Government Continues to Downplay, Distort Data on Defensive Gun Use

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20230911/government-continues-to-downplay-
distort-data-on-defensive-gun-use

In 2021, John R. Lott, Jr., the president of the Crime Prevention Research
Center (CPRC) released a paper on the “serious errors” he found in Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reports purporting to track “active shooter
incidents” (ASIs). The FBI’s annual or biannual reports – which aim “to
provide federal, state and local law enforcement with data so they can
better understand how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover
from these incidents” – contained, according to Dr. Lott, critical errors.
In one instance, the failure to include “many major missed cases” meant
that once those cases were accounted for, what the FBI had presented as a
drastic increase in ASIs between 2000 and 2013 was actually a “slight,
statistically insignificant upward trend over the 38 years from 1977
through 2014,” and one that was, moreover, attributable to high numbers in
a single year (2012).

Another error highlighted in the 2021 paper was the FBI’s repeated
exclusion of cases where armed citizens intervened in attacks, with the
corrected data establishing a significantly more favorable depiction of
defensive gun uses. This included Dr. Lott identifying at least six
missing cases in 2018-19 in which a concealed handgun permit-holder
stopped the attacker. The FBI had reported that, between 2014 and 2019,
citizens with permitted concealed handguns stopped an attack in nine out
of 145 cases (6.2%); as corrected, the figure more than doubled to over 15
percent. (Further research was required to identify additional concealed
carry cases missed by the FBI prior to 2014.)

Interestingly, the Washington Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler,
contacted the FBI for comments regarding the issues Lott raised. “The FBI
brushed aside repeated efforts by The Fact Checker to discuss its reports
and the questions raised by Lott. ‘We have no additional information to
provide other than what is provided within the active shooter reports on
our website,’ the agency said in an emailed statement.”

A new article by Dr. Lott maintains that the FBI persists in its
unfortunate practice of massively underreporting incidents in which armed
civilians have thwarted active shootings. “While the FBI claims that just
4.6 percent of active shootings were stopped by law-abiding citizens
carrying guns, the percentage that [the CPRC] found was 35.7 percent. I am
more confident that we have identified a higher share of recent cases, and
our figure for 2022 was even higher – 41.3 percent.”

The corrected statistics are even more compelling once adjusted for just
the locations where armed individuals are permitted to carry. Although the
FBI dataset does not break down cases between those occurring in “gun-
free” zones and others, the CPRC found that in “places where law-abiding
citizens are allowed to carry firearms, the percentage of active shootings
that were stopped is 51 percent. For 2022, that figure is a remarkable
63.5 percent” – a stunningly persuasive endorsement on the benefits of
lawful carry. (The specific data used by the CPRC is available at its
website, here.)

Another study lends support to the CPRC’s findings, being the results of a
national survey analyzing firearm ownership and use released last year by
William English (McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University).
Admittedly, this doesn’t use the FBI’s metric of “active shooter incident”
(which applies only to public places and excludes shootings from gang or
drug violence), but nonetheless offers valuable insight into how often
firearms are used in defense of self and others.

The study found that more than 81.4 million Americans aged 18 and over own
firearms, with approximately 31.1% (25.3 million) reporting having used a
gun to defend themselves or their property, often on more than one
occasion. Extrapolating the figures, these “gun owners have been involved
in … approximately 50 million defensive incidents. Assuming that defensive
uses of firearms are distributed roughly equally across years, this
suggests at least 1.67 million defensive uses of firearms per year in
which firearms owners have defended themselves or their property through
the discharge, display, or mention of a firearm (excluding military
service, police work, or work as a security guard).” Footnote 9 clarifies
that “this estimate is inherently conservative;” if, for instance, those
who do not personally own firearms are included in the estimate, it “could
be substantially higher – perhaps as high as 2.8 million per year.”

Lott’s article concedes that data collection and classification mistakes
may happen, although this doesn’t explain why the problems with the FBI’s
reporting continue even after updated, corrected information is made
available. The FBI’s “data on active shootings is missing so many
defensive gun uses that it’s hard to believe it isn’t intentional.”

