Wow, I just saw John Stossel (sp?) pimp every single NRA talking point on guns, without

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

citing a single piece of contrary information (such as the study ?New England Journal of Medicine or Journal of the AMA? that showed that a gun in the home was much more likely to be used to kill someone in the home than save their life through defense).

Does anyone know if the guy he had on with the anecdote about saving himself from 19-20 youths by showing his gun is some kind of NRA guy? Sure dished out the talking points like one.

And this, after no names named in the DC Madam thing. I'm SO surprised by ABC. :eyes:

[alarimer]

1. I hate John Stossel

He's just full of crap on every topic.

[jody]

2. You do know the Dem Party says "We will protect Americans' Second Amendment right to own firearms"

2004 Democratic Party Platform at http://www.democrats.org/pdfs/2004platform.pdf

[alarimer]

3. So the fuck what?

The NRA is a bunch of assholes. Gun nuts. Right-wing lunatic freaks. And Stossel is just a tool anyway.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. I don't have a problem with people having firearms in America. I DO have a problem

with distorted shit like Stossel just presented on national TV.

[Solo_in_MD]

5. The party is far from living up to that

[bluerum]

6. All it takes one granny a year scaring off a burgler to get

the NRA juices flowing.

Never-you-mind the tragedies.

[kevinbgoode]

7. 20/20 has been a right wing parroting tabloid program for at least

the last couple of years. I don't watch the program at all - Stossel is just a wingnut propagandist.

[wellst0nev0ter]

8. The Last Coupla Years?

I recently watched an installment that aired in 1993 which profiled lesbian couples in Ft. Lauderdale like they were some kind of freaks or animals in a nature show. Believe me, this has been going on for a while.

[ToeBot]

9. It's common knowledge that John Stossel is a smarmy looking liar,

There aren't nearly enough google hits for that quotation, thank you David Sirota.

[benEzra]

10. I didn't see this piece,

but I suppose it's newsworthy that someone in the MSM actually use pro-gun-owner talking points instead of Bradyite talking points. Mainly, I'm surprised that the network actually allowed an anti-more-bans piece to air.

That's encouraging, actually. The MSM has been on a ban-lawfully-owned-guns kick for at least two decades, and in so doing has sucked many Dems onto that bandwagon (the 1994 debacle comes to mind). Maybe the talking heads are realizing that NYC, DC, and Chicago do not constitute the entire United States.

(such as the study ?New England Journal of Medicine or Journal of the AMA? that showed that a gun in the home was much more likely to be used to kill someone in the home than save their life through defense).

That was Kellerman et al, JAMA 1986 (the "43 times more likely" figure comes from that study). He came to that number by excluding all defensive uses that didn't result in the death of the attacker (if that rapist was just scared off, or was shot but survived, it didn't count) and counting deaths of attackers who were acquaintances of the would-be victim under the "shooting a friend or family member" category.

After his 43x number was debunked, Kellerman reduced his estimate to 2.7x in a later paper, discussed here. The big problem with this one, as I see it, is that it draws conclusions from at-risk populations (drug dealers, people with criminals in the home, people with prior intra-home assaults) and applies them to the population at large, i.e. people with squeaky-clean records and no history of violence. If you fall into the latter category, I know of no studies showing significant relative risk from gun ownership vs. non-ownership.


--------------
Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What? (written in '04, largely vindicated in '06, IMO)

[Paladin]

13. Stossell Has Been A Right Wing Pimp For Years

I saw that he was doing a report on gun control last night and I didn't waste my time with it; I knew exactly what he'd say.

Do you ever get tired of relying on conservative jerk-offs to spread your views on guns? Probably not.....

[Rosemary2205]

11. I saw it and you are mischaracterizing the piece IMHO.

I'm not a big John Stossel fan, but the question at hand was - does gun control lower the crime rate. The answer is no. The piece was about the overall crime rate within communities not about gun safety in the home. In fact, even the studies you sighted do not claim gun control equals less accidental deaths, suicides, or domestic violence situations involving guns.

