Any study proving that Kellerma(n) & Reay study on gun is BS ?

[Shung]

I have a friend who studies laws in Geneva University and in a course about criminology, the professor is constantly using "Kellerma(n) & Reay, The New England Journal of Medicine 314, 1986, " study to advance the fact that guns are pure EVIL and that they "create" violence in the USA..

here are the notes taken by my friend (woman) in the last lesson :

"When a burglar in the USA goes to into somebody's house to rob him, he suppose that the homehowner is armed, so he armed himself as well. When he is inside the house and caught by the homeowner, he will use his gun. That is why burglary are less common in the USA because they often end in murder and homicide.

That is why in the USA the stats about home burglary are higher than in Switzerland.
For 1 use of a gun in a legit self defense situation, there is : 1.3 accidental death (child playing with a gun for ex), 4.6 homicides : stolen gun, or gun used in an abusive way by it's owner. And 37 suicides.
For 43 gun use, there is one self defense use, 1.3 accident, 4.6 homicides, and 37 suicides.
Getting a gun for self defense will provide a reason for the criminal to use violence.
Banning guns allows to reduce or prevent the criminal to commit crimes with these tools, and so reduce the number of crimes with these tools"

Now, I totally understand that the logic up there is totaly flawed and partial, and I don't need anything to understand that.. The simple facts that the guy think that a gun MUST be fired to be usefull in a self defense situation (and thus not considering the thousand of times guns are used succesfully to save a life without being fire, because they are statisically not repertoried) proove that he doesnt know what he is talking about.

Now, the professor told my friend (who is not anti gun at all, and an avid shooter) that if she could proove, as she told him, that this study is BS, he would change his mind and his lessons at University..

The main counter argument he has opposed to my friend, who prooved him a couple of times that he was wrong, was that all the other studies were made by the NRA or other gun lobby groups..


What i would like to get from you, is a couple of quite impartial sources that would proove that the main article he is basing he lessons on, is biased and not true...

Have you something for me that I could use ? i remember having read many times in here that this study had been proven wrong and biased, but I'd like to find sources that proove it.

Thanks a lot, and sorry for my poor english. i wrote this in 5 minutes translating the notes as quickly as I could.

 

[Mike J]

You might find this article useful http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
Another site that you might be useful to you is www.guncite.com/ everything there is footnoted studies used referenced etc.

 

[ganymede]

There was a recent study conducted by the National Acadamy of Sciences (nuetral organization) I dont remember what the name of the study was but they looked at all the guns bans that hae been inacted by the US and they could not find one instance that showed a causal relationship between a gun ban and a reduction in crime.

If you find a peer reiew on the kellerman study that refutes it i would be interested to know about it. that study is the one most often brought up when i argue with doctors/psychologists about guns, and i'd like to be able to show something that proes it wrong.

Here are the somewhat weak arguments i use.

1. as you mentioned, no study can take into account the ammount of times a gun is used to protect life wihout being fired.

2. In the 20th centry it is estimated that 250 million people were murdered......
--by there own goernment. a human being is 100's of times more likely to be killed by their own goernment then they are to be killed by a burgler (let alone other peoples goernments.) We don't hae the second amendment to protect ourseles from robers, we hae it to protect ourseles from foregn inasion and from goernment tyrany.

It may sound silly to most people, the idea that one day Americians might hae to defend agianst a tyranical goermnet, but politcal winds can and do change, superpowers do collapse and power does corrupt.

Guess when the last time a foriegn goernment inaded and occupied a US city was? 1812 as far as i know, and that didn't last ery long. Anyone who has eer thought of inading the US (or switzerland for that matter) has had to think about the fact that many of the citizens will be armed. And we know from painful experience how hard it is to occupy a country whos citizens are capable of defending themseles.

so statisticly, in the extremly long run, a gun is much more likely to be used as a deterent to a goernment, foriegn or domestic, then it is to be used agianst a criminal, and for that reason alone, we should all be armed

