Here is how they debunk kellerman....
Lies Damned Lies and Washington CeaseFire s Statistics - The Truth About Guns
#1) Dr. Kellerman initially failed to state how he determined that the gun used belonged in the home or had been brought into it by someone else. Four years later he wrote a letter to the NEJM with a correction stating that in follow-up interviews it was determined that in 63% of the cases the gun was organic to the household. So, 0.63 times 22 means you’re only 13.6 times more likely to be ki . . . etc. (I think I’ll start using the acronym TMLTBKBAGIYHTTKAI . . . or, better yet we’ll just use TML (times more likely). So, that has reduced the 22 TML figure down to 13.6.
#2) Dr. Kellerman failed to account for
other risk factors like drug use, criminals or criminal activity in the home. According to his study’s Table 3, 53% of the case study households contained at least one adult who had been arrested. So 0.47 times 13.64 leaves 6.4 TML.
#3)
Most of the killings didn’t actually occur “in the home,” Oops! According to Kellerman’s own figures, only 23.9% of the homicides happened in the home of the victim. So, 0.239 times 6.4 gives us 1.5321812 so let’s call it 1.5 TML, shall we?
#4) Kellerman’s study includes suicides committed with guns. The problem with that is he did no research to determine if the “victim” acquired the weapon solely in order to commit suicide or if they used it as a “method of opportunity.” And despite the antis claims to the contrary, numerous studies have shown that suicide rates are independent of method. In other words, taking away guns may reduce the gun suicide rate, but non-gun suicides will increase enough to offset this.
#5) And the biggest problem of all: Dr. Kellerman seems to believe that killing someone is the only way to use a gun defensively (one wonders, then, what he thinks of police departments who routinely
arrestpeople instead of killing them). But according to Dr. Kleck’s study
Targeting Guns (as cited on
page 19of Gun Facts ver. 6.0) in less than 0.1% of DGUs is the attacker killed. Indeed, in 92% of DGUs the victim merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot.
So, putting all this together, what do we have (besides the fact that 22 TML is a completely bogus number)? After my swipe at number crunching we have reduced TML to 1.5, but what does that mean in real life?
Well, according to the
CDC‘s numbers, over the 11 years from 1999 to 2009 we averaged 11,800 firearm-related murders annually. If we carry that number through 2010 and look at the census numbers, that means the your chance of being murdered with a gun is 11,800/309,000,000 or 0.0038%. So even if we accept Dr. Kellerman’s premise that guns are only useful when they kill someone, having a gun in your home raises your odds of being killed from 0.0038% to 0.0059%.
