
From: "Preston K. Covey" <covey+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Gun Stats & Mortal Risks
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 18:35:05 -0500 (EST)


Folks,

Hail from the nether world.  On February 4th, the Wall Street Journal
carried a front-page article by Erik Larson entitled "Armed Force."  I
felt a reply was in order to his citation of the notorious scare stat
that "A Gun is 43 times more likely to kill than to protect."  I sent
the following to the WSJ.

-----

Gun Stats & Mortal Risks

Preston K. Covey


	Erik Larson~s even-handed article on Paxton Quigley (~Armed Force,~
2/4/93, WSJ) cites the world~s most notorious ~statistic~ regarding guns
in the home:  ~A pioneering study of residential gunshot deaths in King
County, Washington, found that a gun in the home was 43 times more
likely to be used to kill its owner, spouse, a friend or child than to
kill an intruder.~  The ~43 times~ stat is everywhere these days;  it
has grown in media lore like the proverbial urban myth: it was inflated
by one pugilistic talk-show pundit to ~93.~  Given the shock value of
the finding, the conclusion of the 1986 New England Journal of Medicine
(NEJM) study is remarkably understated:  ~The advisability of keeping
firearms in the home for protection must be questioned.~ 
 
	Responsible people should indeed question the risks and benefits of
bringing a firearm into their home.   But what we need to know is this: 
What exactly are the risks and benefits?  The NEJM testimony is neither
the whole truth about the benefits nor nothing but the truth about the
risks.  Further, as with motor vehicles, we want to know:  What control
do we have over the risks and benefits?  And, as with the risks of
cancer or heart disease or auto accidents:  How can we minimize the
risks?  Like raw highway death tolls, the NEJM stat is not very helpful
here. 

	The NEJM finding purports to inform us, but it is framed to warn us
off.  It is widely promulgated in the media as a ~scare stat,~ a
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?  

	Uncritical citation puts the good name of statistics in the bad company
of lies and damned lies.   Surely, we can do better where lives are at
stake.   Let~s take a closer look at this risky business:

	The ~43 times~ stat of the NEJM study is the product of dividing the
number of home intruders/aggressors justifiably killed in self-defense
(the divisor) into the number of family members or acquaintances  killed
by a gun in the home (the dividend).  The divisor of this risk equation
is 9: in the study~s five-year sample there were 2 intruders and 7 other
cases of self-defense.  The dividend is 387:  in the study there were 12
accidental deaths, 42 criminal homicides, and 333 suicides.  387 divided
by 9 yields 43.  There were a total of 743 gun-related deaths in King
County between 1978 and 1983,  so the study leaves 347 deaths outside of
homes unaccounted.

	The NEJM~s notorious ~43 times~ statistic is seriously misleading on
six counts:

	1.  The dividend is misleadingly characterized in the media:  the ~or
acquaintances~ of the study (who include your friendly drug dealers and
neighborhood gang members) is equated to ~friends.~  The implication is
that the offending guns target and kill only beloved family members,
dear friends, and innocent children.  Deaths may all be equally tragic,
but the character and circumstance of both victims and killers are
relevant to the risk.  These crucial risk factors are masked by the
calculated impression that the death toll is generated by witless
Waltons shooting dear friends and friendly neighbors.  This is
criminological hogwash.

	2.   The study itself does not distinguish 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.  To ignore these obvious
risk factors in firearm accidents and homicides is as misleading as
ignoring the role of alcohol in vehicular deaths: by tautology, neither
gun deaths nor vehicular deaths would occur without firearms or
vehicles; but the person and circumstance of the gun owner or driver
crucially affect the risk. 

	3.  One misleading implication of the way the NEJM stat is framed is
that the mere presence of a gun in the home is much more likely to kill
than to protect, and this obscures -- indeed, disregards -- the role of
personal responsibility.  The typical quotation of this study (unlike
Larson~s) attributes fatal agency to the gun:  ~A gun in the home is 43
times as likely to kill . . . .~  (The Center to Prevent Handgun
Violence, a major promulgator of the NEJM statistic, uses this
particular formulation.)  We can dispense with the silly debate about
whether it~s people or guns that accomplish the killing:  again, by
tautology, gun  deaths would not occur without the guns.  The question
begged is how many deaths would occur anyway, without the guns.  In any
case, people are the death-dealing agents, the guns are their lethal
instruments.  The moral core of the personal  risk factors in gun deaths
are personal responsibility and choice.  Due care and responsibility
obviate gun accidents; human choice mediates homicide and suicide (by
gun or otherwise).  The choice to own a gun need not condemn a person to
NEJM~s high-risk pool.  The gun does not create this risk by itself. 
People have a lot to say about what risk they run with guns in their
homes.  For example, graduates of Paxton Quigley~s personal protection
course do not run the touted ~43 times~ risk any more than skilled and
sober drivers run the same risks of causing or suffering vehicular death
as do reckless or drunk drivers.  Undiscriminating actuarials disregard
and obscure the role of personal responsibility and choice, just as they
disregard and obscure the role of socio-economic, criminological and
other risk-relevant factors in firearm-related death.  This is why we
resent insurance premiums and actuarial consigment to risk pools whose
norms disregard our individualities.  Fortunately, nothing can consign
us to the NEJM risk pool but our own lack of choice or responsibility in
the matter.

