Guns kept in homes are 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household rather than in self-defense. Another thought to ponder....
As much as I am against the government having any additional control over our lives (in fact I want it to have much less), the gun issue is one where I struggle.
If we're honest, the power of the 2nd Amendment doesn't exist anymore. We cannot defend ourselves against a government that has bombs, missiles and tanks with small arms. Furthermore, when in the history of the USA have we even HAD to defend ourselves against it? The argument could be made that was the case in the Civil War, but those were exceptional circumstances brought on by the secession and a need to end slavery.
And I don't understand the obsession with guns either. Outside of target shooting and hunting, the only other purpose for a gun is to murder someone. I do not believe that it is truly for "protection" and I think it's difficult to even point out how many times a gun truly protected a private citizen from death.
I think their primary purpose then is to provide some measure of a feeling of power to people who feel powerless. Personally, I think it's wiser to find a safer, less violent way to not live with fear. I think it starts with attitude.
I don know you, but if you're an American, then I wish all the other Americans read this. Common sense and well written. You should make the rules in that country. Very well said
Well done fucker!!
Thanks. I am American.
The only people we should try to get even with...
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
Guns kept in homes are 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household rather than in self-defense. Another thought to ponder....
Evaluating the "43 times" fallacy
by David K. Felbeck
Director, Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners
August 10, 2000
Those who oppose the use of firearms for self-defense have for fourteen years quoted a study by Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay published in the June 12, 1986 issue of New England Journal of Medicine (v. 314, n. 24, p. 1557-60) which concluded that a firearm in the home is "43 times more likely" to be used to kill a member of the household than to kill a criminal intruder. This "statistic" is used regularly by anti self-protection groups which surely know better, and was even published recently without question in a letter to the Ann Arbor News. Representative Liz Brater cited this "43 times" number in a House committee hearing just a year ago. Thus the original study and its conclusion deserve careful analysis. If nothing else, the repeated use of this "statistic" demonstrates how a grossly inaccurate statement can become a "truth" with sufficient repetition by the compliant and non-critical media.
The "43 times" claim was based upon a small-scale study of firearms deaths in King County, Washington (Seattle and Bellevue) covering the period 1978-83. The authors state,
"Mortality studies such as ours do not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm. Cases in which would-be intruders may have purposely avoided a house known to be armed are also not identified…A complete determination of firearm risks versus benefits would require that these figures be known."
Having said this, these authors proceed anyway to exclude those same instances where a potential criminal was not killed but was thwarted.
How many successful self-defense events do not result in death of the criminal? An analysis by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, v. 86 n.1 [Fall 1995]) of successful defensive uses of firearms against criminal attack concluded that the criminal is killed in only one case in approximately every one thousand attacks. If this same ratio is applied to defensive uses in the home, then Kellermann's "43 times" is off by a factor of a thousand and should be at least as small as 0.043, not 43. Any evaluation of the effectiveness of firearms as defense against criminal assault should incorporate every event where a crime is either thwarted or mitigated; thus Kellermann's conclusion omits 999 non-lethal favorable outcomes from criminal attack and counts only the one event in which the criminal is killed. With woeful disregard for this vital point, recognized by these authors but then ignored, they conclude,
"The advisability of keeping firearms in the home for protection must be questioned."
In making this statement the authors have demonstrated an inexcusable non-scientific bias against the effectiveness of firearms ownership for self defense. This is junk science at its worst.
This vital flaw in Kellermann and Reay's paper was demonstrated clearly just six months later, on Dec. 4, 1986 by David Stolinsky and G. Tim Hagen in the same journal (v. 315 n. 23, p. 1483-84), yet these letters have been ignored for fourteen years in favor of the grossly exaggerated figure of the original article. The continual use of the "43 times" figure by groups opposed to the defensive use of firearms suggests the appalling weakness of their argument.
