1.1.b "2.5 million defensive uses of firearms each year can't be true!"
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This article is from the talk.politics.guns Official Pro-Gun FAQ, by Ken Barnes (kebarnes@cc.memphis.edu) with numerous contributions by others.
1.1.b "2.5 million defensive uses of firearms each year can't be true!"
See Kleck and Gertz (1995), above.
See also testimony of David Bordua and Garen Wintemute in
"Gun Laws and the Need for Self-Defense,"hearings (above)
"Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1994,"Bureau of
Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Dept.
of Justice, SuDoc# J 29.9/6:994 (1994)
In summary: In a nation of some 97 million households, about half of
which own one or more firearms, is a rate of defensive gun use (DGU)
which amounts to about 1.4% per year an unreasonably high figure?
A study undertaken by a group led by criminologist Dr. Gary Kleck of
Florida State University found that there are approximately 2.1 to 2.5
million instances annually in which individual Americans use a gun to
defend themselves. Considered as households, the figure is 1.3 to 1.5
million annual DGUs (Kleck 1995, Table 2). If this figure is correct,
defensive uses of firearms are much more common than crimes committed
with guns. Kleck's study defines a DGU as a defensive action against
a human (rather than an animal), involving actual contact with the
person being defended against, in which the defender could state a
specific crime which he or she thought was being committed at the time
of the incident, and in which the defender's gun was actually used in
some way, even if it was only as part of a verbal threat. A reported
DGU incident must meet all of these criteria in order to be counted
as a valid DGU for the purposes of the survey. Additionally, DGUs
associated with work as a policeman, security guard, or member of
the military are excluded.
The data for the Kleck study were collected using an anonymous
nationwide random-digit-dialed telephone survey of 4,977 adults
conducted from February through April of 1993 by Research Network,
a telephone polling company located in Tallahassee, FL. After a few
general questions about problems in their community and crime, those
polled were asked "Within the past five years, have you yourself or
another member of your household used a gun, even if it was not fired,
for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work,
or elsewhere? Please do not include military service, police work,
or work as a security guard." Those who answered "Yes" were then
asked whether their defensive use was against an animal or a person,
asked to state how many defensive gun use incidents against persons
had happened to members of their household in the last five years,
and asked whether any of the incident or incidents had occurred in
the last twelve months. Of those surveyed, 222 respondents reported
DGUs within the past five years. All respondents reporting DGU, as
well as 20% of those not reporting a DGU, were called back to validate
their initial survey interviews. These raw data were then corrected
for oversampling in the South and West regions, where gun ownership
is highest; and oversampling for males, who are not only more likely
to own guns, but also more likely to be victims of violent crime.
The weighted results (corrected for oversampling built into the
survey) were these: 1.125% to 1.326% of respondents reported having
personally been involved in a DGU incident within the past year, with
1.366% to 1.587% of households reporting a household member being
involved in a DGU incident within the past year (which would include
those DGUs mentioned above involving the respondent). Calculations
based on the estimated adult population of the U.S. and the estimated
number of households in the U.S. show that at this rate there would
be 2,163,519 to 2,549,862 DGUs in 1993 if considered on an individual
basis, or some 1,325,918 to 1,540,405 DGU-involved households. For
comparison, the estimated number of violent crimes committed with
guns in 1993 was 588,140, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.
Kleck discusses the flaws inherent in previous surveys, including
the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS),
which gives the lowest estimate of all methods used to calculate the
number of DGU incidents. The NCVS, Kleck argues, though based upon
a much larger sample than his own survey, severely undercounts the
number of DGUs because respondents are being asked by a government
official to_volunteer_information about incidents in which they may
possibly have done something that was illegal (such as committing
assault with a deadly weapon by pointing a gun at someone), or which
involved an illegal act (such as carrying a gun without a permit).
Further, the NCVS never asks directly whether the respondents used
a gun to protect themselves, and only asks its general question
about self-protection after respondents have already reported the
location of their victimization incident, which in most cases is
reported as being away from the victim's home. Since carrying a gun
without a permit is often illegal, there would be a strong motivation
for respondents not to report DGU outside the home. But how accurate
is the Kleck survey's estimate? What are some possible alternative
explanations that could influence these results?
First, consider some factors which could produce an overestimate.
The sample size, or number of persons surveyed, while smaller than
the NCVS, is several times larger than that usually used in most
public opinion polls. Extrapolating from too small of a sample is
one way to get an overestimate, but this is not a problem for Kleck's
survey, since the Gallup Poll and the Roper Center routinely use
samples smaller than this for their national surveys. (The results
of such national polls are often promoted as newsworthy.) As Kleck
notes, the random sampling error of his survey is less than 1%.
The phenomenon known as "telescoping," in which past events are
remembered as being much more recent than they actually are, could
account for some increase in reported DGUs, but Kleck's survey,
which uses two time periods, asking about events in the past five
years, and within the last twelve months, takes this into account.
Kleck's definition of a DGU to include defense of property could
serve to increase the number of reported DGUs, since use of deadly
force to protect property is not legally recognized in many states.
Kleck notes however, that it was not the purpose of the survey to
discern the legality or morality of the respondent's actions.
One possible source of overestimation that has been seized
upon by critics wanting to explain away Kleck's results is what
Kleck terms the "dishonest respondent" hypothesis, or in other
words, that the respondents made up a story about a DGU. Only
24% of respondents reporting a DGU claimed to have fired their
gun, and even if one were to discard these reported DGUs entirely
(and arbitrarily) as overly dramatic, this leaves well over a
million and a half estimated DGUs, a rate_twenty times_that of
the estimate derived from the NCVS. To assume that even 24% of
respondents are actively trying to create a dramatic story which
is internally consistent enough to deceive the experienced team
of interviewers Kleck used, much less a sufficient number to
account for the vast difference in estimates between the Kleck
survey and the NCVS, is in itself hard to believe. For the NCVS
to miss a DGU requires only that the respondent not volunteer
the information, but as Kleck observes "[t]here is no precedent
in criminological research" for the "enormous level of intentional
and sustained falsification" on the part of respondents which
would be required in order to account for the 30-fold difference
in estimated annual DGUs between Kleck's survey and the NCVS.
Indeed, Kleck argues, there is reason to believe that the
estimate of 2.5 million annual DGUs is_too low." There is the
problem of self-censorship in reporting, since there is evidence
that some respondents to the Kleck survey were wary of reporting
such incidents to anonymous strangers, much less to government
officials as in the NCVS. Several respondents expressed suspicion
of the interviewer prior to answering "no" to the DGU question,
perhaps because they view their actions as legally questionable.
There may also be instances in which respondents regarded their
own DGU incidents as too minor to report, or households in which
DGU incidents of other household members were not known to the
respondent, or where it was not considered appropriate to discuss
the DGU incidents of other household members. The limitations
of a telephone survey preclude sampling among the 5% of American
households without telephones, most of which are poor and/or rural.
As poor people are more likely to be victims of crime, and there
is a higher rate of gun ownership in rural areas, this could also
contribute to an underestimation of the number of DGUs.
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