[northzax]

15. it was the wrong question to ask

the real question is: does localized gun crontrol reduce the violent crime rate? And the answer is probably: maybe. if all you have to do to get a gun is drive 5 miles, it's not going to matter much.

does national gun control reduce violent crime? and the answer to that is obviously yes, as every country that has tried it, on a national basis, has seen a reduction in the use of guns in violent crime. the District of Columbia has 550,000 residents. in 2004, there were 195 homicides, 190 of which used firearms. DC bans firearms, but they are easily available from neighboring jurisdictions like Virginia.

a similar gun ban exists in the United Kingdom, population 60 million. in fact, let's just look at the capital. London, population 7.5 million (yes, that is 15 times the size of the District), despite having a higher overall crime rate had 17. you are slightly more likely to get mugged, but significantly less likely to get shot. i know that I would much rather be mugged than shot, wouldn't you?

[Rosemary2205]

22. Proof that gun control is meaningless re: violent crime.

It would seem the control of violent crime has more to do with the mindset of a people than whether or not they have access to guns.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1741336.stm
No-one knows how many illegal firearms there are in Britain, although estimates range from between 200,000 to several million. Whatever the true figure, it is said to be growing daily.

With so many deadly weapons on the streets of the UK's big cities, the next question seems to be whether Britain's famously unarmed police officers should carry guns as a matter of course.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1566715.stm

Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture - but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept. SNIP

Guns and shooting are popular national pastimes. More than 200,000 Swiss attend national annual marksmanship competitions.

But despite the wide ownership and availability of guns, violent crime is extremely rare. There are only minimal controls at public buildings and politicians rarely have police protection

[northzax]

23. the swiss have the most restrictive gun control of all

guns are permitted only to trained members of the militia who have completed their military service. (yes, this is practically all adult males, but still) guns are registered, by serial number and ammunition is not easy to come by. Of course what Swiss don't have many of is handguns, yeah, every household has a SIG 550, but then, it's not easy to casually carry one of those under your jacket into a government office. Also, ammunition is registered, so use of the weapons in crime is pretty tough to get away with.




to get a permit to carry one of the few, non-military handguns around. you need to not only demonstrate competance and training, but also a need for the weapon.

and, of course, there is a difference between violent crime nad homicide. even in London, where guns are increasingly common, it is rare to be shot by one.

[undeterred]

12. I watched it because I had just finished watching Greys Anatomy

and I couldn't find the remote.

The the thing is, they jumped through so much stuff so fast that they really didn't make any points at all. I actually wondered if his female co-host has a barf bucket on the floor between them.

[Paladin]

14. "Grey's Anatomy," Followed By Stossel?

Jeez, you have a stronger stomach than I do......

[undeterred]

17. If I take my nighttime meds early, I could be watching FOX news

and I wouldn't care.

[1932]

16. Stoessel is so right wing that Chomsky, Nader and Hugo Chavez would need to have a TV show

in order to "balance" his whoring for big business.

[jmg257]

18. I don't know how any study can say that - there are MANY more gun defenses then gun-releated deaths

annually. On the conservative side - there are hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses vs. around 26,000 gun related deaths. I don't get how they can say "much more likely used to kill someone" - ANY one, let alone specifically household members. ???

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

19. I don't know where your figures for defenses come from. Here's an example of one study:

The study relates to the incidence of suicide and firearm ownership. I'm having trouble finding the Journal of the AMA article that I remember, I'll post it if I find it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17426563&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

J Trauma. 2007 Apr;62(4):1029-34; discussion 1034-5.Click here to read Links
Household firearm ownership and rates of suicide across the 50 United States.

* Miller M,
* Lippmann SJ,
* Azrael D,
* Hemenway D.

Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA. [e-mail]

BACKGROUND: The current investigation explores the association between rates of household firearm ownership and suicide across the 50 states. Prior ecologic research on the relationship between firearm prevalence and suicide has been criticized for using problematic proxy-based, rather than survey-based, estimates of firearm prevalence and for failing to control for potential psychological risk factors for suicide. We address these two criticisms by using recently available state-level survey-based estimates of household firearm ownership, serious mental illness, and alcohol/illicit substance use and dependence. METHODS: Negative binomial regression was used to assess the relationship between household firearm ownership rates and rates of firearm, nonfirearm, and overall suicide for both sexes and for four age groups. Analyses controlled for rates of poverty, urbanization, unemployment, mental illness, and drug and alcohol dependence and abuse. RESULTS: US residents of all ages and both sexes are more likely to die from suicide when they live in areas where more households contain firearms. A positive and significant association exists between levels of household firearm ownership and rates of firearm and overall suicide; rates of nonfirearm suicide were not associated with levels of household firearm ownership. CONCLUSION: Household firearm ownership levels are strongly associated with higher rates of suicide, consistent with the hypothesis that the availability of lethal means increases the rate of completed suicide.

PMID: 17426563

[benEzra]

21. Suicide rates, health advocacy literature, and other thoughts...

The study relates to the incidence of suicide and firearm ownership.

One problem for Hemenway et al's hypothesis is that the U.S. suicide rate is lower (in some cases, much lower) than that of most nations with stricter gun laws and less gun availability to the average citizen. The U.S. suicide rate is lower than that of Canada, Norway, Japan, Denmark, Austria, Australia, Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, and many others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

And our below-average suicide rate is in spite of the fact that Americans work the longest hours of any First World nation, have the least free time, have arguably the worst mental-health care in the developed world, one of the worst rich/poor gaps, some of the worst inner city blight, etc. etc.

If gun availability increased suicide rates, you'd expect the U.S. rate to be higher than that of other nations, particularly nations with better social safety nets than ours. Since it's not, that hypothesis rings a bit hollow; if gun availability is a factor at all, it is apparently a relatively insignificant one.

Also, I'd be curious to know whether they looked at aggregate suicide rates in lawful gun-owning homes, or aggregate suicide rates in populations where self-reported lawful gun ownership is high. In other words, are long-term gun owners at higher or lower risk of suicide compared to the local population at large.

FWIW, I am pretty sure that Hemenway is largely funded by the ban-more-guns lobby; I'm not sure about the others. Hemenway's position at Harvard was created by a gun-ban-lobby grant.

Personal disclaimer, so you are aware of where I'm coming from: My wife and I, and most of the people we know, own guns and are keeping them. We make safety a priority, use them responsibly, and store them in a safe when not in use.

I don't know where your figures for defenses come from.

I don't know what he/she had in mind, but I suspect that the figures for defensive use (deterring an attacker, whether shots fired or not) are probably from Gary Kleck et al, from various peer-reviewed criminological journals.

In my opinion, the articles on guns in journals of criminology tend to be more rigorous than the articles in medical journals, perhaps because many M.D.'s just don't know much about guns, and there may also be a greater tendency toward philosophical bias when doctors stray outside their fields of expertise into political advocacy. A look at some of the systemic problems in the medical gun-ban-advocacy literature may be found here (Kates et al, 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 513-596 (1994)).

Predictably, gun violence, particularly homicide, is a major study topic for social scientists, particularly criminologists.<2> Less predictably, gun (p.514)crime, accidents, and suicide are also a topic of study among medical and public health professionals. Our focus is the remarkable difference between the way medical and public health writers treat firearms issues and the way social scientists treat those issues. Examination of the literature produced by medical and health writers reveals why their conclusions on firearms diverge so radically from those of criminological scholarship. We focus on that literature's anomalies both for their own sake and because that focus allows us to explore some of the more important policy and legal issues of gun control.

Interesting read, regardless of which side of the issue you're on.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

20. I think this includes some of what I was looking for:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=12192220

1: Epidemiology. 2002 Sep;13(5):517-24.Click here to read Links
Household firearm ownership and suicide rates in the United States.

* Miller M,
* Azrael D,
* Hemenway D.

Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA. [e-mail]

BACKGROUND: In the United States, more people kill themselves with firearms than with all other methods combined. A central question regarding the relation between firearms and suicide is whether the ready availability of firearms increases the suicide rate, rather than merely increasing the proportion of suicides from guns. METHODS: We used publicly available data for the nine regions and 50 states in the United States over a 10-year period (1988-1997) to examine the association between levels of household firearm ownership and rates of suicide, firearm suicide, and non-firearm suicide by age groups and gender. RESULTS: In both regional and state-level analyses, for the U.S. population as a whole, for both males and females, and for virtually every age group, a robust association exists between levels of household firearm ownership and suicide rates. CONCLUSIONS: Where firearm ownership levels are higher, a disproportionately large number of people die from suicide.

PMID: 12192220

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=11937613

J Urban Health. 2002 Mar;79(1):26-38.Click here to read Links
Firearm availability and suicide, homicide, and unintentional firearm deaths among women.

* Miller M,
* Azrael D,
* Hemenway D.

Department of Health Policy and Management, Boston, MA 02115, USA. [e-mail]

CONTEXT: In the United States, more than 45,000 women died from gun violence over the last decade. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether measures of firearm availability are related to rates of suicide, homicide, and unintentional firearm deaths among women in the United States. DESIGN: Pooled cross-sectional time series data on suicide, homicide, and unintentional firearm deaths (1988-1997) were used to estimate the association between the rate of violent death among women and four proxies of firearm availability. Two proxies came from survey reports of household firearm ownership rates; two were derived from mortality statistics. SETTING: United States, 1988-1997. RESULTS: The increased rate of suicide and homicide in states with high gun levels was accounted for primarily by significantly elevated firearm suicide and firearm homicide rates. Unintentional firearm death rates were also increased in states with more guns. At the regional level, qualitatively similar results were obtained. CONCLUSION: Between 1988 and 1997, the suicide, homicide, and unintentional firearm death rates among women were disproportionately higher in states where guns were more prevalent. The elevated rates of violent death in states with more guns was not entirely explained by a state's poverty or urbanization and was driven primarily by lethal firearm violence, not by lethal nonfirearm violence.

PMID: 11937613

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=12453821&query_hl=15&itool=pubmed_docsum

Am J Public Health. 2002 Dec;92(12):1988-93.Click here to read Click here to read Links
Rates of household firearm ownership and homicide across US regions and states, 1988-1997.

* Miller M,
* Azrael D,
* Hemenway D.

Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass 02115, USA. [e-mail]

OBJECTIVES: In this study we explored the association between rates of household firearm ownership and homicide across the United States, by age groups. METHODS: We used cross-sectional time-series data (1988-1997) to estimate the association between rates of household firearm ownership and homicide. RESULTS: In region- and state-level analyses, a robust association between rates of household firearm ownership and homicide was found. Regionally, the association exists for victims aged 5 to 14 years and those 35 years and older. At the state level, the association exists for every age group over age 5, even after controlling for poverty, urbanization, unemployment, alcohol consumption, and nonlethal violent crime. CONCLUSIONS: Although our study cannot determine causation, we found that in areas where household firearm ownership rates were higher, a disproportionately large number of people died from homicide.

PMID: 12453821

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=11937614&query_hl=15&itool=pubmed_DocSum

J Urban Health. 2002 Mar;79(1):39-48.Click here to read Links
The epidemiology of firearm suicide in the United States.

* Romero MP,
* Wintemute GJ.

Violence Prevention Research Program, University of California, Davis, USA. [e-mail]

CONTEXT: Little attention has been given to the role of firearms in suicide. In 1998, firearms were the leading method of committing suicide for both men and women, responsible for three times the number of suicides compared to the next leading method. Understanding the epidemiology of firearm suicide will increase awareness of firearm suicide as a major public health problem. RESULTS: Rates of firearm suicide have changed little over the past two decades and have consistently exceeded rates of firearm homicide. The firearm suicide rate among men is approximately six times that of women. While firearm suicide rates are highest among the elderly, the majority (66%) of firearm suicides are among persons under 55 years of age. Firearm suicide rates among women of all ages have dropped modestly, while rates among elderly men have risen considerably. Whites have roughly twice the rate of firearm suicide as do blacks and other race/ethnicity groups. Individual-level empirical studies have consistently indicated that keeping firearms in the home is associated with an increased risk of suicide. CONCLUSIONS: For suicide prevention to be effective, the availability and use of firearms in suicides must be addressed.

