Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Pompous WaPo Anti-Gun Nut With An Agenda

Gun Safety in Homes


Every now and then we see the mainstream media publish the same tired platitudes that "guns are bad". These articles are presented with no attempt to provide a balanced presentation of the issues, no citation of the studies which are provided in an attempt to support the author's obvious bias, and no consideration of the reason for firearms ownership.

Such is the case in an online discussion of "Gun Safety In The Home" ; we thank Publicola for bringing it to our attention.

Today (May 30, 2006), the Washington Post provided its own private Doctor Phil at 2pm to answer online questions about "Gun Safety In The Home". His qualifications: he's a Harvard Professor. In fact, he's "associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and co-author of a new study on gun safety in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine."

More on that later. *

The exercise fielded exactly 7 questions, all of which were apparently submitted by people in the immediate Washington, DC area (6) and Chicago (1) ... metropolitan areas which, counter to the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, refuse to allow private ownership of firearms.

If questions were submitted from outside the Beltway/ChiTown area, they weren't included in the published article.

Here's a sample of the questions, and the answers, provided for your amusement and edification:

Rockville, Md.: Do you have any references to the studies supporting the notion that teaching kids about safety does not work? I find it hard to believe that teaching safety does not have some positive impact.

Matthew Miller: A great reference -- and a sobering one -- is Hardy behavior oriented approaches to reducing youth gun violence. It can be found at www.futureofchilden.org

Here are a few examples:

Currently, some 10 percent of elementary school teachers provide some firearm safety education. The most popular curriculum is the National Rifle Association's Eddie Eagle program (Price et al., 2005). Unfortunately, recent evaluations find that while the Eddie Eagle program may teach children aged 4-7 to verbalize safety messages, these messages do not lead to actual behavior change (Howard 2004; Himle et al 2004; Gatheridge et al 2004). In one study, boys aged 9-15 were strongly warned not to touch guns. However, when left alone with a gun, about a quarter touched and played with it. Almost all then denied doing so when they were asked. None of the boys touched any other forbidden item after being warned against doing so. "The results of the current study indicate that guns hold a unique allure and cast further doubt on the ability of gun admonitions to keep children safe around guns" (Hardy 2003, 352).

Note: www.futureofchilden.org is a broken link. The reference simply does not exist.

The reference to "(Price et al., 2005)" is not linked at all. No attempt has been made to provide an explanation or reference to the cited 'study', and the Washington Post has made no effort to provide contributory references.

The same is true ofthe profligrate citations "(Howard 2004; Himle et al 2004; Gatheridge et al 2004).", which are impossible to verify.

It would appear that the citations were invented on the spur of the moment to suggest scientific studies are available to support an opinion which is not, in fact, supportable.

In other words: the author is making it up as he types.

I can do that, because I'm just a pajama-clad blogger and nobody expects more of me. HE can't do that, because he presents himself as an authority.

That is to say, while I may lie with impunity, I don't; I present references to support my claims.
While he may lie with authority, he is unable to providing supporting documentary evidence.

Ergo: I could be a liar, but I'm not; he's unconvincing liar.

Here's another exchange from the original article:

Baltimore, Md.: Have you compiled statistics on how many times a gun has actually been used to protect/defend family members in their homes in recent years? Thank you.

Matthew Miller: I highly recommend David Hemenway's book "PRIVATE GUNS PUBLIC HEALTH" as a one-stop shopping source for clear and unbiased information about the costs and benefits of firearms in the U.S. Here are a few of the statistics Dr. Hemenway notes in his recent book:

Numbers of Uses: The National Research Council (2005) examined the scientific literature on self-defense gun use. They concluded that: "self-defense is an ambiguous term" (p.106), that whether one is a defender or a perpetrator may depend on perspective, and that "we do not know accurately how often armed self-defense occurs or even how precisely to define self-defense" (p. 13). The claim that there are 2.5 million self-defense gun uses each year received no support.

A teenager from Arizona, working with his father, provided a reality check on the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses. They examined all Phoenix area newspaper reports, supplemented by police and court records. Unsubstantiated findings from a Kleck-Gertz study would predict that the police should have known about 98 civilian defensive gun use killings, and 236 defensive gun use firings at criminals during the period studied. Although a homeowner successfully defending his family against a home invasion would provide a juicy news story, a careful investigation by the father-son team could find only two actual cases of self-defense gun use involving a killing or a firing at an assailant. These two incidents appeared to be escalating altercations, with innocent bystanders exposed to the gunfire (Denton & Fabricius 2004).

Is More Better? While there are undoubtedly virtuous incidents of self-defense gun use, there are too many stories of self-defense gone awry. "A five year old girl in Houston is dead after being mistaken for a burglar by her stepfather He shot when someone tried to open the door of the bedroom where he and his wife were sleeping" (NBC56.com, 8/16/04). "A teenager, who celebrated his 16th birthday by playing pranks in his neighborhood, was fatally shot by a neighbor who mistook him for a burglar (the teen) and an unidentified friend were ringing doorbells or knocking on doors and then running away" (St. Petersburg Times, 10/27/03). "A small girl [aged 2] remained in the hospital in critical condition Sunday from a gunshot wound inflicted by a man who had confronted a group of teenagers after one sent a football crashing through the window of his southwest Houston apartment (The man) rushed out, demanding to know who broke the window He took his hand out of his pocket and he had a gun. That's when everybody started running. Police said (the man) raised the pistol toward two of the fleeing juveniles and fired" (Houston Chronicle, 7/24/05).

