Talk:Defensive gun use

Article is pretty heavily biased

A lot of bias in this article given the amount of criticism for Kleck and the various studies which all estimate Defensive Gun Use, but only use hard crime data for misuse ignoring crimes not reported. The criticism need to be detailed more, especially given it is published. Right now I'd say this article should be flagged as problematic. 96.31.177.52 (talk) 00:17, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

See also

The "see also" guideline suggests that

"As a general rule the "See also" section should not repeat links which appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes. Thus, many high-quality, comprehensive articles do not have a "See also" section."

All three of this article's see alsos appear in its first paragraph, making it unlikely that a reader needs a second mention. I've been reverted by another editor on this, however, so won't edit war over it [1]; if it's felt that this article needs to be an exception to usual editing practices, that's okay with me too. I realize it has a controversial history. -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:23, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I reverted my own change. I misread your comment and thought you were removing them based on the general applicability/relevance of those links (as has been done recently in a few other articles i monitor). On further review I understood your purpose and agree - the links are already in the body. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Cheers, thanks! -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Kleck survey

By kleck's numbers, successful home burglary gun self defense uses occur at a frequency of 200%. 200% of the time someone is home with a gun during a robbery do they successfully defend against the burglary. This is based on a telephone survey of 5,000 people with 65 people responding they had used their gun in self defense. This is 1.3%. Well below the margin of error. In contrast, a study done by the Atlanta police department finds that rather than 200%, which is impossible, in only 1.5% of burglaries when the victim was at home the victim was able to defend themselves with a gun. It was twice as likely 3%, that the gun owner would have their own gun turned against them. Another conclusion of kleck's self reported numbers is that rape victims outgun rapists, and not only are rape victims more likely to be armed, but they're more likely to shoot the rapists. Again, of 5,000 people, the basis of these wild claims are 65 individuals. The reason is that Kleck used a middle school understanding of statistics to develop and interpret his survey. For instance, if you do a random telephone poll of 5,000 people and ask them if they voted in the last presidential election, how often they wear seatbelts, their height, and if they watch the news or educational television, those same 65 people that are within the margin of error will misreport their answers to those questions. Also there's the difference in chance of misclassification. When you have a survey that reports 65 instances of option B, there are 65 chances that could be misclassified. When that same survey has 4,935 instances of option A there are 76 chances of misclassifacation for option A for each single chance of misclassification for option B. This creates a larger margin of error. What kind of margin of error would account for a fivefold overestimation of defensive gun uses? 1%. Was Kleck able to reduce the margin of error of his self reported telephone survey below 1%? No. Also, kleck's survey called about 10,000 people with a response rate of only about 50%. The first question kleck's survey asked was if the respondent had used a gun in self defense in the past few years. Of the roughly 5,000 people that went on to not respond how many did because they didn't own a gun, or if they owned a gun they'd never used it in self defense? Similarly, kleck's survey reports that there would be 207,000 cases where someone defending themselves with a gun shot the assailant. But that is more than twice the firearm hospitalizations. Another statistic derived from kleck's survey is that almost every gun self defense foils a potentially fatal attack. This leads to the conclusion that of the 11,041 defensive gun uses a day, most of them are potentially fatal, leading us to conclude that victims are able to prevent a potentially fatal attack 99.6% of the time. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=114TeeTylerToe (talk) 20:39, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

"It was twice as likely 3%, that the gun owner would have their own gun turned against them. " No that is not what the Atlanta study says at all. It says 97% of the crime prevention with a gun is successful.108.18.64.230 (talk) 15:33, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

These criticisms of the research are included in the article. These criticisms do not equal being "debunked". We offer multiple estimates, along with criticisms of the methodology used to generate each estimate. There is no "truth" here. Nobody knows the actual answer.

• Kleck specifically says that his numbers cannot be used to estimate DGU rates for any particular crime or type of event. Raising that type of objection is a strawman as his numbers do not attempt to show that.
• Klecks research suffers from the same flaws all survey based research of rare incidents suffer from. We do not invalidate the entire statistical methodology. We cannot apply a different standard to this specific implementation of it, unless you can show specific errors not general to the entire type of research (see Marvin Wolfgang's analysis)
• for us to pick one of the estimates and define it as correct would be WP:OR and violate WP:NPOV unless there is wide consensus (in the scientific community) that a number is outdated. There is no such consensus here. There is the contrary research of a few other statisticians, which we mention. There is the defense of Klecks methodology by other statisticians.