PMID: 11937614

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=12764330

Ann Emerg Med. 2003 Jun;41(6):771-82.Click here to read Links

Comment in:
Ann Emerg Med. 2004 Jan;43(1):141; author reply 141-2.

Homicide and suicide risks associated with firearms in the home: a national case-control study.

* Wiebe DJ.

Violence Prevention Research Group, University of California-Los Angeles School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA. [e-mail]

STUDY OBJECTIVE: I test the hypothesis that having a gun in the home is a risk factor for adults to be killed (homicide) or to commit suicide. METHODS: Two case-control analyses were based on national samples of subjects 18 years of age or older. Homicide and suicide case subjects were drawn from the 1993 National Mortality Followback Survey. Living control subjects were drawn from the 1994 National Health Interview Survey. Ten control subjects matched by sex, race, and age group were sought for each case subject. RESULTS: The homicide sample consisted of 1,720 case subjects and 8,084 control subjects. Compared with adults in homes with no guns, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for homicide was 1.41 (95% confidence interval 1.20 to 1.65) for adults with a gun at home and was particularly high among women (adjusted OR 2.72; 95% CI 1.89 to 3.90) compared with men (adjusted OR 1.23; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.49) and among nonwhite subjects (adjusted OR 1.74; 95% CI 1.37 to 2.21) compared with white subjects (adjusted OR 1.27; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.56). Further analyses revealed that a gun in the home was a risk factor for homicide by firearm means (adjusted OR 1.72; 95% CI 1.40 to 2.12) but not by nonfirearm means (OR 0.83; 95% CI 0.62 to 1.11). The suicide sample consisted of 1,959 case subjects and 13,535 control subjects. The adjusted OR for suicide was 3.44 (95% CI 3.06 to 3.86) for persons with a gun at home. However, further analysis revealed that having a firearm in the home was a risk factor for suicide by firearm (adjusted OR 16.89; 95% CI 13.26 to 21.52) but was inversely associated with suicide by other means (adjusted OR 0.68; 95% CI 0.55 to 0.84). CONCLUSION: Having a gun at home is a risk factor for adults to be shot fatally (gun homicide) or commit suicide with a firearm. Physicians should continue to discuss with patients the implications of keeping guns at home. Additional studies are warranted to address study limitations and to better understand the implications of firearm ownership.

PMID: 12764330

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=8371731

N Engl J Med. 1993 Oct 7;329(15):1084-91.Click here to read Links

Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home.

* Kellermann AL et al.

Department of Internal Medicine, University of Tennessee, Memphis.

BACKGROUND. It is unknown whether keeping a firearm in the home confers protection against crime or, instead, increases the risk of violent crime in the home. To study risk factors for homicide in the home, we identified homicides occurring in the homes of victims in three metropolitan counties. METHODS. After each homicide, we obtained data from the police or medical examiner and interviewed a proxy for the victim. The proxies' answers were compared with those of control subjects who were matched to the victims according to neighborhood, sex, race, and age range. Crude and adjusted odds ratios were calculated with matched-pairs methods. RESULTS. During the study period, 1860 homicides occurred in the three counties, 444 of them (23.9 percent) in the home of the victim. After excluding 24 cases for various reasons, we interviewed proxy respondents for 93 percent of the victims. Controls were identified for 99 percent of these, yielding 388 matched pairs. As compared with the controls, the victims more often lived alone or rented their residence. Also, case households more commonly contained an illicit-drug user, a person with prior arrests, or someone who had been hit or hurt in a fight in the home. 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. CONCLUSIONS. The use of illicit drugs and a history of physical fights in the home are important risk factors for homicide in the home. Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

PMID: 8371731

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=1308093&query_hl=43&itool=pubmed_docsum

N Engl J Med. 1992 Aug 13;327(7):467-72. Links

Suicide in the home in relation to gun ownership.

