Reply #31: Yes, the ubituity of these studies should tell you something..

[whoneedstickets]

The gun lobby is desperate to build a case that guns are good for something other than sporting uses and:

a. Intentionally or Accidentally Killing yourself
b. Intentionally or Accidentally Killing your spouse
c. Intentionally, Accidentally or Negligently killing your children
d. Intentionally or Accidentally killing an unrelated 3rd party

So they have to trot out self defense stats or find some friendly right-wing think tank or FSU Criminology prof who they can fund to lend the imprimatur of academic legitimacy to wild estimates.

As the study "Firearms and Violence: a critical review" notes..

"The discrepancies in the prevalence estimates of defensive gun use can and should be better understood. Remarkably little scientific research has been conducted to evaluate the validity of DGU estimates, yet the possible explanations are relatively easy to categorize and study. The two surveys are either (1) measuring something different or (2) affected by response problems in different ways, or (3) both. Statistical variability, usually reflected by the standard error or confidence interval of the parameter, also plays some role but cannot explain these order of magnitude differences."


So some paranoid, talk-radio listener hears a bump in the night and grabs his gun and that's a DGU? An this number is used to offset the damage of gun murders, suicides, and fatal and debilitating accidents.