-- "Surely this figure of 108,000 cannot possibly be true!" Of course it can [you write]. The authors of the study addressed this very issue in the "justifiable homicide" section, where initial FBI stats are later corrected to reflect actual outcomes in court cases. Interesting stuff."
Here's what the Cato study said with regard to "finding" additional justifiable and "excusable" homicides in their section on justifiable homicides:
"How do we find out how many such cases exist? In 1989, Time magazine published an
article called “Death by Gun.” It included photographs and information about every person killed by a gun in one week in the United States: May 1–7, 1989. There were 464 gun deaths reported in the article. Of these, 216 were suicides, 14 were initially reported as non–law enforcement defensive
homicides, 13 were police justifiable homicides, and 22 accidents.10 That left 199 murders
and manslaughters. The Time article, like the FBI’s data collection, showed the number of defensive
gun uses that resulted in a death based on initial reports. A year later, Time followed up
on the murder cases, to see how the courts handled them. Instead of 14 self-defense or
“justifiable” homicides, there were now 28. This was because 14 of the “crimes” reported
in “Death by Gun” were now found to be justifiable homicides. At least 43 murder cases had still not gone to trial, and it was possible that some of those would be found justifiable.” Clearly, the FBI’s justifiable homicide data is not particularly meaningful for understanding defensive gun uses
that result in death—and is useless for understanding the vastly larger number of defensive
gun uses that do not result in death. "
So in one year, 14 cases, initially reported as murders were changed, over the course of one year, to justifiable or excusable homicides. For the sake of argument let's stipulate that Cato's methodology and findings are accurate in this instance. So we add 14 cases per week, multiply that by 52 weeks in a year, and we find 728 additional justifiable/excusable cases in the U.S. per year.
728 is less than 100,000 is it not? So again, I ask, where is the source of your assertion that 100,000 criminals are killed in DGU's per year?
This has absolutely nothing to do with a woman in Georgia, or Jim Heim's beliefs, or Fatboy's insults. Where are the dead criminals?
CATO's study then asserts: "The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports also significantly overstate murders and understate defensive gun uses. If the police investigate a homicide and ask the district attorney to charge someone with murder or manslaughter,that is reported as a murder or manslaughter
to the Uniform Crime Reports program. But district attorneys will often investigate a case in the weeks afterward, find evidence that the killing was justifiable or excusable homicide, and drop the case entirely. Further, some of those charges are found to be justifiable or excusable homicide by
judges and juries during a trial. This is very often the case in spousal abuse situations
where a woman defends herself or her children from an estranged husband. A killing initially charged as a murder or nonnegligent homicide that is later reclassified as a justifiable or excusable homicide, will not be moved in the Uniform Crime Reports data from the homicide column to the justifiable homicide column."
Let's stipulate for the sake of the argument that all the above is true. Just a reminder; you wrote: "the National Crime Victimization study found 108,000 self-defense gun cases annually...which only included situations where the criminal was killed (not wounded or merely fled the scene)." I challenged this, you ascribed it to judicial reclassifications over time. Still, the only way to get to over 100,000 criminals being shot per year, as you assert, is to have 2,000 cases that were initially filed as murders being reclassified or adjudicated as justifiable homicides PER WEEK! Given that there are a mere 12,000 or so gun murders per year it strains common sense to believe that this number could possibly be plausible. For every murder there 8 or 9 justifiable homicides and no one noticed? Get real or find a citation that says over 100,000 criminals die per year at the hands of armed citizens.
The Forbes article states: "A widely-known study conducted by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz in the 1990s found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million U.S. defensive gun uses annually. A National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS) which asked victims if they had used a gun in self-defense found that about 108,000 each year had done so. A big problem with the NCVS line of survey reasoning, however, is that it only includes those uses where a citizen kills a criminal, not when one is only wounded, is held by the intended victim until police arrive, or when brandishing a gun caused a criminal to flee."
I want to know where Forbes got the information thata forms the basis for its assertion that the "NCVS line of survey reasoning, however, is that it only includes those uses where a citizen kills a criminal...etc"
You've stated that over 100,000 criminals were killed by citizens defending themselves with guns, circa 1994. I say that's nonsense. The Cato report doesn't say this, it doesn't provide any number of dead criminals killed by private citizens.
