----- Original Message ----- From: "Henry Schaffer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 7:29 PM Subject: [inbox] Re: "Laws Limiting Gun Access Cut Teen Suicides"
> Cory sends us news of this newly published study: > > ... > Another big assumption in the study - this one is *not* noted - hits > at the heart of the idea of preventable. This one is that witnesses > will tell the truth and not ever shade the truth or outright lie to > protect the shooter, e.g. "For LCIs, a death was coded as preventable > only if the case file indicated clear evidence that the shooter did not > realize the gun was loaded at the time of the shooting. Usually this was > based on unambiguous statements of witnesses interviewed by the police." > This also crops up in, "For personalized guns, a death was considered > preventable if there was clear evidence in the case file that the > shooter was not the owner or authorized user of the gun." Henry is assuming that witnesses might shade the truth to protect the shooter. There is another possibility: that the witnesses might shade the truth to protect themselves. There has long been concern that a fair number of the "cleaning accident" deaths were actually suicides, either where the suicide chosen not to leave a note, or where family removed any evidence of this to avoid shame or insurance consequences. I would also wonder if some "gun accidents" might have involved someone else pulling the trigger. Police are trained to look for evidence of this, and there are certainly circumstances where it is obvious that the gun isn't in the hand that pulled the trigger--but it does make me a bit skeptical of the methodology. > As far as the assumption that the devices will work - the authors > include the idea that revolvers should have a loaded chamber indicator > to remove the element of chance in "so-called Russian roulette". > > I have trouble in including Russian roulette shootings in the > "unintentional and undetermined" category! I'm curious: how are these classed by police? As suicides or accidents? The person pulling the trigger knows that there is a 1 in 6 (or 1 in 5, depending on the maker) chance of death. This doesn't sound like an accident to me. > However to me some anti-firearms bias is shown by the authors in their > giving their first of a list of "RELATED ARTICLE: Key points" as: > > "* Changing the design of products to make them safer is a proven injury > prevention strategy, but for firearms this strategy has not yet been > widely adopted." > > From my knowledge of firearms, I can safely say that the above "Key > point" is seriously in error. There are many improvements which have > been made in handguns - perhaps not every one in every gun, but part of > that is the diversity of configurations and mechanisms. I'm thinking of > improvements as diverse as the "firing pin block" in revolvers, to > improved "safeties" in semi-autos. And the firing pin block and magazine safety common in many semiauto pistols today. Perhaps the authors mean "this strategy has not been imposed by law." Clayton E. Cramer [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
