Reply #44: 43 number is bad science. Research was flawed. [View All]

[Tannim]

The premise that guns are 43 more likely to cause a death to the homeowner of family is flawed. See text from link below.

http://www.ct71st.com/GunControl/Myth2.htm

This "fact" is simply wrong. Guns of any type, including handguns, do not make it 43 times more likely you or your family will be injured. In fact, the opposite is true. Guns make us all safer. Here's why:

This so-called study was conducted by Arthur L. Kellermann, an anti-self defense lobbyist with an axe to grind. The "study" was designed to produce a pre-determined result. The "study" is pure "junk science."

A flawed study: At the end of his report, Kellermann acknowledged his study did "not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm." He also admitted his study did not look at situations in which intruders "purposely avoided a home known to be armed."

In other words, Kellermann ignored the vast majority of situations in which legally armed citizens frightened away intruders simply by displaying a firearm! What Kellermann did was like conducting a study on the percentage of drunk drivers on the road by counting the number of drunks locked up in jail at 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Obviously, you would incorrectly think that everyone on the road was drunk.

Further, Kellermann also acknowledged that of the 43 deaths for every intruder killed, 37 were suicides. This is significant since ample research, and the situation in Japan, shows that merely removing firearms from a society does not reduce the suicide rate..

The facts: By carefully examining facts and statistics from the Department of Justice, the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies, Prof. Gary Kleck from the School of Criminology, Florida State University, discovered Americans use firearms to prevent crimes approximately 1 to 1.5 million times per year. These are the very cases Kellermann chose to ignore. Had Kellermann considered these facts, he would have had to conclude a firearm in the home makes a family safer.

More importantly, Prof. Kleck also discovered that robbery victims who defended themselves with a gun suffered lower rates of injury than did those who resisted without a gun, or even those who did not resist at all and instead complied with the violent criminal's demands. In short, Prof. Kleck concluded the private ownership of firearms deters criminal behavior.