Gaijin42 (talk) 20:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

The only criticism seems to be "He argues that there are too many "false positives" in the surveys". And no, writing books about your own non peer reviewed survey that's central finding is within the margin of error is not a problem shared by "all surveys". TeeTylerToe (talk) 21:21, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun" (86 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1, 1995) on their 1993 National Self Defense Survey (NSDS) of 4,997 people, 213 of whom reported using a gun in self-defense. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology is described as a peer-reviewed publication. 1994 - The Kleck & Gertz results first published in a law review for comment. 1995 - The revised Kleck & Gertz study published under peer-review by academic referees. Critics like to cite the 1994 law review and dismiss Kleck & Gertz as "unrefereed" and "not peer reviewed" ignoring the 1995 journal publication under peer review.--Naaman Brown (talk) 00:53, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

My bad, I was thinking we had more criticism here (as is on the Kleck main article). Im ok with some expansion of criticism (but think it would be WP:UNDUE to do the full thing here. Send them to the Kleck article.). Removal of the information is not acceptable. It is controversial. It has issues. It has not been debunked. Where there is not a clear truth, we need to present all notable and reliably sourced estimates. None of these estimates is WP:FRINGE. Gaijin42 (talk) 21:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Few things, first, I don't see your source to indicate he claims 200% or robberies have guns involved (what does that even mean?). Hemenway has criticized the study, but I read the Chance article and I don't remember that being the criticism. Besides, Hemenway has his own numbers and Kleck and Getz (there's more than one study too) are opposed to his it would appear. There are criticisms of Hemenway's numbers too, yet they're in there.

On an issue like this, where there's a gulf in what various research reports, and people on both sides that have established ideas about a contentious political issue, the best we can do is provide the range. I don't think there's any credible argument that either range of what's listed here now is "fringe" by any stretch of how we use that word on Wikipedia. Criticisms on both sides are fair, so long as they're in context, referenced, and aren't given undue weight.

That section, that you removed a big swath of, presents the estimates as they vary and it does so in neutral terms. The criticisms of both should go on below, but that introductory section is to give some context to readers, inform them there's debate, and the scope of it. Ideally we'd add even more studies to that section. But we can't include every criticism after each line up there. Put those below. It helps organization, and it also helps the neutrality by separating them out and providing some insulation about making conclusions sound like they're Wikipedia's conclusions.

Obviously there is some standard for what's included... the basic reliable source guidelines apply, but we don't argue a source has been repudiated with original research. Shadowjams (talk) 02:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I only removed the mention of the controversial Kleck figure. It was one sentence iirc. As for the robberies, extrapolating from the survey data, there would have been twice as many robbery DGUs than there were reported robberies. In the year of the survey there were something like 400,000 reported robberies, but extrapolating from the survey, 800,000 people used a gun to defend against a robbery.TeeTylerToe (talk) 16:28, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Kleck does not make any claims as to the number of robberies which involved a DGU. He specifically says that the number of incidents for any particular crime type are too low to make any statistical inference. Using an OR strawman is not an argument to remove well sourced material. Hemenway and Kleck disagree on what the numbers mean. Both are quoted. Both are criticized. We do not determine that one is right and the other is wrong. Gaijin42 (talk) 16:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

"there would have been twice as many robbery DGUs than there were reported robberies." As with your statement on "200%", you are assuming crime reporting rates are accurate or even most crime are reported. It is well established that many crimes are under-reported at a fraction of their rate. that is not only victims not reporting, it is police departments having a paperwork and political interest in under underreporting. In my major metro area (DC) there have been widespread criticism of endemic not just under reporting but of simply throwing out cases of sexual assault. You mention the Atlanta police department study. seems to me that you are conflating use of a gun as in firing the gun and use as in brandishing or showing the gun.108.18.65.229 (talk) 01:34, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The NYC Village Voice has had long running series on a deliberate policy of under reporting of crime by certain precincts of the NYPD. And to put it mildly, the talking points against Kleck by his political opponents would not pass peer review at an academic journal devoted to criminology. --Naaman Brown (talk) 12:57, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Balancing DGU v gun crime