Claims about the high frequency of self-defense gun use are also contradicted by the data. For example, for sexual assaults, only 1 victim in 1,119 total incidents reported attacking or threatening with a gun (15 used a non-gun weapon; 38 called the police or a guard; 120 attacked without a weapon; 161 ran away; 219 yelled; 343 struggled). In robberies, 1.2% of victims used a gun, whereas 3.8% called the police or guard, 12.7% ran away, 20.5% struggled. In confrontational burglaries, 2.7% of victims used a gun, 3.3% some other weapon, 6.3% ran away or hid, 10.9% struggled, 20.4% yelled or turned out the lights, and 20.1% called the police. In all confrontational crimes, 0.9% of victims reported using a gun, 1.7% a non-gun weapon, 7.2% called the police, 10.1% ran away, 13.8% struggled, and 29.3% did nothing (Hemenway 2005).

The NCVS data show that: (1) gun use in self-defense is very rare; (2) it is not clear whether resistance will or will not reduce the likelihood of injury; and (3) two of the most common forms of "resistance" also appear to be the most successful in terms of reducing the likelihood of injury-calling the police or running away (Hemenway 2005).

Hemmingway is "... an economist at the Harvard School of Public Health".

An economist? At Harvard? School of Public Health? And Milller is "associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center"? Sounds positiviley incestuous.

The book ( "PRIVATE GUNS PUBLIC HEALTH") actually exists. Amazon has two in stock, which it cannot sell. It also lists 32 available from other sellers, who can't find a buyer. Given that this book is rated #478,458 in Amazon Books, that's not surprising.

What is surprising is the review ... provided by "Phillip J. Cook, Ph. D" and copyright by the Massachusetts Medical Society. Their review included the following comments:

The canonical example for injury-control investigators is highway safety, in which the comprehensive approach propounded by Bill Haddon, a physician who served as the first director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration....
Haddon sought to direct the focus in highway safety away from improved driving and toward improved design of vehicles and roadways. For gun violence, the analogy is to focus less on the shooters and more on access to guns and their design. Of course, it is not obvious that an approach that has been successful in reducing highway crashes, which are mostly unintentional, will also be successful in curtailing the intentional acts (suicide and assault) that produce most gun injuries and deaths. If shooters were determined, resourceful people with clear and sustained deadly intent, then regulating guns would likely have little effect on the number of homicides and suicides; they would find a way. But in the real world, as Hemenway spells out, a large portion of serious intentional violence would be less deadly if guns were less readily available or less user-friendly. Furthermore, although gun "accidents" make up only a small fraction of the total gun injuries, they are common enough that the Consumer Product Safety Commission would surely give them high priority if it were not barred from doing so by federal law.

Another feature separates firearms from vehicles: the possibility of "virtuous use." The belief in the importance of giving civilians a means of self-defense has long been used as an argument for preserving the right to keep handguns in the home. In recent decades, that philosophy has fueled a successful effort to ease state restrictions on carrying concealed weapons in public. This campaign has made great use of the work of criminologist Gary Kleck, who concluded from his analysis of survey data that there are millions of virtuous self-defense uses of guns each year. Hemenway has done more than any other scholar in rebutting that absurd claim.
(Emphasis added)

The choice of words and phrases in this review suggests that the reviewer was not objective in his evaluation. Nobody else cared enough to comment, so we are resigned to accepting the single reviewer as either credible ... or not.

One more example, just to make a point:

Washington, D.C.: This topic is a sensitive one for me: When my brother was 8 years old, in the early 80s, he accidentally shot himself with a police revolver my father had borrowed from a friend. [snip]

...

[snip] Do you feel the penalties for negligent firearms control satisfactory? Would making it mandatory that a negligent parent would see jail help deal with the problem?

Matthew Miller: Parents in cases where a child accesses a gun are rarely charged, but I do not personally think that making it mandatory that a negligent parent would see jail is the best way to reduce accidents and suicide among our children.

[snip] One myth is that where guns are more prevalent killings are less likely -- the exact opposite is the case.

[snip]. Physicians should also be playing a more active role in educating parents about the medical risks involved in firearm ownership and the risk of various storage practices.

Again, the author makes claims about statistical evidence, but does not cite the sources.

Howerver, he does encourage "... [physicians to play ...] a more active role in educating parents about the medical risks involved in firearm ownership and the risk of various storage practices."

* We mentioned that we would discuss "The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine" (APAM) later. This is the time.

The Claremont Institute ("Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership") has said, in response t0 the tendency for some pediatricians to question and counsel patients about Gun Safety In The Home and APAM:

Some medical organizations have urged doctors to tell their patients about the dangers of guns. We all know that misusing guns can be dangerous, but the risks of guns have been blown way out of proportion by groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Even worse is the tendency of some medical organizations to inject their political views favoring gun control into patient education. That's simply unethical. (emphasis added)

The Claremont Institute has also suggested, in the article "DOCS GUN FOR A BAN":

Another slam at kids and guns appeared in the April 2004 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. "Gun Threats Against and Self-Defense Gun Use by California Adolescents" studied gun use among a group of Californians aged 12 through 17. Only 4% of them reported ever having been threatened with a gun. The earthshaking scientific contribution this article makes is that these 4% were boys who tended to threaten others and whose parents didn't know where they were after school. Did we need a yearlong Harvard study to tell us that? And what about the 96% who never had been threatened with a gun? Can we learn anything from good kids who stay out of trouble? The authors apparently think not. (emphasis added)

In fact, it is not only professionally unethical, but also perhaps unlawful, for physicians to suggests safety measures relating to firearms ownership and storage ... an area where they typically have no personal experience or professional training.

Only a personal opinion, which is presented under the guise of "I'm Your Doctor, I Know What's Right".

These articles clearly suggest that the authors of the "yearlong Harvard study (studies)" cleave more to an agenda than to well-considered scientific study.

Based on the unscientific agenda propounded in the root article, we tend to agree.

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