	4.  Suicide accounts for 84% of the deaths by gun in the home in the
NEJM study.  As against the total deaths by gun in King County,
including those outside the home, in-house suicides are 44% of the total
death toll, which is closer to the roughly 50% proportion found by other
studies.  Suicide is a social problem of a very different order from
homicide or accidents.  The implication of the NEJM study is that these
suicides might not occur without readily available guns.  It is true
that attempted suicide by gun is likely to succeed.  It is not obviously
true that the absence of a gun would prevent any or all of these
suicides.  This is widely assumed or alleged, but the preponderance of
research on guns and suicide actually shows otherwise, that this is
wishful thinking in all but a few truly impulsive cases.  (See:  Bruce
L. Danto et al., The Human Side of Homicide,  Columbia University Press,
1982;  Charles Rich et al.,  ~Guns and Suicide,~  American Journal of
Psychiatry,  March 1990.)  If suicides were removed from the dividend of
the NEJM study~s risk equation, the ~43 times~ stat would deflate to
~six.~  The inclusion of suicides in the NEJM risk equation -- like the
causes, durability, or interdiction of suicidal intent itself -- is a
profoundly debatable matter.  Quotations of the NEJM study totally
disregard this issue.

	5.  Citations of the NEJM study also mislead regarding the estimable
rate of justifiable and excusable homicide.  Most measures, like the
NEJM homicide rate, are based on the immediate disposition of cases. 
But many homicides initially ruled criminal are appealed and later ruled
self-defense.  In the literature on battered women, immediate case
dispositions are notorious for under-representing the rate of
justifiable or excusable homicide. Time~s January 18, 1993, cover story
on women ~Fighting Back~ reported one study~s finding that 40% of women
who appeal have their murder convictions thrown out.  Time~s July 17,
1989, cover story on a week of gun deaths reported 51% of the domestic
cases as shootings by abuse victims; but only 3% of the homicides were
reported as self-defense.  In a May 14, 1990, update, Time  reported
that 12% of the homicides had eventually been ruled self-defense. In
Time~s sample, the originally reported rate of self-defense was in error
by a factor of four.  The possibility of such error is not acknowledged
by promulgators of the NEJM statistic. 

	6.  While both the dividend and the product of the NEJM risk equation
are arguably inflated, the divisor is unconscionably misleading.  The
divisor of this equation counts only aggressors who are killed,  not
aggressors who are successfully thwarted without being killed or even
shot at.   The utility of armed self-defense is the other side of the
coin from the harms done with guns in homes.  What kind of moral idiocy
is it to measure this utility only in terms of killings ?  Do we measure
the utility of our police solely in terms of felons killed  -- as
opposed to the many many more who are otherwise foiled, apprehended, or
deterred?  Should we not celebrate (let alone count ) those cases where
no human life is lost as successful armed defenses?  The question posed
to media that cite the NEJM scare stat is this:  Why neglect the
compendious research on successful armed defense, notably by
criminologist Gary Kleck (Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America ,
Aldine de Gruyter, 1992)?
	Kleck~s estimations of the rate and risk of defensive firearm use are
based on victimization surveys as well as other studies:  the rate is
high (about one million a year) and the risk is good (gun defenders fare
better than anyone, either those who resort to other forms of resistance
or those who do not resist).  Dividing one million gun defenses a year
by 30,000 annual gun deaths (from self-defense, homicides, suicides, and
accidents) yields 33.  Thus, we can construct a much more favorable
statistic than the NEJM scare stat:  

A gun is 33 times more likely to be used to defend against assault or
other crime than to kill anybody.   

	Of course, Kleck~s critics belittle the dividend of this calculation;
what is good news for gun defenders is bad news for gun control.  We
should indeed question the basis and method of Kleck~s high estimation
of defensive firearm use, as I have questioned the NEJM statistic. 
Clearly, the issue of how to manage mortal risks is not settled by
uncritical citation of statistics.   One thing troubles me still:  we
can hardly escape the unquestioned NEJM scare stat in our media,  but we
hardly ever find Kleck~s good work mentioned,  even critically.
