The report only considers justified homicides to be those reported to the FBI under the FBIs extremely limited definition.
From the report:
“While we view the evidence that castle doctrine increases homicides as convincing, we note that one downside of the homicide measure is that it could well include homicides that are justified under the new self-defense law and yet may not meet the strict definition of justifiable homicide. Thus, this increase may not be viewed by everyone as
unambiguously bad. For example, the increase could be driven by individuals protecting themselves from imminent harm by using lethal force.22 On the other hand, the increase could be driven by the escalation of violence in situations that otherwise would not have ended in serious injury for either party.
We address this issue in two ways. First, we focus solely on murder, which
excludes classifications of non-negligent manslaughter that are more likely to be used in self-defense killings that do not meet the strict definition of justifiable homicide. Results are shown in Panel C of Table 5, where all specifications show statistically significant increases of between 6 and 11 percent. In addition, we find suggestive evidence that felony homicide and suspected felony homicidethat is, homicides that were or were suspected to have been committed along with a felony, such as robbery or burglaryare
increased as a result of the laws. 23 These homicides almost certainly represent an escalation of violence by criminals, as opposed to self-defense situations.24 Combined, this suggests that the increase in homicides is unlikely to be entirely due to self-defense.”