Still in Denial

Miguel points out our friends at CSGV are spilling more ink on ridiculous claims of no defensive gun use. They even acknowledge the DOJ study that says 80,000 – 100,000 defensive gun uses a year, but dismiss the study because “they don’t apply any value judgement to say whether they were warranted or not.”

Miguel correctly points out threatening someone with a gun who doesn’t deserve it is called Assault with a Deadly Weapon. True in Florida. In Pennsylvania it’s actually Simple Assault if you only threaten someone with a gun, but it’s a second degree misdemeanor, which is up to two years in prison. The simple fact that most of these folks weren’t charged should indicate that DGUs are real, and numerous.

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Myths of the Gun Control Lobby
  2. Defensive Gun Use
  3. The Science is In!

8 thoughts on “Still in Denial”

  1. Shees, the DOJ, which is no friend to gun rights, lists them as DGUs, so they are probably just that.

    Denial is strong in these anti-gun control freaks. The facts do not comport with their hysteria, so they must be ignored.

    It’s right up there with the insane claim that gun ownership is decreasing despite multiple sources and observations that it is booming.

    Clearly, facts are an anathema to them.

    It’s getting harder and harder to take any of their claims seriously. Their use of bad statistics, piss-poor analysis, faulty study designs, in-their-pocket researchers, selective reporting, and so on, really strains their credulity.

    Advice to David Gross, turn it around and commit to do good research and use verifiable facts and stop with hyperbole and hysterics and you might get some people to listen. Oh wait, the facts are not in their favor so they have to LIE and do a media hissy fit to get acknowledged and get donations.

  2. I posted a response to their “statistics”. It was deleted and I was banned within a half hour. But if just a few of their acolytes saw my comment pop up on their news feed before it was deleted I’ll consider that a success.

  3. The DOJ study almost certainly undercounts because one of the questions that you have to answer before you get to the “did you use a weapon to defend yourself?” question asks if you were a victim of a crime. Some people, if they weren’t injured, answer, “No.” And generally, if you draw a gun on a robber, you aren’t injured.

  4. “Defensive Gun Use” is one of those terms that mean whatever you want them to mean. It can mean the perp saw an NRA sticker on a citizen’s car, and decided to pass on. It may mean a confrontation in which the perp suspects the citizen may have a gun. It may be that someone pointed a gun at a perp. Or that a citizen fired a gun to warn off a perp. Or actually wounded or killed the perp.

    From still pending prison surveys it appears that citizens with guns warn off criminals 750,000 times a year, and fire shots about 75,000 times a year.

    Stranger

    1. @Stranger, so true about the importance of definitions. I have not bothered to look at the report yet, but their dismissive response to it shows that they are not serious about rigorous analysis.

      Our goal is to minimize violence and bloodshed by criminals and if my “Molon Labe” or NRA stickers on my car prevent a car jacking, so much the better. If my neighborhood looks like it has gunnies in it so that the criminals avoid contact, so much the better.

      When a criminal figures that the odds are significant that they will get a gun pointed at them, we’ll see less personal crimes (rapes, violent assaults and murders).

    2. Not quite that undefined.

      Within a given study DGU has a definition that is described to the subjects, in theory they are only supposed to answer “yes” if their experience meets that methodological definition.

      There are definite weaknesses to such surveys but fuzzy meaning isn’t supposed to be a big one.

      In theory. =)

  5. The DOJ, via the NIJ, did a telephone survey similar to Kleck’s (one of 14 such surveys by various media and academic groups over the years) in 1994. The results published in ’97.

    No mention of that one in their “lack of statistics, but the DOJ says…” tweet. I wonder why?

    Oh yeah, it’s because the National Institute of Justice came up with 1.5 million solid DGU’s, squarely in the middle of such survey’s as a group.

    (of course they then spent the remainder of the publication attempting to explain that away)

Comments are closed.