It does say this: "The academic researchers who conducted the NSPOF survey, Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig, noted that the numbers were so high as to be implausible: the number of rapes prevented by women armed with guns exceeded the number of rapes reported by the NCVS, and “NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by non–law enforcement civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases.” For those reasons, Cook and Ludwig arrivedat the conclusion that Americans were exaggerating or falsifying defensive gun uses in
the surveys."
Cook and Ludwig got the 130,000 figure by doing a statistical analysis based on what people were telling them (Cook and Ludwig performed the National Survey of Private Ownership and Use of Firearms --NSPOF). They didn't believe it in 1997 because they could not account for the huge discrepency in adjudicated "justifiable homicide" cases, in the low 200s in 1994, and this number.
So we're left with an uncited assertion by Forbes, the language in the CATO report, which does not cite the Forbes language, but does question the conclusion reached by Cook and Ludwig. So we would expect the CATO report to up with a number of dead criminals at the hands of gun owning civilians. But it doesn't.
Regarding the defense use of firearms, I checked the CATO Study Thatcher cited. Here's a sample of the key findings: "The most widely known is the study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, completed in the 1990s, when violent crime rates were higher than they are today. That study found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million defensive gun uses per year in the United States.
It further states: "The National Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms found approximately1.5 million defensive gun uses per year.
And yet more: "Another prominent study was the federal government’s National Crime Victimization
Survey (NCVS), which also asked if victims of crimes had used a gun in self-defense. That
study found that there were about 108,000 defensive gun uses per year."
One, Thatcher is DEAD wrong to assert that the 108,000 figure is would be criminals KILLED by their intended victims. Thatcher wrote: "the National Crime Victimization study found 108,000 self-defense gun cases annually...which only included situations where the criminal was killed (not wounded or merely fled the scene)." Here's what the authors actually wrote: "Private citizens sometimes use their guns to scare off trespassers and fend off assaults. Such defensive gun uses (DGUs) are sometimes invoked as a measure of the public benefits of private gun ownership. On the basis of National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year." "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, May, 1997, pg.8. That's the TOTAL estimate of defensive gun uses per year of the then recent NCVS data that these authors cited. No reference whatsoever is made about the state of health of the would be criminals after they encountered a DGU. Again, when the FBI comes up with figures in the low 200s per year of justifiable homicides I'm personally more inclined to go with total DGUs per year in the low to mid 100,000s than 2.45 million. But if Thatcher wants to stick by his claim of 108,000 criminals killed per year in instances of DGU I suggest he needs to come up with better sources and data to back-up his assertion.
TWO, any sociological analysis that is over 15 years old is of uncertain value in terms to today's debate. And finally, THREE, in my opinion, analsyses undertaken in the same timeframe (roughly 1994-1998) that come up with annual defensive uses of guns of between 2.45 million at the high-end to 108,000 at the low-end are of little persuasive value either way.
jimt 1 day, 8 hours ago
On Slamming the Senators
DingoMike: "When we start killing as many people with firearms in this country as we do with automobiles then you might convience me of a need for insurance."
"Death rates from guns, traffic accidents converging"
Kelly Kennedy, USA TODAY11:35 a.m. EST December 21, 2012
WASHINGTON — Deaths from traffic accidents have dropped dramatically over the last 10 years, while firearm-related fatalities rose for decades before leveling off in the past decade, a USA TODAY analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.
Meanwhile, the rate of firearms deaths has exceeded traffic fatalities in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Michigan, Nevada and Oregon, records show. The rate is equal in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In the United States in 2010, the rate of firearm deaths was 10 people per 100,000, while for traffic accidents it was 12 per 100,000. Firearm-related deaths totaled 31,672 in 2010.
In recent comments against gun control, bloggers, columnists and commentators have said, "More people are killed by cars than guns, but I don't see anyone calling for a ban on automobiles."
That argument was recently made by musician Ted Nugent in a column for the conservative Washington Times; Awr Hawkins, a blogger for Breitbart.com, made the same argument after stating three times as many people die in car accidents as in shootings; and it's a trend now in the comment section of every story about a car accident to ask why there's no request for a ban on vehicles. In fact, a quick Internet search comes up with half-a-million hits from people asking why no one calls for a car ban every time a person is killed in an automobile accident.
In 1999, 87 people intentionally killed themselves through car accidents; the number increased to 104 in 2009, according to the CDC. However, researchers at the Suicide Prevention Center have said as many as 2% of car accidents may be suicides, and that they are often reported as accidents.
The number of firearm deaths by "intentional self harm" was 16,599 in 1999, and 18,735 in 2009 – a 13% increase, according to the CDC.