Other point: the balancing of DGU v gun crimes (whether 108,000 v 900,000 or 2,100,000 v 430,000) is based on the logical fallacy that gun control affects the lawabiding and the criminal gun users equally. The NIJ survey of gunowners gave licensed dealers as the source of 60% of their gun acquisitions. In the BJS survey of prison inmates, criminals cited licensed dealers at 14% and cited 20.8% "drug dealer/street sales", 9.9% "theft/burglary", 8.4% "fence/black market". None of the NIJ sample cited "drug dealers/street sales, theft/burglary or fence/black market". In the real world, the law-abiding are more likely to follow the law on legal sales, while criminals are likely to break the law. --Naaman Brown (talk) 12:57, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

DGU surveys pre Kleck & Gertz 1995

Summary of the thirteen surveys on DGU listed by Kleck & Gertz 1995.

FREQUENCY OF DEFENSIVE GUN USE 
from Kleck and Gertz 1995 Table 1                     - Excluded -    
                                     Gun     Recall  Against  By Mil  
    Survey:    Year:  Area:  Sample: Type:   Period: Animal: Police:  
                                                                  
 1. Field      1976   Calif.  NiA     Hgun    [a]      No      Yes     
 2. Bordua     1977   Ill.    NiA     All     Ever     No      No      
 3. Cambridge  1978   U.S.    NiA     Hgun    Ever     No      No      
 4. DMIa       1978   U.S.    RgV     All     Ever     No      Yes     
 5. DMIb       1978   U.S.    RgV     All     Ever     Yes     Yes     
 6. Hart       1981   U.S.    RgV     Hgun    5 yr     Yes     Yes     
 7. Ohio       1982   Ohio    Res     Hgun    Ever     No      No      
 8. Time/CNN   1989   U.S.    Own     All     Ever     No      Yes     
 9. Mauser     1990   U.S.    Res     All     5 yrs.   Yes     Yes     
10. Gallup     1991   U.S.    NiA     All     Ever     No      No      
11. Gallup     1993   U.S.    NiA     All     Ever     No      Yes     
12. L.A. Times 1994   U.S.    NiA     All     Ever     No      Yes     
13. Tarrance   1994   U.S.    NiA     All     5 yrs.   Yes     Yes     
 
               Defensive question    % Who       [b] Implied           
    Survey:    Ask of:   Ref to:   Used: Fired:  number DGUs:
                                                         
 1. Field       All Rs         R    [a]    2.9     3,052,717    
 2. Bordua      All Rs         R     5.0   n.a.    1,414,544    
 3. Cambridge   Hgun own       R    18    12            n.a.    
 4. DMIa        All Rs     Hshld    15     6       2,141,512    
 5. DMIb        All Rs     Hshld     7     n.a.    1,098,409    
 6. Hart        All Rs     Hshld     4     n.a.    1,797,461    
 7. Ohio        Hgun hshld     R     6.5   2.6       771,043    
 8. Time/CNN    Gun own    Hshld     n.a.  9-16[e]      n.a.    
 9. Mauser      All            R     3.79  n.a.    1,487,342    
10. Gallup      hgun hshld     R     8     n.a.      777,153    
11. Gallup      Gun own        R    11     n.a.    1,621,377    
12. L.A. Times  All            R     8[c]  n.a.    3,609,682    
13. Tarrance    All        Hshld   1/2[d]  n.a.      764,036    

  ABBREV KEY:                             Own   Gun owners             
  NiA   Non-instititionalized Adult       Hgun  Handgun                
  RgV   Register Voter                    R     Respondent to survey   
  Res   Resident                          Hshld Household              
 
