Kellermann's Responce to Criticism
Sam A. Kersh
Dr. Arthur Kellermann had a paper published in Vol 329, No. 15, October
7, 1993 issue of the NEJM. This paper brought the Journal and
Kellermann much criticism. He responded and the letter was published in
Vol 330, No. 5, Feb 3, 1994. Robert L. Ray claims "it's too long to
post." I disagree--- sooooo
The authors reply:
To the Editor:
Large-scale cohort studies are usually the best way to explore the
relation between a potential risk factor and an outcome of
interest. Since this approach was not feasible, we conducted a
case-control study. By ascertaining the rate of gun ownership in
households where a homicide had occurred and comparing this rate
with that noted in a random sample of neighboring households that
contained a person of the same age group, sex, and race as the
victim, we obtained a good approximation of relative risk (1). This
is the same research technique that was used to identify the link
between cigarette smoking and lung cancer (2).
The exaggerated claim that guns are used in self-defense more than
a million times a year has not withstood scientific scrutiny (3,4).
If a gun in the home affords substantial protection from homicide
(whether it is used to injure, kill, or frighten intruders or
simply discourage them from entering), we should have found that
homes in which a homicide occurred were less likely to contain a
gun than similar households in which a homicide did not occur. The
opposite was true.
We restricted our study to homicides in the home because the risk
or protective benefit of a readily available firearm should be most
plausibly demonstrated where it is kept. All such homicides were
included, whether or not they involved a person at high risk for
violence because of various behavioral factors. Although we noted
a degree of association among several behavioral risk factors, each
contributed independently to the risk of homicide. Therefore, we
took these effects into consideration in our final model.
A comparable ascertainment of exposure is crucial in any
case-control study, which is why we based our analysis on
interviews rather than on-the-scene reports. Ninety-three percent
of the homicides involving firearms occurred in homes where a gun
was kept, according to the proxy respondents. In 8 of the other 14
homicides, the investigating officer specifically noted that the
gun involved had been kept in the home.
Although we tried to interview a proxy respondent for each control,
this was often impossible. However, the rate of gun ownership
reported by the proxy respondents was actually higher than the rate
reported by the controls themselves.
We are confident that our findings will be corroborated. The early
studies of smoking and lung cancer were confirmed by subsequent
studies. Nonetheless, some doctors still smoke. Old habits -- and
deeply held beliefs -- die hard.
Arthur L. Kellermann, M.D., M.P.H.
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30329
Grant Somes, Ph.D.
University of Tennessee, Memphis
Memphis, TN 38103
Frederick P. Rivara, M.D., M.P.H.
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
>.................................................................................................................
Sam A. Kersh
NRA Life Member
TSRA Life Member
L.E.A.A., JPFO
=======================================================
Read the book UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES.
Reviews are at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D1888118040
or
http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/95/123195vs.htm
uspc...@my-dejanews.com
In article <35731b2c...@news.flash.net>,
csmk...@flash.net (Sam A. Kersh) wrote:
> A very misleading subject title <
I expected something along the lines of:
"boo hoo hoo, waa waa waa"
Then again, after reading Kellermann's written response, it did.
Jim
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
David Veal
In article <35731b2c...@news.flash.net>,
Sam A. Kersh <csmk...@flash.net> wrote:
[Dr. Kellermann responds to criticism.]
>The authors reply:
>
>To the Editor:
>The exaggerated claim that guns are used in self-defense more than
>a million times a year has not withstood scientific scrutiny (3,4).
>If a gun in the home affords substantial protection from homicide
>(whether it is used to injure, kill, or frighten intruders or
>simply discourage them from entering), we should have found that
>homes in which a homicide occurred were less likely to contain a
>gun than similar households in which a homicide did not occur. The
>opposite was true.
This is nonsense. In order to conclude this it would be necessary
for each control household to be subject to the same danger as the
household in which the murder took place. The study didn't attempt to
pair homes of equal risk ... in fact, the study more than amply
demonstrated that homes in which someone was murdered suffer from a whole
host of danger-predicting characteristics that their control pairs didn't.
In fact, firearms could still be very effective for self-defense and
still produce exactly the situation the study found ... if the
experimental homes were more likely to be subject to a potentially lethal
attack. And given the differences in characteristics, you would be hard
pressed to argue that homes in which larger percentage of occupants used
illegal drugs and had criminal records were not exactly that.
--
David Veal ve...@utk.edu
WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get
WYGIWYD - What You Get Is What You Deserve
Bill B.
The exaggerated claim that guns are used in self-defense more than
a million times a year has not withstood scientific scrutiny (3,4).
If a gun in the home affords substantial protection from homicide
(whether it is used to injure, kill, or frighten intruders or
simply discourage them from entering), we should have found that
homes in which a homicide occurred were less likely to contain a
gun than similar households in which a homicide did not occur. The
opposite was true.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And homes in which homicides occurred also had toilets. Hence toilets kill!
RAY
David Veal wrote:
Kellermann wrote:
> >To the Editor:
> [...]
> >The exaggerated claim that guns are used in self-defense more than
> >a million times a year has not withstood scientific scrutiny (3,4).
> >If a gun in the home affords substantial protection from homicide
> >(whether it is used to injure, kill, or frighten intruders or
> >simply discourage them from entering), we should have found that
> >homes in which a homicide occurred were less likely to contain a
> >gun than similar households in which a homicide did not occur. The
> >opposite was true.
>
DV> This is nonsense. In order to conclude this it would
be necessary
> for each control household to be subject to the same danger as the
> household in which the murder took place. The study didn't attempt to
> pair homes of equal risk ... in fact, the study more than amply
> demonstrated that homes in which someone was murdered suffer from a whole
> host of danger-predicting characteristics that their control pairs didn't.
RR: David, you forget that Kellermann then factored out
these risks for homicide, and STILL came up with a 2.7 times
added risk with firearms in the home, even with the risks
of both cases and controls evened out.
RAY
Bill B. wrote:
>
> The exaggerated claim that guns are used in self-defense more than
> a million times a year has not withstood scientific scrutiny (3,4).
> If a gun in the home affords substantial protection from homicide
> (whether it is used to injure, kill, or frighten intruders or
> simply discourage them from entering), we should have found that
> homes in which a homicide occurred were less likely to contain a
> gun than similar households in which a homicide did not occur. The
> opposite was true.
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
Hence toilets kill!
RR: However, after a final double-blind multi-factorial
deep-regression analysis, Professor Alphonse HighBottom has
concluded that there is a 6.34422 chance that homes
containing guns are more likely to have an outhouse than an
'inhouse' :-)
David Friedman
> In fact, firearms could still be very effective for self-defense and
> still produce exactly the situation the study found ... if the
> experimental homes were more likely to be subject to a potentially lethal
> attack. And given the differences in characteristics, you would be hard
> pressed to argue that homes in which larger percentage of occupants used
> illegal drugs and had criminal records were not exactly that.
I think the argument against the study is a little stronger then that. The
fact that someone has a gun in his home is in itself evidence that he is
at risk--not because he is at risk from his gun, but because being at risk
is one of the reasons people have guns.
Someone else writes (responding to David Veal, not to me)
> RR: David, you forget that Kellermann then factored out
> these risks for homicide, and STILL came up with a 2.7 times
> added risk with firearms in the home, even with the risks
> of both cases and controls evened out.
