Guns-N-Research

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy there’s a lively discussion on the Kellerman study which claimed to prove that simply having a gun in your dwelling increased your odds of being killed by a gun by some astronomical amount, usually quoted by the antis as 43:1 but lately somewhat less.

The comments to this are the best reading on the topic I’ve ever seen with various legal types and a few statisticians chiming in. Volokhs position is that Kellermans study is essentially meaningless because there were so many variables that were simply ignored.

There are several classes of job that entail the use, or at least, possession of a firearm, among which are policeman, drug dealer, robber, security guard, and others that may occur to you. These folks carry guns because they regularly come in contact with people of a socially dubious sort that a reasonable man would not want to do business with without some assurance that all the men present, especially our reasonable man, were, at least arguably, equal. Kellermans study did not take any of this into consideration, so the class of “gun owner” frequently included criminals of various sorts, and police. Since no one was included in the study who did not also make it into the obituary column, there is a disproportionate number of criminals included in the study. Kellerman also included suicides, and actually did differentiate them, blaming the gun for the suicide.

The top 21 countries for suicide rates are:

#1 Lithuania: 81.9 per 100,000 people

#2 Russia: 74.1 per 100,000 people

#3 Latvia: 71.4 per 100,000 people

#4 Estonia: 64.6 per 100,000 people

#5 Belarus: 55.7 per 100,000 people

#6 Hungary: 55.5 per 100,000 people

#7 Sri Lanka: 46.9 per 100,000 people

#8 Slovenia: 45.1 per 100,000 people

#9 Finland: 43.4 per 100,000 people

#10 Kazakhstan: 39.7 per 100,000 people

#11 Ukraine: 38.2 per 100,000 people

#12 Belgium: 37.3 per 100,000 people

#13 Croatia: 34.6 per 100,000 people

#14 Austria: 34.2 per 100,000 people

#15 Luxembourg: 30.8 per 100,000 people

#16 France: 30.4 per 100,000 people

#17 Switzerland: 29.5 per 100,000 people

#18 Moldova: 29.5 per 100,000 people

#19 Czech Republic: 28.1 per 100,000 people

#20 Bulgaria: 25.3 per 100,000 people

#21 Japan: 25 per 100,000 people

The US comes in at #30

Gun control ranges from a lot (Japan) to essentially none (several places. Sure it’s illegal, so what?)

Snowdog99 commented:

Epidemiological studies are 99% horsesh*t for many of the very reasons Eugene cites in his post - that is (in essence), that the chain of causation is difficult if not impossible to accurately characterize empirically.

It reminds me of a "study" done a few years ago, whereupon the researchers found that young teenage women sporting tattoos were more likely to give birth out-of-wedlock. The media dutifully interpreted these results to mean: "tattoos cause unplanned pregnancy."

At this point the light bulb came on over my head. All I need to do is copy all the Brady Bunch propaganda, and do a word substitution of “tattoo” for “gun” and “unplanned pregnancy” for “death” and apply for a boatload of federal money for my foundation; the “Billll Foundation for the Prevention of Unplanned Pregnancy”

I have visions of a large, imposing structure filled with hotties in white lab coats…..