Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Guns in the Home

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“Guns in the Home – A Greater Risk to Family and Friends

? For every time a gun is used in a home in a legally-justifiable shooting there are 22

criminal, unintentional, and suicide-related shootings.[16]

? The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home.[17]

? The presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold.[18]”

Brady Group

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  2. this is important.  here’s the whole page:

    GUNS IN THE HOME

    There are an estimated 193 million guns in America. Some estimates range as high as 250 million. That’s almost one gun for every man, woman and child in the United States. Guns are not just in urban and rural homes, they’re everywhere – cities, towns, suburbs and farms. In fact, there is a gun in 43% of households with children in America. There’s a loaded gun in one in every ten households with children, and a gun that’s left unlocked and just “hidden away” in one in every eight family homes.

    While the Brady Campaign united with the Million Mom March does not seek to prevent law-abiding citizens from owning, using, or purchasing firearms, people have the right to know the true risks associated with keeping a gun in the home. The fallacy that a home is safer with a gun in it and that a gun is a necessary means of self-protection is widely promoted by the gun lobby. The gun lobby also downplays or ignores the risks families take when they introduce a gun into the home.

    Does a Gun in the Home Make You Safer?

    No. Despite claims by the National Rifle Association (NRA) that you need a gun in your home to protect yourself and your family, public health research demonstrates that the person most likely to shoot you or a family member with a gun already has the keys to your house. Simply put: guns kept in the home for self-protection are more often used to kill somebody you know than to kill in self-defense; 22 times more likely, according to a 1998 study by the Journal of Trauma.[1] More kids, teenagers and adult family members are dying from firearms in their own home than criminal intruders. When someone is home, a gun is used for protection in fewer than two percent of home invasion crimes.[2] You may be surprised to know that, in 1999, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, there were only 154 justifiable homicides committed by private citizens with a firearm compared with a total of 8,259 firearm murders in the United States. Once a bullet leaves a gun, who is to say that it will stop only a criminal and not a family member? Yet at every opportunity the NRA uses the fear of crime to promote the need for ordinary citizens to keep guns in their home for self-protection. Furthermore, the NRA continues to oppose life-saving measures that require safe-storage of guns in the home.

    Keeping a Gun in the Home Can Be Deadly

    Because handguns and other firearms are so easily accessible to many children, adolescents and other family members in their homes, the risk of gun violence in the home increases dramatically. Consider this: The risk of homicide in the home is three times greater in households with guns.[3] The risk of suicide is five times greater in households with guns.[4] What’s more, tragic stories of accidental or unintentional shootings from the careless storage of guns at home are all too common. The statistic noted above bears repeating: a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal, unintentional, or suicide-related shooting than to be used in a self-defense shooting. [5]

    A Gun in the Home: Key Facts

      * From 1990-1998, two-thirds of spouse and ex-spouse murder victims were killed with guns.[6]  * Guns are the weapon of choice for troubled individuals who commit suicide. In 1999, firearms were used in 16,599 suicide deaths in America. Among young people under 20, one committed suicide with a gun every eight hours.[7]  * A gun in the home also increases the likelihood of an unintentional shooting, particularly among children. Unintentional shootings commonly occur when children find an adult’s loaded handgun in a drawer or closet, and while playing with it shoot themselves, a sibling or a friend. The unintentional firearm-related death rate for children 0-14 years old is NINE times higher in the U.S. than in the 25 other countries combined.[8]

    When Tragedy Strikes Home: Recent Incidents

      *

      On March 21, 2002, a 14-year-old South Carolina boy deliberately shot and killed his 12-year-old foster sister. The boy had taken live shotgun shells from his father’s house and used them in a shotgun that he had taken from his mother’s bedroom.  (“Alleged shooter under house arrest,” The Herald (Rock Hill, SC), March 27, 2002.)  *

      On March 28, 2002, 15-year-old Quinton Bridges was shot and critically injured by his 15-year-old friend, Derek Scott Oaks in Tucson, AZ. The youths had been tossing water balloons and wrestling before Oaks loaded his father’s rifle and aimed it at his friend’s head while the teen sat at a computer playing a game. According to police, the boys were not arguing; Oaks didn’t think the firearm worked because he tried to pull the trigger before he went in the room and it didn’t fire. Oaks has since been charged with attempted second-degree murder.  (“Teen charged with attempted murder,” Tucson Citizen, March 30, 2002.)  *

