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jimmy the one

(2,718 posts)
11. kleck's 2.5 million dgu study
Sat Mar 12, 2022, 11:53 AM
Mar 2022

krispos: not all defensive gun uses end with a discharge.

It's infrequent (2 of 9, kleck) that a defensive gun use (dgu) includes a fired gun, even accd'g to gun guru gary kleck. In fact, one need not even own a gun to be credited with a dgu. Kleck contends that verbal dgus comprise the majority of dgus (altho they can escalate). So someone not owning a gun telling a potential threat he will pull out his gun (non existent) and threat runs off = bona fide dgu. No gun cannot harm the owner! erm....

Here is kleck's 1995 interview defending his (laughable) claim of ~2.5 million dgus. The actual interview link is defunct, but I have linked to my DU post from feb 2013 here, my comments are in brackets [ ]:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=111114

Intro: a 1995 study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz that reported an astounding 2.5 million defense gun uses (DGU) each year in the United States.

SCHULMAN: How many respondents did you have total? [nationally in klecks study]
KLECK: We had a total of 4,978 completed interviews, that is, where we had a response on the key question of whether or not there had been a defensive gun use.

SCHULMAN: So roughly 50 people out of 5000 responded that in the last year they had had to use their firearms in an actual confrontation against a human being attempting a crime?
KLECK: Handguns, yes.

SCHULMAN: Had used a handgun. And slightly more than that had used any gun.
KLECK: Right.

SCHULMAN: So that would be maybe 55, 56 people?
KLECK: Something like that, yeah.

SCHULMAN: Okay. I can just hear critics saying that 50 or 55 people responding that they used their gun and you're projecting it out to figures of around 2 million, 2-1/2 million gun defenses. Why is that statistically valid?
KLECK [starting to tapdance]: Well, that's one reason why we also had a five-year recollection period. We get a much larger raw number of people saying, "Yes, I had a defensive use." It doesn't work out to be as many....


SCHULMAN: Let's talk about how the guns were actually used in order to accomplish the defense. How many people, for example, had to merely show the gun, as opposed to how many had to fire a warning shot, as to how many actually had to attempt to shoot or shoot their attacker?
KLECK: We got all of the details about everything that people could have done with a gun from as mild an action as merely verbally referring to the gun on up to actually shooting somebody.

SCHULMAN: Could you give me the percentages?
KLECK: You have to keep in mind that it's quite possible for people to have done more than one of these things since they could obviously both verbally refer to the gun and point it at somebody or even shoot it.

KLECK: 54% of the defensive gun uses involved somebody verbally referring to the gun. 47% involved the gun being pointed at the criminal. 22% involved the gun being fired. 14% involved the gun being fired at somebody, meaning it wasn't just a warning shot; the defender was trying to shoot the criminal [as if all the dgu gun owners were innocent little lambs]. Whether they succeeded or not is another matter but they were trying to shoot a criminal [uh, non sequitur]. And then in 8% they actually did wound or kill the offender.
SCHULMAN: In 8% wounded or killed. You don't have it broken down beyond that?

KLECK: Wound versus kill? No. Again that was thought to be too sensitive a question. Although we did have, I think, two people who freely offered the information that they had, indeed, killed someone. Keep in mind that the 8% figure is based on so few cases that you have to interpret it with great caution.
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/kleck.interview.html

me, jimmy the one, 2013: Hahaha! 'so few cases' - that's for sure gary! cause 8% wounded or killed was about 4 or 5 total people (2 killed) shooting or wounding in the whole junky study! and extrapolating that out meant ~200,000 gunshot injuries for that year of the study, b b b but only 100,000 reported gunshot wounds that year!
Phantom Gunshot Victims - HEAL THYSELVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

back to march 2022: I got a little carried away in my younger days. But was true, kleck's study percentage of 8% wounded or killed would've had ~200,000 gunshot wounds, whereas actual hospital or medical clinic admissions for gunshot wounds for the study's year was ~100,000 (99,000 and change IIRC).
Note that 8% of 55 or 56 dgu respondents (per kleck above) would be the whopping total of 4 or 5 kleck's dgus actually killing or wounding the victims, of which two were confessedly 'killed'. 5 - 2 = 3. What a farce.


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