>How would one estimate the accuracy of self-reports of self-defense? I >know in medical research you can assess the validity of self-reported >health by doing follow up medical exams or seeing if the respondent dies >or becomes seriously ill shortly after the survey.
Well one thing one can do is ask if the survey data make sense in light of other sources of data we have. I'm _told_ that if you project the number of certain specific types of crimes that were supposedly prevented, according to the survey, that you get numbers that are many times larger than the actual number of those crimes committed. This doesn't seem plausible given that most people don't carry their guns with them when they are out on the street where the vast majority of crimes are committed. (Since I don't have a cite for this I'm not claiming its true, just suggesting it as a methodology.) Another thing one can do is compare error rates on verifiable items of a comparable nature. For example a lot more people report that they are "managers" than actually are (as verified by their employers). Since a lot of people would probably consider it heroic to fight of a criminal with a gun I wouldn't be surprised if people engaged in a similar sort of wishful thinking on this question. This approach in particular suggests that _all_ the reports in the survey could easily be in error (which doesn't mean that no one ever uses a gun in self-defense, just that you would need a much bigger sample to find them and accurately calculate the true rate). One could look at published reports of crimes and attempted crimes and look at the fraction of reported incidents in which victims were armed. Of course there is going to be reporting bias, but isn't this why the whole issue of "brandishing" vs "discharging" is important? We expect that if people have to discharge their weapons in self defense then we will read about it in the paper and we should be able to get an accurate estimate of how important gun use in self defense is from such sources. Suppose we never hear about cases where criminals are scared off by someone brandishing a gun but we always hear about it when a criminal is shot. My understanding is that reports of the latter are very rare. If they account for 25% of crimes prevented then there aren't many crimes prevented (4x reports), but if 98% of the time all one has to do is show the gun then the number of crimes prevented is 50x the number of reports and is considerably more important. Thus the difference between! 75% and 98% is very very substantive. A difference between 98% and 90% would mean 1/5th as many crimes prevented. >Is self-defense just one of those issues where we'll never have decent >data? Yes, but that doesn't meant that we can't learn from what data are available. My understanding is that depending on how you come at this issue you reach very different conclusions. If what I have been told by people I trust on these issues is true, there is very little evidence supporting the view that guns are frequently used in defense against criminals other than survey data and anecdote. - - Bill Dickens William T. Dickens The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 797-6113 FAX: (202) 797-6181 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AOL IM: wtdickens
