Jordan Hayes:
>I'd be interested in your opinion of criminologists like Don Kates
and
>Gary Kleck, especially Kleck
oh yes, Gary Kleck, who amused other criminologists a few years back with his claim that 2.5 million crimes were prevented through defensive gun uses each year. Among other things, he had 322,000 rapes prevented through gun use (as against 316,000 reported rapes; are the majority of rapists fended off by gun-wielding victims?) and 130,000 criminals wounded or killed by defensive gun use each year; the *total* number of nonfatal shootings known to police is about 100,000.
You can find a nice demolition job of his study by Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig at http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/165476.pdf. When they're through, there's not much left standing.
Josh