From: chrisb@wang.com (Chris Bennet)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: "guns used more on owners than on burglars"
Date: 4 Sep 92 14:14:59 GMT
Organization: Wang Labs, Lowell MA, USA

tpehrson@javelin.sim.es.com (tim clinkenpeel) writes:

>recently i was having a gun debate with my brother-in-law; i want to acquire
>one for fun/protection and he throws the old "guns are used more on their
>owners than on assailants" line at me.  from previous discussions on usenet, i
>was led to believe that this was a bogus result of a flawed, outdated study.
>could someone please offer some insight into this topic, preferrably in the
>form of citing references and/or statistics?

I believe the basis for this story was an article published some time ago
in the "New England Journal of Medicine".  I have a photocopy of a gun
magazine article [Second Amendment Report] the refers to it but do not know
the date or the gun magazine.  Here are the major points:

The study was of King County, Washington gun death statistics and the
author was Dr. Arthur L. Kellerman.  His conclusion: "Our research
suggests that guns kept in peoples' homes are far more often involved
in the death of someone living in that home than they are used...in
self defense of for self protection."

Kellerman and Donald Reay, King County medical examiner,
studied the records of of all gunshot deaths from 1978 to 1983 
in the county.  Of 743 gunshot deaths, they found 473 took place in the
home, 398 of those in the home where the firearm was kept.

Of the 398 gunshot deaths that involved a firearm kep in the home, 333
were suicides, 12 were the result of accidents and 41 were classified
as criminal homicides.  3 of the deaths were listed as unclassifiable.
2 intruders were killed trying to enter a home.

Kellerman noted that 36 of the 58 non-suicide deaths were residents of
the home in which the gun was kept and 24 were friends or acquaintances.

The flaws:
Non-lethal use was ommited.  Alan M. Gottleib, author of the article
said "The study left out the ninety percent of the reported incidents
in which home owners successfully defended themselves or their homes
with guns, in which no deaths occured."

As a "death only" study it cannot tell researchers anything about the
degree of danger posed by guns.  Raw facts are only as useful as their
comparison with other data.  At best the death-only study merely reveals
the different ways people use guns to cause death.  This is as useful
as discovering the way people use knitting needles to cause death.

The study did not include deaths by other causes for comparison.
(If I remember correctly, guns are like 20 on the list of home dangers -
behind kitchen tables and falls.)


What I'd like to add:

If you saw a study that said automobiles are more likely to be involved
in the death of their owner could you conclude _anything_ from that ?
(I'm sure cars _are _ more likely to be involved in the death of the owner.)

If you saw a study that said that house door locks were more likely to lock
the owner out their house than someone they didn't know, would you 
remove the locks from your house ?

The National Safety Council figures (available from 1979 on) show that handgun
accidents kill 231 people of all ages yearly.  Far short of "a child is
killed every day" as some sources (Handgun Control Inc) will have you
believe.  For children under 15 the average is 50-55 deaths yearly. For
children under 5 the figure is 34 deaths per year.  Compare that to
380 deaths from swimming pool drownings (again under 5yrs old).

 Chris