re need info on and suicide for refutation here s something preston covey professor of ethics at cmu wrote from preston k covey covey andrew cmu edu subject gun stats mortal risks date mon feb est folks hail from the nether world on february th the wall street journal carried a front page article by erik larson entitled armed force i felt a reply was in order to his citation of the notorious scare stat that a gun is times more likely to kill than to protect i sent the following to the wsj gun stats mortal risks preston k covey erik larson s even handed article on paxton quigley armed force wsj cites the world s most notorious statistic regarding guns in the home a pioneering study of residential gunshot deaths in king county washington 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 the times stat is everywhere these days it has grown in media lore like the proverbial urban myth it was inflated by one pugilistic talk show pundit to given the shock value of the finding the conclusion of the new england journal of medicine nejm study is remarkably understated the advisability of keeping firearms in the home for protection must be questioned responsible people should indeed question the risks and benefits of bringing a firearm into their home but what we need to know is this what exactly are the risks and benefits the nejm testimony is neither the whole truth about the benefits nor nothing but the truth about the risks further as with motor vehicles we want to know what control do we have over the risks and benefits and as with the risks of cancer or heart disease or auto accidents how can we minimize the risks like raw highway death tolls the nejm stat is not very helpful here the nejm finding purports to inform us but it is framed to warn us off it is widely promulgated in the media as a scare stat a misleading half truth whose very formulation is calculated to prejudice and terrify the frightful statistic screams for itself the risks far outweigh the benefits yes what fool would run these risks if your car were times more likely to kill you a loved one a dear friend or an innocent child than to get you to your destination should you not take the bus uncritical citation puts the good name of statistics in the bad company of lies and damned lies surely we can do better where lives are at stake let s take a closer look at this risky business the times stat of the nejm study is the product of dividing the number of home intruders aggressors justifiably killed in self defense the divisor into the number of family members or acquaintances killed by a gun in the home the dividend the divisor of this risk equation is in the study s five year sample there were intruders and other cases of self defense the dividend is in the study there were accidental deaths criminal homicides and suicides divided by yields there were a total of gun related deaths in king county between and so the study leaves deaths outside of homes unaccounted the nejm s notorious times statistic is seriously misleading on six counts the dividend is misleadingly characterized in the media the or acquaintances of the study who include your friendly drug dealers and neighborhood gang members is equated to friends the implication is that the offending guns target and kill only beloved family members dear friends and innocent children deaths may all be equally tragic but the character and circumstance of both victims and killers are relevant to the risk these crucial risk factors are masked by the calculated impression that the death toll is generated by witless waltons shooting dear friends and friendly neighbors this is criminological hogwash the study itself does not distinguish households or environs populated by people with violent criminal or substance abuse histories where the risk of death is very high versus households inhabited by more civil folk for example people who avoid high risk activities like drug dealing gang banging and wife beating where the risk is very low indeed in actuality negligent adults allow fatal but avoidable accidents and homicides are perpetrated mostly by people with histories of violence or abuse people who are identifiably and certifiably at high risk for misadventure to ignore these obvious risk factors in firearm accidents and homicides is as misleading as ignoring the role of alcohol in vehicular deaths by tautology neither gun deaths nor vehicular deaths would occur without firearms or vehicles but the person and circumstance of the gun owner or driver crucially affect the risk one misleading implication of the way the nejm stat is framed is that the mere presence of a gun in the home is much more likely to kill than to protect and this obscures indeed disregards the role of personal responsibility the typical quotation of this study unlike larson s attributes fatal agency to the gun a gun in the home is times as likely to kill the center to prevent handgun violence a major promulgator of the nejm statistic uses this particular formulation we can dispense with the silly debate about whether it s people or guns that accomplish the killing again by tautology gun deaths would not occur without the guns the question begged is how many deaths would occur anyway without the guns in any case people are the death dealing agents the guns are their lethal instruments the moral core of the personal risk factors in gun deaths are personal