Forgive me for saying this, but Micheal Moore made an interesting point in the moie "bowling for columbine" Moore points out that the untied states has about 10,000 gun deaths a year (not counting suicides) Many people might attribute that to the fact that there are so many guns in the US, but Moore points out that canada has just as many guns per capita as the US, and yet they hae a fraction of the gun deaths. he asks a lot of people why that is. and he gets answers ranging from our bloody past, to computer games. I would surmise that we kill each other with guns so much because we're Americians and we're F------ crazy. and if we didnt hae guns we would use knies. if they banned knies we would beat each other to death with our bear hands.

also as a side note, i gather that your friend lives in switzerland. I could be wrong but i was under the impression that the swiss government arms its citizens with military weapons as deterant to invasion. If that's true, how does your freind explain why people in switzerland dont shoot each other as much if guns are what causes that?

and lastly there is one statistic in that report i know is completly false. it says that for eery legitamte shooting 1.3 children die accidently from a gun. but according to the CDC only about 55 children 15 or under accidently kill themseles with guns each year, so according to that there only 40 or so legitamate shootings a year in the US? that can't be true. i read about more then that in my NRA magazine.

here is the source for my statistic http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf

sorry for spelling, if you didnt figure it out, i need a new keyboard

 

[Librarian]

One item:

The source of the 43-to-1 ratio is a study of firearm deaths in Seattle homes, conducted by doctors Arthur L. Kellermann and Donald T. Reay ("Protection or Peril?: An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home," New England Journal of Medicine, 1986). Kellerman and Reay totaled up the numbers of firearms murders, suicides, and fatal accidents, and then compared that number to the number of firearm deaths that were classified as justifiable homicides. The ratio of murder, suicide, and accidental death to the justifiable homicides was 43 to 1.

(David Kopel, 2001)

Kellerman uses as his figure of merit gun DEATHS, without considering that guns could be used defensively, legally with a result that was NOT death. That in itself is a fundamental error.

And that professor is reasoning from a biased perspective: it's important to evaluate a study by what it actually says, not merely its origins.

Kellerman himself should not be accepted as without an 'agenda'; if the professor is sympathetic to Kellerman's views, that's fine (if, IMHO, mistaken), but to reject/accept something from the NRA or the VPC or the Brady Campaign without examining the actual study is rather un-scientific.

Edgar Suter's paper "Guns in the Medical Literature -- A Failure of Peer Review" is the standard refutation of Kellerman's "43 times".

 

[ganymede]

In seatle homes? are you kidding me? they picked the city that has the highest suicide rate in the country to base their study on? how convenient. how about i make study that proes that guns can stop all crime by picking a small city in nebraska that hasnt had a felony commited in the entire towns history. does your friends professor know that it rain over 200 days a year in the city they did this survey in?

 

[ganymede]

OH and another thing. I'm sure none of "37 suicides" would have killed themseles if they didn't hae a gun.

 

[Shung]

also as a side note, i gather that your friend lives in switzerland. I could be wrong but i was under the impression that the swiss government arms its citizens with military weapons as deterant to invasion. If that's true, how does your freind explain why people in switzerland dont shoot each other as much if guns are what causes that?

we both live in Switzerland, and we both are shooters and gun owners. I am pretty confortable with guns statistics and arguing with people about them (and proove them that they are mostly wrong), but my friend asked me if I knew precise articles or sources that would proove the kellerman study to be totally flawed. Because I have read about it many times on this forum, I knew it was, but I only needed official writings that proove it. i've got some already, and your help is much appreciated.

We must face that professor with reality. he told that if he saw that Kellerman study was wrong, he would change his mind, and what he teaches.. I don't really believe he will since he seem to be quite "anti" , and friend with the most "anti" professor of Switzerland (Prof Killias), but still it would be very fun to proove him in public by A+B that what he has been telling was based on a totally irrational document..

 

[NukemJim]

You want it, you got it.

First from the National Academy of Sciences. http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=2

Empirical research on firearms and violence has resulted in important findings that can inform policy decisions. In particular, a wealth of descriptive information exists about the prevalence of firearm-related injuries and deaths, about firearms markets, and about the relationships between rates of gun ownership and violence. Research has found, for example, that higher rates of household firearms ownership are associated with higher rates of gun suicide, that illegal diversions from legitimate commerce are important sources of crime guns and guns used in suicide, that firearms are used defensively many times per day, and that some types of targeted police interventions may effectively lower gun crime and violence. This information is a vital starting point for any constructive dialogue about how to address the problem of firearms and violence.