I haven't seen the study, but the methodological problem is that he can
only factor out those risks he has data on. If being at risk causes gun
ownership, which seems plausible, then gun ownership will correlate with
the unobservable risks as well--and they will correlate with being a gun
victim.
--
David Friedman
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
David Friedman
After reading the thread on Kellerman, I did a bit of web browsing. Steve
Kangas has a good summary of the Kellerman paper at:
http://www.scruz.net/~kangaroo/L-kellermann.htm
The one crucial thing he does not say, and that is asserted in a piece
from _Reason_ elsewhere on the web, is that Kellerman has refused to make
his data available to other researchers. If that is true, then his study
cannot be trusted, since he can say anything he likes about the results,
true or false, without the risk that someone else will rerun his
regressions and prove them false.
I note, incidentally, that John Lott and Isaac Ehrlich, two economists who
did (widely separated) statistical studies heavily criticized (by
opponents of handgun ownership and the death penalty, respectively) both
made their data available to others.
Steve Hix
In article <ddfr-03069...@129.210.78.3>, dd...@best.com (David
Friedman) wrote:
> > RR: David, you forget that Kellermann then factored out
> > these risks for homicide, and STILL came up with a 2.7 times
> > added risk with firearms in the home, even with the risks
> > of both cases and controls evened out.
>
> I haven't seen the study, but the methodological problem is that he can
> only factor out those risks he has data on. If being at risk causes gun
> ownership, which seems plausible, then gun ownership will correlate with
> the unobservable risks as well--and they will correlate with being a gun
> victim.
What RR neglected to bring out from the study in question was
that Kellerman found even *higher* risks associated with
- Renting, rather than buying your home.
- Using any illegal drugs.
and a couple of other factors.
He also neglected to note that Kellerman counted homicides that
either didn't involve any firearm (but the victim either owned
one or resided in a home where one was owned), or the firearm
owned was not connected with the homicide.
The study, as an argument for restricting legal gun ownership,
is severely lacking.
RAY
David Friedman wrote:
> I haven't seen the study, but the methodological problem is that he can
> only factor out those risks he has data on. If being at risk causes gun
> ownership, which seems plausible, then gun ownership will correlate with
> the unobservable risks as well--and they will correlate with being a gun
> victim.
RR: What 'unobservable risks' are you talking about? As I
said, Kellermann already has factored out the societal
risks. The only remaining homicide risk might be a personal
threat from specific individuals. Kellermann also takes
that into account with the observation that if these
homicide victims bought guns to protect themselves from
these personal threats, then the purchase of guns for this
self-defense purpose was in itself self-defeating.
Afterall, they were MURDERED!
BTW, you can locate Arthur Kellermann's study at your
local library. Just ask for the New England Journal of
Medicine dated 8/7/93, page 1084.
RAY
David Friedman wrote:
>
> After reading the thread on Kellerman, I did a bit of web browsing. Steve
> Kangas has a good summary of the Kellerman paper at:
> from _Reason_ elsewhere on the web, is that Kellerman has refused to make
> his data available to other researchers. If that is true, then his study
> cannot be trusted, since he can say anything he likes about the results,
> true or false, without the risk that someone else will rerun his
> regressions and prove them false.
RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
the public.
John R. Lott, Jr.
RAY wrote:
Not all Kellermann's data has yet to be released, and he waited over five
years to release what he did. Recent work by Gary Kleck using what has been
released confirms that at absolute most 4 percent of the homicides could be
attributed to the gun owned by those in the residence. Kellermann's study
incorrectly assumed that all the gun deaths were caused by the gun in the
home. Obviously, this assumption is crucial for his claim. At least 96
percent of his deaths were falsely assigned.
Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he uses a statistical
method (the case control method) which was designed for a completely different
type of problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the same way that
a drug study for example assigns drugs to people. Many people may have bought
guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
Finally, unlike Kellermann's studies, my earlier study and my new book did not
focus on data from only one or three cities for only one year. I studied data
for all the counties in the entire United States over many years. I studied
murder rates, accidental gun deaths, and suicides. There is in fact
absolutely no evidence that any of Kellermann's claims are correct. See More
Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Steve Fischer
In article <35752E4F...@Interaccess.com> RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com> writes:
>David Veal wrote:
>
>Kellermann wrote:
>> >To the Editor:
>> [...]
>> >a million times a year has not withstood scientific scrutiny (3,4).
>> >If a gun in the home affords substantial protection from homicide
>> >(whether it is used to injure, kill, or frighten intruders or
>> >simply discourage them from entering), we should have found that
>> >homes in which a homicide occurred were less likely to contain a
>> >gun than similar households in which a homicide did not occur. The
>> >opposite was true.
>>
>be necessary
>> for each control household to be subject to the same danger as the
>> household in which the murder took place. The study didn't attempt to
>> pair homes of equal risk ... in fact, the study more than amply
>> demonstrated that homes in which someone was murdered suffer from a whole
>> host of danger-predicting characteristics that their control pairs didn't.
>
>these risks for homicide, and STILL came up with a 2.7 times
>added risk with firearms in the home, even with the risks
>of both cases and controls evened out.
... and it is the way he "factored out" that is in question.
--
/Steve D. Fischer/Atlanta, Georgia/str...@netcom.com/
Steve Fischer
In article <35761E87...@Interaccess.com> RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com> writes:
>David Friedman wrote:
>
>> I haven't seen the study, but the methodological problem is that he can
>> only factor out those risks he has data on. If being at risk causes gun
>> ownership, which seems plausible, then gun ownership will correlate with
>> the unobservable risks as well--and they will correlate with being a gun
>> victim.
>
>RR: What 'unobservable risks' are you talking about? As I
>said, Kellermann already has factored out the societal
>risks.
Exactly how did he do that? Be specific. Use numbers.
Let's see, the societal risk = 2.537584, so that means the
retarded monkey typing the great American novel will only
be enticed into eating a banana if I wear a dress and rub
my stomach while singing the French national anthem. Hence,
more guns = more murders.
> BTW, you can locate Arthur Kellermann's study at your
>local library. Just ask for the New England Journal of
>Medicine dated 8/7/93, page 1084.
Been there, done that.
Dan Z
In <35761F7B...@Interaccess.com> RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com>
writes:
>David Friedman wrote:
>>
>> After reading the thread on Kellerman, I did a bit of web browsing.
Steve
>> Kangas has a good summary of the Kellerman paper at:
>> The one crucial thing he does not say, and that is asserted in a
piece
>> from _Reason_ elsewhere on the web, is that Kellerman has refused to
make
>> his data available to other researchers. If that is true, then his
study
>> cannot be trusted, since he can say anything he likes about the
results,
>> true or false, without the risk that someone else will rerun his
>> regressions and prove them false.
>
>RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
>data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
>Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
>the public.
As has been pointed out to Ray before (sigh), AFTER several years, AND
"cleaning up" of the data.
--
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Dan Z
In <35761E87...@Interaccess.com> RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com>
writes:
>David Friedman wrote:
>
>> I haven't seen the study, but the methodological problem is that he
can
>> only factor out those risks he has data on. If being at risk causes
gun
>> ownership, which seems plausible, then gun ownership will correlate
with
>> the unobservable risks as well--and they will correlate with being a
gun
>> victim.
>
>RR: What 'unobservable risks' are you talking about? As I
>said, Kellermann already has factored out the societal
>threat from specific individuals. Kellermann also takes
>that into account with the observation that if these
>homicide victims bought guns to protect themselves from
>these personal threats, then the purchase of guns for this
>self-defense purpose was in itself self-defeating.
