Study: The Incidence of Defensive Firearm Use by US Crime Victims, 1987 to 1990 (McDowall D., Wiersema B. American Journal of Public Health, 84:1982-1984; 1994)
Writing in the December 1994 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, principal investigator David McDowall, PhD and co-author Brian Wiersema used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to estimate DGUs. They described the need and the purpose of the study in this way: "We were interested in the incidence of defense and the situations in which it occurs." They examined data from the years 1987 through 1990. They reported that during the years under examination, there were 143.9 million incidents of crime. During that period, there were 258,460 incidents of firearm resistance to crime, for an average of 64,615 DGUs every year. They reported that victims of crimes used guns defensively in 0.18% of all crimes, and in 0.83% of violent crimes. The study counted 50,262 self-defense gun uses by police in the line of duty during the study period. Removing these police DGU drops the yearly estimate of civilian DGUs to 51,959. McDowall concluded that DGU is rare in the USA. Dr. McDowall published a follow-up study in 1998 using data from the 1992 and 1994 waves of the NCVS, in which the estimate of yearly DGU was adjusted upwards to 116,000 (McDowall, D., C. Loftin, and B. Wiersema. Estimates of the Frequency of Firearm Self-Defense from the Redesigned National Crime Victimization Survey. Violence Research Group Discussion Paper 20; 1998. (unpublished report)).
The National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS)
The NCVS study (link) is an ongoing annual survey of crime victims done by the US Census Bureau on behalf of the Department of Justice – Bureau of Justice Statistics. The survey is conducted every year, as it has been since 1973. The purpose of the survey is to assess crime victims on the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal acts in America. The NCVS is designed to assess a representative sample of over 59,000 US households, and collected data from over 116,000 non-institutionalized adults subjects (the study has been modified since 1990 to survey a smaller number of people and households). Sampled households are retained in the survey for three years, and are surveyed twice a year for the period they are retained in the study. The sample includes police officers and security guards who might use guns at their jobs. Being a Census Bureau survey, contact with interviewees is made through telephone and personal interview. The response rate for the survey was reported to be 95%.
Interviewees in the study are asked about incidents of rape, sexual assault, assault, robbery, theft, household burglary, and motor vehicle theft that occurred to them personally in the previous six months. Respondents who report an incidence of crime are then asked questions about self-defense:
“Was there anything you did or tried to do about the incident while it was going on?”
Responses from victims who answer they took action during the criminal attack are coded into one of 16 categories, including “attacked offender with gun; fired gun”, and “threatened offender with gun”. The interviewer continues to ask “anything else” until the crime victim reports no further actions taken. The survey follows these questions with an additional probe:
“Did you do anything (else) with the idea of protecting yourself or your property while the incident was going on?'
and affirmative responders are asked to detail their actions.
(Follow this
link to view the full study questionnaires)
For the purpose of estimating DGUs, the advantages of this study design are
1) the study is publicly funded;
2) the study is done by a government agency with extensive experience in conducting representative national surveys;
3) the large representative sample size;
4) the “representativeness” of the sample is maintained by making personal contact with households that do not respond to telephone contact;
4) the reliability of the responses is maintained by repeating interviews with the households every six months;
5) because interviews are conducted every 6 months, episodes of “telescoping*” can be identified and controlled;
6) a DGU is only counted in the setting of a criminal attack.
*"Telescoping" is the term given by researchers to a phenomenon whereby survey respondents mistakenly recall and include events that are outside of the period of time under investigation.
The disadvantages of this study design are:
1) the study is not specifically designed to measure DGUs;
2) the study does not track every type of crime;
3) the study does not ask every interviewee about episodes of DGU;
4) interviewees are not specifically asked about defending themselves with a gun;
5) follow-up studies have demonstrated that the incidence of assault (and especially assaults by relatives and non-strangers) in the NCVS is under-reported, and if crime is under-reported then so too will DGUs be under-reported;
6) respondents’ anonymity is not preserved, and some interviewees may therefore feel wary or unwilling to discuss gun use with federal government employees.
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