While much has been learned, much remains to be done, and this report necessarily focuses on the important unknowns in this field of study. The committee found that answers to some of the most pressing questions cannot be addressed with existing data and research methods, however well designed. For example, despite a large body of research, the committee found no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws decreases or increases violent crime, and there is almost no empirical evidence that the more than 80 prevention programs focused on gun-related violence have had any effect on children’s behavior, knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs about firearms. The committee found that the data available on these questions are too weak to support unambiguous conclusions or strong policy statements.

Underlining by NukemJim

And then from the Center for Disease Control http://www.cdc.gov/mmwR/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

During 2000--2002, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (the Task Force), an independent nonfederal task force, conducted a systematic review of scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of firearms laws in preventing violence, including violent crimes, suicide, and unintentional injury. The following laws were evaluated: bans on specified firearms or ammunition, restrictions on firearm acquisition, waiting periods for firearm acquisition, firearm registration and licensing of firearm owners, "shall issue" concealed weapon carry laws, child access prevention laws, zero tolerance laws for firearms in schools, and combinations of firearms laws. The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes.

Underlining by NukemJim

If you read the studies, which are a scientific review of other studies you will find that they trash Kellerlman.

However, I must admit I stopped playing the statistics game a number of years ago. I defer to someone far more eloquent than I, THR own John Ross.

from http://web.archive.org/web/20070115025334/www.john-ross.net/mistakes.htm

THEY SAY: “If we pass this License-To-Carry law, it will be like the Wild West, with shootouts all the time for fender-benders, in bars, etc. We need to keep guns off the streets. If doing so saves just one life, it will be worth it.”

WE SAY: “Studies have shown blah blah blah” (FLAW: You have implied that if studies showed License-To-Carry laws equaled more heat-of-passion shootings, Right-To-Carry should be illegal.)

WE SHOULD SAY: “Although no state has experienced what you are describing, that’s not important. What is important is our freedom. If saving lives is more important than the Constitution, why don’t we throw out the Fifth Amendment? We have the technology to administer an annual truth serum session to the entire population. We’d catch the criminals and mistaken arrest would be a thing of the past. How does that sound?”

Best wishes

NukemJim

 

[Echo9]

I could say more, but off the top of my head:

"Getting a gun for self defense will provide a reason for the criminal to use violence."

If that were true, there would be very few armed criminals in D.C or Chicago. And even places like New Jersey and NYC.

Also, "For 1 use of a gun in a legit self defense situation, there is : 1.3 accidental death (child playing with a gun for ex)..."

I'm not sure what statistic backs up the "1.3 accidental death" figure, but some of those studies are horrible skewed. One, for example, considers people up to 16 (I think) "children." A bit misleading. And of course there are varying definitions of "legit self defense." The same study I just mentioned only called a situation "legitimate self-defense" if the intruder was actually shot and killed.

 

[Trebor]

Tag for later use.

 

[JohnKSa]

Kellerman's stuff has been pretty well cut to ribbons.

He BADLY under-reported self-defense gun uses by counting ONLY the situations where the attacker was actually killed. That is the LEAST likely outcome of a self-defense gun use. Over 90% of self-defense gun uses do not even involve an injury to the attacker (in something like 80% the gun isn't even discharged) and around 80% of the remaining self-defense uses involving handguns do not result in the death of the attacker. By choosing to count only self-defense gun where the attacker was killed he ignored 94% to 98% of actual self-defense gun uses.

He badly over-reported the negative effects by including suicides although there is no data to suggest that suicide rates decrease in the absence of firearms.

In addition, there is the implication that ALL of the homicides in the study would have gone away if the guns hadn't been present. It's possible that the number would have been reduced, but even that is speculation--people who want to kill someone are not automatically prevented from doing so by the absence of firearms.

The bottom line is that anyone quoting Kellerman these days is doing so because they intend to mislead and/or because they haven't made even the least effort to verify his figures.

There are a number of resources in the following link that may be helpful.
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgaga.html

 

[svtruth]

A thought experiment

Gun violence in major US cities is predominantly Black on Black. This disproportionality demonstrates that the guns per se do not cause the violence. It is likely that race does not either, but is just a proxy for socioeconomic status, ie poverty.
Good luck.

