Scare statistics: poor foundation for Public Policy
by Gary Gerard, Managing Editor
The Times-Union, Warsaw IN
14 December 1996
"Nobody wants to take your guns"
Here are a couple quotes to consider:
"We will never fully solve our nation's horrific problem of gun violence unless we ban the manufacture
and sale of handguns and semi-automatic weapons." -- USA Today
"Why should America adopt
a policy of near-zero tolerance for private gun ownership? ...(W)ho can still
argue compellingly that Americans can be trusted to handle guns safely? We
think the time has come for America to tell the truth about guns. They are
not for us. We cannot handle them." -- Los Angeles Times
When there's a new batch
of gun laws proposed, my anti-gun friends can't understand why I'm concerned.
I'm concerned because I firmly believe there are a number of people in high
places who would like to ban all guns for all purposes.
But my anti-gun friends
always reassure me. "Nobody wants to ban all guns," they say. Well, there are at least
a couple editorial writers -- one each at the L.A. Times and USA Today --
who do.
Gun myths designed to confuse
Last week, I pointed out
a few quotes from officials who overstated their case by using inflated statistics.
This week I would like to take aim at gun myths. Gun myths are numerous. They are an affront to the 60 to 65 million law-abiding gun owners in this country. And they are repeated incessantly in the national media.
The national media hope to shape opinions on the gun controversy and I can't help but think they know the truth and just choose to mislead us. They must know that the myths they report don't stand up to the light of scrutiny, but they continually use them anyway.
The biggest -- and most oft-quoted -- gun myth goes like this: "A gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill you or a friend than a criminal intruder." Or, "For every case of justifiable homicide with a gun, there are 43 unnecessary deaths."
This "factoid" came from a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine and has been repeated thousands of times. You have to work really hard to make it even remotely resemble a fact.
How much must you fear
yourself?
First of all, the folks
who did the study counted suicides. Of those 43 deaths they're talking about,
37 are suicides.
The study, then, appears to be saying that owning a gun makes you more likely to become suicidal. That's ludicrous. And further, there are plenty of ways to kill yourself without a gun. Those 37 deaths likely would have occurred if there was no gun in the house.
Blaming the gun that
wasn't used
Next, the study counted
all homicides in all households with guns, even if the household gun wasn't
involved in the shooting.
For example, a criminal carrying his own gun breaks into your home. He shoots and kills you while your gun is locked safely in a gun cabinet. For purposes of the study, they count this as one of the 43 deaths because a gun-owning homeowner was killed with a gun. It apparently didn't matter to them that the homeowner's gun had absolutely nothing to do with it.
When your assailant
is your "friend"
Also, for purposes of
the study, "you or a friend" meant you or anybody known to you. If the shooter
knew the victim in any way, they counted it in the 43.
If it was a drug dealer shooting another drug dealer over a deal gone bad, or a woman shooting a violent ex-boyfriend who was stalking her in her home, they were counted as "bad" deaths.
In "43 to 1," practically all justifiable self-defense homicides are counted among the 43. The 1 only counts a total stranger.
Is a gun useless unless
it kills?
The study also assumes
that the proper measure of a successful use of a gun for defense is the number
of dead intruders it produces.
Yet most credible research shows that 98 percent of the time, defensive use of a gun does not even involve a shot fired. In those cases, the intruder surrenders or flees upon sight of a gun. [In others, a criminal is most often missed or wounded, not killed.]
The value of a gun isn't measured in the body count on your front porch, but rather in crimes prevented, lives saved and the safety of your family.
The truth about firearm
self-defense
Basically, the folks who
did the study set out to make guns look as bad as possible and slanted all
their numbers to make their case. The 43 to 1 study is useless drivel, spoon-fed
to us by the media over and over and over.
So what's the real story, you ask?
There has been significant research done on guns used for defensive purposes.
Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America was written by Gary Kleck, a criminologist from Florida State University. Kleck is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA and Common Cause. He is a lifelong registered Democrat as well as a contributor to Democrat candidates.
Gun Stats and Mortal Risks was written by Preston Covey. Covey is head of the Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University.
(Ethics, hmmmm.)
In short, these guys are committed to giving us the most accurate information available on guns, crime and violence.
What a concept.
Covey says that the 43
to 1 statistic:
"purports to inform
us, but is framed to warn us off. It is widely promulgated in the media as
a 'scare stat,' a grossly misleading half-truth whose very formulation is
calculated to prejudice and terrify. The frightful statistic screams for itself:
the risks far outweigh the benefits, yes? What fool would run these risks?
If your car were 43 times more likely to kill you, a loved one, a dear friend
or an innocent child than to get you to your destination, should you not take
the bus?"
Kleck's research -- from gleaning local police department, BATF, and FBI files -- shows a range of 606,000 to 960,000 defensive uses of firearms per year. [His latest research, using techniques that more directly count defensive gun use, ups this figure to over two million.] In most cases a shot is never fired and no one is killed.
Covey uses the number 750,000 -- the midrange of Kleck's numbers -- to estimate the following:
A gun is 245 times more likely to be used by a non-criminal to defend against criminal threat than by a non-criminal to commit criminal homicide. (1)
A gun is 535 times more likely to be used to defend against criminal threat than to accidentally kill anybody. (2)
A gun is 50 times more likely to be used to defend against criminal threat than to kill any other person. (3)
A gun is 50 times more likely to be used to defend against criminal threat than to be used in suicide. (4)
I know that guns are not for everyone. I know that guns are dangerous in the wrong hands.
But I also know that to shape meaningful public opinion and formulate effective public policy, you need facts, not "scare stats."
Notes
1. Assumes 30,000 gun deaths per year minus 15,000 suicides.
Subtract 1,400 accidental deaths, leaving 13,600.
Subtract a conservative rate of justifiable, self-defense homicides -- 10 percent of all gun homicides.
This leaves 12,240 gun homicides not in self-defense.
A Chicago Police Department study of homicide from 1965 to 1991 showed that 75 percent of gun homicides
are committed by criminals with prior records.
Applying that standard leaves 3,060 criminal homicides by non-criminals.
750,000 gun defenses per year divided by 3,060 equals 245.
2. 750,000 gun defenses per year divided by 1,400 accidental gun deaths.
3. 750,000 gun defenses divided by 15,000 gun homicides including self-defense.
4. 750,000 gun defenses divided by 15,000 gun suicides.
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