Reply #54: DGU's [View All]

[russ1943]

Defensive gun use is a completely different kind of statistic, as the National Academies' National Research Council. comments;


"In Firearms and Violence 2004: How many times each year do civilians use firearms defensively? The answers provided to this seemingly simple question have been confusing. Consider the findings from two of the most widely cited studies in the field: McDowall et al. (1998), using the data from 1992 and 1994 waves of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), found roughly 116,000 defensive gun uses per year, and Kleck and Gertz (1995), using data from the 1993 National Self-Defense Survey (NSDS), found around 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.
Although theories abound, it is not possible to identify the prevalence of defensive gun use without knowledge on inaccurate reporting. Kleck and Gertz (1995) and others suggest that estimates from the NCVS are biased downward, arguing that respondents are reluctant to reveal information to government officials, and that indirect questions may yield inaccurate reports. Hemenway (1997a) and others suggest that estimates from the NSDS are biased upward, arguing that memory telescoping, self-presentation biases, and the rare events problem more generally lead the numbers of false positive reports to substantially exceed the numbers of false negative reports. It is not known, however, whether Kleck’s, Hemenway’s, or some other assumptions are correct. The committee is not aware of any factual basis for drawing conclusions one way or the other about reporting errors."

Statistics from a variety of sources do not confirm that defensive gun use by ordinary citizens occurs on a scale that dwarfs criminal gun use. There are significant differences between studies regarding defensive use of firearms, with some estimates suggesting just over 100,000 defensive gun uses per year, which is a small fraction of the far better documented number of criminal gun uses in a year.