 

[Glass Heart]

Hi everyone,



I’m the « avid shooter » female friend of Shung who has asked him for some help to prove that Kellerman & al.’s study is BS… flawed to be polite.

First of all, new on this forum and I apologize for my English. I make many mistakes, sorry for that, hope it’ll be understandable anyway…

Shung, thank you again for posting my request here, as I can see it was a great idea, you guys are providing me great help, thank you so much !


My next criminology lesson is on Friday. Gives me some time to read some more studies and get arguments Then, I’ll try again to prove my teacher that the study he presented in front of 400 students is BS. I already had a… discussion with him twice ‘bout it, but still gonna try again. He’ll understand how stubborn I can be



As already said, when I told him that most of the studies I read showed on the contrary the protective effect of owning guns on criminality, his answer was that it’s only because I read it on NRA, pro-gun web pages, or on Pro-TELL pages (which is kinda our “Swiss NRA”). But that’s too easy as an answer…

Anyway, I think that even if a study is made by “pro-guns”, as long as it explains clearly and scientifically HOW and WHY Kellerman’s study is flawed, he would have to believe it. I already found some articles that only says that Kellerman is wrong, but it didn’t said precisely how.
Of course, if I can find a study made by a more “neutral” organization, it would be more credible for him I guess!

Even if he didn’t write any anti-guns studies himself, it seemed pretty clear that he’s against guns. During our ‘debate’, he told me a little bit scandalized, how accessible the guns are in the US, quoting Michael Moore's movie… gosh what a reference…Anyway, I spare you the details.



In fact, I already showed my professor one of the first studies that I found (thanks google) trying to find the original Kellerman’s:
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/papers-shade/StatisticalMisgivingsandLies.PDF
Quoting the third paragraph one the 10th page :

On a final note… Kellerman noted in 1986 that gun ownership was “ 43 times" more likely to result in the homeowners’ death. In 1993 when he published a similar paper, that number fell to 2.7 times more likely to result in the homeowners death. Which are we to believe? Or perhaps we should believe neither. In 1994 (after the publication of both papers), Kellerman was taped giving a presentation at a seminar. This time he states on the tape that a person is 18 times more likely to be murdered if they keep a gun in the home! In the audience was Janet Reno who was quite fond of quoting Kellerman when speaking about gun control in her capacity as Attorney General during the Clinton years.6

But he wouldn’t believe it just like this, and asked me for a more reliable source : if I could find the articles/studies where Kellerman himself changes his “43” or “37” famous number, to the “2.7” or “18”, maybe he would believe it.
Uh now I remember, my teacher told me “maybe it’s just a comma mistake between “2.7” and “18”.”…

Anyway...

Again, thank you for the help you’re providing me.
I read carefully every one of your answers, and write down the references and sources that you give me.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I think the professor has his definitions wrong.

Burglars enter unoccupied dwellings to steal property.

Home invaders enter occupied dwellings to rob from people.

The Wright & Rossi study based on the NIJ felon survey showed that burglars avoid occupied dwellings, and home invasion robberies are low in the US compared to the UK.

As far as Kellerman's figures go,

The self defense figure that folks like Kellerman use is the FBI UCR table of killing of a felon during commission of a felony by a citizen as adjudicated by police report.

The FBI UCR states their figure does not reflect eventual adjudication by medical examiner, coroner, district attorney, grand jury, trial jury, trial judge or appellate court.

I have read of shooting homicides by citizens and by police in my home county adjudicated as justifiable by the district attorney, grand jury or trial jury, never by police report.

Prof. Marvin Wolfgang (who hated guns) wrote in a study of homicide that when and where such stats were kept, tracing voluntary manslaughter (homicide) through the judicial system, 20% to 30% of homicides were eventually adjudicated as self-defense. Gary Kleck has claimed that the FBI UCR stat of ~170 justifiable homicides needs to be multiplied by seven.

So Kellerman starts with the minimum justifiable homicide stat of ~170 when the true number may be 1,000 to 3,000, ignores the four to eight woundings per homicide, ignores maybe ten times that number of warning shots and misses, and the ten to twenty times the shooting number of DGUs that are just chase-offs with no shots fired.

