# Common sense gun legislation?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-sense-gun-legislation/733300>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [October 2, 2015, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-sense-gun-legislation/733300 "2015-10-02T20:48:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 620

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**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\
**Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-sense-gun-legislation/733300/620 "2015-11-30T01:04:19Z")

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> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#):
>
> The criticism you’re responding to regards factors that were LITERALLY controlled for in the study. You simply don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about with the claims you are making here. I’m not sure you’re struggling with “factors,” “controlled for,” “studies” or what here.

Totally. The study controlled for things like the case group having higher rates of illicit drug use, household fighting, and members of the household being arrested. Compared to the control group in this study, the victim group had significantly higher rates of renting (70% vs. 47%), living alone (27% vs. 12%) [Table 2], consuming alcohol and various issues at home and work as a result, household illicit drug use (31% vs. 6%), household fighting, and members of the household being arrested (52% vs. 23%) [Table 3]. In other words, the victim group had a riskier lifestyle. But of course, that was all controlled for!

Might as well take the victim group from only 3 time felons and the control group from suburban housewives. It’s absurd to think, oh, we selected a control group completely different than the victim group, but hey, we controlled for it! At what point would such a disparate group render the results meaningless in your mind? You have already dismissed a comparison of homicides and toasters so at least there is a baseline.

> [@Fear\_Itself](#):
>
> Or you or someone else accidentally shot you. Probably happens more often than murders committed with the owner’s gun.

Do you know how many accidental gun deaths there are each year without looking it up? Serious question.

> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#):
>
> No. Reading the study renders that beyond dispute. Is there some reason you cannot read the study?

I have read the study. The study makes no effort to distinguish a homicide with a gun that is in the home or one that is brought into the home by another person. That is what I think \*\*UltraVires’s \*\*example is highlighting.

[Since the study itself stated:](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506#t=article)

> [@](#):
>
> In the light of these observations and our present findings, people should be strongly discouraged from keeping guns in their homes

It is critically important to determine if the gun used in the homicide in the case examples were actually kept in the home. The above would be a ludicrous statement if all of the homicides were with a gun from outside the home.

Here is what Kellermann states in response apparently in 1994:

> [@](#):
>
> A comparable ascertainment of exposure is crucial in any case-control study, which is why we based our analysis on interviews rather than on-the-scene reports. **Ninety-three percent of the homicides involving firearms occurred in homes where a gun was kept,** according to the proxy respondents. In 8 of the other 14 homicides, the investigating officer specifically noted that the gun involved had been kept in the home.

But of course, this was an error. It took Kellmermann 5 years apparently in 1998:

> [@](#):
>
> An independent review of the data from a case–control study of gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home, reported by my colleagues and me (Oct. 7, 1993, issue),1 has identified an inaccuracy in our response to the letters to the editor about the study (Feb. 3, 1994, issue).2 In the fourth paragraph of our response, we reported, “Ninety-three percent of the homicides involving firearms occurred in homes where a gun was kept, according to the proxy respondents.” **What we should have said was that 93 percent of proxy respondents for victims of homicide involving firearms provided information about the presence or absence of a gun in the home. Sixty-two percent of this group reported that the victim lived in a home where one or more guns were kept, not 93 percent, as we stated in our reply.**

From 62% it was inflated to 93%. Only…a 50% increase. Maybe they controlled for that? I guess Kellermann could have suffered from a counting error.

This is highlighted further in a future study that Kellermann did. in 1998, Kellermann published “Injuries and deaths due to firearms in the home.” [That study found:](http://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Can-Owning-a-Gun-Really-Triple-the-Owners-Chances-of-being-Murdered.pdf)

> [@](#):
>
> The Kellermann et al. (1998) article reported analyses of 438  
> criminal assaults and homicides committed with a gun in or near  
> a residence. The authors found that 49 of these incidents involved  
> a gun “kept in the home where the shooting occurred” (p. 264),  
> 295 involved a gun brought to the scene from elsewhere, and  
> another 94 involved a gun whose origins were not noted by the  
> police. Thus, among the 344 (49 + 295 = 344) **residential shootings  
> involving a gun with known origins, only 14.2%** (49/344 = .142)  
> involved a gun kept in the home where the shooting occurred.

14.2% is quite a bit different than 62%. But, replication! I wonder what would explain such a dramatic difference.

> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#):
>
> Do you know how journal editing and peer review works? The level of scientific malpractice you’re proposing would take a conspiracy, and publishing work of such low quality would soon render a journal like the New England Journal of Medicine in disrepute. Do you think the New England Journal of Medicine is in disrepute? You are theorizing a conspiracy, like it or not.

I wouldn’t call it a conspiracy - but it is a given that there is [a prejudice against gun ownership that pervades the public health field](https://reason.com/archives/1997/04/01/public-health-pot-shots), and at the CDC:

> [@](#):
>
> As Bordua, Cowan, and Southwick observed, a prejudice against gun ownership pervades the public health field. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, nicely summarizes the typical attitude of her colleagues in a recent book. “My own view on gun control is simple,” she writes. “I hate guns and cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned.”\*\* Opposition to gun ownership is also the official position of the U.S. Public Health Service, the CDC’s parent agency. Since 1979, its goal has been “to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership,” starting with a 25 percent reduction by the turn of the century\*\*.

The director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Mark Rosenberg stated that he

> [@](#):
>
> “envisions a long term campaign, similar to [those concerning] tobacco use and auto safety, to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.” In 1994 he told The Washington Post, “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly, and banned.”

So not necessarily a conspiracy. Just enough bad science disguised as advocacy restricted. Research on the other hand, has always been permitted, contrary to what you previously asserted in error. Care to walk that back or are you going to omit discussion of that one as well?

In another bit of irony, consider how Kellermann established gun ownership. in the control group. It was through interviews. It was a scripted process, but it was through simply asking the people that were designated as the controls. I know for a fact that myself, and a very large portion of the gun owning community would deny ownership of a firearm to someone asking. But the kicker is, the control information was obtained through interview. But wait, who was it that said they didn’t trust self reporting?

> [@Studying Firearm Related Violence](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/studying-firearm-related-violence/689994/61):
>
> I’d be fine with any method that did not rely on the self-report of a group of people who is by their very nature more scared and prone to overestimate risks than normal people.

It seems like you only don’t accept self reporting when it doesn’t align with your ideology.

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