Talk:Arthur Kellermann/Archive 1

Archive 1

Discussion

Gzuckier - I agree with everything you say, including the lack of astonishment inherent in Kellermann's findings. And it's precisely the "guns blazing" language which seems inappropriate in the biography of an emergency room doctor and academic whose work is respected in a variety of fields, but considered controversial only on one hot-button issue. How about removing the inflammatory label (on the grounds that merely repeating a label lends it credence), and reporting instead: "...who label him "anti-gun" and sometimes accuse him of scientific malpractice." DBBrownWiki 02:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Gzuckier - Merely shifting the derogatory label "dedicated anti-gun zealot" to another location suggests that this is what you'd like readers to think of Kellermann by way of introduction. He and his injury prevention colleagues also study means of lowering the road toll. Does that make them "anti-car zealots"? Suggest leaving this slur to be discovered in a cited source.DBBrownWiki 00:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm just trying to be NPOV; it's a fairly substantial part of the "body of knowledge", if you will, re Kellermann that the NRA and folks of similar philosophy tag him as a zealot and a criminal fraud and so on and so on. For myself, I'd be inclined to include "falsely" in there, but that'd be immediately tagged as POV, although I think it comes from the POV of scientific veracity... Maybe we should start out with a bigger discussion of the controversy before getting to the research itself, which frankly doesn't deserve the kind of "guns blazing" attack, to use a metaphor. I mean, the discovery that keeping a gun in the house is associated with a higher risk of getting shot at home than not keeping a gun in the house is about as astounding as the discovery that keeping a swimming pool in the house is associated with a higher risk of drowning at home, or keeping a bed in the house is associated with a higher risk of dying in bed at home. But again, we have to include the "other" POV.Gzuckier 18:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

The phrase in the introduction: "Although Kellermann claims not to be an anti-gun zealot ('I grew up around guns,' he says..." seems designed to suggest the opposite, that indeed Kellermann IS an "anti-gun zealot." The use of the word "claims" is a common tool to suggest that a statement should be treated with suspicion. There is no evidence cited to suggest that Kellermann did not grow up around guns. To comply with the NPOV policy, this sentence should be altered to read: "Although Kellermann says he is comfortable with guns ('I grew up around firearms, he says...". DBBrownWiki 22:35, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

good point. lemme have a whack. Gzuckier 15:00, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Gzuckier - Shifting the derogatory label "anti-gun zealot" to another location suggests that this is what you'd like readers to think of Kellermann by way of introduction. He and his injury prevention colleagues also study means of lowering the road toll. Does that make them "anti-car zealots"? Suggest leaving this slur to be discovered in a cited source. DBBrownWiki 21:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

. "Libdemplus, I have moved your text from the main article to this page and replaced it with a short summary (that is, a stub). The article in its previous form would have been deleted.

If you want to expand the article again, here's what I'd suggest:

1. Include a summary of Kellermann's other activities in addition to his gun politics.
2. Get an actual copy of his studies and read them, so you can include quotes from them, rather than depending on summaries posted elsewhere.
3. Include a summary of the methodology and conclusions of the article from Kellermann's point of view
4. Write about how HCI and others have used the study.
5. Keep your rebuttal of the article short, and quote other authorities where possible.
6. Be sure the resulting article is balanced and gives more or less equal space to both sides of the story.

See also Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

Kat 18:15, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Kat, First, thanks fot your patient guiding hand. It will come in very useful. I also intend to get involved with pages about equal rights for gays, including gay marriage, etc... abortion rights, adoptees rights about bio-parents, the "drug war".... and some other controversial issues.

As you can tell, I will need to learn alot about how to write articles.

Anyway, I never thought of #1 above before, that's a really good suggestion. I have never heard anything about Kellerman outside of his behavior on the study and the thing about his lack of qualifications to even do such a study. I mean, I can easily see what would prompt an Emergency Room trauma doctor to become morally and emotionally driven to "do something" about the carnage he saw in his job trying to repair the dammage. What I don't get is what made him, or those who funded his study think that he was remotely qualified to conduct such a study.

