Interesting Question
December 24th, 2006 by Syd
I got an interesting question from a reader:
I have my CCL but my mother-in-law says that now I have a greater chance of getting killed with my own gun. She says home owners always get killed with their own gun. I think this is bunk. I asked her where she gets her info and she said itâ??s common info in all the newspapers. I need facts.
That’s an interesting question. In one way, that being pure mathematical
probabilities, you are more likely to get shot with your own gun if you have
a gun. But that is also BS. It’s like saying people who go swiming are more
likely to drown than those who never go into the water or people who ride in
cars are more likely to be involved in accidents than those who don’t. The
only answer is, “So what’s your point?” As to the second part, I have never
seen even the mostly rabidly anti-gun newspapers (and there are quite a few)
try to claim that homeowners always get shot with their own guns. My own
family has owned guns since gunpowder was invented and we have yet to shoot one of ourselves. (See Clayton Cramer’s blog which lists daily armed self
defense incidents, http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html)
I don’t know that this one can be won in terms of statistics. It is so easy
to twist statistics to support whatever point of view you want to take. I
think you have to personalize the matter, i.e., “I choose to have the
capability to defend myself and my family against a violent attack,” and “If
someone were coming into your home to do you harm, would would you rather
have a gun or not have one?” If the answer is, “No, I’d rather not have the
gun,” then you say, “OK, you take your chances with the Night Stalker and
I’ll take my chances with my gun. There are some things worse than getting
shot.”
But if you want some statistical kinds of stuff:
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/cri/i_stats.html#crimestatscat
http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/stats.html
http://www.justfacts.com/gun_control.htm
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel013101.shtml
http://www.aware.org/selfdefense.shtml
http://www.kc3.org/CCWSTATS.html
Those should get you started. Thanks for an interesting question.
Let me shed some light on where this common belief comes from and is so often misunderstood and misquoted.
“firearm kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder”
It began in 1986 in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine by DR. Arthur Kellerman, et al.
“The Kellerman study viewed defensive gun uses only as instances in which the criminal intruder was shot and killed. Instances in which intruders or assailants were wounded or frightened away by the use of a firearm were not included. Kellerman admitted that, “Studies such as ours do not include cases in which intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display fire arm. A complete determination of firearm risks versus benefits would require these figures be known.”ii Kellerman’s approach was not unlike measuring the effectiveness of police officers solely on the basis of the number of criminals they kill.iii”
To read more about it do a search on “Arthur Kellerman and Firearms” or to read the rest of where that quote came from go to:
http://www.berettausa.com/communities/home_prot/family.htm