r/GunsAreCool

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r/GunsAreCool
Hypx • 6y !

Just a reminder: Gary Kleck is not a credible source on gun control. The latest post on r/science cannot be taken seriously.

There is a recent post on r/science claiming that guns do not increase the crime rate. The paper is here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004723521400107X

The problem, as any well-informed gun control advocate knows, is that the paper is written by Gary Kleck. A man well-known for his long list of dubious pro-gun research.
The best refutation of one of his works I've seen is here: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-gun-ownership-myth-114262.html?ml=m_b7_1

Long story short, this is another in a long line of deceptive research papers by Gary Kleck. We should disregard it completely, and point to his previous questionable
studies as reason to ignore further work from him on this subject.

35 14 Comp…

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PraiseBeToScience Developer 6y !
reposting my reply in /r/guncontrol here:

Well it's not even a real study. It's just another hack job by a biased researcher setting up a methodology that starts with a conclusion:

Each study was assessed as to whether it solved or reduced each of three critical methodological problems: (1) whether a validated measure of gun
prevalence was used, (2) whether the authors controlled for more than a handful of possible confounding variables, and (3) whether the researchers used
suitable causal order procedures to deal with the possibility of crime rates affecting gun rates, instead of the reverse.

Emphasis mine. That's just his way of saying, "I tossed out anything I didn't like."

This is a guy who thinks his survey method shows we have 3 million DGUs a year is valid, when we can use the same method to show 4 million Americans are
abducted by extra terrestrials every year.

It's also funny he's worried about controls, when he couldn't even ask a couple more questions in his survey to weed out people with wild claims like 52 DGUs in one
year. (hint gun nuts: this is why we joke about ridiculous shit being called a DGU.) That case is from when the NIJ repeated Kleck's study and got the same
results[PDF], only the NIJ was intellectually honest enough to also put in a few more controlling questions (which rooted out the lady with 52 DGUs in one year) and
include the ridiculous results in the 2 pages (pgs 8-10) they spend tearing apart Kleck's methodology. Of course, gun nuts love to ignore that part of the study when
they cite it.

I will add one thing though: Kleck is doing damage control for this study. That study took John Lott's original work which he featured in his book "More guns, Less
crime" and fixed the coding errors in Lott's models plus added a decade more of data. It's conclusions show more guns = more crime, especially aggravated assault.

16 Responder

[deleted] 6y !

It's conclusions show more guns = more crime, especially aggravated assault.

All you need to do to prove this is plot the violent crime rate against guns per capita. If you do this for all 50 states you will see immediately that states with lots of
guns/lax gun laws (the two are correlated) tend to be more violent than states with fewer guns/more restrictive gun laws. I did say "tend" because laypeople think
that single data points (e.g. guntards screaming about DC!!!!!!! and CHICAGO!!!!!!) are enough to make the relationship false when the statisticians and
econometricians sincerely wish they would sit down, shut the fuck up and keep their ignorance to themselves. If guns made one safer you should see the opposite
relationship - if criminals really were scared of "good guy concealed carry crime stopping heroes" then crime should be lower in places where more people carry
weapons. That is just one experiment you can use to totally debunk the efficacy of widespread gun ownership.

14 Responder

brotherwayne GrC Platinum Member® Operation Mountain Dew® 6y !

It's never as simple as f(x) -- there's always so much more going on. Thinking you just need to plot the crime rate is the same thing that gunnits do when they
reference the "Countries by firearm homicide rate" wikipedia page.

I'm saying that when discussing gun statistics always talk about the research because researchers have to have higher standards than we do.

0 Responder

Long_dan 6y !
The sad thing is that the people who like to use Kleck and Lott as credible researchers accept their findings without question because they do not even
understand how flawed the methodology and hence the conclusions are. We are not talking about the intellectual elite of America here, not even the intellectual
beer league. This is the problem with American style democracy: Ignorance gets a vote on equal terms. There are sufficient numbers of people short a few of the
poverbial bricks to keep these guys afloat for a long time. They aren't even embarassed to wave it around. 3 million DGU's per year. Bull Shit.

6 Responder

[deleted] 6y !
[eliminado]

6 Responder

brotherwayne GrC Platinum Member® Operation Mountain Dew® 6y !

You must be in a "low tiger" area.

4 Responder

bouchard 6y !
I haven't taken /r/science seriously in well over a year.

0 Responder

GunTotingAcademic 6y !
I'm not here to argue, but I am curious why you think that is the 'best refutation.' The authors of that Politco piece made arguments that Kleck and Gertz have
already responded to at length -- anyone who is familiar with the literature will know this. Kleck pointed this out in his response piece, posted shortly after that
article.

[EDIT: The following was meant as a query to PraiseBeToScience, not the OP. My bad] Also, why do you think Kleck is somehow doing 'damage control' for Lott?
Kleck himself disagrees with Lott, and he has made that clear in the past. Although they are sometimes lumped into the same camp, Kleck and Lott hold differing
opinions on the role of gun ownership on crime rates: Lott thinks that right-to-carry laws decrease crime, while Kleck thinks that they have no effect either way.

-5 Responder

PraiseBeToScience Developer 6y !
I'm going to assume you're not much of an 'academic' as your name implies.

