From: [Johann Opitz] at [smtp.esl.com] (Johann Opitz) Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns Subject: Re: Bogus Statistic??? Date: 1 Jan 1994 01:01:54 GMT [b m cquaid] at [crash.cts.com] (Brad McQuaid) wrote: Statement: "One child under 14 is accidently shot to death every day in the USA" (Center to Prevent Handgun Violence) "14 children are killed by handgun abuse every day in the USA". (Handgun Control Incorporated) Truth: True, if the year in question is 1979, when there were 364 such deaths. In 1990, the most recent year for which data are available, the number was 236, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The number of fatal gun accidents among children has fallen by 56% since 1970, even as the gun supply has grown significantly.[4] 14 children/day times 364 days/year means about 5100 children killed by handguns every year in the USA. This is false. The total firearms deaths for children (up to age 14) was 587 in 1988. In 1990 the number children killed by firearms related accidents was 236. The total number of children killed by abuse of firearms (handguns, shotguns, and rifles) in the USA is between 600 and 800 a year. Statement: "In the past decade, more than 138,000 Americans were shot by children under the age of 6." (Hartford Courant) Truth: No source is ever cited for this factoid because there is none. No government or academic agency even collects data to provide an estimage for the true figure.[4] Statement: "Firearms are responsible for the deaths of 45,000 infants, children and adolescents per year." (American Academy of Pediatrics) Truth: Even if all persons 15-95 are considered "adolescents," this one can't be true. The 45,000 figure exceeds the total deaths in all ages from all causes related to firearms.[4] Statement: "One million U.S. inhabitants die prematurely each year as the result of intentional homicide or suicide." (former Surgean General C. Everett Koop) Truth: According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 1988 there were about 30,000 suicides (by all methods) and about 22,000 homicides (by all methods, including legal self-defense). Thus, the "one million" claim is off by about 1800%.[4] Statement: "A gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill someone you know than be used against an intruder." Truth: This is a misrepresentation of a meaningless comparison from a limited and poorly done study. This study was performed over a 6 year period in one single county in the USA. As this study is was done in just one county, that makes its results useless for saying what happens anywhere else. Scientists and researchers call this "a sample size of one". The comparison is meaningless because it is an apples vs oranges comparison. 37 of the 43 are suicides, 4.6 are classified as criminal homicides, and 1.3 were classified as accidents.[5] Kellermann and Reay, the authors of the study have stated themselves that "cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm [and] cases in which would-be intruders may have purposely avoided a house known to be armed.."[5] should be included as a benefit. BUT, when they calculated their comparison they did NOT include those cases. They therefore undercounted protection uses by at least 500 times.[6] If the purpose is to compare defensive uses verses misuse, all defensive uses should be counted, not just the 0.2% of time when a defensive use results in the death of an attacker. You measure defensive uses by lives saved, not criminals killed, after all, the purpose of self defense is to prevent or stop a criminal attack, not kill the attacker. Homicides that were found to be self-defense in a court of law were counted as criminal homicides by this study, thus over stating the number of criminal homicides, and under stating the number of self-defense homicides. "Someone you know" is often described as friends or even "loved ones", but in reality this includes rival gang members, drug dealers, abusive spouses and acquaintances, and so on. Those who proclaim the 43-1 statistics will often imply that only dear friends, loved family members, and small innocent children are the ones being killed, an obviously misleading statement. The study failed to distinguish between households or environs populated by people with violent, criminal, or substance-abuse histories -- where the risk of death is very high -- versus households inhabited by more civil folk (for example, people who avoid high-risk activities like drug dealing, gang banging and wife beating) -- where the risk is very low indeed. In actuality, negligent adults allow fatal but avoidable accidents; and homicides are perpetrated mostly by people with histories of violence or abuse, people who are identifiably and certifiably at ~high risk~ for misadventure. The Hart Poll in 1981 found 644,000 defensive uses with handguns per year. The Mauser Poll in 1990 found 691,000 defensive uses per year. The Field Poll in California in 1978 found 1.2 million handgun defensive uses per year. The Time/CNN Poll in 1989 found over 908,000 defensive uses per year. Gary Kleck estimated the yearly defensive use of firearms by civilians to be at about 1,000,000 per year. A more recent study by Gary Kleck put the yearly total at approximately 2,400,000 defensive uses. Yet the total deaths by firearm in the USA only runs about 25,000 to 30,000 per year, and that includes accidents, murders, suicides and self defense homicides. That means a gun is 30-40 times more likely to defend against an assault or other crime than kill anybody. As accidental firearm's related deaths is about 1400 per year, including hunting accidents, the defensive use verses accidental death ratio is about 700-800 to 1. A study by Simon Fraser University professor Gary Mauser shows Canadians use guns in self-defense against assailants more than 32,000 times a year. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Information from [1]National Firearms Association fact sheet. [2]Coalition For Gun Control fact sheet. [3]Handgun Control Incorporated letter(s). [4]American Rifleman, August 1993, Pg42-44, "Kids and Guns" by David Kopel. [5]"Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home," Arthur L. Kellermann and Donald T. Reay, The New England Journal of Medicine 314, no. 24 (June 12, 1986): 1557-1560 [6]"Crime Control through the Private Use of Armed Force" by Professor Gary Kleck. [7] US federal law, 18 USC 922(g). [8] Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (Stats Canada) [9] Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Letter to Florida Residents, Nov '93 [10] U.S. Source "Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1991", Federal Bureau of Investigation, p.58 CDN. Source "Crime Trends in Canada 1962-1990", Cdn. Ctr. for Justice Statistics, p.15. [11] Handgun Control Incorporated Fact Card (circa 1986) ********** All Standard Disclaimers Apply ********** "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." -- Frederic Bastiat "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine e-mail: [Johann Opitz] at [smtp.esl.com]