>Afterall, they were MURDERED!
>local library. Just ask for the New England Journal of
>Medicine dated 8/7/93, page 1084.
Third, it is not surprising that Kellerman and Reay's analysis shows
that homicide victims are armed in disproportionate numbers, for it
appears that a large and growing proportion of homicide victims are
criminals themselves. [74] In other words, by focusing his analysis on
households in which homicides occurred, Kellerman and Reay may be
finding out information only about the characteristics of homicide
victims, and people who commit murder, without any assurance that such
information may be safely generalized to the gun-owning public at
large. It is possible that the households in which homicides occur are
far from representative of typical or average households in which guns
are present. If so, treating the 43 times statistic as though it were a
universal law applicable to all gun owners, rather than as descriptive
of a discrete, aberrant subset, is simply wrong and misleading.
[74]. See Daniel D. Polsby, "Firearms Costs, Firearms Benefits and
the Limits of Knowledge," Journal of Law and Criminology 86
(1995): 211.
(From John R. Lott, Jr)
James F. Mayer
In <35761F7B...@Interaccess.com> RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com>
writes:
>David Friedman wrote:
>>
>> After reading the thread on Kellerman, I did a bit of web browsing.
Steve
>> Kangas has a good summary of the Kellerman paper at:
>> The one crucial thing he does not say, and that is asserted in a
piece
>> from _Reason_ elsewhere on the web, is that Kellerman has refused to
make
>> his data available to other researchers. If that is true, then his
study
>> cannot be trusted, since he can say anything he likes about the
results,
>> true or false, without the risk that someone else will rerun his
>> regressions and prove them false.
>
>RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
>data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
>Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
>the public.
Only after being badgered by congress to do so and after it have
been "cleaned up".
David Friedman
In article <35761E87...@Interaccess.com>, RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com>
wrote:
> RR: What 'unobservable risks' are you talking about?
Any factors that both make people more likely to own guns and more likely
to be murdered.
>As I
> said, Kellermann already has factored out the societal
> risks.
Insofar as he has data on them.
>The only remaining homicide risk might be a personal
> threat from specific individuals. Kellermann also takes
> that into account with the observation that if these
> homicide victims bought guns to protect themselves from
> these personal threats, then the purchase of guns for this
> self-defense purpose was in itself self-defeating.
> Afterall, they were MURDERED!
If he makes that argument, he is obviously missing the point.
Consider the striking correlation between visiting a hospital and dying.
The "obvious" explanation is that going to a hospital increases your
chance of dying. If someone pointed out that the reason for the
correlation was that when people were seriously ill they went to a
hospital in the hope of being cured, would it be an adequate response to
say that going to the hospital was obviously self-defeating, since they
died?
Steve Kangas, incidentally, has a good (sympathetic) summary of the
Kellerman paper webbed on his site, from which it sounds as though
Kellerman did everything he reasonably could to control for the sort of
problems we are discussing--although everything might still not be enough.
The one critical fact that Steve omits is that (at least according to a
_Reason_ article I found online that discusses Kellerman's work) Kellerman
has refused to make his data available to other researchers. If that is
true, it undercuts all of his claims about his research, since it means
that he has made it impossible for other people to find out whether or not
they are true.
Does anyone know whether it is true that he has kept his data secret, and
if so whether he has offered any explanation for doing so?
David Friedman
In article <35761F7B...@Interaccess.com>, RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com>
wrote:
> David Friedman wrote:
> >
> > After reading the thread on Kellerman, I did a bit of web browsing. Steve
> > Kangas has a good summary of the Kellerman paper at:
> > The one crucial thing he does not say, and that is asserted in a piece
> > from _Reason_ elsewhere on the web, is that Kellerman has refused to make
> > his data available to other researchers. If that is true, then his study
> > cannot be trusted, since he can say anything he likes about the results,
> > true or false, without the risk that someone else will rerun his
> > regressions and prove them false.
>
> RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
> data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
> Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
> the public.
Can one get at it online? Do you know if anyone, in particular anyone on
the other side, has reanalyed it (as Black and Nagin recently did in the
JLS for Lott's data) and published the results?
How do you know it is available, by the way? I ask, not to question your
honesty, but because one of the virtues of the net is that it moves us
closer to a situation where everyone can check out facts for himself at
fairly low cost. A lot of political argument consists of one siding
asserting "A," the other asserting "not A," and no easy way for spectators
to tell who is telling the truth.
Incidentally, I apologize for reposting my "fact" about the data not being
available just before reading your post.
Bill Bailey
John R. Lott, Jr. <john...@law.uchicago.edu> wrote in article
<3576BE82...@law.uchicago.edu>...
>
>
> RAY wrote:
>
> > David Friedman wrote:
> > >
> > > After reading the thread on Kellerman, I did a bit of web browsing.
Steve
> > > Kangas has a good summary of the Kellerman paper at:
> > > The one crucial thing he does not say, and that is asserted in a
piece
> > > from _Reason_ elsewhere on the web, is that Kellerman has refused to
make
> > > his data available to other researchers. If that is true, then his
study
> > > cannot be trusted, since he can say anything he likes about the
results,
> > > true or false, without the risk that someone else will rerun his
> > > regressions and prove them false.
> >
> > RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
> > data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
> > Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
> > the public.
>
Kellermann's research model (as medical models typically do) excludes
rational choice factors. (Yes, Ray, there are unobserved factors in
Kellerman's research!) Similarly, the earlier social models of firearms
research--which were very derivative of physical science models--excluded
factors of rational choice. They counted guns and counted crimes (somewhat
selectively) and declared more guns correlated with more crime. There was
not much difference between that model and the medical contagion model.
You caught crime from guns. The idea has found sybolic representation in a
number of movies--the "evil" gun that goes from hand to hand causing
murders and misery, and no person has sufficient strength of character to
stop it. The idea that more crime (or at least more, the media artifact of
more crime information) might cause more people in a given region to
purchase more firearms wasn't even a consideration. From Zimring onward, I
think that "mechanistic model" was pretty much the standard model for gun
research.
Are we seeing a shift toward rational choice models in firearms research?
I think of James D. Wright and colleagues as being some of the first (I may
be wrong on that point), who began by examining rational choices made by
criminals amid an armed citizenry. More recently, we have Gary Kleck and
John Lott's research. Dare we hope for more?
Bill Bailey
jackson dryden
--
jackson
I don't know about everybody else, but I would love to see Arthur Kellerman
come and debate you here. Oracle, at least, would be chagrined at the
prospect that his favorite "expert" would expose himself to the possibility
of being undone in honest, intellectual combat. If that happened, Oracle
would, himself, be undone.
Hope to see your posts on a regular basis.
jackson
>
>
RAY
RR: I must say, I'm glad to see one of the academic players
take a roll in tpg. Lott first sent this to my e-mail.
This is how I responded:
John Lott wrote:
> > RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
> > data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
> > Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
> > the public.
>
JL> Not all Kellermann's data has yet to be released, and
> he waited over five years to release what he did.
> Recent work by Gary Kleck using what has been released
> confirms that at absolute most 4 percent of the homicides
> could be attributed to the gun owned by those in the
> residence. Kellermann's study incorrectly assumed
> that all the gun deaths were caused by the gun in the
> home. Obviously, this assumption is crucial for his
> claim. At least 96> percent of his deaths were falsely
> assigned.
