From sokol at jhu.edu Mon Apr 26 15:25:14 1999
As to the "general deterrence" effect i.e. criminal being
supposedly scared of armed citizen - this argument is simply
hogwash -- drivel cooked by armchair social comentators who
have no clue what street life is about. As I argued above, the
central premise of this argument - rationality of criminal
behavior - is false in the light of available evidence (cf.
Katz, op. cit.).
I'd be interested in your opinion of criminologists like Don Kates and Gary Kleck, especially Kleck's critique of the NCVS. Here's a summary of that critique:
http://www.guncite.com/gcdguse.html
Kates also has quite a bit to say about the numbers and attempts to debunk some of this 'drivel cooked by armchair comentators' here:
http://www.2ndLawLib.org/related/katesreal.html
/jordan