In 2011, traffic deaths fell 2% to 32,367 from the previous year, making traffic deaths in 2011 at the lowest level since 1949 -- and a 26% decline since 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
We can now expect Dingo, et.al. to poo-poo this article because the statistics and numbers come from the CDC and the National Academy of Sciences, among others. When we all know that the only accurate numbers regarding firearms related fatalities come from Ted Nugent, the NRA, Breitbart, Rush, Glenn Beck.........
jimt 1 week, 4 days ago
A Ghastly Price
Cook [aka NSPOF] continues:
"Thus, it is of considerable interest and importance to check the reasonableness of the NSPOF estimates before embracing them. Because respondents were asked to describe only their most recent defensive gun use, our comparisons comparisons are conservative, as they assume only one defensive gun use per defender. The results still suggest that DGU estimates are far too high.
For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in which a woman defended herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated from NCVS.
For other crimes...the results are almost as absurd: the NSPOF estimate of DGU robberies is 36 percent of all NCVS-estimated robberies, while the NSPOF estimate of DGU assaults is 19 percent of all aggravated assaults. If those percentages were close to accurate, crime would be a risky business indeed!
NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases."
In other words, several people in their phone interviews said they wounded or killed a criminal in the previous 12-month using a gun. Given the sample size, 2,568 people, and doing a straight line projection for the population as a whole (that's what the sample is for) we would expect to see 130,000 dead criminals. But we don't see 130,000 dead criminals, or 108,000 dead criminals because they aren't there! Just like there has to be fewer defensive uses of guns in rape cases than there are rape cases, the 130,000 dead criminal finding doesn't pass the "reasonableness" test.
The text of the Forbes article, the Cato Study, and Cook say what they say. And you read what they say. Forbes is simply wrong. You will recall that I said their finding was not sourced and nothing in Cato or Cook substantiates their finding. And I'm sorry, but you're simply misreading the Cato and Cook findings.
jimt 1 week, 4 days ago
A Ghastly Price
Thatcher,
Forbes mistated the NCVS result. It found 108,000 DGU's for the year, not 108,000 criminals killed!
Obviously 108,000 is far less than the up to 2.5 million DGUs Kleck found, or even up to 1.5 million that Cook found. What Cook then did was a simple sample projection and came up with 130,000 criminals killed out of the 1.5 million. And that's what he wrote.
Here's Cooks sample: "Sample: Probability sample of 2,568 noninstitutionalized adults aged 18 and over who are fluent in English or Spanish and live in households with a telephone.
Here's his method: :Method: Telephone interview with one randomly selected adult from each household.:
Here's Cook's text in full on this matter. If you can't understand it, perhaps there's another intellectually honest conservative who can. If not, I give up. If you want to believe over 100,000 criminals are killed each year by citing Forbes, Cook, or Cato (which only found 28 justifialbe homicides a year using Time's data), go ahead, but I fear others may find that you are making a fool of yourself, and you're not a fool.
"Forty-five respondents reported a defensive gun use in 1994 against a person (exhibit 7). Given the sampling weights, these respondents constitute 1.6 percent of the sample and represent 3.1 million adults. Almost half of these respondents reported multiple DGUs during 1994, which provides the basis for estimating the 1994 DGU incidence at 23 million. This surprising figure is caused in part by a few respondents reporting large numbers of defensive gun uses during the year; for example, one woman reported 52!
Respondents were excluded on the basis of the most recent DGU description for any of the following reasons: the respondent did not see a perpetrator; the respondent could not state a specific crime that was involved in the incident; or the respondent did not actually display the gun or mention it to the perpetrator. Applying those restrictions leaves 19 NSPOF respondents (0.8 percent of the sample), representing 1.5 million defensive users. This estimate is directly comparable to the well-known estimate of Kleck and Gertz... While the NSPOF [this is Cook's data] estimate is smaller, it is statistically plausible that the difference is due to sampling error. Inclusion of multiple DGUs reported by half of the 19 NSPOF respondents increases the estimate to 4.7 million DGUs
Some troubling comparisons. If the DGU numbers are in the right ballpark, millions of attempted assaults,thefts, and break-ins were foiled by armed citizens during the 12-period. According to these results,guns are used far more often to defend against crime than to perpetrate crime. (Firearms were used by perpetrators in 1.07 million incidents of violent crime in 1994, according to NCVS data.).