 1. Field Institute, Tabulations of the Findings of a Study of 
    Handgun Ownership and Access Among a Cross Section of the 
    California Adult Public (1976).
 2. David J. Bordua et al., Illinios Law Enforcement Commission, 
    Patterns of Firearms Ownership, Regulation and Use in 
    Illinios (1979).
 3. Cambridge Reports, Inc., an Analysis of Public Attitudes Towards 
    Handgun Control (1978).
 4. DMIa & 5. DMIb from DMI (Decision/Making/Information), 
    Attitudes of the American Electorate Toward Gun Control (1979). 
 6. Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Violence in America Survey
    October 1981.
 7. The Ohio Statistical Analysis Center, Ohio Citizen Attitudes 
    Concerning Crime and Criminal Justice (1982).
 8. H. Quinley, Memorandum reporting results from Time/CNN Poll of Gun
    Owners, dated Feb. 6, 1990 (1990).
 9. Gary A. Mauser, Firearms and Self-defense: The Canadian Case,  
    Presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Society of 
    Criminology (Oct. 28, 1993).
10. Gallup Poll 1991,  
11. Gallup Poll 1993,  
12. L.A. Times poll, and 
13. Tarrance poll.  (10-13) were taken from a search of the 
    DIALOG Public Opinion online computer database. 

Notes:
[a]. Field recall period: 1 yr, 2 yr and Ever; Use: 1.4%, 3% and 8.6%.
[b]. Estimated annual number of defensive uses of guns of all types 
     against humans, excluding uses connected with military or police 
     duties, after any necessary adjustments were made, for U.S., 1993. 
     Adjustments are explained in detail in Gary Kleck, "Guns and 
     Self-Defense", on file with the School of Criminology and Criminal
     Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 1994.
[c]. Covered only uses outside the home.
[d]. 1% of respondents, 2% of households.
[e]. 9% fired gun for self-protection, 7% used gun "to scare someone."
     An unknown share of the latter could be defensive uses not 
     overlapping with the former. 

As Kleck & Gertz 1995 pointed out, the sample selection (registered voters, non-institutionaised adult, handgun owner, gun owner resident) and the questions asked meant each one of these surveys was measuring something different and they cannot be directly compared, especially since the samples represent different years.

adapted from: Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," Table 1, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1995, Vol. 86 No. 1.

High Estimate Seems to be 4.7m, not 2.1m

Should not 4.7 million be used as the upper range, putting Kleck and Gertz somewhere in the middle of the range?Carwon (talk) 17:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Low estimate Hemingway'slogic the same as anti-vaccine advocates

Reading through Hemingway's work advocate the low end of the estimates, I am struck by how much it mirrors anti vaccine advocates who cite harm but who insist on the bottom number of estimated benefit. I don't wan to directly add my thought son that to the article, but Hemingway's logic being so similar to anti vaccine people does bear mentioning here for future editors.Carwon (talk) 17:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The new "low estimate" of 127 is the total number from the SURVEY GROUP ONLY, not the whole country. Good grief. Someone grossly misunderstood what they were reading in the survey results when they cited that number on the page. A clue should have been that the FBI has documented Justifiable Homicides (self defense) uses at over 200 per year in recent years , which is the small minority of cases where the gun was actually fired in self defense and killed the perpetrator. So how could a low estimate of all self defense uses, including when the gun wasn't fired, be only 127? Someone with better editing skills please check the survey and revert that erroneous edits. 74.96.242.195 (talk) 14:30, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

The IP is correct. I'm not sure that study is even designed to look at the total number; it seems that Hemmenway was trying to talk about the results of a DGU, not about the total number of DGUs. Faceless Enemy (talk) 14:48, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

upcoming research

A summary on the defensive gun use issue in a call for further research: "Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence", National Academies Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-309-28438-7.

Defensive Use of Guns

Defensive uses of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, some scholars point to radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.

A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gunwielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004). Effectiveness of defensive tactics, however, is likely to vary across types of victims, types of offenders, and circumstances of the crime, so further research is needed, both to explore these contingencies and to confirm or discount earlier findings.

Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public—concealed or open carry— may have a different net effect on the rate of injury. For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use (Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995). Although some early studies were published that relate to this issue, they were not conclusive, and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration.