RR: Thank you for your response. I had seen you make this
claim in the Chicago Tribune (although I did not see any
attribution to Kleck there). Perhaps you can tell me what
data source this 96% figure comes from.
As I've posted in TPG, the only source I have found
which comes close is a letter Kellermann wrote in the NEJM
responding to his critics, where he said police had noted
that 8 of 14 cases of homicide were committed with a gun
that 'had been' in the home. If this is the only source
that Kleck or you have, I would suggest that your
interpretation is speculative, to say the least.
I have e-mailed Kellermann with your Tribune paragraph
(was it Myth #5?), and he says your contention is a
distortion.
JL> Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he
> uses a statistical method (the case control method)
> which was designed for a completely different type of
> problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the
> same way that a drug study for example assigns drugs to
> people. Many people may have bought guns because they
> were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
RR: However, if Kellermann has correctly factored out
societal risks of homicide, then IMM, the remaining
correlation with guns (in this case 2.7X) might still be
considered causal. The only risks of attack that might
remain would be a personal attack threat... something so
individualized that it could not be part of the overall
analysis. And Kellermann commented on this potential
drawback in the study, saying that if Joe Blow bought a gun
because Sam Smith had threatened to kill him, then quite
obviously the gun had failed as a self-defense tool since
Sam Smith accomplished the deed.
JL> Finally, unlike Kellermann's studies, my earlier study
> and my new book did not focus on data from only one or
> three cities for only one year. I studied data
> for all the counties in the entire United States over
> many years. I studied murder rates, accidental gun
> deaths, and suicides. There is in fact absolutely no
> evidence that any of Kellermann's claims are correct.
> See More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
RR: I hope to soon. I've read your earlier study, and look
forward to seeing your book.
Finally, as a layman in this debate, I'd sure
appreciate it if you would comment on the absolute rancor
that's surfaced in recent years from academics on both sides
of the issue. While I'm quite use to seeing the flames
erupt in tpg, I personally find it disheartening when MDs
and Phds go toe to toe in allegedly prestigious Law Reviews
and Professional Journals.
I'm sure Gun Control advocates are not immune from this
disease, but I really thought that the Kates/Schaeffer
article in the Tennessee Law Review hit a new low in
rhetoric and name calling, without adding much of
substance.
Perhaps your guys need to communicate more among each
other.. have some multi-disciplinary round-tables and even
go out for a few drinks together. I wonder, did you even
attempt to talk with Kellermann to get his meaning before
you wrote your Myth #5?
David Friedman
In article <357739FA...@Interaccess.com>, RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com>
wrote:
>RR: However, if Kellermann has correctly factored out
>societal risks of homicide, then IMM, the remaining
>correlation with guns (in this case 2.7X) might still be
>considered causal. The only risks of attack that might
>remain would be a personal attack threat... something so
>individualized that it could not be part of the overall
>analysis. And Kellermann commented on this potential
>drawback in the study, saying that if Joe Blow bought a gun
>because Sam Smith had threatened to kill him, then quite
>obviously the gun had failed as a self-defense tool since
>Sam Smith accomplished the deed.
As I just pointed out in this thread, that is a very poor argument--if
Kellerman really made it, that is one bit of evidence that he is a
demagogue rather than a scientist (although, of course, even scientists
are not immune to the temptation to occasional demagoguery). Does anyone
have the quote? Did he imply that he was answering the argument, or merely
commenting on the (obvous) fact that self-defense does not always work.
Consider two people, otherwise similar, save that A has been threatened
with murder by someone and B has been not. A, not surprisingly, obtains a
gun. Which of them is more likely to be a murder victim?
Again, consider two people, otherwise similar, one of whom is a
professional criminal and the other not. Which is more likely to own a
gun? To be a murder victim?
> Finally, as a layman in this debate, I'd sure
>appreciate it if you would comment on the absolute rancor
>that's surfaced in recent years from academics on both sides
>of the issue. While I'm quite use to seeing the flames
>erupt in tpg, I personally find it disheartening when MDs
>and Phds go toe to toe in allegedly prestigious Law Reviews
>and Professional Journals.
1. I think you should distinguish between professional scholars, such as
Black and Nagin (the authors of the only scholarly criticism of the Lott
and Mustard paper that I have seen), and professional political activists
such as Stephen Terek. The latter have a clear personal stake in
denigrating studies that produce results they don't like, and suffer
virtually no professional loss from making bad, or even dishonest,
arguments. I think the Black and Nagin article is in large part
unconvincing, and it might be dishonest in the very weak sense of
attempting to make their case look better than it is, but it isn't
particularly rancorous.
2. I stumbled into the aftermath of a previous dispute of a similar sort
some years back, and I think the story is instructive. As you may know,
Isaac Ehrlich did some very controversial research on the deterrent effect
of the death penalty, and was criticized in much the same fashion that
John Lott has been.
Some years ago, I had a colleague, a law professor, who is a very
prominent figure in the criminalogical community. He is also, in my
judgement, an unusually gentle and reasonable man. I happened to mention
Ehrlich's work, and the response was just short of a diatribe. He claimed
that the work had been refuted, that Ehrlich was dishonest, that he had
refused to provide his data to other researchers, ... .I asked for
evidence, and he lent me a volume of articles on deterrence edited by some
friends of his.
I read the volume, and it provided no support at all for any of his
claims--on the contrary, the one article that dealt with one of Ehrlich's
articles was by people who had been given Ehrlich's data by Ehrlich and
had replicated his results. The summary article on studies of deterrence
(not the death penalty specifically) found, as I recall, that out of
thirteen such studies twelve had come up with a positive result. The only
stuff in the book that was critical of deterrence, as far as I remember,
was the introduction, written by the editors--and it consisted essentially
of arguing that all of the evidence for deterrence could conceivably be
explained away in one way or another. While that was true--statistical
evidence can practically always be explained away if you are sufficiently
ingenious--the editors offered no tests at all of their conjectural
explanations.
I pointed all of this out to my colleague, and his response was apologetic
(as I say, he is an unusually reasonable man). Basically what he said was
that Ehrlich's work had been used for evil purposes (to argue for the
death penalty, which my colleague opposed), that he was sure its
conclusion was wrong (not on statistical grounds--I don't think he knows
much about statistics--but from dealing with criminals), and he thus had
strong hostile feelings towards Ehrlich. Pretty clearly, his specific
charges were things he had gotten from other people who shared his biases,
and had never bothered to check.
--
David Friedman
DD...@Best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
Tim Lambert
dd...@best.com (David Friedman) writes:
> In article <35761E87...@Interaccess.com>, RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com>
> wrote:
>
> > RR: What 'unobservable risks' are you talking about?
>
> Any factors that both make people more likely to own guns and more likely
> to be murdered.
>
> >As I
> > said, Kellermann already has factored out the societal
> > risks.
>
> Insofar as he has data on them.
>
> >The only remaining homicide risk might be a personal
> > threat from specific individuals. Kellermann also takes
> > that into account with the observation that if these
> > homicide victims bought guns to protect themselves from
> > these personal threats, then the purchase of guns for this
> > self-defense purpose was in itself self-defeating.
> > Afterall, they were MURDERED!
>
> If he makes that argument, he is obviously missing the point.
>
> Consider the striking correlation between visiting a hospital and dying.
