tlambert

Mary Woods wrote: Kellermann also used a control case study, limiting his cases to the following criteria; "Any death ruled a homicide was included, regardless of the method used. Assault related injuries that were not immediately fatal were included if death followed within three months." ( NEMJ…

circe wrote: In homes with guns the homicide of a household member is three times more likely to occur than in homes without guns. New England Journal 1993;329.1084-1091. David Friedman writes: You may also have noticed that the death rate in hospitals is much higher than in hotels. So if only…

Lott grossly misrepresents Kellermann's study. He states that "they fail to report that in only 8 of these 444 homicide cases could it be established that the gun involved had been kept in the home." Kellermann et al do indeed fail to report that, but that is because it is not true. They do note…

(from The Criminologist Vol 25, No 5 Sep/Oct 2000 pp 1,6) In a recent issue of the Criminologist, Otis Duncan raises concerns about my writings. He discusses a wide range of issues from the estimated number of defensive gun uses and the rate at which defensive uses result in the gun being fired…

This post contains extracts from Chapter 23 Private Defence of Textbook of Criminal Law by Glanville L Williams (2nd Ed 1983). Summary In general, private defence is an excuse for any crime against the person or property. It probably applies to the defence even of a stranger, and may be used…

Otis Dudley Duncan, University of California, Santa Barbara (from The Criminologist Vol 25, No 1 Jan/Feb 2000 pp 1-7) We who work hard to produce statistics for public consumption would do well to acquire a little historical perspective. Theodore Porter's wide-ranging Trust in Numbers: The…

Ray writes: Danny's obvious reading disability has not allowed him to read this when I posted it before. Maybe he can get a friend to read it to him this time: W A Collier writes: Ray, one question for you: If all these other folks including Marvin E. Wolfgang (widely acclaimed as a…

W A Collier writes: How the NCVS miscounted DGUs Undersized sample, poor methodology, bias in the questions, unsound methods and procedures in eliminating bias, and unlike Kleck, they started with the conclusion (there are only a small number of gun defenses) as an objective to be proven (not the…

I argued that the estimate of 200,000 DG woundings derived from Kleck's survey (p163 of TG) was inconsistent the estimate of 7700-18,500 DG woundings on page 164 of TG. Kleck accuses me of sloppy reading for not noting that the p 164 estimate is for medically treated wounds only. However, even if…

Gary Kleck writes: my position that estimates of DGUs with a wounding are unstable is correct. The prevalence of DGUs with a wounding in the Kleck-Gertz (K-G) survey was 0.0011 (1.326% of U.S. adults had a DGU of some kind in the previous year, and 8.3% of DGUs involved a wounding -- see pp. 184-…

Dan Z wrote: Yeah, that's really odd. According to figures published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, in 1994, Northern Ireland had an adjusted homicide rate of 5.85 and Scotland was 2.24. It looks to me like the rate for Northern Ireland is greater What does "adjusted" mean here?…

Gun Control Advocates Purvey Deadly Myths Wall Street Journal, 11 Nov. 1998 By John R. Lott Jr. The family gun is more likely to kill you or someone you know than to kill in self-defense. The 1993 study yielding such numbers, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, never…

Gun Control Advocates Purvey Deadly Myths Wall Street Journal, 11 Nov. 1998 By John R. Lott JR. The U.S. has a high murder rate because Americans own so many guns. There is no international evidence backing this up. The Swiss, New Zealanders and Finns all own guns as frequently as…

I used to believe that Kleck's estimate of DGU's was correct, but overwhelming evidence to the contrary has convinced me otherwise. Sam A. Kersh writes: To the best of my knowledge, you have never accepted Kleck's DGU estimates. At least not in the last 5 years that you and I (and Pim) have…

bob (really Edgar Suter?) writes: From an early DRAFT of Gary Kleck's TARGETING GUNS : FIREARMS AND THEIR CONTROL scheduled to be published this month: The Medical/Public Health Literature on Guns and Violence False Citation of Prior Research One final problem in the medical/public health…

Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes: Just a very few comments: Folks can report an incident to the police without reporting gun use. I once fetched a gun to encourage some burglars to leave, and reported the burglary but not the gun use, since the gun possession was unlawful. The Kleck estimate is not…

0. Introduction Volume 87:4 of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology contains three articles on the issue of the frequency of defensive gun use. The first presents David Hemenway's critique of Gary Kleck's 2.5 million estimate, the second is Kleck and Gertz's reply and finally Tom Smith of…

John Briggs writes: Also, the Crime Incident Report that follows the Basic Screen Questionnaire seems to elicit details (including defensive responses) regarding only the most recent of multiple similar reported crime incidents. Questions 2 and 3 ask about the when and where of "this/the first…

Note that even if you are in love with Kleck's estimate for DGUs, you can't honestly compare it with the NCVS estimate for gun crimes, since it is not possible for both Kleck's estimate for DGUs and the NCVS estimate for gun crimes to be correct. Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes: Why not? NCVS's…

" THE 'PSYCHIC COST' OF HOLIDAY GIFT-GIVING" By Dr. Paul Gallant and David Kopel The approach of the holiday season brings a perennial problem: what to give the relative or good friend who already has a VCR? For many American gift-givers the answer has often been a high-quality firearm. Perhaps…

Dan Day wrote: I've reread that a number of times and still can't figure out exactly what Kellermann is trying to say. The best I can make out is that Kellermann is claiming that self-defense homicides are not legally justifiable (?) You missed the bit where he defined the meaning of those terms…

It is disingenous for Kleck to take a quotation of Kellerman's out of context to make it appear that Kellermann was asserting that only 2% of of homicides were lawful defensive homicides. Dan Day wrote: Well, your own summary isn't entirely accurate either. Here's the passage in question: Less…

Charles Scripter wrote: Here we fit the NSW "before" region to a slope + constant background, while the "after" region is fit only to a slope (chance resulted in this slope passing through, or very close to zero, eliminating the need for a constant, 4th parameter). The origin is located at year…

Edgar Suter wrote: From an early DRAFT of Gary Kleck's TARGETING GUNS : FIREARMS AND THEIR CONTROL scheduled to be published this month: The Medical/Public Health Literature on Guns and Violence False Citation of Prior Research In a 1992 article [Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, Somes G, et al. Suicide…

EdgarSuter wrote: whether or not Mr. Lambert disagrees with a single quote of my assessment of the harmful nostrum of gun control, he has yet to explain the habitual fabricated citations of Kellermann (noted in my letter to Emerg Med News) All right, let's have a look at the first one: citation of…

Charles Scripter wrote: [...regarding Tim Lambert's assertion of a significant decrease in homicide in New South Wales in 1920, coincident with the enactment of a gun control law in NSW in that same year...] The Lambert analysis method clearly shows that there was a significant decrease for any…

A large number of criminal shootings are "drive-bys" --- fired from long range and more likely to hit an extremity than a self-defence shooting at close range. These factors suggest that defensive shootings would be more lethal than criminal ones. John Briggs writes: Any data on the proportions…

Alan Peyton-Smith writes: Oh, BTW, I have good reason to believe that this Brian Ross we're talking about is the same Brian Ross who created a few extra Internet accounts for himself under false names such as David Bowman and Kylie Minogue and Tim Lambert and possibly several others. Are you…

John Briggs writes: [Calculation of number of justifiable shootings deleted] This would suggest 15,000 to 20,000 civilian justifiable woundings or 17,500 to 22,500 incidents in which a civilian shot and hit an assailant. Kleck does a similar calculation in "Point Blank" to get an estimate of 10,…

Viktor writes: Of course, we know here in America that the highest crime rates for the past 50 years are in the cities that have the strictest gun control laws (Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Detroit) imposed on innocent people - the distinction being, there can be no gun control that is…