--Naaman Brown (talk) 20:37, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a good study to incorporate into the section as it directly addresses some of the debates over incident rates. Shadowjams (talk) 23:11, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Merge discussion

WITHDRAWN by proposer. See Summarize discussion below. Thanks. Lightbreather (talk) 17:58, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

The material in this article's section, Analysis of John Lott research is practically identical to the Defensive gun use section in the John Lott article. I have suggested that they be merged because duplicated material, especially on contentious topics, is likely to cause problems for editors and confusion for readers. Lightbreather (talk) 18:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

When you say "merge", what you really mean is to cut it from this article, correct? If that is the case, I disagree. Cutting the information from this article would lessen and do harm to this article. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 20:32, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Having had a helpful discussion with Gaijin42 re: merging vs. summarizing, I am going to change my proposal here. What I meant by "merging" is in fact called "summarizing" on Wikipedia, if I understand Gaijin correctly. Lightbreather (talk) 17:28, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I have changed the merge to/from tags to summarize to/from tags. Lightbreather (talk) 17:51, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Summarize discussion

The material in this article's John Lott research section is practically identical to the Defensive gun use section in the John Lott article. I have suggested that the material in the latter be summarized into the former. Lightbreather (talk) 17:55, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Reddit defensive gun forum cited as "dgu catalog"? Wild sudden pro gun slant with all other views deleted?

What the heck happened here?TeeTylerToe (talk) 20:42, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

You need to explain your recently added tags a little more in depth than this. Shadowjams (talk) 00:34, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Undue weight is being given to user generated forum lists of dgus, and the studies that represent the high estimates of defensive gun uses that have been all but debunked with absolutely no rebuttal. I haven't followed this page very closely and I've been busy recently, but it seems as though unbalanced articles on the kleck and lott were merged into this article, and a circlejerk dgu anecdote forum was brought in as a reference for this article. This has left this article completely unbalanced now composed of a summary, and two unbalanced sections on flawed studies reporting the high DGU estimates. It's not like any part of it is subtle.TeeTylerToe (talk) 17:17, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Hyperbole aside, I didn't readd any of your removed links to the user-generated forums, nor did I remove your removed thinktank external links. I also left most of your undue tags. I only removed the overarching one.

The article is in need of all viewpoints, but if you want to categorically exclude the most cited advocates for one side of the argument (Kleck and Lott), there's never a chance of this article being balanced. You need to articulate your objections to those sections more specifically; or better yet (because I find their language quite mild by many of our contentious-articles), add to the sections on other research. Shadowjams (talk) 20:08, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I just now removed the other two "unbalanced" tags for the Kleck and Lott sections. I don't see any articulation of how they're biased, other than you saying "sections on flawed studies". That's simply not sufficient. If your argument is that any mention of those studies is inherently biased, I strongly doubt others will agree that would result in a balanced article.

Perhaps I misunderstand your objections though. I do not like the rearrangement of the article into specific sections for each researcher. I think that may be some of your objection. I would recommend reverting back to the earlier organization, where it was organized by issue, and not researcher. Organizing by researcher allows for the problems you're concerned about. That said, I do not see any bias in those sections for those researchers. Hemenway's research is cited as a rebuttal in the opening paragraph of the first section, and not long after in the second. Shadowjams (talk) 20:17, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Overview of gun laws by nation: Self-defense

This (below) was in the Overview of gun laws by nation as a subsection of the Arguments section. It had been tagged Globalize since April 2010, with a link to this article (Defensive gun use) as the "main" article. Suggest we glean - much is already duplicated here - and incorporate material where appropriate. --Lightbreather (talk) 00:19, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Collapsing copied text so discussion is easier to read

