Posted on 01/23/2007 8:08:38 PM PST by neverdem
States with the greatest number of guns in the home also have the highest rates of homicide, a new study finds.
The study, in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine, looked at gun ownership in all 50 states and then compared the results with the number of people killed over a three-year period.
The research, the authors said, “suggests that household firearms are a direct and an indirect source of firearms used to kill Americans both in their homes and on the streets.”
The researchers, led by Matthew Miller of the Harvard School of Public Health, drew on data gathered by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2001, the agency surveyed more than 200,000 people and asked them, among other questions, whether they had a gun in or near the home.
In states in the highest quarter of gun ownership, the study found, the overall homicide rate was 60 percent higher than in states in the lowest quarter. The rate of homicides involving guns was more than twice as high...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Two of every three American homicide victims are killed with firearms, yet little is known about the role played by household firearms in homicide victimization. The present study is the first to examine the cross sectional association between household firearm ownership and homicide victimization across the 50 US states, by age and gender, using nationally representative state-level survey-based estimates of household firearm ownership. Household firearm prevalence for each of the 50 states was obtained from the 2001 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Homicide mortality data for each state were aggregated over the three-year study period, 2001–2003. Analyses controlled for state-level rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, per capita alcohol consumption, and a resource deprivation index (a construct that includes median family income, the percentage of families living beneath the poverty line, the Gini index of family income inequality, the percentage of the population that is black and the percentage of families headed by a single female parent). Multivariate analyses found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates of men, women and children. The association between firearm prevalence and homicide victimization in our study was driven by gun-related homicide victimization rates; non-gun-related victimization rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership. Although causal inference is not warranted on the basis of the present study alone, our findings suggest that the household may be an important source of firearms used to kill men, women and children in the United States.
Keywords: Homicide; Firearms; Guns; Violence; Epidemiology
Exactly why I dislike social sciences.
I would imagine that if they bothered to look for other factors, such as race and class, that a much clearer trend would emerge.
Is there any mention in there of how many registered gun owners commit felonies with those guns? I didn't think so.
Consider the source.
uh, the reason so many people have guns in the home in these states is the HIGH CRIME RATE INCLUDING HOMICIDES.
They buy them to protect themselves.
Once again the liberals blame the instrument most useful to defend oneself from the criminals instead of those perpetuating the crimes.
I'll say it again. This study is bogus, funded by the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. Barack Obama was on the board of directors before he ran for the Senate.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1766323/posts?page=20#20
Who paid for the study?
Obviously another poll with targeted results.
Figures don't lie, but liars can figure. Junk science.
Or, if they'd tried to get the "cart/horse" dichotomy in the proper order they'd noticed that where the murder rate is higher private citizens take action to make sure they are able to defend themselves.
Bingo. Correlation is not causality. They controlled for so many variable they couldn't identify an intervening variable if they wanted to. Which, of course, they didn't.
Mark
"Household" firearms? What does that term even mean? You buy a gun, you bring it home. What other type of gun is there?
Actually, the issue probably isn't even one of reversed causality, though that may occur to some extent. Imagine that Freedonia has two states, each with two counties; all four counties have equal populations.
State #1 County A: 0 firearms; 40 homicidesThe state with the most firearms has the most homicides, but examination of the data at the county level shows that the counties with the most firearms have the least homicides.
State #1 County B: 40 firearms; 0 homicides
State #2 County A: 0 firearms; 50 homicides
State #2 County B: 50 firearms; 0 homicides
Highest "homicide" rates, not highest crime rates, nor do they even try to say "hghest criminal homicide rates."
You kill someone trying to rob you or assault you, that goes into the stats as "a homicide."
As Samuel Clemens is reputed to have said,
"There's lies, there's damn lies, and there's statistics."
Be careful how you ask that question: it could be construed to mean that you don't oppose, or that you actually support, gun registration.
(You don't actually support gun registration, do you?)
World news alert
"MOST PEOPLE DIE WERE MOST PEOPLE LIVE"
Anything you would care to add to this smooth twist of statistics?
It this is from the NY Times, then it must be true.
Gag me
Ah the nyt, a regular gusher of truth.
What do you tell people that come to you house asking about your guns.
I've never had anyone inquiring. Have you? This is more NYT BS!
My primary care physician was asking this question during the prescreening at a doctor's visit, along with questions on seatbelt use, history of diabetes, etc.
It wouldn't matter where in the world you did this survey - you'd still get similar results, only worse because guns would be owned exclusively by crims. All this proves is that crime and guns go together. Duh.