If Kellerman has done other works, it could be quite enlightening.

On point#2, I will try to find a copy, preferably on-line so I can reference it for people who want to read the whole thing as well. One of the biggest problems with his study was his secrecy. I'm not sure that anyone has yet been able to peer-review his "raw data". Mostly the media have just quoted or mis-quoted parts of his "conclusions" and I will have to see how detailed various offerings of his works are.

I will rely on you for checking for balance. As should be obvious by now, it's not something I see a lot of from anyone on this issue.

Thanks

Libdemplus Aug 6, 2003 (UTC)

---

Kat, a quick look by google gives me these references for when/where Kellermann published his "43 time more likely..." study and his subsequent papers:

"Kellermann AL. and Reay DT. "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-Related Deaths in the Home." N Engl J. Med 1986. 314: 1557-60."

Interesting point I have found, from several different sources now, about his 1986 paper. In his paper Kellermann directly defines what the "proper" methology should be to come to a scientifically valid conclusion, a method that actual criminologists approved of and even gun rights people said would provide some meaningful data... The odd thing is that after describing the "proper" methodology, he then goes ahead and ignores that and instead uses a method that he himself had said was flawed and might not give meaningful results.

Then by the time Kellermann got to the article below his "increased risk factor" had changed to 2.7 rather than 43. That's quite a math error!

Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB et al. "Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home." N Engl J Med. 1993; 329(15): 1084-91.

That's also an estimate of a completely different numeric result, from a different study, published in a different scientific paper, seven years later!

First paper: ratio of household members killed to 'bad guys' killed.

Second paper: ratio of odds of becoming a homicide victim within your own house if someone keeps a gun in the house, to the odds if nobody keeps a gun in the house

Why is it so hard for 'some people' to see that these two numbers might be different?

For that matter, why is it so hard for 'some people' to see that it just might be harder to get shot to death in a house, when there isn't any gun in the house? Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Interesting data from the above study. Kellerman has a chart that shows select "increased risk factors" as follows:

That should be KellermanN. Not picking nits, but if you're going to get all your information by searching for Kellerman, you might as well educate yourself about general relativity by searching for 'Einstien'. Would you be surprised if doing so caused you to adopt some points of view which were 'not generally regarded as valid' by the majority of the world's physicists?Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know nothing about Kellermann, but I just wanted to note this excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Meme:

The Kellerman meme provides an example of this occurring on the Internet. A search of the web and/or Usenet for the word 'Kellerman' will turn up a large number of citations, describing at great length the behavior of a 'Dr. Arthur Kellerman', who, with the willing assistance of the Centers for Disease Control and the public health lobby, purportedly fabricated studies in order to implicate firearms (and by extension their owners) as a menace to public safety, for the purposes of statist control of the population. The authors of these pages and postings describe purported machinations, "junk science," a subsequent recantation by Dr. 'Kellerman', and the use of his work by gun control proponents.

In reality, no "Dr. Arthur Kellerman" exists, at least not in any connection with the above description. There is, however, a Dr. Arthur Kellermann (with double n), who has indeed published several papers estimating the overall impact on the public health of firearm availability and various aspects of firearm storage, as part of a career in public health and emergency and trauma medicine. As in any such series of studies, Kellermann's work has strengths and weaknesses, which pundits rigorously debate both in the literature and online. However, even after eliminating matters of opinion and statements which are not fully supported, the remaining verifiable facts of Kellermann's studies and career remain virtually unrecognizable in the negative descriptions of 'Kellerman.'

The original meme of Kellermann and his work on gun-related violent injury has generated a new meme, "Dr. Kellerman is a evil lying gun-grabbing enemy of freedom," by the classic genetic phenomenon of a deletion mutation. The sub-population involved had strongly negative attitudes towards Kellermann's work as well as a lack of first-hand familiarity with his studies and career. Because of the "reproductive isolation" caused by the total non-intersection of the results of searches for "Kellerman" and "Kellermann," the 'Kellerman' meme drifted even further in the direction of negativity, unchecked by facts related to the real Kellermann. As this group encounters new individuals of similar general outlook, they introduce new recruits to the 'Kellerman' lore only, and go on to produce their own websites and postings furthering the rapid progress of this meme.

