mcculloch@mail.utexas.edu (Jim McCulloch) wrote:

>On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 23:27:40 GMT, csmkersh@flash.net (Sam A. Kersh)
>wrote:
>
>>mcculloch@mail.utexas.edu (Jim McCulloch) wrote:
>>
>>>.............all of Jim's rantings deleted.................
>>
>>From Cook, Ludwig & Hemenway:
>>INSIGHTS
>>Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
>>Vol 16, No. 3
>>pages 463-469
>>1997
>
>snippage
>
>>            .... Kleck's and Gertz's DGU estimates do not
>>	 appear to be artifacts of any particular computational or
>>	 weighting decisions made in their analysis.  It there is any
>>	 problem here, it is intrinsic to the method.."
>
>Your quote from this article  is totally dishonest, Sam, assuming you
>read the article.  The most charitable thing I can say, is that you
>may not have read the rest of Cook, et al.'s article at all.  If you
>had read it, you would have discovered that they made  the same
>criticisms of Kleck as I did.  The rest of the article, after the last
>sentence you quote above, is devoted to showing that there *is* in
>fact a problem, and it is precisely *intrinsic to the method* employed
>by Kleck.  The problem, of course, is the false positive problem, and
>they devote extensive discussion to the their argument that the
>problem is real, and that it "swamps the truth" in Kleck's survey, and
>surveys like his.

Oh, Jim, unlike you, I've read both the INSIGHT  article and
NCJ-165476...  What you and Cook fail to address is the far more likely
occurrence of false negatives....  The problem is not Kleck problem, but
survey techniques in general.   Cook et al did their own survey and
found, much to their displeasure, that DGUs ranged from 1.5 to 4.7
million a year, not the 108,000 claimed by NCVS inadequate survey
methodology.  Remember, NCVS is about victimization, not DGUs.


And as Cook and Ludwig also stated re:NCVS flawed survey:

	"...Most NCVS respondents never have a chance to answer the
	DGU question, falsely or otherwise."

Prof. John Lott addressed the current trend of people to be far less
forthcoming about firearms ownership and DGUs because of the "stigma"
placed on them by people like yourself.  Too self righteous to admit
that self defense with a firearm is not murder...  You do remember you
inane statement regarding Gordon R. Hale, don't you?



Sam A. Kersh
NRA Life Member
LEAA Life
TSRA L-111738
JPFO
Training is Sergeant's Business
http://www.flash.net/~csmkersh/
===============================================================
talk.politics.guns' resident hypocrite admits to using a gun 
by proxy

     "So for me and my family, all we need for protection
against crime is some basic knowledge of where not to
travel, and how to travel there if we have to.  For
instance, I've had to go into the Cabrini and Taylor Homes
in Chicago a number of times, but because they are
high-crime areas, I go in daylight, to meet someone I know,
with a bodyguard."

Robert L. Ray aka kira@interaccess.com