Hence, the Brady Campaign’s claim that “people who keep guns in homes are almost 3 times more likely to be murdered.” From this, Kellerman and colleagues concluded, “In the light of these observations and our present findings, people should be strongly discouraged from keeping guns in their homes.”
…
Of the total number of homicides committed in the study area, only 1.6 percent (30 of 1,860) were gun homicides committed in the victim’s home using a gun kept there. 98.4 percent we either outside the home, were not gun homicides, or did not use the victim’s gun. People in the case sample are 62 times more likely to be killed under these other circumstance than to be killed in their own home with a gun kept there.
David Yamane
July 18, 2014
Scrutinizing Claims About Guns in Homes as a “Risk Factor” for Homicide in the Home
[This is the 1993, long discredited Kellermann study. But this is, to me, a novel approach to discrediting the paper. And it seems to be much more powerful than the other approaches.
It makes it all the more obvious that the anti-gun people have to deliberately lie and deceive in order to get their way. Whatever their motivation it is not for the good of society and it is particularly bad for people that own or want to own firearms. These people are evil.—Joe]
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The “evil” part is more obvious in Gary Kleck’s analysis, where he referred to the “Nonsense Ratio”. That refers to the central part of the argument in that “paper”, which is comparing the number of people killed by guns used in a crime, vs. the number of criminals KILLED in self defense.
Kleck comments: “What is so deceptive about the ratio is the hint that killing burglars or intruders is somehow a “benefit” to the householder. This is both morally offensive and factually inaccurate”.
And further: “Gun owners do not keep guns for the sake of having a chance to “bag a burglar.” Instead, the benefit of defensive gun ownership that would be parallel to innocent lives lost to guns would be innocent lives saved by defensive use of guns.”
“Morally offensive” is a good way to describe this absurd piece of socialist propaganda masquerading as scientific research.
I think Klecks “Nonsense Ratio” is less effective than, “People are 62 times more likely to be killed by something other than a gun kept in their own home.” This is because the “Nonsense Ratio” needs more explanation than the simple sentence which stands alone until they want a reference.
I know that Joe would expect me to say this, and that he could say it himself very well, but here goes, one more time anyway;
Even if every other gun owner on the planet tried to murder someone last night, I didn’t, so leave me alone. (posit stolen from Tam – we can take the accident model too if you want it, and apply the same logic to it) I’m 100% innocent in this matter, so no one has any claim against me based on what someone else did or might do, or might tend to do. To look at it any other way is to ignore the very concepts of rights and justice, falling instead for the deadly lie that is the authoritarian, or collectivist, model of government in charge of raising and breeding humans like a herd of cattle.
Point being of course that your rights are not contingent upon statistics. Ever. They’re still your rights no matter what.
It is more than enough to point out the deadly evil of ignoring both the concept of rights and of justice, trying instead to condemn others based on demographics, ownership of certain inanimate objects, or upon group identity. If that’s not enough of an argument, nothing is. If rationality isn’t working, nothing will. If rationality DOES work, at least on a very few, then why abandon it and go off chasing numbers? Who are you impressing?
There will be times and places wherein gun ownership and crime both go up in correlation, and what will you say then? To argue that gun ownership is OK right now, because of the numbers that exist right now, you’re saying at the same time that gun ownership WOULD NOT be OK under different circumstances. Careful.
Exactly. We don’t measure how much protection the First Amendment should afford speech based on some measure of worthwhile things that are said by someone, we don’t (mostly) decide which religions to “make no law regarding” based on how much damage might occur were we to make a law regarding any particular religion, nor do we measure the security to be afforded people in their homes based on some statistic of crimes committed, so why should this Amendment, the hated Second, be measured that way?
I always liked the point that when you compare white-on-white homicide rates (whites being about 70% of the population in both cities at that time), using Kellerman’s own numbers, it’s lower in Seattle. The fact that our 30% minority is mostly lower income blacks and Hispanics, and Vancouver’s is mostly upper income Chinese, makes all the difference. Seattle’s 30% minority has such a high crime rate that it pushes the overall average up spectacularly. It’s culture that makes the difference, not the tool.
I remember that wonderfully awful 1993 study. “Firearms in home” was around #6 or 7 down on the list of correlated lifestyles associated with dying of gunshot.
“Renting” instead of having a mortgage was many multiples higher risk for gunshot than keeping a gun in one’s home. And yet no calls to eliminate apartment living were issued by those against gun violence!
So, “98.4 percent we[re] either outside the home, were not gun homicides, or did not use the victim’s gun. People in the case sample are 62 times more likely to be killed under these other circumstance than to be killed in their own home with a gun kept there.”
So, after close scrutiny of the Kellermann study, we find it supports “Shall Issue”.
Torture the numbers as you wish, they can not be made to admit that a gun in the home poses a greater danger of being shot by it at home, not when the likelihood of being killed under other circumstances having nothing to do with that gun at home are 62 times greater. More “Gun as magic object thinking”. Keep one at home and you’re 62 times more likely to be killed in some other way, not with that gun.