In an extensive series of studies of large, nationally representative samples of crime incidents, criminologist Gary Kleck found that crime victims who defend themselves with guns are less likely to be injured or lose property than victims who either did not resist, or resisted without guns. This was so, even though the victims using guns typically faced more dangerous circumstances than other victims. The findings applied to both robberies and assaults. Other research on rape indicated that although victims rarely resisted with guns, those using other weapons were less likely to be raped, and no more likely to suffer other injuries besides rape itself, than victims who did not resist, or resisted without weapons. There is no evidence that victim use of a gun for self-protection provokes offenders into attacking the defending victim or results in the offender taking the gun away and using it against the victim. Kleck has claimed, in his own national survey, and in other surveys with smaller sample sizes, that the numbers of defensive uses of guns by crime victims each year are substantially larger than the largest estimates of the number of crimes committed of offenders using guns. However, surveys that ask both about defensive gun use and criminal gun use find that more people report being victims of gun crimes than having used a gun in self-defense. In a largely approving review of Kleck's book Point Blank (1991) in the journal Political Psychology, Joseph F. Sheley argues that Kleck sidesteps the larger political problem of the role of gun culture in contributing to the spread and effect of violence in the United States. The economist John Lott, in his book More Guns, Less Crime, states that laws which make it easier for law-abiding citizens to get a permit to carry a gun in public places, cause reductions in crime. Lott's results suggest that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms deters crime because potential criminals do not know who may or may not be carrying a firearm. Lott's data came from the FBI's crime statistics from all 3,054 US counties. Lott's conclusions have been challenged by other researchers. A University of Pennsylvania study, for example, found that people who carry guns are 4.5 times more likely to get shot than unarmed people. However this study has also been criticized by other researchers. The efficacy of gun control legislation at reducing the availability of guns has been challenged by, among others, the testimony of criminals that they do not obey gun control laws, and by the lack of evidence of any efficacy of such laws in reducing violent crime. The most thorough analysis of the impact of gun control laws, by Kleck, covered 18 major types of gun control and every major type of violent crime or violence (including suicide), and found that gun laws generally had no significant effect on violent crime rates or suicide rates. In his paper, Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do not, A study by Arthur Kellermann found that keeping a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of suicide. It is well known that suicide is more common in rural areas of the United States where gun ownership is more common. The higher suicide rates in countries such as Japan may be explained by cultural factors irrelevant to the issue of the relationship between guns and suicide in the US. University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt argues that available data indicate that neither stricter gun control laws nor more liberal concealed carry laws have had any significant effect on the decline in crime in the 1990s. While the debate remains hotly disputed, it is therefore not surprising that a comprehensive review of published studies of gun control, released in November 2004 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was unable to determine any reliable statistically significant effect resulting from such laws, although the authors suggest that further study may provide more conclusive information. Forty U.S. states have passed "shall issue" concealed carry legislation of one form or another. In these states, law-abiding citizens (usually after giving evidence of completing a training course) may carry handguns on their person for self-protection. Some states, like Florida and Texas, only allow concealed carry, and only after obtaining a permit. Other states, like West Virginia, Virginia, Colorado and Pennsylvania, allow open carry without a permit as long as an individual satisfies the legal requirements to own a gun. However, to carry concealed in these states requires a permit. Other states and some cities such as New York may issue permits. Only the District of Columbia have explicit legislation forbidding personal carry. Vermont, Wyoming, Arizona, and Alaska do not require permits to carry concealed weapons, although Alaska retains a shall-issue permit process for reciprocity purposes with other states. Similarly, Arizona retains a shall-issue permit process, both for reciprocity purposes and because permit holders are allowed to carry concealed handguns in a few places (such as bars and restaurants that serve alcohol) that non-permit holders are not. Some people (who?) consider self-defense to be a fundamental and inalienable human right and believe that firearms are an important tool in the exercise of this right. They consider the prohibition of an effective means of self-defense to be unethical. For instance, in Thomas Jefferson’s "Commonplace Book," a quote from Cesare Beccaria reads, "laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

I agree that the content should not be in the overview article and some of it is likely better here. Per WP:SUMMARY and due to the closely related nature of some of the articles, parts may be appropriately duplicated into the GC article, the gun violence article, the US article (or other countries) as parts are relevant in multiple places. Gaijin42 (talk) 00:57, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Sources?

This was in the (global) Gun violence article in the Domestic Violence section. It seems to be outside the scope of that article, but perhaps the sources have some use here - if they're not already being used?

"Kleck and others argue that guns being used to protect property, save lives, and deter crime without killing the criminal accounts for the large majority of defensive gun uses."

--Lightbreather (talk) 03:10, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Can you add those sources into the article (if they're not already)? Shadowjams (talk) 21:22, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Pictures

People training self-defense with firearm in the Czech Republic

I've added some pictures which were deleted with the following reasoning: "We don't need 4 almost identical images."

What better pictures can accompany this article than 4 pics depicting the basics of DGU training? Cimmerian praetor (talk) 06:52, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Marvin Wolfgang quote

I suggest this be removed as the article is not set up to justify the findings of Kleck & Gertz, unless it is the result of further research. While their findings are central to the debate, their validation or otherwise should probably be left to others who have done separate research on the subject, such as Hemenway, Cook or Ludwig. Wolfgang's opinion, while very eminent, is opinion. Flanker235 (talk) 07:36, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Done.