As far as non-responses to Kleck's response to his criticism, are we really judging this by who gets the last word? Kleck' work is transparently bad, and the study I
linked shows why. His methodology, which is to survey gun owners on DGUs they've had, is exactly the methodology used by a Roper poll to 'prove' 4 million
American are abducted by extra terrestrials every year. Nor do his results pass any kind of basic sniff test. According to Kleck, more rapes are prevented by DGU
each year than rapes are estimated to occur! This is not a sane result by any stretch of the imagination.

Kleck's response to justify his numbers when they are obviously way out of the realm of possibility is just further proof he's a hack and extremely biased. No one
engages him any more for the same reason the Climate Science community doesn't engage climate change denying 'scientists' anymore, it's obvious he's an
ideologue or partisan. It's a waste of time and energy.

Lott's work has been long discredited. But the study I linked added insult to injury by repeating Lott's work only this time fixing his coding errors and adding more
data. When the researchers did this they found more guns = more crime, especially aggravated assaults. Kleck is running damage control because now Lott's
work, when properly done, now shows right to carry laws are a net negative.

Kleck and Lott hold differing opinions on the role of gun ownership on crime rates: Lott thinks that right-to-carry laws decrease crime, while Kleck thinks
that they have no effect either way.

But they both disagree that more guns = more crime, and both have demonstrated they are willing to go to great lengths in their conclusions (in Lott's case
commit fraud) to show that.

11 Responder

GunTotingAcademic 6y !
The rules here forbid me from posting a pro-gun argument under the current circumstances, so I must respectfully bow out. My original post was simply a
question, and I received a response.

I would be very cautious about interpreting Kleck's motives behind conducting this study. I viewed a draft version of this paper long before the Donohue et al.
paper was posted, so it is doubtful that he published this specifically for the sake of doing any kind of damage control.

(Also regarding the rape claim, if you're relying on NCVS numbers, then it's well-known that there's a problem of underreporting. See Bachman [1998])

-4 Responder

PraiseBeToScience Developer 6y !

I would be very cautious about interpreting Kleck's motives behind conducting this study.

I'd be more cautious in thinking his motive are pure. As I said, his results are way out of the realm of possibility and he still defends them. There's really only a
couple of explanations for that, and neither of them are intellectually honest.

(Also regarding the rape claim, if you're relying on NCVS numbers, then it's well-known that there's a problem of underreporting. See Bachman [1998])

This is hardly the only problem with Kleck's numbers, as I said the NIJ report I linked details a lot of it. If we are to assume his numbers on DGU are correct
than you must accept that all crime is massively under reported. There simply is no hard evidence anywhere to suggest Kleck is right, and a lot suggesting
he is wrong, way wrong, like an order of magnitude wrong.

7 Responder

chessdevl 6y !
Kleck's response ignores/overlooks/blatantly hides a number of things. For starters, he completely ignores/blatantly hides the fact that Dr. Hemenway has written
a couple rebuttals to Kleck's original responses (the bottom link is to one of them: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/bad-science-3/, the other more extensive
one is in his book Private Guns, Public Health).

Second, he completely ignores the relative magnitude of false positives versus false negatives (even if there was a false negative rate of 100%, it would only
require around a 2% false positive rate for any survey of DGUs (even assuming the actual incidence of DGUs is several million per year) will lead to massive
overestimates).

Third, Kleck has yet to offer in any of his writing a convincing retort for why some of his estimates are impossible. His most consistent claim is that we can't
extrapolate any conclusions from the subcategories of DGUs, yet can trust the overall survey measure. He also uses contradictory claims (when it comes to
burglaries, Kleck argues that NCVS data can't be used despite using it himself to compare DGUs to criminal uses) or just straight up idiotic ones (that there are
200k criminals each year who are shot and never seek medical treatment).

Finally, and most glaringly, Kleck ends his article by stating that the authors, like Hemenway, never present empirical evidence. Kleck evidently didn't read the
entire 2nd page of the Politico article, as it extensively detailed new empirical evidence that only showed 1,600 verified DGUs on an annual basis (which btw is
triple the number found each year by pro-gun sites). Kleck had an opportunity to explain where the missing 99.9% of his purported DGUs are, but instead he
chose to pretend that the empirical evidence didn't exist.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw a counter-response from the authors in the next couple weeks or so.

4 Responder

Hypx " 6y !

I'm not here to argue, but I am curious why you think that is the 'best refutation.' The authors of that Politco piece made arguments that Kleck and Gertz
have already responded to at length -- anyone who is familiar with the literature will know this. Kleck pointed this out in his response piece, posted shortly
after that article.

It's the best because it's succinct and doesn't dwell on jargon. It also neatly points out Kleck's claims are mathematically impossible and are hopelessly out of line
when compared to real data. I fail to see how Kleck can respond to this without resorting to denial or misdirection of some kind.

Also, why do you think Kleck is somehow doing 'damage control' for Lott? Kleck himself disagrees with Lott, and he has made that clear in the past.
Although they are sometimes lumped into the same camp, Kleck and Lott hold differing opinions on the role of gun ownership on crime rates: Lott thinks
that right-to-carry laws decrease crime, while Kleck thinks that they have no effect either way.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here, but Lott is equally if not even more discredited than Kleck. The degree at which the two are discredited is not
particularly meaningful.

4 Responder

GunTotingAcademic 6y !
Fair enough, though everyone would be better off if the read the criticisms first hand and consulted the replies.

Regarding your second point, my mistake. I mistook the first commenter's post as yours. It was directed toward his last point.

-2 Responder

brotherwayne GrC Platinum Member® Operation Mountain Dew® 6y !

Make sure you read the rules.

2 Responder

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