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Gary Kleck

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Gary Kleck
File:Mf0145.jpg
Dr. Gary Kleck, FSU criminologist
Born (1951-03-02) March 2, 1951 (age 73)
Alma materUniversity of Illinois
Occupation(s)University Professor, Author, Criminologist

Gary Kleck (born March 2, 1951) is a criminologist and is the David J. Bordua Professor of Criminology at Florida State University.

Criminology

Kleck has done numerous studies of the effects of guns on death and injury in crimes,[1] on suicides,[2] and gun accidents,[3] the impact of gun control laws on rates of violence,[4][5] the frequency and effectiveness of defensive gun use by crime victims,[6][7] patterns of gun ownership,[8] why people support gun control,[9] and the myth of big-time gun trafficking.[10]

Kleck conducted a national survey in 1994 (the National Self-Defense Survey) and, extrapolating from the 5,000 households surveyed, estimated that in 1993 there were approximately 2.5 million incidents in which victims used guns for self-protection, an average of 4.75 times per minute for each minute of the year, compared to about four hundred thousand crimes committed by offenders with guns.[11]

In addition to his work on guns and violence, Kleck has done research concluding that increasing levels of punishment will not increase the deterrent effects of punishment,[12] and that capital punishment does not have any measurable effect on homicide rates.[13]

Criticism

A study of gun use in the 1990s, by David Hemenway at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, claimed that criminal use of guns is far more common than self-defense use of guns.[14] Kleck claims that Hemenway's own surveys confirmed Kleck's conclusion that defensive gun use numbers at least in the hundreds of thousands each year, and that a far larger number of surveys (at least 20) have shown that defensive uses outnumbered criminal uses.[15]; however, the Hemenway study just cited gives no such figure and says in its conclusion, "We might expect that unlawful 'self-defense' gun uses will outnumber the legitimate and socially beneficial ones." Critics, including Hemenway, respond that these estimates are difficult to reconcile with comparable crime statistics, are subject to a high degree of sampling error, and that "because of differences in coverage and potential response errors, what exactly these surveys measure remains uncertain; mere repetition does not eliminate bias". [16]. In another article, Hemenway notes that Kleck has armed women preventing 40% of all sexual assaults, a percentage he considers unlikely because few women go armed. In the same article, Hemenway notes that Kleck's survey shows armed citizens wounding or killing attackers 207,000 times in one year, contrasted against the total of around 100,000 Americans wounded or killed, accidentally or intentionally, in a typical year.[17]

Various studies have found that defensive gun uses occur at a dramatically lower magnitude than that found by Kleck. In the article "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms" by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Cook and Ludwig quote the National Crime Victim Survey as finding 108,000 DGUs per year. One section of the article compares the U.S. crime rate to the number of DGUs reported by Kleck and Kleck-like studies and concludes that their estimate of the DGUs is improbably high.[18]An article published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics says, "In 1992 offenders armed with handguns committed a record 931,000 violent crimes ... On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a firearm to defend themselves or their property. Three-fourths of the victims who used a firearm for defense did so during a violent crime; a fourth, during a theft, household burglary, or motor vehicle theft."[19]

Kleck has attempted to rebut these criticisms, claiming that studies of methodological errors in surveys concerning other controversial behaviors consistently find that the errors produce, on net, underestimates of the frequency of the behaviors. [20]

Impact

In 1993, Kleck won the Michael J. Hindelang Award from the American Society of Criminology for his book Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America (Aldine de Gruyter, 1991).[citation needed] He has testified before Congress and state legislatures on gun control proposals. His research was cited in the Supreme Court's landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision, which struck down the D.C. handgun ban and held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ Kleck and McElrath, "The effects of weaponry on human violence." Social Forces 69(3):669-92
  2. ^ "Miscounting suicides." Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 18(3):219-236
  3. ^ Chapter 7, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter
  4. ^ Kleck and Patterson,"The impact of gun control and gun ownership levels on violence rates." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 9(3):249-287
  5. ^ Britt, Kleck, and Bordua, "A reassessment of the D.C. gun law." Law & Society Review 30(2):361-380.
  6. ^ (with Miriam DeLone), "Victim resistance and offender weapon effects in robbery." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 9(1):55-82.
  7. ^ (with Susan Sayles), "Rape and resistance." Social Problems 37(2):149-162.
  8. ^ Chapter 3, Targeting Guns: Firearms and their Control. Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter
  9. ^ Kleck, Gertz and Bratton, “Why do people support gun control?” Journal of Criminal Justice 37(5)
  10. ^ Kleck and Wang, “The myth of big-time gun trafficking.” UCLA Law Review 56(5):1233-1294
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ Kleck, Sever, Li and Gertz, “The missing link in general deterrence research.” Criminology 43(3):623-660.
  13. ^ Kleck, "Capital punishment, gun ownership, and homicide." American Journal of Sociology 84(4):882-910.
  14. ^ Hemenway, D., D. Azrael, M. Miller (2000). "Gun use in the United States: results from two national surveys". Injury Prevention. 6 (4): 263. doi:10.1136/ip.6.4.263. PMC 1730664. PMID 11144624.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ Kleck, G. and D. Kates (2001), Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control, Chapter 6. N.Y.: Prometheus
  16. ^ National Research Council (2004). Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. pp. 111–113. ISBN 0-309-09124-1.
  17. ^ Hemenway, David (1997). "SURVEY RESEARCH AND SELF-DEFENSE GUN USE: AN EXPLANATION OF EXTREME OVERESTIMATES". Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern). 87: 1430. Retrieved 9 November 2012.
  18. ^ Cook, Philip J. (1997). "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms" (PDF). US Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  19. ^ Rand, Michael J. (1994). "Guns and Crime: Handgun Victimization, Firearm Self Defense, and Firearm Theft". U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs,Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved 11 November 2012. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  20. ^ Kleck, G. and D. Kates (2001), Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control, Chapter 6. N.Y.: Prometheus

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