Ninth Stage

That old canard about “a gun kept in a home is 43 times more likely to kill someone you know then to kill a stranger in self-defense.” is debunked, again, at ChuBlogga

Reading the latest Carnival of Cordite I saw the link to ChuBlogga’s post. It reminded me of what I had read years ago about the definition of the “someone you know” that you gun owners are “more likely to kill”. I had read that among the “someone[s] you know” are the fare that shoots you, the cabbie; the psycho neighbor who everyone is afraid of; the stalker abusive ex who ignores all the restraining orders you’ve taken out; your rival drug dealer/gang member (as if dead drug dealers and gang members should count in murder statistics) that you shoot dead.

In fact it’s pretty rare for any killing to occur before some kind of interaction between the parties. If there is enough interaction the FBI will conclude that it was an “acquaintance” or “someone you know” and “someone you know” goes both ways. A little searching finds some evidence for this here.

Since the FBI Uniform Crime Reports records “justifiable homicide” based on the preliminary determination of the reporting officer, rather than upon the final determination, the FBI data dramatically under-reports “justifiable homicide.” Knowing one another is sufficient to meet the FBI’s definition of “acquaintance,” so “acquaintance” includes the maniac in one’s apartment building and dueling drug dealers, hardly the type of good people most would call “friends.” These are predators that Handgun Control Inc. considers “friends and family.”

In other words those included in the so called “factoid”, “43 times more likely to kill someone you know”, are all sorts of criminals, either committing the crime or getting their just desserts.

UPDATE: More in this Connecticut Law Review Symposium Dialogue.

Bogus: Just one. We are short on time, so just one. I will make it a very small, very targeted question. I am interested in your statement about the FBI’s UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS’ definition of acquaintance. You said it is very broad and would include two people who knew each other for only a few seconds or even for a minute. For example, a taxicab driver and a patron. I find that interesting because that definition does not fit our lay understanding of acquaintance. I wonder where you found that, because I have never found that definition in the UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS nor do I find definitions for friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, or neighbor. More importantly, even if there were a set of definitions, I wonder whether they would control over a common-sense understanding, since this information is based on reporting by 17,000 local law enforcement agencies.

So, can you enlighten us where you get this definition of acquaintance from?

Lott: Yes, as you know, they don’t really have a definition in the UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS. You would think it’s a pretty important thing to define. [Page 1427]

However, when local law enforcement calls the Justice Department they tell them how to report things to them for statistical purposes. There is a lot of noise with regard to UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS numbers, both in terms of whether crimes are even reported there. Noise also in terms of the consistency across a lot of the numbers, but, you know, you have lots of cases here.

For example, if you have a delivery man drop off a package during the day, and even if he says nothing to the person he’s giving it to, if he sees an old lady who’s there and the home and she takes the package and he sees she’s living by herself, looks like there is a lot of valuable things there, he goes and he tries to rob her later that night and he kills her in the course of the residential robbery, that is going to be classified as an acquaintance murder.