> The "obvious" explanation is that going to a hospital increases your
> chance of dying. If someone pointed out that the reason for the
> correlation was that when people were seriously ill they went to a
> hospital in the hope of being cured, would it be an adequate response to
> say that going to the hospital was obviously self-defeating, since they
> died?
Ray has misstated Kellermann's argument. He merely points out that in
those cases the gun failed as protection.
> Steve Kangas, incidentally, has a good (sympathetic) summary of the
> Kellerman paper webbed on his site, from which it sounds as though
> Kellerman did everything he reasonably could to control for the sort of
> problems we are discussing--although everything might still not be enough.
> The one critical fact that Steve omits is that (at least according to a
> _Reason_ article I found online that discusses Kellerman's work) Kellerman
> has refused to make his data available to other researchers. If that is
> true, it undercuts all of his claims about his research, since it means
> that he has made it impossible for other people to find out whether or not
> they are true.
>
> Does anyone know whether it is true that he has kept his data secret, and
> if so whether he has offered any explanation for doing so?
The data is publicly available from the ICPSR
(http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/) study #6898.
James F. Mayer
In <tn1zt4e...@oolong.orchestra.cse.unsw.EDU.AU> Tim Lambert
According to Mr. John Lott, not all of it.
Tim Lambert
"John R. Lott, Jr." <john...@law.uchicago.edu> writes:
> RAY wrote:
>
> > David Friedman wrote:
> > >
> > > After reading the thread on Kellerman, I did a bit of web browsing. Steve
> > > Kangas has a good summary of the Kellerman paper at:
> > > The one crucial thing he does not say, and that is asserted in a piece
> > > from _Reason_ elsewhere on the web, is that Kellerman has refused to make
> > > his data available to other researchers. If that is true, then his study
> > > cannot be trusted, since he can say anything he likes about the results,
> > > true or false, without the risk that someone else will rerun his
> > > regressions and prove them false.
> >
> > RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
> > data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
> > Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
> > the public.
>
> Not all Kellermann's data has yet to be released, and he waited over five
> years to release what he did.
Hmmm, it's been over five years since Kleck did his survey on
defensive gun use. When is he going to release the data?
> Recent work by Gary Kleck using what has been
> released confirms that at absolute most 4 percent of the homicides could be
> attributed to the gun owned by those in the residence. Kellermann's study
> incorrectly assumed that all the gun deaths were caused by the gun in the
> home. Obviously, this assumption is crucial for his claim. At least 96
> percent of his deaths were falsely assigned.
This is wrong from beginning to end. As far as I can tell, this
"work" by Gary Kleck amounts to misreading a statement by Kellermann
that that there only 14 gun homicides in homes where no guns were kept
according to the proxy and in 8 of those cases the police noted that
the gun involved had been kept in the home (i.e. the proxy was
mistaken in those cases.) Kleck seems to have misunderstood this as
meaning that in only 8 out of the 209 gun homicides did the police
state that the gun involved was kept in the home.
It's not hard to estimate an upper bound on the number of homicides
committed with guns brought from outside. Six out of the 214 cases
where no gun was kept were committed with guns brought from outside.
It seems reasonable to suppose that the proportion would be similar
for the other 174 cases, giving us a total of at most 11 homicides
committed with outside guns. This is an upper bound because we have
assumed that all the guns where the police could not decide whether or
not the gun was brought from the outside were, in fact, from the
outside.
To summarize: at least 95 percent of the homicides can be attributed
to the gun owned by those in the residence. Kleck's "at absolute most 4
percent" is wildly incorrect.
> Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he uses a statistical
> method (the case control method) which was designed for a completely different
> type of problem.
Wrong. I suggest you read Scelesselman's book on case control studies.
> Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the same way that
> a drug study for example assigns drugs to people.
A drug study that randomly assigns drugs to people is not a case
control study.
> Many people may have bought
> guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
>
> Finally, unlike Kellermann's studies, my earlier study and my new book did not
> focus on data from only one or three cities for only one year.
Your study, however, is correlational just like Kellermann's. States
were not randomly assigned concealed carry laws.
> There is in fact
> absolutely no evidence that any of Kellermann's claims are correct.
Welcome to talk.politics.guns, Dr Lott. I see you are getting into
the swing of things. Overblown rhetoric is what we do best here.
Tim
Jim McCulloch
>Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he uses a statistical
>method (the case control method) which was designed for a completely different
>type of problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the same way that
>a drug study for example assigns drugs to people. Many people may have bought
>guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
This seems like a common-sense statement, but do we really know this
to be true? Here it Texas, the last time I checked, one class of gun
owners, at least, the people who were getting permits to carry
handguns, were overwhelmingly middle-aged middle-class white males,
who statistically are not at particularly high risk being attacked.
That is not to say they do not *believe* themselves at high risk ;-).
In any case, you can very well say the people in Kellermann's sample
*may* have bought guns because they were in danger, but do you
actually know what percentage of the gun owners bought guns because
they were, objectively, "at high risk"? Seems like a hard thing to
prove, to me. You certainly can't use the occaional homicide in the
sample as proof, because the cause of that is what is in
question--that reasoning would not only be circular, but very tightly
circular. You would need some sort of auxiliary evidence, like, say,
prior police reports of threats to the gun owners, wouldn't you? Do
you have any actual evidence for your statement?
--Jim McCulloch
Dan Z
In <ddfr-04069...@129.210.78.3> dd...@best.com (David Friedman)
writes:
>The one critical fact that Steve omits is that (at least according to
a
>_Reason_ article I found online that discusses Kellerman's work)
>has refused to make his data available to other researchers. If that
is
means
>that he has made it impossible for other people to find out whether or
not
>they are true.
>
>Does anyone know whether it is true that he has kept his data secret,
and
>if so whether he has offered any explanation for doing so?
>
From John Lott, Jr's post of yesterday:
"Not all Kellermann's data has yet to be released, and he waited over
five years to release what he did."
--
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Dan Z
being
>available just before reading your post.
>
>--
>David Friedman
>http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
From John Lott Jr's post of yesterday:
"Not all Kellermann's data has yet to be released, and he waited over
five years to release what he did."
I suspect John Lott is a much more credible source than Ray.
John R. Lott, Jr.
>John Lott wrote:
>> > RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
>> > data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
>> > Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
>> > the public.
>>
>waited over five
>> years to release what he did. Recent work by Gary Kleck using what
has been
>> released confirms that at absolute most 4 percent of the homicides
could be
>> attributed to the gun owned by those in the residence. Kellermann's
study
>> incorrectly assumed that all the gun deaths were caused by the gun in
the
>> home. Obviously, this assumption is crucial for his claim. At least
96
>> percent of his deaths were falsely assigned.
>
>claim in the Chicago Tribune (although I did not see any
>attribution to Kleck there). Perhaps you can tell me what
>data source this 96% figure comes from.
> As I've posted in TPG, the only source I have found
>which comes close is a letter Kellermann wrote in the NEJM
>responding to his critics, where he said police had noted
>that 8 of 14 cases of homicide were committed with a gun
>that 'had been' in the home. If this is the only source
>that Kleck or you have, I would suggest that your
>interpretation is speculative, to say the least.
> I have e-mailed Kellermann with your Tribune paragraph
>(was it Myth #5?), and he says your contention is a
>distortion.
