heidi lmsc lockheed com original article the colorado daily recently reprinted the wall street journal s article on paxton quigley including the nefarious little paragraph the journal tacked onto the end after recieving much assistance from various t p g type folks i wrote a letter to the editor criticizing this last paragraph and surprise surprise surprise they published it the text follows the colorado daily btw is the university of colorado boulder student i think newspaper not exactly a big coup but every little bit i guess the title was the only thing they changed added gun stats the daily recently reprinted an article from the wall street journal primarily concerned with paxton quigley author of armed and female the article in turn cites a misleading statistic that was originally reported in the new england journal of medicine the article states a study found that a gun in the home was times more likely to be used to kill its owner spouse a friend or child than to kill an intruder this is an often quoted statistic and it is misleading for sev eral reasons outlined below the study gives the impression that if you own a gun the likelihood that you will successfully use it to defend yourself is less than that of the gun being turned against you the study however fails to take into account cases where a law abiding citizen uses a gun to thwart a crime without actually killing the perpe trator the study actually refers to acquaintances rather than friend this would include the friendly neigh borhood thug who shows up like clockwork every month the second your grandmother cashes her social security check possibly an acquaintance but hardly a friend the nejm study is based on the immediate dis position of cases and fails to take into account cases originally filed as homicides that were later ruled to be self defense especially considering the small sample size taking these events into account has a sub stantial effect on the ratio quoted criminologist gary kleck gives us a slightly dif erent statistic a gun is times more likely to be used successfully by a private citizen against an aggressor than it is to kill anyone at all further per sons defending themselves from aggression by using a gun fare better than those who resist vicimization by some other means or who offer no resistance at all statistics available from the fbi and other agencies also show that a gun is times more likely to be used by a non criminal to defend against criminal threat than to be used to commit criminal homicide times more likely to be used to defend against a criminal threat than to accidentally kill anybody and times more likely to defend against criminal threat than to be used to commit suicide it is well to keep in mind that nearly anything can be proved by uncritical quotation of statistics one has to consider carefully what questions were asked by those gathering the data before one can draw an accu rate conclusion from them d f taylor cu department of chemistry and biochemistry spooksmoke revolution assasination thorium cobalt clintin cia nsa shc dod loki acca nmsu edu liberty or death taylordf ucsu colorado edu send me something even you can t read