It is, of course, irresponsible to manipulate data to further a preferred
political narrative, and it is much more egregiously so if the entity
involved is a publicly funded and supposedly nonpartisan government agency
whose information is relied on by media, courts, law enforcement, and
legislators. President Joe Biden – who has himself been so frequently and
consistently caught out making false claims about guns that even CNN has
called him on it – is already campaigning on a sweeping new gun control
platform. The success of his anti-Second Amendment agenda rests on
undermining facts and evidence, and convincing Americans that defensive
gun use is a fantasy.
--
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.

No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.

[X, formerly known as "!Jones"]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 16:20:20 -0000 (UTC), in talk.politics.guns "Leroy

Post by Leroy N. Soetoro

Referencing a 2023 release by the National Rifle Association (NRA)
claiming in the title that "[the US] Government Continues to Downplay,
Distort Data on Defensive Gun Use"
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20230911/government-continues-to-downplay-distort-data-on-defensive-gun-use#:~:text=The%20study%20found%20that%20more,on%20more%20than%20one%20occasion.
One of the prime difficulties in interpreting "studies" of gun-related
human behavior is detecting a fiduciary relationship between the
researcher[s] and the topic under study. Of course, this issue is by
no means limited to the study of firearms; for example: one should
take with a grain of salt a study of pharmaceuticals conducted by an
organization funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Paraphrasing
Sinclare's Law: "A person or organization whose income depends on some
assertion being true will accept *extremely* flimsy supporting data as
hard proof of the assertion." In this case, the NRA, being in the
business of promoting guns for the US industry, cannot be expected to
weigh relative data in an unbiased manner.
Similarly, the article is highly focused on John Lott, who has never
been published in this field and whose research (and academic
integrity… see: "The Mary Rosh Affair") is highly questionable. Dr.
Lott also has a well-documented fiduciary relationship with the gun
industry.
The article cites a 2022 study (English, 2022) which amounts to yet
another iteration of what are generically known as "Kleck surveys",
after Gary Kleck;s eponymous work at Florida State University.
Essentially, these surveys conduct anonymous, cold-call interviews
wherein respondents are asked whether of not they have ever used a
firearm in a defensive manner. The survey defines a positive answer
as a "DGU", assumably invoking the idea of a "defensive gun use";
however, it is important to keep in mind that the artifacts being
counted are simply survey answers by anonymous respondents.
There is nothing inherently wrong with data obtained from survey
instruments; however, the data have to be validated. This usually
means taking a sample of the data and investigating them rigorously,
and, in the Kleck surveys, this step has never been attempted. (I
have no idea how this would, or could, be done in an anonymous
telephone survey.) The extrapolation is statistically valid if you
are careful to say that there would be 60 million [always end made-up
numbers with zeros so that your asshole doesn't slam shut when you
pull 'em out!] positive answers to the survey were it to be
administered nationally; however, not a single use, defensive or
otherwise, of a firearm was ever documented.
A second possible method of validation exists that *can* be used on
anonymous surveys. It's not as reliable as data sampling; however, it
can provide insight. The technique is called "complimenting the item"
or asking the question backwards to flip the suspected bias. In this
case, the respondents would be asked if they had ever been involved in
a gun-related incident where the other person could *possibly* have
believed he or she was acting in self-defense. Of course, the number
of positive responses is expected to be far lower than the original
survey; however, the quotient would give the reader a metric of
validity… *anything* would be impressive! (I wrote to Dr. Kleck and
asked why he didn't try that. I haven't heard back, and don't expect
to.)
The bottom line is that we have no idea how many defensive uses of
firearms we have had in the US. Not a single one has ever been
proven; however, none have ever been disproven, either. To get an
idea what an estimate of that number might be, we should avoid
listening to any organization or researcher funded by money from the
gun industry.
English, William, 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis
Including Types of Firearms Owned (May 13, 2022). Georgetown McDonough
https://ssrn.com/abstract=4109494 or
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4109494

