Myth-Busting Monday
Myth-Busting Monday
MYTH: U.S. homicide numbers are inflated compared to other countries because of defensive gun use
This article originally appeared on GVPedia.
Summary:
Homicide is when one person kills another. Murder is homicide with intent.
Researcher John Lott claims that international comparisons of firearm homicide rates makes the U.S. look more deadly than it really is. Lott further claims that comparing murder rates is a more accurate depiction.
Lott argues that the gap between the number of firearm homicides and firearm murders is the result of including gun homicides committed in self-defense with the firearm homicide rate.
In reality, the gap between the number of firearm homicides and murders comes from Lott comparing comprehensive CDC data with incomplete FBI data.
Lott’s Claims:
In his 2020 book, Gun Control Myths, Lott writes, “Homicides include not only murders, but also justifiable homicides in which civilians or law enforcement officers kill in self-defense. In the five years from 2011 to 2015, the U.S. experienced 11,577 firearm homicides and 8,786 firearm murders. The gap between these two numbers is much larger in the U.S. than in other countries. So, comparing homicide rates gives a more unfavorable impression of the U.S. than if we looked only at murder rates.”
Lott continues by saying murder isn’t a nationwide problem in the U.S. but is “only a big problem in certain urban areas.”
“People seem to think homicides and murders are the same thing. They’re not,” Lott said in a July 20, 2019 talk at FreedomFest Libertarian Conference. “The big difference is homicides are murders and justifiable homicides…. Justifiable homicides are cases where a police officer is being threatened by a criminal and has to kill the criminal, or a civilian uses a gun in self-defense. The United States has a lot more justifiable homicides than other countries. That would lower our rate by 20% or so. It would make a significant difference. The vast majority of countries don’t report murders. They just report homicides.”
Lott further claims that countries with high homicide rates don’t report homicide data, therefore portraying the U.S. as a more dangerous country than it is. Lott additionally contends that the U.S. has a relatively high homicide murder rate compared to developed countries because the U.S. has a “much worse drug gang problem.”
The Facts:
The gap Lott identifies between the number of firearm homicides and firearm murders does not come from excluding self-defense shootings. Instead, the disparity stems from his comparison of comprehensive data from the Center for Disease Control with incomplete data from the FBI.
An examination of Lott’s footnotes confirms that he obtained his homicide figures from the CDC and his murder figures from the FBI. Lott fails to mention that CDC’s data is primarily from coroner reports. The FBI relies on voluntary reporting from local law enforcement. Many localities, and even entire states such as Alabama, opt out of reporting murder figures to the FBI.
“The FBI’s less rigorous method was developed in the 1960s out of necessity when a single year of crime data was stored on seven or eight large reels of computer tape,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
In 1999, criminologist Michael Maltz from the Justice Department published a critique of the FBI’s procedures, noting that poor procedures led to incomplete data. In the ensuing twenty years, the FBI has failed to adopt the recommendations made by Mr. Maltz in his seventy page report
Lott acknowledges the shortcoming with FBI’s data in his 2016 book, The Bias Against Guns. He writes, “Many crime myths persist due to incomplete or inaccurate data reporting. Hundreds of ‘justifiable homicides’ are reported each year by the FBI, but many more homicides might fall into that category. Since many jurisdictions do not report data on ‘justifiable homicide,’ this makes the FBI’s ‘total’ essentially meaningless.”
We address the “drug gang problem” portion of Lott’s claim in a separate entry.
UPDATE, DECEMBER 28, 2023: 'It is historic': U.S. poised to see record drop in yearly homicides despite public concern over crime
Sources:
John Lott, Gun Control Myths, 2020
“GVPedia explains…Defensive Gun Use,” GVPedia University, February 24, 2020
“Gun Control Myths by John Lott,” CSPAN, July 20, 2019 (starts at 12 min)
Jo Craven McGinty, “The FBI’s Crime Data: What Happens When States Don’t Fully Report,” Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2018
John Lott, The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies, 2016
Michael D. Miltz, “Bridging Gaps in Police Crime Data,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 1999
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