Kellermann
tlambert | July 25, 2004 Kellermann's studies on guns frequently get criticized by people who do not seem to have read them. The latest to do so is Michael Krauss, who writes
Notwithstanding all this data, the press gave extraordinary publicity to a 1993 article by one Arthur Kellerman in the New England Journal of Medicine. Kellerman's "study" concluded that the presence of a gun in one's home dramatically increased one's chances of being killed by gunfire. As has since been widely noted, though, the study had stupendous methodological flaws that would surely have…
tlambert | June 30, 2003gzuckier explains, in detail, what is wrong with Lott's criticism of Kellermann.
For some reason, Kellermann's work seems to provoke badly flawed criticism. In another posting gzuckier demolishes three other critiques. In an earlier posting I noted that a critique by Kopel and Reynolds got all its facts wrong. And in a AEI event promoting Lott's new book, Carl Moody claimed:
The second cut is, as you say, is the data available to other researchers [inaudible], and the answer is no for Kellermann, so I think he's lying. He's refused repeated requests for his…
tlambert | May 13, 2003Glenn Reynolds comments on the CNSNews article. Despite Ayres and Donohue's best efforts, Reynolds is all agnostic on the Lott question, but fortunately he has an opinion on the study by Ludwig and Cook (who Reynolds calls "antigun researchers"):
What's most striking to me, though, is another study, by antigun researchers, that tries to measure gun ownership by suicide rates. (And it's not mentioned here, but I believe there was another that tried to use subscriptions to gun magazines as a proxy.) This seems rather bogus to me, and I can only imagine the general derision if this…
tlambert | June 1, 2001Since Kellermann had released his data when that paragraph
was written, the part I left out was irrelevant.
David Friedman writes:
From your point of view, what is the story about his data? The story I
thought I had seen was that he refused to release it until forced to do
so--my vague memory was that the research was government funded and that
eventually made it possible to compel him to release the data. Is that
true? If not, what really happened?
The accounts that claim that Kellermann had to be forced to release
his data come from such obviously biased sources that I'm not inclined
to…
tlambert | May 28, 2001Mary Woods wrote:
Kellermann also used a control case study, limiting his cases to the
following criteria; "Any death ruled a homicide was included, regardless
of the method used. Assault related injuries that were not immediately
fatal were included if death followed within three months." ( NEMJ
vol.329, no.15, pg. 1084). Right there, that raised a red flag in my
mind. If the case studies included deaths occurring three months after
an assault, one has to question the validity of those cases. The
questions that come to mind were; what were the cause of death for those
who were…
tlambert | May 24, 2001circe wrote:
In homes with guns the homicide of a household member is three times
more likely to occur than in homes without guns. New England Journal
1993;329.1084-1091.
David Friedman writes:
You may also have noticed that the death rate in hospitals is much
higher than in hotels. So if only we abolished the hospitals ... .
But the study controlled for a variety of factors such as age, sex,
neighbourhood, criminal record, drug use etc etc. If take your
hospitals/hotels analogy and control for severity of disease/trauma we
would find that hospitals are safer. For example, if you just…
tlambert | April 12, 2001Lott grossly misrepresents Kellermann's study. He states that "they fail to
report that in only 8 of these 444 homicide cases could it be established
that the gun involved had been kept in the home." Kellermann et al do indeed
fail to report that, but that is because it is not true. They do note that
in 8 out of a subset of 14 cases the police report stated that the gun
involved had been kept in the home. Needless to say, 14 is not equal to 444.
Lott goes on to claim that "all or virtually all the homicide victims were
killed by weapons brought into their homes by intruders". This claim is…
tlambert | November 23, 1998Gun Control Advocates Purvey Deadly Myths
Wall Street Journal, 11 Nov. 1998
By John R. Lott Jr.
The family gun is more likely to kill you or someone
you know than to kill in self-defense. The 1993 study
yielding such numbers, published in the New England
Journal of Medicine, never actually inquired as to
whose gun was used in the killing. Instead, if a
household owned a gun and if a person in that household
or someone he knew was shot to death while in the home,
the gun in the household was blamed. In fact, virtual-
ly all the killings in the study were committed…
tlambert | May 19, 1996The authors of the bibliography are quite correct when they state that a
case-control study could measure a net protective effect of firearms.
EdgarSuter writes:
"could" if death were the only legitimate measurement of the protective
benefits of guns.
Wrong. "could" if protection from death is a legitimate use of a
firearm.
Mr. Lambert's quibbling about the definition of "only rarely" bypasses the
main point of the letter.
