Survey offers broad view of firearms in the home

Houston Comical ^ | Sept. 6, 2005, 8:57PM | MIKE STOBBE/AP

[Lead Moderator]

there is a Word Count limit and I thought I would excede it.....

In that case, no problem ;)

[JOAT]

First of all, a phone survey of 241,000 people seems to be quite an undertaking. That is a lot of phone calls

I smell something fishy

I think the 'survey' has been an ongoing effort by the physicians to gather this data from kids at school physical time over several years. Each of my children have been asked by the doctors whether or not we had guns in the house. Even the frickin dentists have asked.

I told them to answer honestly and with a big smile, "Yes, LOTS of them. We don't call the police if we have a problem doc."

[WKUHilltopper]

I was nine.

[Red Badger]

Consumer Product Safety Commission aka Consumer Product STUPIDITY Commission..........

[DBrow]

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/116/3/e370.pdf

Here is the pdf version of the paper, grab it and archive it while this link works.

The survey consisted of three questions added into the annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System conducted by the Feds. They also ask questions about dope, alcohol, sex, health, and a host of other things, by phone, and they do indeed hit over 200,000 phones. CDC pays for it and it shows up in how much funding your area gets for health and other issues.

They define youth as under 18.

The questions are, is there a firearm in or near where you are living now; is it loaded; is it unlocked. They give definitions of firearm, loaded, and locked. California only got two questions for some reason.

The article has lots of stats and tables with 95% confidence limits, so if you were to put it into Excel you could easily add to it CDC youth firearms accidents by state.

The newspaper reports assume a "youth" population of about 70 million, so 1.7 million kids is about 2.5% of the youth population.

There is a plethora of assumptions made, all footnoted, about the effects of unlocked guns and kids, so it's a veritable field day for geeks (like me) who love tracking stuff down.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Did you have a Winchester 30/30 and an Ithaca Model 37 12 G Pump?

[Conspiracy Guy]

CPSC = Consumers' Pockets Sucked Clean

[DBrow]

http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/

The behavioral risk factor survey page. 2002 data on firearms (these are considered to be health threats of course) is not available online.

[quietolong]

What fool would answer a poll like this in the first place! I smell it too.

[DBrow]

See my 65 and 68 as to where the survey comes from.

The Feds brag that this is the largest phone survey ever.

[FeliciaCat]

"About 1,400 children are killed by firearms each year, according to CDC estimates."


How are they defining "Children"???? A 15 year old gang banger getting shot by a rival gang should not be counted IMO....Are they speaking ONLY of firearm accident within the home? I want more info on this statement.

[DBrow]

See my post #65, you can read the report yourself.

Kids are defined as under 18, and the report references another report that claims that 90% of kid's firearms accidents occur in the room where the gun was kept.

Accidents, not murders.

It's a real interesting report fer sure.

[JOAT]

Thanks for the link in 65. Grabbed the document to pore over.

[RetroSexual]

Thanks DBrow, although the news is absolutely disgusting. It reminds me of the census bureau's intrusive questioning.

Again, I say that the odds of them getting accurate responses from sensible people are low.

[heckler]

Just for your FYI.

My brother in-law, the cop gave me one of these as a gift. I'd talked about them and we have 2 small kids so I thought it was a great idea for my night stand gun.

I've had it for 2 months. About 3 weeks ago I woke up to one of those sounds in the middle of the night that you know is probably one of the cats raising hell downstairs, but I reached over to unlock my pistol 'just in case'. It wouldnt open. I tried the combination 5 times and it wouldnt open. I pulled the key out of my night stand and opened it manually. It was a little unerving to contemplate what would have happened if I had actually needed it.

The next morning I proceeded to figure out what had happened to prevent it from opening. I had to disconnect the battery pack and reconnect it before it would work.

This thing is supposed to beep intermittently if the batteries get low or if someone has entered the wrong combination 25 times. It wasnt beeping.

After I put it back together it seemed to work fine. 3 days later I tried it again and it didnt work, had to open with the key. I'm going to try new batteries before I call the manufacturer, but I'm very dissatisfied with this thing.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

So if someone from the govt called you regarding a "survey" on gun ownership in your home what would you say? I think I'd say, "Guns? In my home? No way, no how".

Based on that I'd say this survey is worth about as much as a bucket full of warm spit.

[fella]

I don't know about you but if some stranger calls me on the phone and asks questions about guns and children the last thing I'm going to tell them is the truth. With all the draconian laws that the gun-grabbers have stampeded through various state legislatures and succeeded in getting dictated by the bench, you could be setting yourself up for an out of control swat raid followed by jail time or even a funeral, if you tell the truth.

[WKUHilltopper]

I used to have a Winchester model 94 30/30. Took my first deer with it. I loved it. Wish I still had it. Also had a "sears-stevens" double barrel (side by side) 20ga. Still have that one. Actually was my first gun ever.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

How many are killed by abortion?

I think it's still close to 2 million a year. But I don't think guns are used.

[Conspiracy Guy]

My first gun was a Marlin Model 39 ? 22 Lever Action. Got it at 8 years. Got the Winchester Mod 94 and the Ithaca 37 at 10. My first handgun was a 22 auto loader of some sort but I can't remember the mfr or mod.