A TRIBUTE TO A VIEW I HAVE OPPOSED.

The article presents the author's opinion on research concerning guns and violence in the U.S. I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. We hypothesized that if a victim resists in some manner, there may be a greater likelihood of an uncompleted robbery. Of the 166 offenses in which the offender threatened the victim with a knife, only 30 percent of the victims resisted either orally, by physical force or by displaying their own weapon. There was more resistance to a gun threat, 40 percent. Among those cases in which there was no resistance, nearly three quarters suffered no physical harm. When a gun was the instrument of intimidation, only five percent of the non-resisters but three times as many resisters were seriously hurt. Defensive gun usage, as reported in the current study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, includes mostly robbery and burglary, in which offenses there is little mutual combat compared to homicides. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology.