Originally posted by: Shockwave
Originally posted by: Amused
Originally posted by: Mucho
Keep in mind people who own handguns are ten times more likely to shoot a family member or temselves than a stranger.
What a worthless "stat."
Not when you take into account what Millennium said.
Your only likely to shoot a family member if your idiotic and dont respect the gun.
No, it's a stupid stat on it's face.
This is a mindlessly bleated stat based on ONE study done by doctors Arthur Kellermann and Don Reay, and is titled, "Protection or peril? An analysis of firearms related deaths in the home." (New Engl J Med 1986. 314: 1557-60.)
The oft quoted Kellermann paper claims a homeowner's gun is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. This is a nonsense ratio. Kellermann states, "for every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides involving firearms."
First we need to understand how the ratio was derived.
Kellermann tabulated gunshot deaths occurring in King County, Washington, from 1978 to 1983. Table 1 below is taken from Kellermann's paper (Table 3 on p. 1559).
Table 1. Classification of 398 Gunshot Deaths involving a Firearm Kept in the Home
Type of Death---------------- No.
Unintentional deaths--- ---12
Criminal homicide----------- 41
Suicide-------------------- ---333
Unknown----------------------- 3
Total--------------------------- 389
Self-protection homicide---- 9
As we see from Table 1, a ratio of 389 violent deaths to 9 justifiable homicides gives us the famous 43 to 1 ratio.
Let's apply the same methodology to non-gun deaths and non-gun self-protection homicides in the home, for King County, Washington.
Table 2. Estimation of Violent Deaths in the Home Not Involving a Firearm
Type of Death------------------- No.
Unintentional deaths----------- 0
Criminal homicide----------------50
Suicide--------------------------- 347
Unknown-------------------------- 0
Total -------------------------------397
Self-protection homicide-------- 4
This ratio of 397 non-gun violent deaths to 4 justifiable homicides reduces to 99 to 1.
So having applied Kellermann's methodology to non-firearm violent death, the risk factor more than doubles from 43 to 1, to 99 to 1.
Please note, the purpose of this exercise is not to show that using a gun in the home is better than not using one. This exercise does no such thing. It is merely to show how deeply flawed Kellermann's study really is. Further, a number of tremendously important factors are left unaccounted.
For example, another way of looking at it is, more martial artists are probably murdered by non-gun methods than they kill in self-defense. Would we conclude that it is best to avoid learning a martial art for self-defense based on such a "nonsense ratio?" Regardless of how the number crunching had turned-out between gun and non-gun violent deaths in the home, we should be able to see that Kellermann's approach contributes nothing towards establishing a general or personal risk factor for a gun in the home.
What is truly sad about the nonsense-ratio is how often it is cited and uncritically accepted.
To decide whether or not to own a gun for self-defense based solely on a "kill" ratio is folly. To estimate the risks and benefits of gun ownership many more factors need to be considered. An example is defensive gun use, which outnumbers homicides, suicides, and accidents, and is ignored in most of the medical research.
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