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People Use Guns Defensively
to Defeat
Criminals
2.5 Million Times per Year
In
1995 University Professors Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz published their paper "Armed
Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," Journal
of Criminal Law and Criminology, 86(1):150-187, Fall 1995. That paper
reported a survey they performed in Florida in 1994 which concluded that 2.5 million
people use guns each year in the United States to defend against criminal attacks. (Kleck
is a member of the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Common Cause, among other politically
liberal organizations. He is also a lifelong registered Democrat. He is not and has
never been a member of or contributor to the NRA, Handgun Control Inc., or any other advocacy
group on either side of the gun-control issue, nor has he received funding for research from any
such organization.)
A similar survey was repeated as a part of the National
Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms sponsored by the National Institute of Justice,
U. S. Department of Justice with results reported in the Research Brief,
"Guns in America: National
Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, NCJ
165476. Cook and Ludwig report 1.5 million persons use guns each year to defend
themselves against criminal attacks (see their Exhibit 7).
Various politically motivated attacks have been made on
Kleck & Gertz scholarship. A
letter
by Kleck to the Maryland Governor's Commission on Gun Violence gives a response
to an attack by Jon S. Vernick of Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.
In that letter Kleck
states, "What makes Vernick's criticisms so odd
is that all of them have already been thoroughly rebutted, in the
written report of that research. Had he bothered to read the
report, he would have known that none of his claims were correct.
Unfortunately, Vernick decided to critique the research,
apparently with no sense of embarrassment whatsoever, solely on
the basis of a cursory press account of the work. No serious
scholar does such things."
By contrast an honest statement by One of the most prominent
criminologists in the world, Marvin Wolfgang, who was a strong proponent of gun control
is:
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I am as strong a gun-control advocate as
can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of
Brave New World, I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even
from the police. I hate guns -- ugly, nasty instruments designed to kill people.
. . .
What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled
is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in
support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in
defense against a criminal perpetrator . . . . I have to
admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research.
Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a
defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge
the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence. The National Crime Victim
Survey does not directly contravene this latest survey, nor do the Mauser and Hart studies.
. . .
Nevertheless, the methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear.
I cannot further debate it.
. . .
The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate
nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun
can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all
objections in advance and have done exceedingly well.
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