But there's more. Included in the "43 times" of Kellermann are 37 suicides, some 86 percent of the alleged total, which have nothing to do with either crime or defensive uses of firearms. Even Kellermann and Reay say clearly
"…[that] the precise nature of the relation between gun availability and suicide is unclear."
Yet they proceed anyway to include suicides, which comprise the vast majority of the deaths in this study, in their calculations. Omitting suicides further reduces the "43 times" number from 0.043 to 0.006.
"Reverse causation" is a significant factor that does not lend itself to quantitative evaluation, although it surely accounts for a substantial number of additional homicides in the home. A person, such as a drug dealer, who is in fear for his life, will be more likely to have a firearm in his home than will an ordinary person. Put another way, if a person fears death he might arm himself and at the same time be at greater risk of being murdered. Thus Kellermann's correlation is strongly skewed away from normal defensive uses of firearms. His conclusion is thus no more valid than a finding that because fat people are more likely to have diet foods in their refrigerators we can conclude that diet foods "cause" obesity, or that because so many people die in hospitals we should conclude that hospitals "cause" premature death. Reverse causation thus further lowers the 0.006 value, but by an unknown amount.
In conclusion, if we use Kellermann's data adjusted for reality, a firearm kept in a home is at least 167 times more likely to deter criminal attack than to harm a person in the home. This number is some 7000 times more positive than the "43 times" negative figure so often quoted. Should groups and individuals that knowingly perpetuate a figure that is at least 7000 times too large be given any credence at all?
With two million defensive uses of firearms each year, both inside and outside the home, the value of protection against criminal assault provided by firearms vastly exceeds any dangers that they might present.
Guns kept in homes are 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household rather than in self-defense. Another thought to ponder....
Evaluating the "43 times" fallacy
by David K. Felbeck
Director, Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners
August 10, 2000
Those who oppose the use of firearms for self-defense have for fourteen years quoted a study by Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay published in the June 12, 1986 issue of New England Journal of Medicine (v. 314, n. 24, p. 1557-60) which concluded that a firearm in the home is "43 times more likely" to be used to kill a member of the household than to kill a criminal intruder. This "statistic" is used regularly by anti self-protection groups which surely know better, and was even published recently without question in a letter to the Ann Arbor News. Representative Liz Brater cited this "43 times" number in a House committee hearing just a year ago. Thus the original study and its conclusion deserve careful analysis. If nothing else, the repeated use of this "statistic" demonstrates how a grossly inaccurate statement can become a "truth" with sufficient repetition by the compliant and non-critical media.
The "43 times" claim was based upon a small-scale study of firearms deaths in King County, Washington (Seattle and Bellevue) covering the period 1978-83. The authors state,
"Mortality studies such as ours do not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm. Cases in which would-be intruders may have purposely avoided a house known to be armed are also not identified…A complete determination of firearm risks versus benefits would require that these figures be known."
Having said this, these authors proceed anyway to exclude those same instances where a potential criminal was not killed but was thwarted.
How many successful self-defense events do not result in death of the criminal? An analysis by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, v. 86 n.1 [Fall 1995]) of successful defensive uses of firearms against criminal attack concluded that the criminal is killed in only one case in approximately every one thousand attacks. If this same ratio is applied to defensive uses in the home, then Kellermann's "43 times" is off by a factor of a thousand and should be at least as small as 0.043, not 43. Any evaluation of the effectiveness of firearms as defense against criminal assault should incorporate every event where a crime is either thwarted or mitigated; thus Kellermann's conclusion omits 999 non-lethal favorable outcomes from criminal attack and counts only the one event in which the criminal is killed. With woeful disregard for this vital point, recognized by these authors but then ignored, they conclude,
"The advisability of keeping firearms in the home for protection must be questioned."
In making this statement the authors have demonstrated an inexcusable non-scientific bias against the effectiveness of firearms ownership for self defense. This is junk science at its worst.