      On March 30, 2002, a 9-year-old Seattle boy was wounded when a .22-caliber rifle he and his 13-year-old brother were playing with discharged. The boys were playing with the gun in a bedroom in their uncle’s home.  (“9-Year-Old Boy Wounded In Apparent Accidental Shooting,” KOMO News web site, March 30, 2002.)  *

      On April 6, 2002, 3-year-old Stephon Starks shot and wounded himself with a .22-caliber pistol that he found in a dresser drawer in his mother’s bedroom in Nashville, TN. Police said Stephon had gotten up to get some clean underwear after he wet the bed when he found the gun. He was climbing back into bed when the gun went off.  (“Boy, 3, wounds himself after finding gun in mom’s room,” The Tennessean, April 7, 2002.)  *

      On April 8, 2002, a 4-year-old Jacksonville, FL boy died after unintentionally shooting himself, while playing with his grandfather’s gun while the rest of the family was sleeping.  (“Boy, 4, accidentally kills self,” Florida Times-Union, April 9, 2002.)

    Do Parents Do a Good Job of Keeping Kids Away from Guns in the Home?

    No. A 1998 study by Peter Hart Research on behalf of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence (now the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence) found that, even though most parents realize that guns in the home endanger their children, many parents still leave guns accessible to kids.

    Specifically, in the nationwide survey of 806 parents, 43% of households with children have guns, and 23% of gun households keep a gun loaded. 28% keep a gun hidden and unlocked. 54% of parents said that they would be highly concerned about their child’s safety if they knew there was a gun in the home of their child’s friend. Despite many parents’ concern about the immediate dangers that guns left in the house pose to their children, they are failing to take the necessary steps to help ensure their children’s safety. Perhaps most significantly, many parents simply do not view guns as a personal threat to their children or their family whatsoever.

    Too often a parent drops off their child at a friend’s house for an afternoon play session or a sleep-over party not knowing that the car ride would be the last time they would see their child alive. Why? The study found that most parents don’t discuss the issue of guns in the home with the parents of their children’s friends. Amazingly, only 30% have asked the parents of their children’s friends if there is a gun in the home before allowing a visit. 61% of the parents included in the survey responded that they never even thought about asking other parents about gun accessibility.

    Clearly, parents don’t think about the tragic possibilities of an innocent visit to another home. While parents are asking each other about supervision, food allergies, adult television access, they are ignoring guns – the one factor that could mean the life or death of their child.

    Child Access Prevention Laws

    The Brady Campaign supports Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws, or “safe storage” laws that require adults to either store loaded guns in a place that is reasonably inaccessible to children, or if they decide to leave their guns left out in the open, to use a safety device to lock the gun. If a child obtains an improperly stored, loaded gun, the adult owner is criminally liable.

    Although the primary intention of CAP laws is to help prevent unintentional injury, CAP laws can also serve to reduce juvenile suicide and homicide by keeping guns out of the reach of children. Currently, 18 states – California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin – have enacted CAP laws. In addition, Kansas courts have held that gun owners in Kansas may be held liable if they leave guns easily accessible to children.

    April 2002

    Endnotes

      1. Kellermann AL. “Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home.” Journal of Trauma, 1998; 45(2):263-67.  2. Kellermann AL. “Weapon Involvement in Home Invasion Crimes.” JAMA 1995; 273(22):1759-62.  3. Kellermann, AL, Rivara, FP, Rushforth NB, et al. “Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home.” New England Journal of Medicine. 1993; 329: 1084-1091.  4. Kellermann, AL, Rivara FP, Somes G, et al. “Suicide in the home in relation to gun ownership.” New England Journal of Medicine. 1992; 327: 467-472.  5. Kellermann AL. “Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home.” Journal of Trauma, 1998; 45(2):263-67.  6. “Homicide Trends in the United States.” Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998  7. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, from the WONDER Injury Mortality Data.  8. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Rates of homicide, suicide and firearm-related death among children – 26 industrialized countries.” Morbidity Mortality Weekly Report. 02/07/97; 46:5. 101-105.