Gary Kleck has looked into this quite closely and should be able to
provide you information on this if you write him at Florida State. The
reference in th NEJM is not the source for this 4 percent, it is from
what data that Kellermann has released. Kellermann refused to release
any data to me while I was still working on the book so that the only
information that I had was from the difficult to interpret response that
Kellermann had in the NEJM. When I called Kellermann and coauthors to
ask them to ellaborate on the quote they refused to do so. It was the
only information that was available, and as I say I tried talking to
them about it when I wrote that section of my book.
As to Kellermann saying that I distorted his point, he should have been
willing to talk to me about it when I called him. I would also suggest
that he specifically state what the true correct number is and give us
all the hard data so that we can evaluate his claim.
>
>JL> Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he
>uses a statistical
>> method (the case control method) which was designed for a completely
different
>> type of problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the same
way that
>> a drug study for example assigns drugs to people. Many people may
have bought
>> guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
>
>RR: However, if Kellermann has correctly factored out
>societal risks of homicide, then IMM, the remaining
>correlation with guns (in this case 2.7X) might still be
>considered causal. The only risks of attack that might
>remain would be a personal attack threat... something so
>individualized that it could not be part of the overall
>analysis. And Kellermann commented on this potential
>drawback in the study, saying that if Joe Blow bought a gun
>because Sam Smith had threatened to kill him, then quite
>obviously the gun had failed as a self-defense tool since
>Sam Smith accomplished the deed.
>
He has not correctly factored this out because the probability should be
expected to systematically differ across subgroups. I will be
interested in your response after you read Chapter 2 in my book because
I spend some time trying to deal with this issue. When I debated
Kellermann he refused to discuss this issue with me. The discussion in
my chapter is taken directly from our debate.
>JL> Finally, unlike Kellermann's studies, my earlier study
>and my new book did not
>> focus on data from only one or three cities for only one year. I
studied data
>> for all the counties in the entire United States over many years. I
studied
>> murder rates, accidental gun deaths, and suicides. There is in fact
>> absolutely no evidence that any of Kellermann's claims are correct.
See More
>> Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
>
>RR: I hope to soon. I've read your earlier study, and look
>forward to seeing your book.
> Finally, as a layman in this debate, I'd sure
>appreciate it if you would comment on the absolute rancor
>that's surfaced in recent years from academics on both sides
>of the issue. While I'm quite use to seeing the flames
>erupt in tpg, I personally find it disheartening when MDs
>and Phds go toe to toe in allegedly prestigious Law Reviews
>and Professional Journals.
> I'm sure Gun Control advocates are not immune from this
>disease, but I really thought that the Kates/Schaeffer
>article in the Tennessee Law Review hit a new low in
>rhetoric and name calling, without adding much of
>substance.
> Perhaps your guys need to communicate more among each
>other.. have some multi-disciplinary round-tables and even
>go out for a few drinks together. I wonder, did you even
>attempt to talk with Kellermann to get his meaning before
>you wrote your Myth #5?
> --- Robert L. Ray
Kellermann went over a year without returning my telephone calls, and I
was only was able to talk with him because I think that he accidentally
answered the telephone one time. When I would ask him for the data he
was evassive and noncommital on a date. I will be interested in your
reaction to Chapter 7 in my book where I talk about the debate. I have
been in a lot of academic debates before, but I have never seen anything
like the one over guns. As is true in most of academia, I have made all
my data immediately available. I have not waited 5 years to release a
portion of my data. I have spent dozens of hours working with those
that I have given my massive data set to that I put together with my own
money.
You need to evaluate this debate yourself, and I will be interested in
your final conclusion.
Sincerely,
John
Steve Fischer
In article <tnu360c...@oolong.orchestra.cse.unsw.EDU.AU> Tim Lambert <lam...@cse.unsw.EDU.AU> writes:
>"John R. Lott, Jr." <john...@law.uchicago.edu> writes:
>
>> RAY wrote:
>>
>> > David Friedman wrote:
>> > >
>> > > After reading the thread on Kellerman, I did a bit of web browsing. Steve
>> > > Kangas has a good summary of the Kellerman paper at:
>> > > The one crucial thing he does not say, and that is asserted in a piece
>> > > from _Reason_ elsewhere on the web, is that Kellerman has refused to make
>> > > his data available to other researchers. If that is true, then his study
>> > > cannot be trusted, since he can say anything he likes about the results,
>> > > true or false, without the risk that someone else will rerun his
>> > > regressions and prove them false.
>> >
>> > data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
>> > Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
>> > the public.
>>
>> years to release what he did.
>
>defensive gun use. When is he going to release the data?
>
>> released confirms that at absolute most 4 percent of the homicides could be
>> attributed to the gun owned by those in the residence. Kellermann's study
>> incorrectly assumed that all the gun deaths were caused by the gun in the
>> home. Obviously, this assumption is crucial for his claim. At least 96
>> percent of his deaths were falsely assigned.
>This is wrong from beginning to end. As far as I can tell, this
>"work" by Gary Kleck amounts to misreading a statement by Kellermann
>that that there only 14 gun homicides in homes where no guns were kept
>according to the proxy and in 8 of those cases the police noted that
>the gun involved had been kept in the home (i.e. the proxy was
>mistaken in those cases.) Kleck seems to have misunderstood this as
>meaning that in only 8 out of the 209 gun homicides did the police
^^^^^^
>state that the gun involved was kept in the home.
^^^^^^
You know, I looked through Kellerman's original paper twice
and I can't find a single statement by any cop anywhere in the
paper. Not only that, I can't find a single statement in the
paper in which Kellerman even reports the number of crime guns
that originated in the home. Why not? Supposedly he had police
reports? Why speculate?
So why is there no table showing something like:
Circumstances # cases Weapon Used # cases (weapon in home)
------------- ------- ----------- ------------------------
Rape 34 knife 9 ( 3)
handgun 6 ( 3)
other gun 2 ( 2)
physical force 6 (NA)
blunt instrument 8 ( 5)
burns, etc 3 (NA)
Robbery 13 knife 2 ( 0)
handgun 6 ( 4)
other gun 0 ( 0)
physical force 3 (NA)
blunt instrument 2 ( 1)
other 0 ( 0)
etc
Quarrel 160 knife
gun
etc
Romantic Triangle etc etc etc
Homicide only
Police Intervention
etc
John Johnson
In <3577f463....@newshost.cc.utexas.edu>
mccu...@mail.utexas.edu (Jim McCulloch) writes:
> On Thu, 4 Jun 1998 15:34:59 GMT, "John R. Lott, Jr."
> <john...@law.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>> Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he uses a
>> statistical method (the case control method) which was designed
>> for a completely different type of problem. Gun ownership was
>> not randomly assigned in the same way that a drug study for
>> example assigns drugs to people. Many people may have bought
>> guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
>
> This seems like a common-sense statement, but do we really know this
> to be true? Here it Texas, the last time I checked, one class of gun
> owners, at least, the people who were getting permits to carry
> handguns, were overwhelmingly middle-aged middle-class white males,
> who statistically are not at particularly high risk being attacked.
> That is not to say they do not *believe* themselves at high risk ;-).
If one were to research this very deeply, I would be almost
willing to bet they would find this is the same group of Texans
who provide for the welfare, safety and security of themselves
and their familes with:
Life Insurance,
Health Insurance,
Homeowners Insurance,
Auto Insurance
A Texan's CHL is merely "Personal Protection Insurance."
