The Defensive Gun Use Lie and the Gun Lobby’s Firehose of Falsehood - Part 5
The Defensive Gun Use Lie and the Gun Lobby’s Firehose of Falsehood - Part 5
Most reported defensive gun uses are offensive uses
By: Devin Hughes
This is Part 5 of a 12-part series debunking the defensive gun use myth. Part 1 examined recent high-profile incidents of DGUs gone wrong, how the NRA has seized on the defensive gun use narrative to further its guns everywhere agenda, and what constitutes a DGU. Part 2 looked at the academic origins of the DGU myth and its massive flaws. Part 3 delved into why surveys of statistically rare events produce substantial overestimates. Part 4 explored the surprising parallel pro-gun academic Gary Kleck draws between defensive gun use and using cocaine. Today we will examine how most DGUs reported in surveys are likely aggressive and illegal.
Part 5: Most reported defensive gun uses are offensive uses
Mark Bryant, the founder and head of the Gun Violence Archive, was perusing one of the innumerable gun forums that exist when he stumbled across a “You won’t believe what just happened to me” post.
The poster, an elderly white man from a midwestern town, described how during the previous evening, he and his wife were exiting a movie theater when they saw three black men in hoodies who “looked up to no good.” The poster, feeling threatened, brandished his handgun at the three men, causing them to quickly disperse. The poster’s take away from the incident was how fortunate he was to be armed, and how proud he was of his defensive gun use.
A few days later, Mark was on a call with the Assistant District Attorney of said midwestern town when the Assistant DA related his own “You won’t believe what just happened to me” story. A few evenings prior, he was out with his brother and friend, both of whom were medical students at Vanderbilt, enjoying the evening and on their way to a late showing of a movie. As they approached the theater, suddenly an elderly white man brandished his firearm at them. Panicked by the display of violence, the Assistant DA, his brother, and friend all beat a hasty retreat to get away from the crazed man with a gun.
It was the exact same incident.
The reason this incident and others like it are crucial is because they reveal a central flaw in defensive gun use surveys: they take the word of the person who claimed a defensive gun use at face value and don’t investigate any further.
The case above and those in Part 1 would be listed as defensive gun uses in private surveys, such as Kleck’s, that pro-gun advocates continuously cite. None of the defensive gun use surveys though look at the stories themselves and try to determine whether the incidents being described are defensive gun uses or offensive gun crimes — except for one.
In the late 1990s, David Hemenway sought to investigate this gap in the defensive gun use literature. A pair of private surveys conducted by Hemenway in 1996 and 1999 asked respondents to describe DGUs in their own words. These responses were then submitted to a panel of five judges to determine whether the actions were more likely legal or illegal, while still taking the respondents’ descriptions at face value.
The panel concluded in a majority of cases that the defensive gun uses were illegal, casting severe doubt on their social benefit. Across these two large national samples of randomly selected telephone numbers, the conclusion was overwhelming:
“Guns are used to threaten and intimidate far more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported self-defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society.”
The surveys also found that when someone uses a gun in self defense, it is often part of an escalating, hostile interaction, one in which both participants are likely to be responsible for the event that initially prompted the DGU.
One male respondent who reported a defensive gun use described an incident as follows: “I was watching a movie and he interrupted me. I yelled at him that I was going to shoot him, and he ran to his car.” Another respondent pulled out a gun to resolve a conflict with his neighbor: “I was on my porch and this man threw a beer in my face, so I got my gun.”
Given that the judges were instructed to take the word of the survey respondents on what happened, even Hemenway’s study likely underestimates the relative number of criminal versus justifiable defensive gun uses.
Stay tuned for Part 6 of our 12-part series on defensive gun use, which will examine the National Crime Victimization Survey’s DGU numbers.
Devin Hughes is the President and Founder of GVPedia, a non-profit that provides access to gun violence prevention research, and data.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay