Armed Resistance to Crime The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun

KLECK & GERTZ
[Vol. 86
covered by the NCVS, one cannot meaningfully use NCVS data to estimate
the share of crime incidents which result in a DGU. Nevertheless,
in a ten state sample of incarcerated felons interviewed in 1982,
34% reported having been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured
by an armed victim. ' 60 From the criminals' standpoint, this experience
was not rare.
How could such a serious thing happen so often without becoming
common knowledge? This phenomenon, regardless of how widespread
it really is, is largely an invisible one as far as governmental
statistics are concerned. Neither the defender/victim nor the criminal
ordinarily has much incentive to report this sort of event to the
police, and either or both often have strong reasons not to do so. Consequently,
many of these incidents never come to the attention of the
police, while others may be reported but without victims mentioning
their use of a gun. And even when a DGU is reported, it will not
necessarily be recorded by the police, who ordinarily do not keep statistics
on matters other than DGUs resulting in a death, since police
record-keeping is largely confined to information helpful in apprehending
perpetrators and making a legal case for convicting them.
Because such statistics are not kept, we cannot even be certain that a
large number of DGUs are not reported to the police.
The health system cannot shed much light on this phenomenon
either, since very few of these incidents involve injuries. 61 In the rare
case where someone is hurt, it is usually the criminal, who is unlikely
to seek medical attention for any but the most life-threatening gunshot
wounds, as this would ordinarily result in a police interrogation.
Physicians in many states are required by law to report treatment of
gunshot wounds to the police, making it necessary for medically
treated criminals to explain to police how they received their wounds.
Finally, it is now clear that virtually none of the victims who use
guns defensively tell interviewers about it in the NCVS. Our estimates
imply that only about 3% of DGUs among NCVS Rs are reported to
interviewers. 62 Based on other comparisons of alternative survey estimates
of violent events with NCVS estimates, this high level of underreporting
is eminently plausible. Loftin and Mackenzie reported that
rapes might be thirty-three times as frequent as NCVS estimates indicate,
while spousal violence could easily be twelve times as high. 63
There is no inherent value to knowing the exact number of
60 WRIGHT & Rossi, supra note 43, at 155.
61 See Table 3, Panels A, E.
62 The 85,000 DGUs estimated from the NCVS, divided by the 2.5 million estimate
derived from the presented survey equals .03.
63 Loftin & MacKenzie, supra note 27, at 22-23.