--John Johnson/TX Peace Officer (15+ Years) supporting the
Texas and U.S. Constitutions, the BoR, the 2ndAmnd and the RKBA
"If you're 20 and not a liberal, you have no heart.
If you're 40 and not a conservative, you have no brains."
--Sir Winston Churchill
"The young man who is not liberal is a dullard.
The old man who is not conservative is a fool."
--Samuel Langhorn Clemens, aka: Mark Twain
"Conservatives are afraid the people WON'T understand;
Liberals are afraid the people WILL understand!!!"
--Unknown
"If liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they
interpret the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would
be law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory"
--Mickey Kaus, Editor: "New Republic"
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning; but without understanding."
--Justice Louis D. Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court
--
John_Johnson
TXJo...@ix.netcom.com
© 1998 All rights reserved
Dan Z
In <3577f463....@newshost.cc.utexas.edu>
mccu...@mail.utexas.edu (Jim McCulloch) writes:
>
>On Thu, 4 Jun 1998 15:34:59 GMT, "John R. Lott, Jr."
><john...@law.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>>Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he uses a
statistical
>>method (the case control method) which was designed for a completely
different
>>type of problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the same
way that
>>a drug study for example assigns drugs to people. Many people may
have bought
>>guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
>
>This seems like a common-sense statement, but do we really know this
>to be true? Here it Texas, the last time I checked, one class of gun
>owners, at least, the people who were getting permits to carry
>handguns, were overwhelmingly middle-aged middle-class white males,
>who statistically are not at particularly high risk being attacked.
>That is not to say they do not *believe* themselves at high risk ;-).
>
>*may* have bought guns because they were in danger, but do you
>actually know what percentage of the gun owners bought guns because
>they were, objectively, "at high risk"? Seems like a hard thing to
>prove, to me. You certainly can't use the occaional homicide in the
>sample as proof, because the cause of that is what is in
>question--that reasoning would not only be circular, but very tightly
>circular. You would need some sort of auxiliary evidence, like, say,
>prior police reports of threats to the gun owners, wouldn't you? Do
>you have any actual evidence for your statement?
>
You missed the entire point by concentrating on the last sentence
instead of the two prior to it. The last sentence was simply a possible
example (note the use of the word "may") to illustrate the point in the
prior sentences.
uspc...@my-dejanews.com
In article <3576BE82...@law.uchicago.edu>,> RAY wrote:
> > RR: Actually, it is NOT true. Kellermann has provided his
> > data to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
> > Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is available to
> > the public.
> Not all Kellermann's data has yet to be released, and he waited over five
> years to release what he did. Recent work by Gary Kleck using what has been
> released confirms that at absolute most 4 percent of the homicides could be
> attributed to the gun owned by those in the residence. Kellermann's study
> incorrectly assumed that all the gun deaths were caused by the gun in the
> home. Obviously, this assumption is crucial for his claim. At least 96
> percent of his deaths were falsely assigned.
>
> Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he uses a statistical
> method (the case control method) which was designed for a completely different
> type of problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the same way that
> a drug study for example assigns drugs to people. Many people may have bought
> guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
>
> Finally, unlike Kellermann's studies, my earlier study and my new book did not
> focus on data from only one or three cities for only one year. I studied data
> for all the counties in the entire United States over many years. I studied
> murder rates, accidental gun deaths, and suicides. There is in fact
> absolutely no evidence that any of Kellermann's claims are correct. See More
> Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Kellermann's biggest problem was that he decided to make a study proving that
guns are bad, in spite of the results. What he didn't do was decide to make a
study to see if guns are bad, then make an honest effort on it, regardless of
the results.
Jim
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
julia.c...@iint.com
In article <3577f463....@newshost.cc.utexas.edu>,
mccu...@mail.utexas.edu (Jim McCulloch) wrote:
>
> On Thu, 4 Jun 1998 15:34:59 GMT, "John R. Lott, Jr."
> <john...@law.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
> >Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he uses a statistical
> >method (the case control method) which was designed for a completely
different
> >type of problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the same way
that
> >a drug study for example assigns drugs to people. Many people may have
bought
> >guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
>
> to be true? Here it Texas, the last time I checked, one class of gun
> owners, at least, the people who were getting permits to carry
> handguns, were overwhelmingly middle-aged middle-class white males,
> who statistically are not at particularly high risk being attacked.
> That is not to say they do not *believe* themselves at high risk ;-).
>
> In any case, you can very well say the people in Kellermann's sample
> *may* have bought guns because they were in danger, but do you
> actually know what percentage of the gun owners bought guns because
> they were, objectively, "at high risk"? Seems like a hard thing to
> prove, to me. You certainly can't use the occaional homicide in the
Okay, this is where you've got a problem in your reasoning.
The object of scientific research is to prove things. Your study
only proves things if your assumptions are statistically valid.
If you presume a population is "random" in your study, and someone
criticizing your study points out that that sample "may" not be
random, whammo, all your statistics become invalid and your study
doesn't prove squat-----which means some other bright researcher
with a grant has to either figure out a way to conclusively rule
out that "may", or you have to go with a study design whose statistical
tools don't require that particular population to be random.
Lott's showing a plausible reason why the sample "may" not be
random is all he needs to do to completely torpedo the study's
credibility, because as a result of the study design used if
that sample isn't random, the researcher doesn't have squat.
Lott's shown that because of that "may", Kellerman's study doesn't
*prove* what it says it proves.
The point is that not only doesn't Lott know what percentage of people
bought their guns because they were at high risk, *Kellerman doesn't
either*----and Kellerman's unproven assumption that the data is random
is critical for his study to prove what he says it does.
> sample as proof, because the cause of that is what is in
> question--that reasoning would not only be circular, but very tightly
> circular. You would need some sort of auxiliary evidence, like, say,
> prior police reports of threats to the gun owners, wouldn't you? Do
> you have any actual evidence for your statement?
You're backwards on who has to have the evidence. When you publish a
study, that study's claim to being worth the paper it's printed on is
that it supposedly adds some new scientific knowledge to the world---it
supposedly proves something. Someone reviewing that study doesn't have
to *disprove* it to shoot it down, all they have to do is find a hole
in its reasoning, design, or execution that causes it not to prove what
it says it proves.
Lott's done that.
The typical academic response at this point, among real social scientists,
is to either document why your reasoning doesn't rely on that population
being random (can't be done with the study style Kellerman used), or to
redesign your study so it doesn't have to rely on that and then do it
over, or to try to measure the degree to which the sample isn't random
and use messy statistical techniques to factor it out.
The ideal study would be to pick 1000 random households and get them to
get rid of all their guns, give a random half of them guns and get them to
agree to keep them, make everyone promise not to change their gun-owning
status from the preset one over 40 years (set it up double-blind) and
follow them and see what happens. Nobody does it because compliance is
a problem and it's prohibitively expensive, not to mention a long wait to
get your results. Even with that you run into real world problems that
some people to whom you give guns might have self-selected themselves out
of owning guns if left alone, perhaps knowing they had a hot temper.
Anyway, it's the guy doing the study's job to account for all the maybe's
and perhaps's that might be statistically relevant in his study. All the
guys reading the study looking to pick it apart are supposed to look for
maybe's and perhaps's that the guy doing the study forgot to account for.
If they find one, the guy doing the study loses. This is made "fair" in
that all the guys reading the study looking to pick it apart also do and
publish their own studies that are each subject to being picked apart the
exact same way.
