George Zimmerman's attorneys won't use "stand your ground" defense

[DanTex]

46. That's why you need to look at the actual numbers

The part of the study you cited earlier actually gave the numbers: 500 to 700 additional homicides, of which 50 were justifiable, and even that 50 was the upper end of the confidence interval. That would mean that at most 10% of the additional homicides were justified. Then they go on to point out that, even if you jiggle the assumptions about what a justified homicide is, you still don't explain away the whole 500 to 700 as being justifiable.

For example, even if you accept Gary Kleck's estimate that justifiable homicides are underestimated by 5X, you still only get to at most 250 additional justifiable homicides. Of course, Kleck is a highly controversial pro-gun criminologist whose results have often been refuted by other more mainstream researchers, so it is likely that this 5X figure is high, but the point is, that even if you take the assumptions most favorable to the "justifiable homicide" interpretation: that is, you use the high end of the confidence interval, and you multiply the figure by Kleck's 5X estimate, you still find 250 justifiable homicides, versus between 250 and 450 non-justifiable.

And, by the way, the conclusion you cite doesn't actually say the opposite of what I claimed. It says that at least some of the homicides were non-justifiable (i.e. murder), but it doesn't say either way whether the majority are justifiable or not. This is an understandable decision by the authors, given that any increase in non-justifiable homicide would be a significant finding. However, if you look at the actual numbers, you find that I was correct.

Also, here's the text of the other study, if you're interested.
ftp://ftp.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp6705.pdf