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20230911/government-continues-to-downplay-
distort-data-on-defensive-gun-use
In 2021, John R. Lott, Jr., the president of the Crime Prevention Research
Center (CPRC) released a paper on the “serious errors” he found in Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reports purporting to track “active shooter
incidents” (ASIs). The FBI’s annual or biannual reports – which aim “to
provide federal, state and local law enforcement with data so they can
better understand how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover
from these incidents” – contained, according to Dr. Lott, critical errors.
In one instance, the failure to include “many major missed cases” meant
that once those cases were accounted for, what the FBI had presented as a
drastic increase in ASIs between 2000 and 2013 was actually a “slight,
statistically insignificant upward trend over the 38 years from 1977
through 2014,” and one that was, moreover, attributable to high numbers in
a single year (2012).
Another error highlighted in the 2021 paper was the FBI’s repeated
exclusion of cases where armed citizens intervened in attacks, with the
corrected data establishing a significantly more favorable depiction of
defensive gun uses. This included Dr. Lott identifying at least six
missing cases in 2018-19 in which a concealed handgun permit-holder
stopped the attacker. The FBI had reported that, between 2014 and 2019,
citizens with permitted concealed handguns stopped an attack in nine out
of 145 cases (6.2%); as corrected, the figure more than doubled to over 15
percent. (Further research was required to identify additional concealed
carry cases missed by the FBI prior to 2014.)
Interestingly, the Washington Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler,
contacted the FBI for comments regarding the issues Lott raised. “The FBI
brushed aside repeated efforts by The Fact Checker to discuss its reports
and the questions raised by Lott. ‘We have no additional information to
provide other than what is provided within the active shooter reports on
our website,’ the agency said in an emailed statement.”
A new article by Dr. Lott maintains that the FBI persists in its
unfortunate practice of massively underreporting incidents in which armed
civilians have thwarted active shootings. “While the FBI claims that just
4.6 percent of active shootings were stopped by law-abiding citizens
carrying guns, the percentage that [the CPRC] found was 35.7 percent. I am
more confident that we have identified a higher share of recent cases, and
our figure for 2022 was even higher – 41.3 percent.”
The corrected statistics are even more compelling once adjusted for just
the locations where armed individuals are permitted to carry. Although the
FBI dataset does not break down cases between those occurring in “gun-
free” zones and others, the CPRC found that in “places where law-abiding
citizens are allowed to carry firearms, the percentage of active shootings
that were stopped is 51 percent. For 2022, that figure is a remarkable
63.5 percent” – a stunningly persuasive endorsement on the benefits of
lawful carry. (The specific data used by the CPRC is available at its
website, here.)
Another study lends support to the CPRC’s findings, being the results of a
national survey analyzing firearm ownership and use released last year by
William English (McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University).
Admittedly, this doesn’t use the FBI’s metric of “active shooter incident”
(which applies only to public places and excludes shootings from gang or
drug violence), but nonetheless offers valuable insight into how often
firearms are used in defense of self and others.
The study found that more than 81.4 million Americans aged 18 and over own
firearms, with approximately 31.1% (25.3 million) reporting having used a
gun to defend themselves or their property, often on more than one
occasion. Extrapolating the figures, these “gun owners have been involved
in … approximately 50 million defensive incidents. Assuming that defensive
uses of firearms are distributed roughly equally across years, this
suggests at least 1.67 million defensive uses of firearms per year in
which firearms owners have defended themselves or their property through
the discharge, display, or mention of a firearm (excluding military
service, police work, or work as a security guard).” Footnote 9 clarifies
that “this estimate is inherently conservative;” if, for instance, those
who do not personally own firearms are included in the estimate, it “could
be substantially higher – perhaps as high as 2.8 million per year.”
Lott’s article concedes that data collection and classification mistakes
may happen, although this doesn’t explain why the problems with the FBI’s
reporting continue even after updated, corrected information is made
available. The FBI’s “data on active shootings is missing so many
defensive gun uses that it’s hard to believe it isn’t intentional.”
It is, of course, irresponsible to manipulate data to further a preferred
political narrative, and it is much more egregiously so if the entity
involved is a publicly funded and supposedly nonpartisan government agency
whose information is relied on by media, courts, law enforcement, and
legislators. President Joe Biden – who has himself been so frequently and
consistently caught out making false claims about guns that even CNN has
called him on it – is already campaigning on a sweeping new gun control
platform. The success of his anti-Second Amendment agenda rests on
undermining facts and evidence, and convincing Americans that defensive
gun use is a fantasy.

Yes, that's the article I cited. My point is that no hard data on gun
use or gun ownership exists. We have reams of data from surveys;
however, unless survey data are validated, they serve only to show how
people answer surveys.

On a survey, X number of people will predictably answer that they had
a "close encounter" with space aliens. We can extrapolate and predict
that, if the survey were run nationally, we would report 3.5 million
(or so) encounters with space aliens... but we'd be counting survey
responses!

If we were ever to prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) the existence of
one space alien, then I would call the survey profound.

The same is true of so-called "DGU"s; they're all survey responses and
roughly comparable to the number we'd get on an survey of
extraterrestrial encounters. As of now, we don't have any defensive
gun uses validated.

Definitions:

A defensive gun use is "validated" when, and only when, a *finder of
fact* explicitly invokes the term "self defense" in his or her
finding.


"Finder if Fact" shall be defined as:

"... an impartial person or examiner designated by
legal authority to appraise the facts underlying
a particular matter of a case."

For Example:

In a jury trial: the jury is the fact finder that decides what really
happened in the case at hand. If the jury issues a finding explicitly
stating: "self defense", then it is validated.

In a bench trial: the judge is the fact finder that decides what
really happened. If the judge issues a finding explicitly stating:
"self defense", then it is validated.

In an official investigation: an agent or committee may be appointed
to determine the facts. If the agent or committee appointed to
determine the facts issues a finding explicitly stating: "self
defense", then it is validated.



Non Examples:

Newspaper or media articles

NRA opinions or blogs

Findings of "Not Guilty"... that's a finding of what is *not* proven,
not what *is*.

Surveys (unless restricted to the question of how people answered the
survey.)

'nuff said. Most people here only read bumper stickers.

[Mitchell Holman]

Post by Leroy N. Soetoro
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20230911/government-continues-to-downpl
ay- distort-data-on-defensive-gun-use
In 2021, John R. Lott, Jr., the president of the Crime Prevention
Research Center (CPRC) released a paper on the “serious errors” he
found in Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reports purporting to
track “active shooter incidents” (ASIs). The FBI’s annual or biannual
reports – which aim “to provide federal, state and local law
enforcement with data so they can better understand how to prevent,
prepare for, respond to, and recover from these incidents” –
contained, according to Dr. Lott, critical errors. In one instance,
the failure to include “many major missed cases” meant that once those
cases were accounted for, what the FBI had presented as a drastic
increase in ASIs between 2000 and 2013 was actually a “slight,
statistically insignificant upward trend over the 38 years from 1977
through 2014,” and one that was, moreover, attributable to high
numbers in a single year (2012).

If "defensive guns" deterred
crime why do NO police departments
recommend that homeowners keep a
gun handy?

[Paul Szypula]

Post by Mitchell Holman
If "defensive guns" deterred
crime why do NO police departments
recommend that homeowners keep a
gun handy?

The Jan 6 insurrectionists killed a policeman and tried to kill many more.

Typical rightists.

[RKBA]

Post by Leroy N. Soetoro
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20230911/government-continues-to-downplay-
distort-data-on-defensive-gun-use

Proof that shooting red state rightists is the best way to lower crime!

You can tell the rapists by their red MAGA hats.


The red hats make them easy targets.