My sister was assaulted by a home invader who was chased off by her producing a .357, no shots fired, no dead invader, so I guess it never happened as far as Kellerman or Donohue would be concerned.

If the measure of self-defense is wrong--justifiable homicide adjudicated by police report--then any stat derived from that is wrong.

 

[Librarian]

I see this thread is also beginning to include Defensive Gun Use (DGU) as a response to Kellerman's errors; I mentioned it myself.

Primary researchers here are Gary Kleck/Mark Gertz on the 'yes it happens a lot' side, and Phillip Cook/Jens Ludwig on the 'no it does not' side.

Kleck is a professor at Florida State University. The 'Select Publications' list on his page gives some pointers. Gertz is also a professor at FSU.

Ludwig is at the University of Chicago. Cook is at Duke University.

You can see some of the Cook/Ludwig publications here, and others on their respective faculty web pages.

Tom Smith has a paper that summarizes the research as of 1997. Another interesting piece is here.

 

[Mike J]

Glass Heart-Welcome to The High Road. I hope our responses are helpful to you. Of course I am sure you realize there are some people that don't let inconvenient things like facts get in the way of their conclusions.

 

[ganymede]

"I think the professor has his definitions wrong."

important to keep in mind, we're reading transciptions, from memory of a conversation in swiss.

 

[ganymede]

"One, for example, considers people up to 16 (I think) "children." "

ive read a study that considered people up to 19 "children" so the 19 year old gang banger with mulitple arrests that commited suicide by cop, thats the accidental death of a child, according to some of these studies

 

[gunnutery]

Other posters seem more informed on the study, but I have not the time to read it or go through stats. I know this will sound unscientific and biased, but here's my take on it.

An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home," New England Journal of Medicine, 1986

There are three problems in the above title alone. Note the bold letters. First problem: New England, not a lot of gun loving authority figures out there. Second: Journal of Medicine, there has been an anti-gun agenda brewing in medicine for quite a while. Third: 1986, is that the best study they can tout? 1986??!!

 

[Shung]

important to keep in mind, we're reading transciptions, from memory of a conversation in swiss

there is no such thing as swiss language.. It was in french (we have 4 laguages here. German, French, Italian, Romanche)

But you are right about your comment. The main ideas are correct, but specific definitions might not be exactly transcripted.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Side bar on DGU

Kleck and Gertz (NSDS survey) said it happened 2.5 million times a year.

Cook and Ludwig (NCVS survey) said it happened 108,000 timnes a year.

Cook and Ludwig (NSPOF survey) said it happened 23 million times a year, no, let's revise that down to 4.7 million times a year.

Kleck and Gertz did their own survey.

Cook and Ludwig do reports on surveys conducted by others.

Given that Prof. Marvin "I hate guns" Wolfgang paid tribute to Kleck & Gertz as offering convincing proof of a position he had opposed, Kleck & Gertz is worth a look or two.

Kleck originally accepted the traditional academic anti-gun position until his research convinced him otherwise. There's a list of those: Gary Kleck, Hans Toch, John Lott, David Mustard, James Wright and Peter Rossi.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

There was a newspaper reviewer who remarked that a book had been translated into Argentinian and Australian. If Argentinian and Australian are languages, then Swiss must be a language too. The newspapers are the fountain of truth, no?

ADDED:
I hate to hijack the thread but I followed the link to Tom Smith:

Another questionable (NSDS) finding, and one echoed by the NSPOF, is that a high proportion of DGUs are carried out by women. K-G find that 46.3% of defenders are women and the NSPOF finds that 41.2% are women. Given that the best estimate is that only 20-21% of gun owners are women, this means that women are twice as likely to use a gun defensively as one would expect.

OK, I know four DGUs involving female family members. Two used guns they owned. One used a gun owned by her employer. One used a gun owned by her boyfriend. Four female defenders and two female gun owners, precisely Tom Smith's questionable ratio. A woman does not have to own a gun to have access to a gun for self defense. I guess Tom did not expect that, but it does not take a genius to realize that the percentage of households owning guns is greater than the percentage of individuals owning guns. Women sharing a household with a gun owner have access to a gun for defense without owning a gun. Duh.