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To the Editor: In his article on the risks and benefits of having a gun in the home, Dr Kleck¹ presents inconsistencies in his analyses and standards of evaluation and a willingness to use questionable or misleading statistics to support his position.

First, Kleck routinely dismisses National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) results on defensive gun use (DGU), claiming, incorrectly, that they capture less than (a nonrandom) 4% of all such events. Yet he uses the NCVS data concerning self-defense gun use, without caveat, to claim that guns are an effective method of self-defense.

Second, Kleck claims that DGU is far more common than offensive gun use. He obtains this result by inappropriately comparing the large overestimates of self-defense gun use from private surveys² with the estimates of offensive gun use from the NCVS. For his self-defense estimates, Kleck argues that the NCVS misses many crimes, yet when estimating offensive gun . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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RELATED ARTICLE

What Are the Risks and Benefits of Keeping a Gun in the Home?
Gary Kleck
JAMA. 1998;280(5):473-475.
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