Since an indisputable majority of Kellermann's homicides were not
committed using those scary "guns in the home," one must invoke magical
thinking to explain how these…
tlambert | May 17, 1996Edgar Suter writes:
In Kellermann's most recent study of homicide (Kellermann et al. "Gun
Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home." NEJM Oct 7, 1993;
329(15):1084-1091.) notes "Two hundred nine victims (49.8 percent) died from
gunshot wounds." Prof. Schaffer offers a robust [and successful] effort to
show that the "gun in the home" cannot be the actual homicide instrument in
every case. According to Table 1, mentioned by Mr. Lambert, this figure
includes 1% "unknown firearm" as "method of homicide." Let's charitably
imagine that these "unknown firearms" actually were the "gun…
tlambert | May 16, 1996The study controlled for literally dozens of other factors, including
criminality and illicit drugs. Furthermore the extra homicide risk
associated with firearm ownership was not from shootouts between drug
dealers or gangs, but domestic homicides.
Dr. Paul Blackman writes:
No. The study measured about 2.5 dozen items, but controlled for about
six -- with a number of items prevented from measurement by matching
the controls (race, age group, sex, etc.)
All right. They controlled for four factors by matching and another
six in the multivariate analysis. The other 2 dozen measured items…
tlambert | May 16, 1996Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes:
But let's get back to the estimates of gun ownership by the cases and
the controls.
OK. Unlike Dr Suter's straw man argument this is a real threat to the
study. If gun ownership of the cases is under-reported more than gun
ownership of the controls is under-reported, the correlation between
guns and homicide is weakened. If gun ownership of the cases is
under-reported LESS than gun ownership of the controls is
under-reported, the correlation between guns and homicide is
strengthened.
The cases were, of course, proxies for them. But the situation was
that a…
tlambert | May 15, 1996A limitation on the earlier (43-1) study is not
necessarily a limitation on the later case-control study. The authors
of the bibliography are quite correct when they state that a
case-control study could measure a net protective effect of firearms.
Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes:
The earlier study noted that one couldn't fully evaluate the protective
value of firearms without knowing about their use in non-fatal
protective situations. I.e., the authors recognized that a gun could
be used for protection without producing a corpse.
The later study did not note that one needed such complete…
tlambert | May 15, 1996Daniel D. Polsby writes:
Unless I am seriously mistaken, one would find that crack cocaine
dealers and other persistent criminals are disproportionately
likely to possess firearms and to be murdered by others using
firearms. To place firearms at the heart of this story is at
best tendentious.
The study controlled for literally dozens of other factors, including
criminality and illicit drugs. Furthermore the extra homicide risk
associated with firearm ownership was not from shootouts between drug
dealers or gangs, but domestic homicides.
Absent a controlled experiment (which is impossible)…
tlambert | May 14, 1996Edgar Suter writes:
Dr. Kellermann's subsequent research "finding" that a gun in the home
increases risk used a method that cannot distinguish between "cause" and
"effect." Kellermann's illogical conclusion would be like finding more
insulin in the homes of diabetics and so concluding that insulin "causes"
diabetes. Interestingly Kellermann's own data show that when a homeowner is
killed only rarely is the "gun in the home" the instrument of the homeowner's
death.
Untrue. See table 1 of the paper.
How then can the gun "cause" the death? Does the gun magnetize
murderers to the homeowner's…
tlambert | March 15, 1995You said that they failed to take into account the possibility that
"violent people (gang members for example) are both more likely to get
firearms and are more likely to get themselves killed".
Kellermann et al (in the abstract) "case households more commonly
contained an illicit-drug user, a person with prior arrests, or
someone who had been hit or hurt in a fight in the home. After
controlling for these characteristics, we found that keeping a gun in
the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased
risk of homicide." And this is covered in much greater depth on pages…
tlambert | October 28, 1994The study found that having a gun in the home was
not associated with any increased risk of non-gun homicide, only with
gun homicide.
Dan Day writes:
Gun homicide in the home of the victim, Tim, which is what the study
examined.
So now we have the totally unremarkable finding that if you get shot
in your own home, there's likely to be a gun in the home. And drowning
victims are usually found near water. Big deal.
The study found that overall homicide was associated with gun
ownership, not just gun homicide. There are two plausible mechanisms
to explain this:
Guns make violence more…
tlambert | February 14, 1994Frank Crary said:
The correlation with gun ownership is equally easy to explain. In
the neighborhoods studied, a large fraction of the gun owners are
either criminals (confirmed by the study's correlation previous
convictions)
The study found a correlation between criminal record and homicide,
not between criminal record and gun ownership. In any event there was
a higher risk of homicide associated with gun ownership even after
controlling for criminality.
or purchased a gun in reaction to threats of crime
and violence.
This is unproven.
Both criminals and people threatened by criminals…