Professor Klecks is arguing that NCVS undercounts the defensive use of guns, because citizens are afraid to report such use to the Bureu of the Census interviewers. Well, that is probably the most stupid critique of a survey I've read for a really long time long time. What's next? Black UN helicopters snitching the true data and replacing them with cooked ones?
Even if Kleck's assertion about armed citizenry fears of disclosong their defensive gun use were true, his argument is a bunch of crap for a very simple reason - NCVS reports the defensive use of a _weapon_ not a gun, and a weapon can be anything from a knife to a baseball bat. So if his argument were true, the reported incidence of using a _weapon_ would be higher, since possession of a baseball bat is not a crime (even according to the NRA nutcases). But the defensive use of _weapons_ is low in NCVS stats. And there are very good reasons for that - (a) defensive use of a weapon, especially a fire arm requires a lot of training and an opportunity to use that often does not exist; and (b) you have to have a weapon handy and ready to use to overcome the element of surprise when attacked.
Most street crimes are committed opportunistically, i.e. the perpetrators do it if they see an easy prey (a person who appears to be intoxicated, confused, vulnerable, or perhaps committing an illegal act, such as byuing drugs or sex) - so it is doubful that the possession of a weapon in such situations would offer much help.
Indeed there are very few scenarios where having a fire arm can offer a clear advantage to the potential victim - most of them involving a victim being attacked at home. This is so, beacuse both intrusions by strangers or domestic violence gives the victim some time to react before the perpetrator can physically harm the victim - and that time is necessary to for making a fire arm ready to use. Most stick-ups or rapes involve immediate physical threat by a usually stronger, prepared and determined to act perpetrator - and that gives the victim no time to prepare his/her weapon before the harm is inflicten upon him/her.
So it looks to me that Professor Kleck is a quack not a doctor - perhaps not an armchair comentator but an ouright fraud with a not-so-hidden agenda.
As to:
>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
It is too long for me to read as of now, but a quick glance at the first few sentences suggest that the guy is trying to debunk the liberal agenda of gun control legislation. Well, if that is so, I oppose that agenda as well and I can cite a few good reasons for that, for example, it would lead to another war in addtion to the one we are now having on drugs - meaning more cops, more raids, more invasions of civil liberties and _zero_ advertised effect. (that is, I suspect, one the reasoons why the police support gun contro legislation).
So I do not really need to be convinced about the shortcomics of legalistic attempts to deal with social problems - of which the liberal gun control agenda is an example. What really piss me off is those who insult my inteligence by arguing about supposed moral virtues of gun ownership. My opposition to government attempts to control access to resources like drugs, tobacco or firearms is based on the principle of civil liberties rather than the claimed value of the said resources. I believe that people should have access to to those resources even though their potentially harmful nature leaves little doubt.
BTW, I think that the "defensive gun use" is in the same category as "medicinal use of marijuana" or the supposed "health benefits" of tobacco, claimed by the industry's propaganda in 1950s - a bunch of crap designed to sway small-town morality-play minds.
Wojtek