responsibility and choice due care and responsibility obviate gun accidents human choice mediates homicide and suicide by gun or otherwise the choice to own a gun need not condemn a person to nejm s high risk pool the gun does not create this risk by itself people have a lot to say about what risk they run with guns in their homes for example graduates of paxton quigley s personal protection course do not run the touted times risk any more than skilled and sober drivers run the same risks of causing or suffering vehicular death as do reckless or drunk drivers undiscriminating actuarials disregard and obscure the role of personal responsibility and choice just as they disregard and obscure the role of socio economic criminological and other risk relevant factors in firearm related death this is why we resent insurance premiums and actuarial consigment to risk pools whose norms disregard our individualities fortunately nothing can consign us to the nejm risk pool but our own lack of choice or responsibility in the matter suicide accounts for of the deaths by gun in the home in the nejm study as against the total deaths by gun in king county including those outside the home in house suicides are of the total death toll which is closer to the roughly proportion found by other studies suicide is a social problem of a very different order from homicide or accidents the implication of the nejm study is that these suicides might not occur without readily available guns it is true that attempted suicide by gun is likely to succeed it is not obviously true that the absence of a gun would prevent any or all of these suicides this is widely assumed or alleged but the preponderance of research on guns and suicide actually shows otherwise that this is wishful thinking in all but a few truly impulsive cases see bruce l danto et al the human side of homicide columbia university press charles rich et al guns and suicide american journal of psychiatry march if suicides were removed from the dividend of the nejm study s risk equation the times stat would deflate to six the inclusion of suicides in the nejm risk equation like the causes durability or interdiction of suicidal intent itself is a profoundly debatable matter quotations of the nejm study totally disregard this issue citations of the nejm study also mislead regarding the estimable rate of justifiable and excusable homicide most measures like the nejm homicide rate are based on the immediate disposition of cases but many homicides initially ruled criminal are appealed and later ruled self defense in the literature on battered women immediate case dispositions are notorious for under representing the rate of justifiable or excusable homicide time s january cover story on women fighting back reported one study s finding that of women who appeal have their murder convictions thrown out time s july cover story on a week of gun deaths reported of the domestic cases as shootings by abuse victims but only of the homicides were reported as self defense in a may update time reported that of the homicides had eventually been ruled self defense in time s sample the originally reported rate of self defense was in error by a factor of four the possibility of such error is not acknowledged by promulgators of the nejm statistic while both the dividend and the product of the nejm risk equation are arguably inflated the divisor is unconscionably misleading the divisor of this equation counts only aggressors who are killed not aggressors who are successfully thwarted without being killed or even shot at the utility of armed self defense is the other side of the coin from the harms done with guns in homes what kind of moral idiocy is it to measure this utility only in terms of killings do we measure the utility of our police solely in terms of felons killed as opposed to the many many more who are otherwise foiled apprehended or deterred should we not celebrate let alone count those cases where no human life is lost as successful armed defenses the question posed to media that cite the nejm scare stat is this why neglect the compendious research on successful armed defense notably by criminologist gary kleck point blank guns and violence in america aldine de gruyter kleck s estimations of the rate and risk of defensive firearm use are based on victimization surveys as well as other studies the rate is high about one million a year and the risk is good gun defenders fare better than anyone either those who resort to other forms of resistance or those who do not resist dividing one million gun defenses a year by annual gun deaths from self defense homicides suicides and accidents yields thus we can construct a much more favorable statistic than the nejm scare stat a gun is times more likely to be used to defend against assault or other crime than to kill anybody of course kleck s critics belittle the dividend of this calculation what is good news for gun defenders is bad news for gun control we should indeed question the basis and method of kleck s high estimation of defensive firearm use as i have questioned the nejm statistic clearly the issue of how to manage mortal risks is not settled by uncritical citation of statistics one thing troubles me still we can hardly escape the unquestioned nejm scare stat in our media but we hardly ever find kleck s good work mentioned even critically larry cipriani l v cipriani att com