This vital flaw in Kellermann and Reay's paper was demonstrated clearly just six months later, on Dec. 4, 1986 by David Stolinsky and G. Tim Hagen in the same journal (v. 315 n. 23, p. 1483-84), yet these letters have been ignored for fourteen years in favor of the grossly exaggerated figure of the original article. The continual use of the "43 times" figure by groups opposed to the defensive use of firearms suggests the appalling weakness of their argument.
But there's more. Included in the "43 times" of Kellermann are 37 suicides, some 86 percent of the alleged total, which have nothing to do with either crime or defensive uses of firearms. Even Kellermann and Reay say clearly
"…[that] the precise nature of the relation between gun availability and suicide is unclear."
Yet they proceed anyway to include suicides, which comprise the vast majority of the deaths in this study, in their calculations. Omitting suicides further reduces the "43 times" number from 0.043 to 0.006.
"Reverse causation" is a significant factor that does not lend itself to quantitative evaluation, although it surely accounts for a substantial number of additional homicides in the home. A person, such as a drug dealer, who is in fear for his life, will be more likely to have a firearm in his home than will an ordinary person. Put another way, if a person fears death he might arm himself and at the same time be at greater risk of being murdered. Thus Kellermann's correlation is strongly skewed away from normal defensive uses of firearms. His conclusion is thus no more valid than a finding that because fat people are more likely to have diet foods in their refrigerators we can conclude that diet foods "cause" obesity, or that because so many people die in hospitals we should conclude that hospitals "cause" premature death. Reverse causation thus further lowers the 0.006 value, but by an unknown amount.
In conclusion, if we use Kellermann's data adjusted for reality, a firearm kept in a home is at least 167 times more likely to deter criminal attack than to harm a person in the home. This number is some 7000 times more positive than the "43 times" negative figure so often quoted. Should groups and individuals that knowingly perpetuate a figure that is at least 7000 times too large be given any credence at all?
With two million defensive uses of firearms each year, both inside and outside the home, the value of protection against criminal assault provided by firearms vastly exceeds any dangers that they might present.
Did you read the article I quoted that stated that part of the problem with that study was that it was so small? And how groups like the NRA have worked incessantly to prevent anymore studies to validate or invalidate this data? Google away
Are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
Guns kept in homes are 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household rather than in self-defense. Another thought to ponder....
Evaluating the "43 times" fallacy
by David K. Felbeck
Director, Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners
August 10, 2000
Those who oppose the use of firearms for self-defense have for fourteen years quoted a study by Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay published in the June 12, 1986 issue of New England Journal of Medicine (v. 314, n. 24, p. 1557-60) which concluded that a firearm in the home is "43 times more likely" to be used to kill a member of the household than to kill a criminal intruder. This "statistic" is used regularly by anti self-protection groups which surely know better, and was even published recently without question in a letter to the Ann Arbor News. Representative Liz Brater cited this "43 times" number in a House committee hearing just a year ago. Thus the original study and its conclusion deserve careful analysis. If nothing else, the repeated use of this "statistic" demonstrates how a grossly inaccurate statement can become a "truth" with sufficient repetition by the compliant and non-critical media.
The "43 times" claim was based upon a small-scale study of firearms deaths in King County, Washington (Seattle and Bellevue) covering the period 1978-83. The authors state,
"Mortality studies such as ours do not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm. Cases in which would-be intruders may have purposely avoided a house known to be armed are also not identified…A complete determination of firearm risks versus benefits would require that these figures be known."
Having said this, these authors proceed anyway to exclude those same instances where a potential criminal was not killed but was thwarted.
