That's a lie. The 1986 Kellerman study, the source of the famous "43 to 1" ratio, is deceptive in several ways. The basis for comparison in this study is the ratio of "firearm-related deaths" of household members vs. deaths of criminals killed in the home (justifiable homicides). The "firearm-related deaths" in the study include suicides and accidents, neither of which are randomly distributed throughout the population, as the 43 to 1 "risk ratio" would imply. Both suicides and accidents are more likely to occur in specific categories of people than they are in the general population. Of the 398 "firearm-related deaths" included in the study, the vast majority (333, or, 84%) were suicides. The number of fatal firearms accidents in the study was 12 (or 3% of the studied deaths). Since sometimes a "gun cleaning accident" is actually a suicide reported under a name less likely to deny payment from a life insurance company, there may in fact have been even fewer accidents than are apparent from the reporting. When only the criminal homicides are considered, rather than including suicides and accidents, the "43 to 1" ratio disappears, and the ratio is far less dramatic, more like "4.5 to 1". There were 41 criminal homicides reported in the Kellerman study, and 9 instances of justifiable or self-defense homicide. People who are violent, unbalanced, or involved in a life of crime are much more likely to use their home gun unwisely, and their chances of using it to harm another (or themselves) are higher than would be expected for the majority of the population.