Harvard source

added this, thank you. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

1-3 Guns are not used millions of times each year in self-defense

We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.

Hemenway, David. Survey research and self-defense gun use: An explanation of extreme overestimates. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 1997; 87:1430-1445.

Hemenway, David. The myth of millions of annual self-defense gun uses: A case study of survey overestimates of rare events. Chance (American Statistical Association). 1997; 10:6-10.

Cook, Philip J; Ludwig, Jens; Hemenway, David. The gun debate’s new mythical number: How many defensive uses per year? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 1997; 16:463-469

It seems like this would have a place in the article. There's also https://stat.duke.edu/~dalene/chance/chanceweb/103.myth0.pdfTeeTylerToe

8. Criminals who are shot are typically the victims of crime

Using data from a survey of detainees in a Washington D.C. jail, we worked with a prison physician to investigate the circumstances of gunshot wounds to these criminals. We found that one in four of these detainees had been wounded, in events that appear unrelated to their incarceration. Most were shot when they were victims of robberies, assaults and crossfires. Virtually none report being wounded by a “law-abiding citizen.”

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Oen, Roger; Pitts, Khalid R. When criminals are shot: A survey of Washington DC jail detainees. Medscape General Medicine. 2000; June 28. www.medscape.com

9-10. Few criminals are shot by decent law abiding citizens

Using data from surveys of detainees in six jails from around the nation, we worked with a prison physician to determine whether criminals seek hospital medical care when they are shot. Criminals almost always go to the hospital when they are shot. To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals. But the data from emergency departments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals are afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shot went to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Oen, Roger; Pitts, Khalid R. Medical Care Solicitation by Criminals with Gunshot Wound Injuries: A Survey of Washington DC Jail Detainees. Journal of Trauma. 2000; 48:130-132.

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Do Criminals Go to the Hospital When They are Shot? Injury Prevention 2002: 8:236-238.(talk) 20:52, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Potential useful information

While not directly citable, I think this four-part series offers some good insights, as well as an analysis of sources, and potential useful organization for this Wikipedia article:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/03/1242313/-Defensive-Gun-Use-Part-IV-The-National-Self-Defense-Survey [this is the fourth part]

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:43, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

This study is already in here too much: it's 20 years old, it's been disproven, it's fatally methodologically flawed, and it does not even pass the basic logical test of giving an estimate of defensive gun uses that is less than total number of violent crimes (which includes all gun uses.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1017:B416:1586:BC10:35EA:70FE:B008 (talk) 12:02, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Please watch out for pro-gun fraud in this article, when I originally found it yesterday, there had been a completely made up figure of 33 million defensive gun uses annually, a logically impossible figure someone just made up. Beware of gun-lovers!

Beware of gun lovers! Many false claims were planted in this article, seemingly deliberately, that I had to delete yesterday, after reading the references and finding them to be just completely fabricated. The biggest whopper was this one: "estimates on the high end are 33 million per year." There are only about 1 million violent crimes per year. This is like saying "a defensive gun use occurs in 3300 percent of crimes." This is not logically possible, and even the "high end" figures of 1 million are given undue weight here, given that, they too, are logically impossible, implying more defensive gun use than crime, and are disproven, and over 20 years old and out of date, and based on a laughably small telephone survey of unverified self-report (or boasting over the phone.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by TruthIsDivine (talk • contribs) 19:45, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

The above analysis is WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH and a violation of wikipedia policy. WP:NPOV demands we present all notable viewpoints neutrally. Hemenway gets his section. Kleck gets his too. while there is always room for improvement, and for criticism of viewpoints in the article, your edits are a gross violation of policy. You should be aware that this topic is under Discretionary Sanctions, which means that policy violations such as yours can result in sanctions, including blocks, topic bans, or being banned from the project all together. Gaijin42 (talk) 21:55, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

TruthIsDivine The high figures are estimates and are sourced. See http://home.uchicago.edu/ludwigj/papers/JQC-CookLudwig-DefensiveGunUses-1998.pdf. clpo13_(talk) 21:57, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

1. It does not say 33 million anywhere in that article. You are lying. Show me the inline citation that says 33 million.

2. Use common sense. The number of defensive gun uses cannot be 30 times greater than the total number of violent crimes. Are you stupid?