You should find yourself another doctor, and you should
have told your current one to go pound sand when he or she asked that stupid, nonsensical question.
Montana?
Oh. Maybe we aren't saying how many guns we might have....Someone must have really diddled with the numbers on this one.
You need to remind the doctor that you're the customer and he's the hired help. All those questions are none of his business.
Good point. I remember a local hospital got a rap years ago for having a higher death ratio per patient than other local hospitals. Then it was pointed out that several large convalescent hospitals were located nearby, more than were near any of the other hospitals. It wasn't a bad hospital at all, just had more people likely to die living nearby and entering just previous to their natural passage. When it comes to stats, the devil is in the details!
Show your doctor your NRA Life Membership card!
States with the greatest number of guns in the home are, in my guess, states with the greatest concentration of population.
Since criminals don't fall over each other trying to get to
Centerville,Maine, to prey on the towns 20 residents, I would guess that is why more firearm murders are committed in large cities.
The study is a fraud. Look at the firearm murder rate of Los Angeles.Most of them are gang related.
By the way, the greatest number of drownings is in states that have a lot of water.
Social Science & Medicine?
I keep my rifle loaded on the driveway for safe keeping. I keep the handguns loaded on the mailbox.
Aha, I see. LOL.
Duh, ain't thet cus da guys in da counties wit guns go to da counties witout guns and kills dem people, cus it's safer than killin da people in their own county? Don't that prove guns is bad? < /Lib Activist Mode
In other news ... People have established a link between purposely skewed research and not-so-hidden agendas.
LOL! dummies suck!
This again? I saw this (or an article based on the same bogus "study") posted a few weeks ago and the study was thoroughly debunked at that time.
Moral: The "study" will find what it expects to find.
Thanks for the link! I knew I saw this bogus "study" posted here before.
Now here comes the scumbag New York Times - - a day late and a dollar short, as usual.
I keep loaded guns all over the house, and I made sure my kids know where they are hidden, so that:
1. they don't accidently "stumble" across them and,
2. they can grab one and start blasting bad guys if the need arises.
2001 is a "new" study?
Be that as it may, it only confirms the results of an earlier study, by the same "Disease Model" of crime types. That more people in high crime areas own guns. Not that guns cause crime. Or the crime causes people to want to own guns.
Correlation is not causation. The real question is: were the people victimized through use of the guns they kept their home, or guns brought in by the criminals? They didn't ask that question of course.
Apparently they did.
Analyses controlled for state-level rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, per capita alcohol consumption, and a resource deprivation index (a construct that includes median family income, the percentage of families living beneath the poverty line, the Gini index of family income inequality, the percentage of the population that is black and the percentage of families headed by a single female parent).
Multivariate analysis is probably not the best way to isolate the effects of gun ownership from all those other factors, it would be better to "take out" the effect of the others, and then do the regression analysis on the "residual". IIRC, it's only been 30 years since I employed the same sort of analysis on my master's thesis research (EE not social science), this usually makes for a clearer measure of the degree of correlation of the independent variable of interest (gun ownership) to the phenomena of under study (rate of homicides)
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
But it's at the root of epidemiology and the social sciences. It can be the start of wisdom or foolery at best, tragedy at worst, like most of statistics.
What's a 'registered gun owner'? No such thing in most states. If if weren't for the federal "instant check" and the older "yellow form" (which is kept by the dealer), there would be no record at all in most states. But the "instant check" is in the nature of a "shall issue" permit, the record of which is by law destroyed after approval, supposedly anyway.
A requirement to register your arms is very much like the trick General Gage pulled on the citizens of Boston in 1775. He told them if they would keep their weapons in his arsenals, where they'd be "safe", they could get them anytime they wanted to leave the city. There was a safety issue .... for General Gage that is, not for their owners. Registration is an "infringement". YMMV
LOL! I missed that! Near their home? LOL! I suppose that would include folks with no guns, but "I know the guy down the street has one." LOL!
a statistical trick they usually employ in "studies" such as this is to count suicides as homicides.
Same old deliberately skewed, liberal crap. As we move ever farther into a period of power and prominence for the Democrats, expect to see the MSM marching in lockstep in the effort to abrogate what little is left of the Second Amendment.
Not the slightest bit surprising that the dinosaur media, meanwhile, are going broke, when they've become little else than a collective mouthpiece for the Politically Correct, Leftist line/Democrat Party talking points.
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