jimt 1 week, 4 days ago
A Ghastly Price
Thatcher, my point is that Cook and Ludwig do NOT believe that over 100,000 criminals are killed annually by gun toting legal gun owners engaging in DGUs. If Forbes cited them, and they did, they failed to note the skepticism of the authors that this figure is reliable. Cato NEVER suggested that 100,000 criminals are killed in DGUs annually. The best they could come up with is that 14 "murder" indictments were reclassified as justifiable/excusable homicides in one week based on Time magazines follow-up, generating about 730 additional justifiable/excusable homicides a year. I'm not shooting the messenger, I'm asking the messenger to reread and then think about his sources for his 100k figure. Being a reasonable person, and intelligent to boot, I'm sure he'll reevalute his initial statement and acknowledge that the 100k figure is ludicrous.
jimt 1 week, 4 days ago
A Ghastly Price
Thatcher, Jim Heim can defend himself without my help. I'm focused on your assertion that 100,000 criminals, more or less, are killed each year in defensive gun uses (DGU). Don't change the subject.
Remember you wrote:" jimt-- "Surely this figure of 108,000 cannot possibly be true!" Of course it can [you write]. The authors of the study addressed this very issue in the "justifiable homicide" section, where initial FBI stats are later corrected to reflect actual outcomes in court cases. Interesting stuff."
Here's what the Cato study said with regard to "finding" additional justifiable and "excusable" homicides in their section on justifiable homicides:
"How do we find out how many such cases exist? In 1989, Time magazine published an article called “Death by Gun.” It included photographs and information about every person killed by a gun in one week in the United States: May 1–7, 1989. There were 464 gun deaths reported in the article. Of these, 216 were suicides, 14 were initially reported as non–law enforcement defensive homicides, 13 were police justifiable homicides, and 22 accidents.10 That left 199 murders and manslaughters. The Time article, like the FBI’s data collection, showed the number of defensive gun uses that resulted in a death based on initial reports. A year later, Time followed up on the murder cases, to see how the courts handled them. Instead of 14 self-defense or “justifiable” homicides, there were now 28. This was because 14 of the “crimes” reported in “Death by Gun” were now found to be justifiable homicides. At least 43 murder cases had still not gone to trial, and it was possible that some of those would be found justifiable.” Clearly, the FBI’s justifiable homicide data is not particularly meaningful for understanding defensive gun uses that result in death—and is useless for understanding the vastly larger number of defensive gun uses that do not result in death. "
So in one year, 14 cases, initially reported as murders were changed, over the course of one year, to justifiable or excusable homicides. For the sake of argument let's stipulate that Cato's methodology and findings are accurate in this instance. So we add 14 cases per week, multiply that by 52 weeks in a year, and we find 728 additional justifiable/excusable cases in the U.S. per year. 728 is less than 100,000 is it not? So again, I ask, where is the source of your assertion that 100,000 criminals are killed in DGU's per year?
This has absolutely nothing to do with a woman in Georgia, or Jim Heim's beliefs, or Fatboy's insults. Where are the dead criminals?
jimt 1 week, 4 days ago
A Ghastly Price
Thatcher didn't respond to me, I guess he's out looking for the missing 100,000 dead criminals
jimt 1 week, 5 days ago
A Ghastly Price
CATO's study then asserts: "The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports also significantly overstate murders and understate defensive gun uses. If the police investigate a homicide and ask the district attorney to charge someone with murder or manslaughter,that is reported as a murder or manslaughter to the Uniform Crime Reports program. But district attorneys will often investigate a case in the weeks afterward, find evidence that the killing was justifiable or excusable homicide, and drop the case entirely. Further, some of those charges are found to be justifiable or excusable homicide by judges and juries during a trial. This is very often the case in spousal abuse situations where a woman defends herself or her children from an estranged husband. A killing initially charged as a murder or nonnegligent homicide that is later reclassified as a justifiable or excusable homicide, will not be moved in the Uniform Crime Reports data from the homicide column to the justifiable homicide column."