  3. So now think tanks and clearly biased sources are acceptable?  Funny, when conservatives use these type of sources BMGers dismiss them without analysis due to their political slant.

    • and look at the bottom of the page i linked to above (which the diarist quoted from).  it cites articles from  well-respected journals, not simply think tank opinion.

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      ok, you can go back to abusing your liver now.

  4. The “facts” cited in the “Brady” post, and my understanding of reality didn’t seem to jive.

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    Armed with only my Google search engine and my calculator, I sallied forth into the known cyber world to research the Brady Bunch claims you see above. I found some interesting data that doesn’t seem to fit the Brady mold:

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    Total number of defensive gun uses in the home is between 800,000 and 2.5 million, per the Kleck survey.
    http://www.firearmsa…

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    Gun suicides and homicides, including unintentional shootings:
    Gun suicides annually: 7.35/100,000, thus about 22,050 for 300 million people.
    Gun Homicides annually: 3.72/100,000, thus about 11,160. “Homicide” iincludes accidental deaths.
    http://www.guncite.c…

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    My trusty calculator tells me that equates to about 33,210 gun deaths per year in the US.
    This means that for every gun death, there are 24.09 defensive gun uses in US homes.

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    So much for Brady myth number one. For myth number two, BJS reports 10654 gun related homicides in 2003, vs. 5484 total other homicides. The ratio for gun to non-gun here is 1.94 gun homicides to non-gun homicides. I believe triple means 3 times . . .
    http://www.ojp.usdoj…

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    So much for Brady myth number two. As for suicide risk, in the US there were 32,439 suicide deaths in the United States. If 22050 were committed with guns, that leaves 10,389 by other means. The ratio is 2.12 gun suicides for every suicide by other means. This is somewhat less than the five-times statistic quoted by the Brady Bunch.
    http://www.suicidolo…

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    Every time I check on the “facts” presented by the Brady Bunch, I find them to be Pure, Unadulterated Bovine Feces. The moral? Well, there are TWO:
    1. Don’t believe ANYTHING the Brady Bunch tells you, until you verify whether it is facts or Bovine Feces. Usually, it’s the latter.
    2. If you try to hornswoggle people, there will always be some dupes unwilling to check for themselves. Hopefully, they’ll vote YOUR way . . .

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    Best,
    Chuck

    • Chuck,

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      I think some of your reasoning may be off, or more precisely, you aren’t responding to what the Brady report is saying.  For example, the 5X number is not that of the total amount of suicides, the number committed by guns is 5 times that committed by other means.  What the statistic states is that if your house has a gun, the chance of a suicide in that home is 5 time greater than homes that do not have a gun.  So the relevant data sets would be taking the number of suicides and breaking that down see how many of those suicides were by people who had a gun in the home versus those who were by people who did not have a gun, which your numbers do not tell.  So your analysis does not disprove the Brady statement as it actually doesn’t address the relevant statistic.

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      The same analysis would apply to the 3X homicide number.  It’s not the ratio of gun homicides to non-gun homicides that the statistic is telling us about, it’s that if your house has a gun, then it’s three times more likely that a homicide will occur in that home.  So again, the relevant data is the total number of homicides broken down by homes that had a gun versus those that did not.

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      So, you haven’t disproved anything that the Brady report put forth (which as Laurel noted was based off information from some pretty reputable sources like the New England Journal of Medicine).  If anything, in your smug superiority, you only proved that you didn’t understand what was being said and ended up comparing the proverbial apples to oranges.

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      As for the Kleck survey, given that the numbers are so far off from the FBI’s official statistics, you have to question methodology etc.

      • I’m not following you. For instance,

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        “So the relevant data sets would be taking the number of suicides and breaking that down see how many of those suicides were by people who had a gun in the home versus those who were by people who did not have a gun, which your numbers do not tell.”