How many successful self-defense events do not result in death of the criminal? An analysis by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, v. 86 n.1 [Fall 1995]) of successful defensive uses of firearms against criminal attack concluded that the criminal is killed in only one case in approximately every one thousand attacks. If this same ratio is applied to defensive uses in the home, then Kellermann's "43 times" is off by a factor of a thousand and should be at least as small as 0.043, not 43. Any evaluation of the effectiveness of firearms as defense against criminal assault should incorporate every event where a crime is either thwarted or mitigated; thus Kellermann's conclusion omits 999 non-lethal favorable outcomes from criminal attack and counts only the one event in which the criminal is killed. With woeful disregard for this vital point, recognized by these authors but then ignored, they conclude,
"The advisability of keeping firearms in the home for protection must be questioned."
In making this statement the authors have demonstrated an inexcusable non-scientific bias against the effectiveness of firearms ownership for self defense. This is junk science at its worst.
This vital flaw in Kellermann and Reay's paper was demonstrated clearly just six months later, on Dec. 4, 1986 by David Stolinsky and G. Tim Hagen in the same journal (v. 315 n. 23, p. 1483-84), yet these letters have been ignored for fourteen years in favor of the grossly exaggerated figure of the original article. The continual use of the "43 times" figure by groups opposed to the defensive use of firearms suggests the appalling weakness of their argument.
But there's more. Included in the "43 times" of Kellermann are 37 suicides, some 86 percent of the alleged total, which have nothing to do with either crime or defensive uses of firearms. Even Kellermann and Reay say clearly
"…[that] the precise nature of the relation between gun availability and suicide is unclear."
Yet they proceed anyway to include suicides, which comprise the vast majority of the deaths in this study, in their calculations. Omitting suicides further reduces the "43 times" number from 0.043 to 0.006.
"Reverse causation" is a significant factor that does not lend itself to quantitative evaluation, although it surely accounts for a substantial number of additional homicides in the home. A person, such as a drug dealer, who is in fear for his life, will be more likely to have a firearm in his home than will an ordinary person. Put another way, if a person fears death he might arm himself and at the same time be at greater risk of being murdered. Thus Kellermann's correlation is strongly skewed away from normal defensive uses of firearms. His conclusion is thus no more valid than a finding that because fat people are more likely to have diet foods in their refrigerators we can conclude that diet foods "cause" obesity, or that because so many people die in hospitals we should conclude that hospitals "cause" premature death. Reverse causation thus further lowers the 0.006 value, but by an unknown amount.
In conclusion, if we use Kellermann's data adjusted for reality, a firearm kept in a home is at least 167 times more likely to deter criminal attack than to harm a person in the home. This number is some 7000 times more positive than the "43 times" negative figure so often quoted. Should groups and individuals that knowingly perpetuate a figure that is at least 7000 times too large be given any credence at all?
With two million defensive uses of firearms each year, both inside and outside the home, the value of protection against criminal assault provided by firearms vastly exceeds any dangers that they might present.
Did you read the article I quoted that stated that part of the problem with that study was that it was so small? And how groups like the NRA have worked incessantly to prevent anymore studies to validate or invalidate this data? Google away
the 43%is incorrectmaybe get some new ammo there must besomething new in the past almost 20 years
since that study
thankyou NRA i put my moneywhere my mouth is mail your checktoday
Comments
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/01/14/169164414/lack-of-up-to-date-research-complicates-gun-debate
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
Thanks. I am American.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
Evaluating the "43 times" fallacy
by David K. Felbeck
Director, Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners
August 10, 2000
Those who oppose the use of firearms for self-defense have for fourteen years quoted a study by Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay published in the June 12, 1986 issue of New England Journal of Medicine (v. 314, n. 24, p. 1557-60) which concluded that a firearm in the home is "43 times more likely" to be used to kill a member of the household than to kill a criminal intruder. This "statistic" is used regularly by anti self-protection groups which surely know better, and was even published recently without question in a letter to the Ann Arbor News. Representative Liz Brater cited this "43 times" number in a House committee hearing just a year ago. Thus the original study and its conclusion deserve careful analysis. If nothing else, the repeated use of this "statistic" demonstrates how a grossly inaccurate statement can become a "truth" with sufficient repetition by the compliant and non-critical media.
