This diary is fourth in a series on defensive gun use published by the Firearm Law and Policy group. Part I reports on defensive gun use as described in the Center for Disease Control review of gun violence in America. Part II discusses the many difficulties in defining and determining a proper and legal defensive use of a gun. Part III reviewed the well-known McDowall & Wiersema 1994 study that estimated the incidence of defensive gun use in America. This Part IV will review the well-known Kleck & Gertz 1995 study that also estimated the incidence of defensive gun use in America. Part V will compare the two studies and their methodologies.
|
Introduction
According to the Center for Disease Control, America's premier institution of public health and safety, over 100,000 Americans suffer a gunshot injury every year, and every year, over 30,000 Americans die of their gunshot injuries. For this reason, and for others, many Americans conclude that gun ownership and gun use is highly dangerous, and gun sales and use should be limited and tightly controlled.
Guns are very popular in this country, and gun enthusiasts claim that guns contribute positively to the wider society. Chief among the benefits of gun ownership and use is safety and protection: a gun can be used defensively to prevent crime or stop a crime in progress, and guns help to protect and make safe the home and family. While acknowledging that guns injure and kill many, gun enthusiasts say that defensive gun use is beneficial overall and outweighs any negative impact of guns.
So accurately assessing the frequency of gun injuries and defensive gun uses (DGU) have become central to the debate about gun policy in the USA.
Accurately counting gunshot injuries and gunshot deaths is relatively easy. You simply count up the number of people injured and killed by bullets over a given period of time. Police and hospitals keep records of gunshot injuries and deaths, and every year, the Center for Disease Control collects those records and publishes a yearly tally of the total number of fatal and nonfatal gunshot injuries across the USA. This gives the counting of gunshot injuries an almost unassailable credibility: even the gun industry does not refute the accuracy of the yearly statistics on gunshot injuries.
Counting defensive gun uses is much more difficult. There is no public agency in America that keeps track of DGUs. For this reasons, the incidence of DGU is not counted and tallied every year, but instead must be estimated through surveys and polling – through empiric research. Unfortunately, to date the research on the incidence of DGU has yielded wildly inconsistent results, and some considerable controversy among public health researchers, criminologists, and the general public.
This series will review two of the most frequently cited studies of the incidence of DGU in the USA: the 1994 study authored by David McDowall, and the 1995 study authored by Gary Kleck. These two studies were chosen for review here because they represent the alpha and the omega of empiric research on DGU – both studies are well-know and widely cited in the scientific and lay literature, and these two studies present the high and the low ends of estimates of DGU. We will review the methodologies of these two studies to try and understand why they came up with such different results, even as they purport to measure the same thing.
|
Study: Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With A Gin (Kleck G., Gertz M. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 86(1):150-187; 1995)
In 1995, Gary Kleck and co-author Marc Gertz published the results of their study of the incidence of DGU in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, a peer-reviewed law journal. Dr. Kleck used data from the 1993 National Self Defense Survey (NSDS). A total of 4,997 subjects responded to the NSDS, and the full details about a DGU were collected from 213 subjects. Extrapolating from these raw numbers, Kleck and his research team estimated that Americans used their guns to protect themselves from criminal attack 2.549 million times in the previous year (1992). One point three percent (1.3%) of households were estimated to have experienced a DGU episode in the previous year. The annual incidence of DGU over the previous five years was estimated at 1.884 million. The study included as fairly extensive breakdown of the nature of DGUs described by respondents: what the defender did with the gun, the location of the DGU episode, what the offender was doing, what sort of violence occurred, etc. Kleck concluded that DGU is common in the USA, and occurs more frequently than criminal attacks with a gun.
The National Self-Defense Survey
In reviewing previous studies of DGU, Dr. Kleck felt that those earlier studies had significant flaws, and he set out to design a study specifically for the purpose of estimating DGU. The end result was the NSDS: the purpose of the NSDS was to investigate armed resistance to crime. The NSDS was conducted once in 1993. The study was funded privately, and the study authors do not disclose who provided the funding. The study used a professional private polling firm Research Network of Tallahassee, FL, to do the sampling and interviewing. The study sample was national (lower contiguous 48 states), and the number of subjects interviewed in each state was proportional to the size of the state population – though southern and western states were over-sampled for statistical reasons. Contact with study subjects was done by randomly dialing residential telephone numbers in each state, and when the telephone was answered by a human, asking them if they would consent to participate in the survey. The respondents were adults aged 18 and over. Respondents were assured their anonymity would be maintained in the study. Every respondent was asked specifically about using a gun to defend themselves. Responses that included occupational gun use and use against animals were excluded. Of all the eligible telephone numbers that were called, 61% yielded a completed survey.
Every person responding to the survey was first asked:
“Within the past five years, have you yourself or another member of your household used a handgun, 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.”
If the subject responded affirmatively, they were then asked a follow-up question:
“Did this instance [or any of these instances] happen in the last 12 months?”
Respondents were asked if anyone else in the house had used a gun for DGU. All respondents reporting a DGU incident were asked a series of questions to provide details about the DGU incident. If the person answering the survey was not the one involved in the DGU, call-backs were made to try and speak directly to the person involved.
The advantages of this study are:
1) designed from the ground up to assess the incidence of DGU
2) all interviewees were asked specifically about defending themselves with a gun
3) reports of all DGU are included regardless of the type of crime involved
4) DGU by police and security guards were excluded
5) DGU against animals were excluded
5) respondents remain anonymous, and may therefore feel more willing to talk about gun use with study personnel
The disadvantages of this study are:
1) the study funding is not disclosed
2) the response rate for the survey is abysmally low
3) because of the methodologies employed and the low response rate, the study sample cannot be considered representative of the US population
4) the sample size is smaller than the National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS)
5) there is no way to verify if the reported gun use actually occurred in response to a criminal attack
6) respondents may have been “telescoping” their reports of DGU – reporting DGUs that occurred outside of the time period of the study
The Daily Kos Firearms Law and Policy group studies actions for reducing firearm deaths and injuries in a manner that is consistent with the current Supreme Court interpretation of the Second Amendment. We also cover the many positive aspects of gun ownership, including hunting, shooting sports, and self-defense.
To see our list of original and republished diaries, go to the Firearms Law and Policy diary list. Click on the ♥ or the word "Follow" next to our group name to add our posts to your stream, and use the link next to the heart to send a message to the group if you have a question or would like to join.
We have adopted Wee Mama's and akadjian's guidance on communicating. But most important, be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
|