Let's stipulate for the sake of the argument that all the above is true. Just a reminder; you wrote: "the National Crime Victimization study found 108,000 self-defense gun cases annually...which only included situations where the criminal was killed (not wounded or merely fled the scene)." I challenged this, you ascribed it to judicial reclassifications over time. Still, the only way to get to over 100,000 criminals being shot per year, as you assert, is to have 2,000 cases that were initially filed as murders being reclassified or adjudicated as justifiable homicides PER WEEK! Given that there are a mere 12,000 or so gun murders per year it strains common sense to believe that this number could possibly be plausible. For every murder there 8 or 9 justifiable homicides and no one noticed? Get real or find a citation that says over 100,000 criminals die per year at the hands of armed citizens.
jimt 1 week, 5 days ago
A Ghastly Price
The Forbes article states: "A widely-known study conducted by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz in the 1990s found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million U.S. defensive gun uses annually. A National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS) which asked victims if they had used a gun in self-defense found that about 108,000 each year had done so. A big problem with the NCVS line of survey reasoning, however, is that it only includes those uses where a citizen kills a criminal, not when one is only wounded, is held by the intended victim until police arrive, or when brandishing a gun caused a criminal to flee."
I want to know where Forbes got the information thata forms the basis for its assertion that the "NCVS line of survey reasoning, however, is that it only includes those uses where a citizen kills a criminal...etc"
You've stated that over 100,000 criminals were killed by citizens defending themselves with guns, circa 1994. I say that's nonsense. The Cato report doesn't say this, it doesn't provide any number of dead criminals killed by private citizens.
It does say this: "The academic researchers who conducted the NSPOF survey, Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig, noted that the numbers were so high as to be implausible: the number of rapes prevented by women armed with guns exceeded the number of rapes reported by the NCVS, and “NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by non–law enforcement civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases.” For those reasons, Cook and Ludwig arrivedat the conclusion that Americans were exaggerating or falsifying defensive gun uses in the surveys."
Cook and Ludwig got the 130,000 figure by doing a statistical analysis based on what people were telling them (Cook and Ludwig performed the National Survey of Private Ownership and Use of Firearms --NSPOF). They didn't believe it in 1997 because they could not account for the huge discrepency in adjudicated "justifiable homicide" cases, in the low 200s in 1994, and this number.
So we're left with an uncited assertion by Forbes, the language in the CATO report, which does not cite the Forbes language, but does question the conclusion reached by Cook and Ludwig. So we would expect the CATO report to up with a number of dead criminals at the hands of gun owning civilians. But it doesn't.
jimt 1 week, 5 days ago
A Ghastly Price
Regarding the defense use of firearms, I checked the CATO Study Thatcher cited. Here's a sample of the key findings: "The most widely known is the study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, completed in the 1990s, when violent crime rates were higher than they are today. That study found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million defensive gun uses per year in the United States.
It further states: "The National Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms found approximately1.5 million defensive gun uses per year.
And yet more: "Another prominent study was the federal government’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which also asked if victims of crimes had used a gun in self-defense. That study found that there were about 108,000 defensive gun uses per year."
One, Thatcher is DEAD wrong to assert that the 108,000 figure is would be criminals KILLED by their intended victims. Thatcher wrote: "the National Crime Victimization study found 108,000 self-defense gun cases annually...which only included situations where the criminal was killed (not wounded or merely fled the scene)." Here's what the authors actually wrote: "Private citizens sometimes use their guns to scare off trespassers and fend off assaults. Such defensive gun uses (DGUs) are sometimes invoked as a measure of the public benefits of private gun ownership. On the basis of National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year." "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, May, 1997, pg.8. That's the TOTAL estimate of defensive gun uses per year of the then recent NCVS data that these authors cited. No reference whatsoever is made about the state of health of the would be criminals after they encountered a DGU. Again, when the FBI comes up with figures in the low 200s per year of justifiable homicides I'm personally more inclined to go with total DGUs per year in the low to mid 100,000s than 2.45 million. But if Thatcher wants to stick by his claim of 108,000 criminals killed per year in instances of DGU I suggest he needs to come up with better sources and data to back-up his assertion.
TWO, any sociological analysis that is over 15 years old is of uncertain value in terms to today's debate. And finally, THREE, in my opinion, analsyses undertaken in the same timeframe (roughly 1994-1998) that come up with annual defensive uses of guns of between 2.45 million at the high-end to 108,000 at the low-end are of little persuasive value either way.
However, to believe that there were over 500,000 more DGUs one year (2.45 million in 1994 according to Kleck & Gertz) as actual violent crimes reported to the FBI in that year, 1.86 million, strains credibility. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1
jimt 1 week, 5 days ago
A Ghastly Price
Are you seriously saying that roughly 2,500 justifiable homicides can turn into over 100,000 "to reflect actual outcomes...."? Difference of 40 times!
That is simply crazy