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        First, the number of suicides committed by gun is NOT five times as high as those committed by other means. Second, if there is a gun in the home, and someone commits suicide in the home, and does not use the gun, how does that relate to the issue of gun control? If I have a gun, and want to off myself, would I be more likely to O/D on sleeping pills, for instance, than if I did NOT have a gun?

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        I find the same illogic in the homicide factoid. Having a gun in the home, and not using it to commit a homicide, if that were one’s murderous intent, doesn’t make much sense. We may as well be talking about oranges in the refrigerator. Or perhaps the Brady Bunch is talking about the possibility of an armed intruder being killed by an armed homeowner, and considering that as a homicide? I can’t find the logic in any of this, much as I try, and I have a heavy minor in statistics! (Old Corporate Internal Auditor)

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        For all that, I’d be curious as to how the Brady Bunch came up with these statistics.

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        Thanks, and my Best,
        Chuck

    • 1. 

      guns kept in the home for self-protection are more often used to kill somebody you know than to kill in self-defense; 22 times more likely, according to a 1998 study by the Journal of Trauma.

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      If somebody pulls a gun outside of the home for self defense, it’s not in this Brady number.  So, you’re 800k – 2.5M is actually all defensive gun uses, not gun uses in the home (as you claim, but Kleck doesn’t).

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      Hence, it’s entirely possible that Brady’s claim (1) is right — your counter-analysis fails because Kleck’s numbers aren’t limited to defensive gun uses in the home, whereas Brady’s are.

      2.  Your counter-analysis fails for the same reason.  Brady explicitly limits the dataset to events “in the home”, whereas your datasets from USDOJ are all events, not just those in the home.  Apples to oranges comparison, so your counterclaim doesn’t disprove Brady’s claim.

      3.  You misunderstand what the Brady-suicide claim means.  It doesn’t mean that five times as many suicides occur with guns; rather it suggests that a household with a gun is five times more likely to have a suicide (and it doesn’t even claim suicide by firearm) than a household without a gun.

      I’m not suggesting that Brady’s numbers are correct — I have no idea.  What I am suggesting is that your attempts to discredit them are pointwise failures.  Your compare different data sets on 1 and 2, and completely misunderstand the Brady claim on 3.

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      So, if you’re going to start flinging around “Pure, Unadulterated Bovine Feces” please make sure you do sound analysis.  Otherwise, we’re reminded of this moral:

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      2. If you try to hornswoggle people by claiming analysis is incorrect, there will always be some dupes unwilling to check your work for themselves and establish that either your reading or your critical thinking skills are lacking.

      • Here are some direct questions that do not beg quantalitativeistically significant disenchantedly hornswoggleitive qualified answers:

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        First: How many in-home defensive gun uses occured, where guns(s) were kept in the home during the period 1995 – 2005? Back your answer with a reliable source. Neither the Brady Bunch, nor the Klecks, Lotts, et al, of this world are considered reliable sources for purposes of this exercise. But you had either better not answer the question, or come up with a reputable source acceptable to us BOTH! BJS, if verifiable, would be an acceptable example.

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        Second: How many homicides, suicides and other cides occurred in the home, where guns were kept in the home, during the same period. Further, how many of these were carried out with guns? Do not aggregate the data, please; rather, report each cide separately. Same conditions as above.

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        Such statistics as you envision do not exist. Neither do these. But . . .
        If you come up with these verifiable answers, I will buy you dinner at Ruth’s Chris. I figure my wallet is relatively safe . . .

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        Best, and Good Evening,
        CHuck

        • Chuck,

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          One thing to point out in talking about the stats that are being thrown about.  The so-called “Brady” numbers are not really Brady numbers but the statistical findings from a series of articles that appeared in NEJM and other peer-reviewed journals researched and written by people unaffiliated with the Brady group.  Obviously the Brady group has a particular agenda and if these were there numbers, then I think that you would have the right to be more suspicious of the numbers.  Since they came from independent third parties (and appeared in peer-reviewed journals), I think they have a little more validity.

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          Compare this to the famous Lotts numbers.  I may be mistaken, but I don’t think Lotts’s gun numbers ever appeared in any peer-reviewed journals because his methodology was so bad that none would publish his work. 

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