Do you remember Dr. A.L. Kellerman's 1986 study, "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-releated Deaths in the Home" (Registration Required), published in the New England Journal of Medicine? In it, Dr. Kellerman stated categorically that you are "43 times more likely" to be injured or killed if there is a firearm in your home.
A couple of days ago the Washington Post published an article by Kellerman in which he states:
More than 20 years ago, I conducted a study of firearm-related deaths in homes in Seattle and surrounding King County, Washington. Over the study's seven-year interval, more than half of all fatal shootings in the county took place in the home where the firearm involved was kept. Just nine of those shootings were legally justifiable homicides or acts of self-defense; guns kept in homes were also involved in 12 accidental deaths, 41 criminal homicides and a shocking 333 suicides. A subsequent study conducted in three U.S. cities found that guns kept in the home were 12 times more likely to be involved in the death or injury of a member of the household than in the killing or wounding of a bad guy in self-defense.The original Washington study's results are not cited here. That's not surprising, in that the study has been repudiated for the past 20 years because of the demographic it represents, the phrasing of the questions, the definitions of the terms, and the way the results were interpreted.
A few randomly chosen criticism are available here, here, and here.
(For example, the study does not consider whether the gun in the home was an actual factor, as in whether the gun was used or was locked up in a closet. Also, the study was taken in a "high-crime" neighborhood, and the study did not consider incidents in which a gun was used to deter an attacker without injury to either party, or where only the attacker was wounded but not killed.)
Now Kellerman has changed his point-score, but apparently he has not changed his study methodology.
However, he has made an effort to refute criticisms by inventing his own unsupported argument:
In the real world, Scalia's scenario -- an armed assailant breaks into your home, and you shoot or scare away the bad guy with your handy handgun -- happens pretty infrequently. Statistically speaking, these rare success stories are dwarfed by tragedies.We don't know where he got that impression. John R. Lott's impressive study, published in book form as "More Guns, Less Crime; Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws" (University of Chicago Press, 2000), specifically looked at the deterent effect of firearms ownership ... which question Kellerman 'studiously' avoided.
And more specifically, Dave Kopel (in a 2001 National Review Online article) presciently refuted that article:
Now, how about the self-defense homicides, which Kellermann and Reay found to be so rare? Well, the reason that they found such a low total was that they excluded many cases of lawful self-defense. Kellermann and Reay did not count in the self-defense total of any of the cases where a person who had shot an attacker was acquitted on grounds of self-defense, or cases where a conviction was reversed on appeal on grounds related to self-defense. Yet 40% of women who appeal their murder convictions have the conviction reversed on appeal. ("Fighting Back," Time, Jan. 18, 1993.)Take that, East Coast Liberal Elitist Lying Anti-Gun Scholars!
(H/T Say Uncle, and Days Of Our Trailers, via Ninth Stage)
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