Long post...rebuttals in front, poll at the end
Wow, I stayed away from the computer all weekend and missed all the interesting stuff! Well, not to flog a dead thread, but a few points, and also a general question I'd love folks to chime in on...
jfh, ants, etc...thanks for the high-minded discourse on this subject. This is "The High Road", after all, and I appreciate the genuine debate without diatribe.
TRGRHPY, you are correct...and also incorrect. The study did use "homicides", not specifically murders. Both the study and the analysis I referenced used the terms semi-interchangeably, but you're right, there is clearly a legal distinction. That being said, these were primarily "murders". The study found 3.6% of the 420 cases were "justifiable homicides" according to the police. Others may have in fact been self-defense in the eyes of the killer, but legally they did not pass muster. Most of these crimes appear to have been 2nd Degree Murder, as far as I can tell. Dirtpile, same info in response to your comment about murders vs. defensive shootings.
Pizzagunner...when you take all the cross-variances into account, it does start to look, not like causation necessarily, but like a contributing factor. The "2.7 times" figure is specific to how having a gun in the home relates to death from gun-violence. Is it possible that the relationship is purely coincidental? Sure. But given the range of questions asked and the common factors controlled for, the relationship seems strong enough to give me pause.
ants...there is some information about who died that led the researchers to their conclusions. If you look at the study, under "Relationship of Offender to Victim", 31% were a "Friend or acquaintance", 17% were a spouse, 14% were an "Intimate acquaintance", 10% were a "First-degree relative"...all told only about 22% were either "Stranger" [3.6%], "Other"[1.4%], or "Unidentified" by the police report [17.4%]. That's of the Offender to the Victim. These are not largely defense against home burglary shootings (unless, of course, most of these people were in fact burglarizing their relatives and friends...a point I'd concede is possible, though not likely across the board).
Also, the issues of demographics (e.g. "criminals living alone", etc.) were controlled for...that is, for every one of the 388 complete case studies there was a control household, that lived in the same neighborhood, in the same conditions, of the same race and criminal history, etc., but where a gun homicide had not been committed. If it were these other factors that resulted in the homicide, the control group should have accounted for it.
The contraints that should be recognized for this study are the number of variables surveyed and cross referrenced (31 variables...pretty deep, actually, but there could always be more variable that come into play that we're not looking at), and the number of cases studied (a sample of around 400).
I think people dislike this study so much because there are those who see it as evidence for gun control legislation. I don't see it that way. To me it speaks to our need for firearms education (a big goal of the NRA, by the way), which is what my original post was all about.
To that point (if you've made it this far), I'd love to hear from any of you who have children (or were exposed to guns as children), what methods have been most effective for you in "demystifying" guns for your kids, teaching them, etc. Also, at what age and with what caliber do you think kids should start actually firing a gun if they have an interest? I was not personally raised in a household with firearms, but now have three small children in my own home.
Maybe this would be a good poll question?