The "43 times" claim was based upon a small-scale study of firearms deaths in King County, Washington (Seattle and Bellevue) covering the period 1978-83. The authors state,
"Mortality studies such as ours do not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm. Cases in which would-be intruders may have purposely avoided a house known to be armed are also not identified…A complete determination of firearm risks versus benefits would require that these figures be known."
Having said this, these authors proceed anyway to exclude those same instances where a potential criminal was not killed but was thwarted.
How many successful self-defense events do not result in death of the criminal? An analysis by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, v. 86 n.1 [Fall 1995]) of successful defensive uses of firearms against criminal attack concluded that the criminal is killed in only one case in approximately every one thousand attacks. If this same ratio is applied to defensive uses in the home, then Kellermann's "43 times" is off by a factor of a thousand and should be at least as small as 0.043, not 43. Any evaluation of the effectiveness of firearms as defense against criminal assault should incorporate every event where a crime is either thwarted or mitigated; thus Kellermann's conclusion omits 999 non-lethal favorable outcomes from criminal attack and counts only the one event in which the criminal is killed. With woeful disregard for this vital point, recognized by these authors but then ignored, they conclude,
"The advisability of keeping firearms in the home for protection must be questioned."
In making this statement the authors have demonstrated an inexcusable non-scientific bias against the effectiveness of firearms ownership for self defense. This is junk science at its worst.
This vital flaw in Kellermann and Reay's paper was demonstrated clearly just six months later, on Dec. 4, 1986 by David Stolinsky and G. Tim Hagen in the same journal (v. 315 n. 23, p. 1483-84), yet these letters have been ignored for fourteen years in favor of the grossly exaggerated figure of the original article. The continual use of the "43 times" figure by groups opposed to the defensive use of firearms suggests the appalling weakness of their argument.
But there's more. Included in the "43 times" of Kellermann are 37 suicides, some 86 percent of the alleged total, which have nothing to do with either crime or defensive uses of firearms. Even Kellermann and Reay say clearly
"…[that] the precise nature of the relation between gun availability and suicide is unclear."
Yet they proceed anyway to include suicides, which comprise the vast majority of the deaths in this study, in their calculations. Omitting suicides further reduces the "43 times" number from 0.043 to 0.006.
"Reverse causation" is a significant factor that does not lend itself to quantitative evaluation, although it surely accounts for a substantial number of additional homicides in the home. A person, such as a drug dealer, who is in fear for his life, will be more likely to have a firearm in his home than will an ordinary person. Put another way, if a person fears death he might arm himself and at the same time be at greater risk of being murdered. Thus Kellermann's correlation is strongly skewed away from normal defensive uses of firearms. His conclusion is thus no more valid than a finding that because fat people are more likely to have diet foods in their refrigerators we can conclude that diet foods "cause" obesity, or that because so many people die in hospitals we should conclude that hospitals "cause" premature death. Reverse causation thus further lowers the 0.006 value, but by an unknown amount.
In conclusion, if we use Kellermann's data adjusted for reality, a firearm kept in a home is at least 167 times more likely to deter criminal attack than to harm a person in the home. This number is some 7000 times more positive than the "43 times" negative figure so often quoted. Should groups and individuals that knowingly perpetuate a figure that is at least 7000 times too large be given any credence at all?
With two million defensive uses of firearms each year, both inside and outside the home, the value of protection against criminal assault provided by firearms vastly exceeds any dangers that they might present.
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/informat ... sp?id=2331
had my pick googleaway
Original post has been edited.
I apologized for my error right after posting my original post.
I'm being forced to do it again... repeatedly.
The stat I cited was gun per capita which sits at 89%.
Did you read the article I quoted that stated that part of the problem with that study was that it was so small? And how groups like the NRA have worked incessantly to prevent anymore studies to validate or invalidate this data? Google away
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
since that study
thankyou NRA i put my moneywhere my mouth is mail your checktoday