* Kellermann AL et al.

Department of Medicine, University of Tennessee, Memphis.

BACKGROUND. It has been suggested that limiting access to firearms could prevent many suicides, but this belief is controversial. To assess the strength of the association between the availability of firearms and suicide, we studied all suicides that took place in the homes of victims in Shelby County, Tennessee, and King County, Washington, over a 32-month period. METHODS. For each suicide victim (case subject), we obtained data from police or the medical examiner and interviewed a proxy. Their answers were compared with those of control subjects from the same neighborhood, matched with the victim according to sex, race, and age range. Crude and adjusted odds ratios were calculated with matched-pairs methods. RESULTS. During the study period, 803 suicides occurred in the two counties, 565 of which (70 percent) took place in the home of the victim. Fifty-eight percent (326) of these suicides were committed with a firearm. After excluding 11 case subjects for various reasons, we were able to interview 80 percent (442) of the proxies for the case subjects. Matching controls were identified for 99 percent of these subjects, producing 438 matched pairs. Univariate analyses revealed that the case subjects were more likely than the controls to have lived alone, taken prescribed psychotropic medication, been arrested, abused drugs or alcohol, or not graduated from high school. After we controlled for these characteristics through conditional logistic regression, the presence of one or more guns in the home was found to be associated with an increased risk of suicide (adjusted odds ratio, 4.8; 95 percent confidence interval, 2.7 to 8.5). CONCLUSIONS. Ready availability of firearms is associated with an increased risk of suicide in the home. Owners of firearms should weigh their reasons for keeping a gun in the home against the possibility that it might someday be used in a suicide.

PMID: 1308093

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=7998641&query_hl=36&itool=pubmed_docsum

Am J Public Health. 1994 Dec;84(12):1982-4.Click here to read Links
The incidence of defensive firearm use by US crime victims, 1987 through 1990.

* McDowall D,
* Wiersema B.

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park 20742-8235.

It is well known that many crimes in the United States are committed with firearms. Less adequately documented is the frequency with which victims use guns in self-defense. We used National Crime Victimization Survey data to examine incidents where victims employed guns against offenders. Between 1987 and 1990 there were an estimated 258,460 incidents of firearm defense, an annual mean of 64,615. Victims used firearms in 0.18% of all crimes recorded by the survey and in 0.83% of violent offenses. Firearm self-defense is rare compared with gun crimes.

PMID: 7998641

(this is where your figure of hundreds of thousands seems to come from, an annual survey called National Crime Victim Survey or something conducted by the DOJ, I would like to see the actual data but don't have any of the original articles)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=9715182&query_hl=33&itool=pubmed_docsum

J Trauma. 1998 Aug;45(2):263-7.Click here to read Links
Injuries and deaths due to firearms in the home.

* Kellermann AL,
* Somes G,
* Rivara FP,
* Lee RK,
* Banton JG.

Center for Injury Control, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.

OBJECTIVE: Determine the relative frequency with which guns in the home are used to injure or kill in self-defense, compared with the number of times these weapons are involved in an unintentional injury, suicide attempt, or criminal assault or homicide. METHODS: We reviewed the police, medical examiner, emergency medical service, emergency department, and hospital records of all fatal and nonfatal shootings in three U.S. cities: Memphis, Tennessee; Seattle, Washington; and Galveston, Texas. RESULTS: During the study interval (12 months in Memphis, 18 months in Seattle, and Galveston) 626 shootings occurred in or around a residence. This total included 54 unintentional shootings, 118 attempted or completed suicides, and 438 assaults/homicides. Thirteen shootings were legally justifiable or an act of self-defense, including three that involved law enforcement officers acting in the line of duty. For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides. CONCLUSIONS: Guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.

PMID: 9715182