It’s very good to see Politico willing to publish a retort by Gary Kleck against an article recently published in the same by the trolls over at Armed with Reason. Be sure to read the whole article, but I will quote from, and comment on a bit here:
But what DeFillipis and Hughes carefully withheld from readers is the fact that I and my colleague have refuted every one of Hemenway’s dubious claims, and those by other critics of the NSDS, first in 1997, and again, even more extensively, in 1998 and 2001.
I’m shocked (shocked!) to discover pro-gun control folks not presenting all the facts, and misleading people into believing their conclusion. This is standard operating procedure for our opponents. Dr. Kleck pulls no punches:
The authors, a couple of Oklahoma investment counselors with no graduate degrees, do not claim to have had any training in survey research methods. Like Hemenway (who is also untrained in survey methods), they believe that it’s perfectly plausible that surveys generate enormous over-estimates of crime-related experiences, as if this were the most commonplace thing in the world.
In other words, the people criticizing his studies have no credentials. I’m not one to argue that un-credentialed people can’t produce good science, because they can. But DeFillipis’ and Hughes’ operation looks more like slick marketing rather than science. It would seem Dr. Kleck agrees:
Left unmentioned will be one simple fact: in all of H’s commentary, he does not once cite the one thing that could legitimately cast doubt on our estimates—better empirical evidence.
That’s because they can’t produce it. Even very conservatives studies, like the National Crime Victimization Survey, put the number at 80,000 events a year, and that was also done in the early 1990s, before concealed carry was broadly legal. Even anecdotally, I know two people who did quite legitimately defend themselves with a firearm. In both cases, there were no shots fired; the attacker(s) fled.
