The Propaganda Professor wrote a wonderful and lengthy followup to his other posts on the subject. Here are two small bits.
Gunsters often tout "studies" (i.e., surveys) that supposedly prove that
there are hundreds of thousands, or even a few million, defensive guns
uses (DGUs) every year. But not even all of these surveys support the
"more guns, less crime" motif. Two of the best known figures, both
projected by the Dept. Of Justice, are 108,000 and 65,000 DGUs. Both of
which fall far short of the documented 400,000-plus crimes
committed with a gun annually. No wonder the gun culture has such a love
affair with Dr. Kleck, who posits 2.5 million. He calculated this by
interviewing just 222 individuals.
And here is where those surveys actually might be of some value.
According to Kleck, 8 percent of the defenders wound or kill their
assailants. This figure is certainly too low, given Kleck's extremely
loose standards for what constitutes a DGU. But even so, 8 percent of
2.5 million would mean it happens about 200,000 times per year. And yet
only about one in 400 of these is reported in the news? Seriously? The
National Crime Victimization Survey says it happens 3 percent of the
time out of 108,000 DGUs per year. That's 3240 in which the offender is
wounded if not killed. And yet fewer than one in six is deemed
newsworthy? Get real. One might argue that the media would have neither
the capacity nor the interest to cover 200,000 such incidents per year.
Perhaps not. but they would definitely have both the capacity and the
interest to report 3240.
