Anyway, I went to lunch with some friends on Sunday. There’s one girl in there who likes to think she’s knows everything and is always peppering us with stories and little factoids to show off.
Sunday she throws this little nugget out: In domestic killings, the number one weapon used is NOT guns, but frying pans.
This can’t be true, can it? Anyone heard this before? It sounds like something that Saturday Night Live would have the NRA saying in a skit.
I don’t have any numbers, so I can’t confirm or deny your girlfriend’s claim. But I can say that a cast-iron frying pan, being very heavy, is absolutely lethal when slammed into a human skull.
You don’t need a gun to kill someone. As any forensic pathologist can tell you, frying pans, tire irons, baseball bats, ball-peen hammers, kitchen knives, scissors, and other common household implements, when wielded by an infuriated person, can do a first-rate job.
Frying pans don’t kill people, saturated fat kills people.
wow if this little factoid ends up being true, it would have been a great addition to my paper on gun control. I can tell you that in 90% of domestic homicides, the police had been called to the home at least once in the previous 5 years because of a domestic distrubance, and in 75% of them, 5 times or more. So you don’t have to worry that some day you’re going to piss your wife off and she’ll blow you away. Unless you piss her off all the time. Then one day she might get tired of it.
According to this article, guns were used in domestic violence killings in the US more than twice as often as all other weapons combined:
Bolding mine.
Man, you’re killin’ me here. Can I use this as a sig line?
Chefguy, in the interests of domestic tranquility, be my guest mi amigo.
Would frying pans even show up in the statistics? I would think many of those weapons would just fall under the category of “blunt object”.
Yes, but that article only talks about the women killed, how many men have been killed by their wives using a frying pan?
Very true. Most women are unfamiliar with guns and even afraid of them. They would probably grab the nearest blunt object in a fit of rage (or to defend themselves) which would probably be a frying pan, because the kitchen is where they belong.
And I used to carry an old frying pan in my car for self-defense for 3 reasons-
I never used it, but I wish I’d had the chance.
Instead of a carving knife?
Besides not all frying pans are cast iron these days. Mine would make a great KLANG noise bouncing off a skull, but don’t really have much heft at all.
And I agree that any real statistics would just say “blunt force trauma” and wouldn’t like list the item (rolling pin, chair, golf club…)
Actually, given the disorganization of my cupboards, it would take to long to find anything like that as a weapon.
I’d have to swing a cat.
Huh. And I heard in sociology that men are more likely to die in domestic disputes because they attack women with their fists, who defend themselves with knives, icepicks, cast-iron pans, etc. But then again, this wouldn’t be the first time a nutty college professor said something that wasn’t true!
I thought this was only true in cartoons and sitcoms. Whodathunkit?
All my frying pans are pretty darn hefty. My T-fal 12" pan (with non-stick coating so blood can be easily washed off :D) would make a very nice weapon.
Of course I keep a aluminum baseball bat in my room for such things but my second choice would be a frying pan. Hell, it even makes a great defensive weapon.
But whether frying pans are used in a lot of murders…I dunno. I’d have thought knives would be more common (lighter, more common and generally easier to find).
:eek:
Well, seaworthy just made my official “do not piss off” list.
I found this in a 2000 article from the journal “Law and Order”
Yep, I had a family member killed, murdered, by a frying pan, it does happen.
Actually, this was my line of reasoning as to why men don’t use frying pans.
A cast-iron frying pan is a formidable weapon. I’ve seen an out-of-control drunk pacified by the sight of what would, in other circumstances, be a humourous stereotype: the house mother appearing in curlers and a nightdress, wielding a huge frying-pan. He left quietly.
Strangely enough, this animation was posted at b3ta today. Don’t try this at home, kids.
Well, if all different brands of frying pan are aggregated into one group, whereas guns are separated into 1 murder with a remington 700BDL in .30/06, 2 murders with 9mm Glock semi-autos, and so on, then maybe frying pans would come up with the biggest number 
See how easy it is to make stats say whatever you want?