On 10/11/06, Bruce Marshall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tuesday 10 October 2006 18:16, Net Llama! wrote:
> > > Therefore..... I don't have a lot of faith in the information or the
> > > intent of the website owner.
> >
> > Admittedly, I couldn't find anything either. however, they did provide
> > documented sources for all of their information, so its safe to base it on
> > the veracity of the sources.
>
>
> Here's a statement of the results of one survey on the guninformation.org
> site: "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home" (NE
> Journal of Medicine)
>
> Doesn't sound to me like a very valid survey when trying to find out whether
> law-abiding citizens should not have guns. The people in this survey were
> already breaking laws.... more gun control laws wouldn't affect them at all.
>
>
>
> -------------------
>
> Results During the study period, 1860 homicides occurred in the three
> counties, 444 of them (23.9 percent) in the home of the victim. After
> excluding 24 cases for various reasons, we interviewed proxy respondents for
> 93 percent of the victims. Controls were identified for 99 percent of these,
> yielding 388 matched pairs. As compared with the controls, the victims more
> often lived alone or rented their residence. Also, 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
> (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.4).
> Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate
> acquaintance.
>
> Conclusions The use of illicit drugs and a history of physical fights in the
> home are important risk factors for homicide in the home. Rather than confer
> protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk
> of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.
But this sounds like "guns kept in home associated with a history of
domestic violence" are associated with an increase in risk for an
escalation to homicide ...
Wouldn't we be better to focus on these dysfunctional homes/families
rather than the guns? Violent people commit violent crimes. Reducing
their choice of weapons from guns to fists hasn't stopped them from
killing children by beating them to death.
Note: I am against gun control, because 1: I own a gun (which has
never been used in anger), and 2: because I believe the focus is on
the wrong problem (playing devil's advocate here, but since my wife is
the Chief Medical Examiner (Coroner) for Chiriqui and Bocas Del Toro
provinces, I get some insight into the number and severity of domestic
violence (at least when it appears on my wife's autopsy table) and its
manifestations. None of the murdered children this year were killed
by guns, but by violent, abusive parents using their fists, electrical
cords, cigarrettes (not the cause of death but of severe burn marks --
ditto for irons, and other hot utensils).
My gut feeling is that people focus on the wrong thing. Please
correct me if I'm wrong, as I have no statistics/studies, just
anecdotes.
Ciao,
David A. Bandel
--
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
- Nemesis Air Racing Team motto
_______________________________________________
[email protected]
Unsub/Pause/Etc : http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
