From: [a--in--l] at [powerup.com.au] (Mark Addinall) Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,aus.politics Subject: Re: Pim's mistakes on guns and suicide - AGAIN, and AGAIN... Date: 25 Apr 1996 06:05:23 GMT [e--h--a] at [eskimo.com] wrote: : In <4l0fnf$[ke 9] at [nntp.Stanford.EDU]>, [f k k] at [leland.stanford.edu] writes: : > Once again Pim has posted a "study" about gun ownership, murder and suicide which : >is utter nonsense. I have pointed this out in the past and will do so again. The text of the : >article follows my comments. : > First let me point out the flaws in the data he presents. It is clearly a limited sample. : >Only 14 out of more than 100 countries are presented. There are also glaring omissions. : >Where is the data for Japan for instance? When considering such a complicated issue as : >suicide the number of confounding variables is great, yet we see a very small and limited data : >set. : Japan was not included because it was not part of the : International Crime survey. I don't normally get in this group due to the very high number of postings, and spending far too much time in aus.politics (I have my tribe to look after ; ), but you did post some Australian statistics (seemingly made up) so just for a change I thought I'd post. Apologies in advance, but we have our own crop of control freaks that need confronting in public. Pim quotes from Kellerman et al at length on why guns are a very bad thing. I would like to share some of the peer reviews as presented in the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia (yes we get a lot of journals down here in Oz ;) Kellerman AL, Reay DT. Protection or peril? An analysis of firearms- related deaths in the home. N Engl J Med 1986. 314: 1557-60 A number of methodological and conceptual error included: . Prejudicially truncated data . Non-sequitur logic . Correct methodology described, but not used by the authors . Repeated the harshly criticized methodology of Rushforth from a decade earlier . Deceptively understated the protective benifits of guns. Hmmmm, doesn't look like objective number crunching to me.. And another review.. Kellerman AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB, et al. Gun ownership a risk factor for homicide in the home. N Engl J Med 1993;329(15): 1084-91 Methodological and Conceptual errors: . Used only one logistic regression model to describe multiple socially distinct populations . Psychosocially, economically and ethnically unrepresentative study-populations . Study populations, compared to general population, over-represented serious social dysfunction and financial instability, factors that would expectedly increase risk of homicide . Unrepresentative nature of dysfunctional study populations prevents generalizing results to populations at large . When properly used, an "odds ratio" only estimates relative risk of study and control populations - misleading because the ratio gives no estimate of actual or baseline risk . One week after publication of this article, during his presentation to a gun prohabition advocacy group. H.E.L.P. Conference (Chicago, October 18, 1993), the lead author emotionally admitted his anti- gun bias. Methinks someone's fiddling with numbers.. Let's have another look shall we... Kellerman AL, Rivara FP, Somes G, et al. Suicide in the home in relation to gun ownership. N Engl J Med 1992;327:467-72 Methodological and Conceptual errors: . An "adjustment" to eliminate suicide outside the home for the stated purpose of exaggerating the focus on guns . Ignored the vast body of data on suicide method substitution . The authors virtually ignored their own data showing that factors, such as psychotropic medications, drug abuse, living alone and hospitalisation for alcholism, have much higher correlations with suicide than guns . Failed to address the important social and ethical dilemma - how to reduce _overall_ suicide rates . Ignored the role of failing health in the suicide of the elderly I'm glad he's not managing the UBANGI portfolio ;) Let's have another look... Kellerman AL, Mercy JA. Men, women, and murder: gender specific differences in rates of fatal violence and victimisation. J Trauma 1992;33:1-5 . Most women kill in defense of themselves an their children. In these common (in the U.S.A.) circumstances, lawful self-defense by women against their attackers is nor "murder" in any jurisdiction . The authors' discussion focussed almost entirely on guns though the data on knives and other weapons are vrtually identical. . The authors failed to note that during the study period the domestic homicide rate nearly halved . Provides no primary research, instead provides largely faulty analysis of FBI uniform crime reports data . Though purporting to assess an aspect of risk, the authors failed to analyze the protective use of guns - lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs saved and property protected - no true risk benifit analysis . Ignored data that suggests that guns are actually the safest and most efficacious means of resisting assault, rape and even non-violent crime . Offered no new insights or solutions to the problem of domestic abuse. One last look at the papers published (and presented by Pim as a reference)... Sloan JH, Kellerman AL, Reay DT, et al. Handgun regulations, crime, assaults, and homicide: a tale of two cities. N Engl J Med 1988;319:1256-62 Methodologic and Conceptual errors: . Attempted a simplistic single-cause interpretation of differences observed in demographically dissimilar cities and cultures . Purported to evaluate the efficacy of Canadian gun control without evaluating the situation before the law . The Vancouver homicide rate increased 25% after the 1977 Canadian gun control law And a summation... "Aberrant data, illogical analysis, weak anologies and gross exaggerations should not be a basis for public policy." Interestingly (though not published), according to the authors' own data, guns were next to last in importance in the "risk factors" studied. In closing, sorry for going on so much. If someone could convince me that civilian ownership of firearms was _BAD_, then I would support it wholeheartedly. Throwing biased numbers (or made up statistics) at me will not wash. Numbers are sacred ;) In Australia we have the same crowd who want to ban _BAD_ things. Happily, we have a democratically elected member of our Upper House, who represents the Shooters Party of Australia. They can complain, but he was voted in. Mr. Pim, I would suggest that you put your intelligence and energy into confronting some of the real problems that face your nation, rather than hurling effort into a secondary symptomatic cause/effect argument. And to the rest of you, keep that 2nd amendment. I wish we had one. Regards, Mark (woomera) Addinall. UBANGI!!!