Piling on Kleck and his Bogus DGU Surveys
As noted previously, Kleck’s many DGU surveys have some problems. When we compare Kleck’s statistical inferences to real-life facts, Kleck is often found wanting.
Here’s another example. According to Kleck, in 34% of his DGUs–the criminal was in the act of commiting a burglary. In the year of Kleck’s ’study’, there were 6M burglaries. Of these 6M burglaries, 22% were committed when a resident was home (~1.3M burglaries). Further, Kleck estimates 42% of US homes have a firearm. Again, we go to the calculator:
6M (total burglaries in US) x .22 (% of burglaries committed with at-home resident) x .42 (% of households with firearm) = 554, 400 burglaries
.34 (% of DGUs involved in burglary) x 2.5M DGUs = 850,000 burglaries
This means, according to Kleck, burglaries were foiled by a DGU in 153% of all cases. IOW, all burglaries occurring when a resident with a gun is home are prevented–not just once but more than 1.5 times.
What’s funny is that you can’t see the obvious nature of the stats error you’re making (hint: strawman, as in maybe just maybe the 6MM burglaries number isn’t Klecks…whooops).
Comment by Sebastian-PGP — November 26, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
No error, S the LC™.
Kleck’s results simply are laughable when you compare them to actual stats.
Comment by Administrator — November 26, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
You’re using an assumed number he didn’t supply, support, or rely on for his numbers. You can’t take him to task for a number you yourself supplied, dipshit.
Comment by Sebastian-PGP — November 26, 2007 @ 11:19 pm
Also, you’re misrepresenting the 34%–which is only reported as what the victim thought was happening–not necessarily the crime actually being committed. Nice going, Capt. Strawman!
Comment by Sebastian-PGP — November 26, 2007 @ 11:35 pm
And, as noted in the other thread, DGUs tend to prevent crimes from happening, meaning you can’t compare the total reported crimes from other sources against what you extrapolate from Kleck’s numbers. It’s a big error that anyone who’s had a high school level stats class would catch.
Comment by Sebastian-PGP — November 27, 2007 @ 12:10 am