Nearly a century ago, the great jazz drummer Warren “Baby” Dodds was asked for his opinion of other drummers of his day. Dodds, a perfectionist, but also a gentleman, simply said, “All who are drumming aren’t drummers.”

That brings us to the journalist Michael Allen, who, on Monday, [January 13] took advantage of the fact that anyone with a computer and an internet connection can write just about anything for the entire online world to see.

In this instance, Allen’s “reporting” was aimed at the NRA and award-winning Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck.

“The NRA has been pushing the claim that guns in America are more likely to be used for self-defense than to commit a crime,” Allen wrote. Citing a widely discredited, anti-gun website, Allen added, “According to MediaMatters.org, the NRA likely uses discredited research to advance their claim that ‘firearms are used more than two million times a year for personal protection.'”

The research in question is, of course, the landmark survey by Kleck and Marc Gertz, which found that Americans had used guns for defensive purposes more than two million times in 1993, a number roughly four times the number of violent crimes committed with guns that year.

The Kleck-Gertz study is hardly “discredited.” To the contrary, it was reviewed by the leading anti-gun criminologist at the time, the late Marvin Wolfgang, and Wolfgang’s words speak for themselves:

“I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of Brave New World, I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns–ugly, nasty instruments designed to kill people. . . .

“What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. . . .

“I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. . . . (T)he methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear. I cannot further debate it.”