Clear?
Julie
>
> --Jim McCulloch
Sam A. Kersh
RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com> wrote:
>David Veal wrote:
>
>Kellermann wrote:
>> >To the Editor:
>> [...]
>> >The exaggerated claim that guns are used in self-defense more than
>> >a million times a year has not withstood scientific scrutiny (3,4).
>> >If a gun in the home affords substantial protection from homicide
>> >(whether it is used to injure, kill, or frighten intruders or
>> >simply discourage them from entering), we should have found that
>> >homes in which a homicide occurred were less likely to contain a
>> >gun than similar households in which a homicide did not occur. The
>> >opposite was true.
>>
>DV> This is nonsense. In order to conclude this it would
>be necessary
>> for each control household to be subject to the same danger as the
>> household in which the murder took place. The study didn't attempt to
>> pair homes of equal risk ... in fact, the study more than amply
>> demonstrated that homes in which someone was murdered suffer from a whole
>> host of danger-predicting characteristics that their control pairs didn't.
>
>RR: David, you forget that Kellermann then factored out
>these risks for homicide, and STILL came up with a 2.7 times
>added risk with firearms in the home, even with the risks
>of both cases and controls evened out.
What Kellerman did was ignore his own findings. He wrote:
"The ...characteristics of the victims and controls were similar
except that the case subjects were more likely to have rented their
homes (70.4% v 47.3%).. lived alone (26.8 v 11.9%) ...
Alcohol was more commonly consumed by one or more members of
household of case subjects... (and)..by case subjects themselves....
Illegal drug-use by case subject....was also reported more commonly by
case households than control...
Previous episodes of violence were reported more frequently by
..case households.. "
On final analysis, Kellermann found(1):
1. Rented 5.9 times
2. Lived alone 3.4
3. Alcohol related problems 7.0
4.Use of illicit drugs 9.0
5. Gun kept for self-defense 1.7(2)
1. Table 3, page 1088, NEJM, Vol 329, No15, Oct 7, 1993. At this point,
the 444 had become 388 matched pairs used in the univariate analysis.
2. No, this isn't a typo, the 2.7 says "any gun kept loaded." When
Kellermann finally reached this number, he had "adjusted" the original
444 down to 316 matched pairs case/control in the logistic-regression.
Sam A. Kersh
NRA Life Member
TSRA Life Member
L.E.A.A., JPFO
http://www.flash.net/~csmkersh/csmkersh.htm
=======================================================
Read the book UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES.
Reviews are at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D1888118040
or
http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/95/123195vs.htm
Sam A. Kersh
RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com> wrote:
>Bill B. wrote:
>>
>> The exaggerated claim that guns are used in self-defense more than
>> a million times a year has not withstood scientific scrutiny (3,4).
>> If a gun in the home affords substantial protection from homicide
>> (whether it is used to injure, kill, or frighten intruders or
>> simply discourage them from entering), we should have found that
>> homes in which a homicide occurred were less likely to contain a
>> gun than similar households in which a homicide did not occur. The
>> opposite was true.
>>
>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>
>BB> And homes in which homicides occurred also had toilets.
>Hence toilets kill!
>
>RR: However, after a final double-blind multi-factorial
>deep-regression analysis, Professor Alphonse HighBottom has
>concluded that there is a 6.34422 chance that homes
>containing guns are more likely to have an outhouse than an
>'inhouse' :-)
Ah, but Kellermann himself the very strong likelihood of reverse
causation.
Sam A. Kersh
RAY <Ki...@Interaccess.com> wrote:
> I have e-mailed Kellermann with your Tribune paragraph
>(was it Myth #5?), and he says your contention is a
>distortion.
>
We only have your word on that and you know how much your word carries
here.....
>JL> Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he
>> uses a statistical method (the case control method)
>> which was designed for a completely different type of
>> problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the
>> same way that a drug study for example assigns drugs to
>> people. Many people may have bought guns because they
>> were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
>
>RR: However, if Kellermann has correctly factored out
>societal risks of homicide, then IMM, the remaining
>correlation with guns (in this case 2.7X) might still be
>considered causal. The only risks of attack that might
>remain would be a personal attack threat... something so
>individualized that it could not be part of the overall
>analysis. And Kellermann commented on this potential
>drawback in the study, saying that if Joe Blow bought a gun
>because Sam Smith had threatened to kill him, then quite
>obviously the gun had failed as a self-defense tool since
>Sam Smith accomplished the deed.
>
>JL> Finally, unlike Kellermann's studies, my earlier study
>> and my new book did not focus on data from only one or
>> three cities for only one year. I studied data
>> for all the counties in the entire United States over
>> many years. I studied murder rates, accidental gun
>> deaths, and suicides. There is in fact absolutely no
>> evidence that any of Kellermann's claims are correct.
>> See More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
>
>RR: I hope to soon. I've read your earlier study, and look
>forward to seeing your book.
The book is out and can be bought either through Amazon or Barnes Noble.
Have my copy, as you are aware of, Robert L, remember. You accused Prof
Lott of lying about Kellermann not being open that only 8 of the
firearms could be specifically assigned as the one kept in the case
household....
David Friedman
>On Thu, 4 Jun 1998 15:34:59 GMT, "John R. Lott, Jr."
><john...@law.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>>Another big problem with Kellermann's work is that he uses a statistical
>>method (the case control method) which was designed for a completely different
>>type of problem. Gun ownership was not randomly assigned in the same way that
>>a drug study for example assigns drugs to people. Many people may have bought
>>guns because they were at particularly high risk of being attacked.
>
>This seems like a common-sense statement, but do we really know this
>to be true? Here it Texas, the last time I checked, one class of gun
>owners, at least, the people who were getting permits to carry
>handguns, were overwhelmingly middle-aged middle-class white males,
>who statistically are not at particularly high risk being attacked.
>That is not to say they do not *believe* themselves at high risk ;-).
Remember that Kellerman was trying to use controls who matched the
observable characteristics of the murder victims. So the question is,
between two middle-aged, middle-calss white males, is the one who bought a
gun more likely to be the one at risk of being murdered?
>In any case, you can very well say the people in Kellermann's sample
>*may* have bought guns because they were in danger, but do you
>actually know what percentage of the gun owners bought guns because
>they were, objectively, "at high risk"?
Obviously not for Kellerman's sample--he (or one of his coauthors), after
all, was the one who wrote the questionaire. The question is not "do we
know that his result is wrong" but "how good is our reason for thinking it
is right?" John has offered an argument for the claim that we do not have
have a very strong reason for believing it is right.
Oracle
Kellermann is not my "favorite expert." I know little of his
work. In fact, because I'm not conversant in the details of any
statistical analysis, I really don't have a favorite. Whatever
opinion I've developed of the validity of any such work is based
solely on the reputation and credentials of its author.
--
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
HANDGUN CONTROL
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
jackson dryden <jackson...@nashville.com> wrote in article
<01bd9012$f592eda0$77b441cf@jackson>...
>
> --
Bill Bailey
Well, if that's truly your criteria, you've been treated to a good dose of
the reputation and credentials of John Lott. What do you think?
Bill Bailey
Oracle <aa1...@tseinc.com> wrote in article
<01bd90e6$5db89e60$188653d1@xbwerrsn>...
James F. Mayer
In <01bd90e6$5db89e60$188653d1@xbwerrsn> "Oracle" <