Kleck’s self-reported dgu study {~5,000 calls nationwide, with 56 TOTAL defensive gun uses, ~12 gunfirings in the whole study} finding 2.5 million defensive uses of guns per year wildly exaggerated. Kleck says guns were used to defend against 845,000 burglaries in 1992, a year in which the National Crime Victimization Survey {NCVS} says there were fewer than 6 million burglaries. NCVS- someone was known to be home in just 22% of burglaries (1.3 million), and that fewer than half of US households have firearms - pointed out that Kleck “asks us to believe that burglary victims in gun-owning households use their guns in self-defense more than 100% of the time.”
Can't stop laughing! gun studies in their nutshells!
respondents may also have a distorted view of “self-defense”—e.g., mistakenly thinking they are legally defending themselves when they draw a gun during a minor altercation.
“Guns are used to threaten and intimidate far more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported self-defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society.”
NCVS report, controlling for many of the methodological problems in Kleck, finding 65,000 defensive gun uses per year (NCVS Report, 1997). Current NCVS estimates are in the 100,000 range.
..pro-gun crowd sure wants you to think so, promoting studies over the years claiming guns are used defensively thousands of times per day and that broader gun ownership makes communities safer, and repeating anecdotes in which guns are reported to have thwarted crimes ... National Research Council of the National Academies of Science found that Lott’s claims were not supported by his data. And when Lott misrepresented the report (NY Post, 12/04), NAS listing his distortions. Shooting Down the More Guns Less Crime Hypothesis (11/02), a paper by Nat Bur Economic Research, found crime actually increased in states and locales where concealed carry laws had been adopted. http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-self-defense-self-delusion/
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