Is there a greater risk of dying from a gun shot if you live in a home with a gun? Very likely. Is there a greater risk of dying by drowning in the bath tub if you live in a home with a bath tub? Very likely. Is there a greater risk of dying from falling down stairs if you live in a home with stairs? Very likely. You get my drift. My question is this: SO WHAT?
You have no idea what percentage of the case group were criminals. We know that most male homicide victims are.
Eliminate the criminals from the equation. We know that risk of law abiding citizens getting murdered is much lower than the risk of those who live alone or those who rent from getting murdered, or dying in a car wreck. No, it wasn't gun ownership. It was a gun in the home, including guns brought into the home by someone to murder someone else. Tell us the actual risk to law abiding gun owners.
Do. You know what this sounds like? Denial People with long have not only murdered others but they have committed mass murder http://concealedcarrykillers.org/mass-shootings-committed-by-concealed-carry-killers/
"After controlling for these characteristics, we found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.4). Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8371731 So you have your answer. Notice it says "keeping a gun in the home". That does not mean an intruder brought the gun into the home.
Myth - a widely held but false belief or idea. So someone thinks they have "busted" a false belief. Wow!
Yeah. In the 15 years that CCW has been legal in CO they've named four shootings, two of which have nothing to do with CCW.
Are these all law abiding citizens keeping guns in the home? Is the risk higher or lower than driving in a car?
The study included individuals who had criminal records, and were engaged in criminal behavior. Domestic abuse, recreational narcotic substance use and abuse, standards under which a person cannot legally own a firearm, and yet they possessed them regardless in an illegal manner. This is the bias that is present in the discredited study by Arthur Kellerman.
Then what is being stated by yourself, is that statistics and data pertaining to the actions of known criminals is indicative and relevant to the actions of those who are not criminals? Of the cited incidents, only thirteen actually meet the definition of what amounts to a mass shooting, with others failing to meet the minimum standard recognized by the united states to be classified as such. That is approximately one incident per year, by someone who is claimed to be in possession of a concealed carry permit. A concealed carry permit is not indicative of any criminal action. The number of illegal actions committed by those that hold them are exceptionally rate, and statistically break down to approximately two crimes per state per year. Beyond such, the article includes cases where the individual in question was able to acquire a concealed carry permit in the state of New York, which possesses what are possibly the most stringent standards for issuance in the entire united states.
With the family member or intimate acquaintance already possessing a criminal record that would disqualify them from legal firearms ownership. Therefore the study by Arthur Kellerman is more accurately about the risk of living with a criminal in the same home. Because the criminal individual already resided within the home.
Even if there was unequivocally proof the a law abiding citizen ran some level of increased risk if being murdered if a legal gun was stored in the home, so what? This is a gun control forum, not a PSA forum. There is nothing gun control related in that statistic. Did the Kellermann study, or any of the others, reduce the risk of homicide by including any use of a gun in the home to defend the residents of the home?
"keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide" You seem to have a hard time understanding the word independently. The relationship found between keeping a gun and the increased risk of homicide was independent of other factors such as drug use and arrest records.
Would a study consisting of only law abiding citizens show the same risk? Would the quantified risk be measurable or material? Would a study focused on knives in the home show an increased risk of homicide, given the 1500 knife murders we have each year? Kellermann showed that even including criminals in the study having a gun in the home is significantly less risky with regards to homicide that living alone or renting. What do you want anyone to do with this information? Edit: why do you and Kellermann keep saying "guns in the home" when table 3 that you posted shows a lower risk for long guns in the home than no guns at all?
Whatever defensive gun use that occurred did not reduce the risk of being murdered. If it had then you would have expected the gun ownership rate to be lower among the case group (those who were murdered) than among those in the control group (the living people they were compared to). Instead, you found the opposite pattern: People who had been murdered were more likely to have lived in homes were guns were kept.
That may not have been statistically significant. Overall, the risk associated with gun ownership was higher.
Yes, the relationship found was independent. Kellermann did quantify the risk: people living in homes where guns were kept were 2.7 times more likely to be murdered.
Again you can't even be honest. The data in Table 3 very specifically showed that handguns were riskier; homes with long guns were less risky. 2.7 times what? What is the actual, real quantified risk? What is the measured benefit to a gun owner?
Your point about long guns is meaningless unless it's statistically significant. Obviously, the net benefit is negative: 2.7 times the risk of being murdered compared to those who did not live in homes where guns were kept. That is the real quantified risk.
Kellermann noted the difference in long gun risk factors in Table 3; talk to him. What do we multiply that 2.7 factor by to determine the actual risk? If the product is still so small as to be statistically insignificant, why should we care? Note that the lowest statistically risk level was 2.5; guns barely made the cut line, and if the potential biases mentioned in the discussion portion of the report skew the report lower, it might not be statistically significant at all. Note also the the 95% confidence interval of risk for gun ownership is 1.6 to 4.4 There's a statistically significant change that the actual risk falls under the 2.5 cut line.