--noclip67.169.190.2 02:49, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Househol illicit drug use 5.7 : 1 Home rented 4.4 : 1 History of Domestic violence 4.4 : 1 Lived alone 3.7 : 1 Gun in home 2.7 : 1 Household arrest record 2.5 : 1

I've seen references to other Kellermann studies 1986 and 1993 where his "risk" ratio kept falling with each new re-examination of the dat and each new study. The last "risk" number I recall seeing was something like 1.03 to 1. I'll try to find those exact publication references.

Yeah, you do that, pardon me if I don't hang around until you come back with that info. Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

He also tried other approaches toward his goals in these papers: Kellermann AL. and Reay DT. "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-Related Deaths in the Home." N Engl J. Med 1986. 314: 1557-60.

Sloan JH, Kellermann AL, Reay DT, et al. "Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities." N Engl J Med 1988; 319: 1256-62.

Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, Somes G, et al. Suicide in the Home in Relationship to Gun Ownership. N Engl J Med. 1992; 327: 467-72.

Kellermann AL and Mercy JA. "Men, Women, and Murder: Gender-specific Differences in Rates of Fatal Violence and Victimization." J Trauma. 1992; 33:1-5.

Also, it appears that Kellermann got his "methodology" from someone else who was of similar mind from the past: "methodology of Rushforth from 1976"

I guess I need to find that as well.

Yes, you do; preferably before using it as some sort of put down without clue one as to what Rushforth says. Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Kellermann sure seems to be a one-trick pony!

Translation: despite his solid reputation in the general field of emergency medicine and trauma, as well as his increasing responsibilities managing emergency facilities as well as teaching and researching in medical school; since none of his research finds any evidence that a person is more likely to be shot in a home where there is no gun, he is clearly a moron and all those people who regard him highly are also morons.Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Since his numbers keep changing (downwards) with every paper he publishes and by such huge amounts, why would anyone take his works seriously?

Because we understand what the numbers refer to, and you don't?Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And why does the media keep only reporting the 1986 numbers "43 times more likely"???

Actually, I did a pretty extensive web search, and the vast majority of references to the 1986 paper and the 43X figure are from..... Kellermann bashers, of course. Come into the 90s, little gunnies! Do not be afraid! Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Libdemplus Aug 6, 2003 (UTC)

Memphis TN Commercial Appeal, letters and comments, Feb 2009: gun control advocates cited Kellermann's 43x stat as an argument for web publishing personal data on pistol permit holders. And what should we call the current decade, the Twenty Oughts? Naaman Brown (talk) 16:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

---

see also: Michael Bellesiles for another example of politically-motivated and fraudulent "junk science".

Arthur Kellerman, an emergency-room doctor by profession with no background in either criminology or statistics, eventually declared that he has fully disavowed the 13 year old "43 to 1" study as methodologically flawed.

Well, that is news. Where and when did that happen?Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To his credit, and a point that is universally over-looked by the gun-control lobby, Kellerman himself, in the summary to his study, stated that the "link" he found between gun-ownership and "increased risk" of death may actually be a case of "reversed causation" effect and that his study methods could not be used to determine if this was the case. Basically, Kellerman admitted right from the start that it's equally likely that the "link" he found to increased risk of death for gun-owners was actually caused by other factors in the persons life and that these other risk factors were what prompted the person to obtain a gun in the first place.

Of course, as KellermanN pointed out in the next sentence, to believe in 'reversed causation' would require you to believe that the hypothesis that getting shot to death in your home causes you to have previously bought the gun used to shoot you was preferable to the alternative hypothesis that, if there was not a gun in the home, you would very likely not get shot there. And nobody could be that stupid!Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

One could also say that people who are likely to die a violent death are more likely to have a personality that makes them want to own guns. Or vice versa. Lars T. 17:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Meaning, that if you choose to conduct your life in a manner that puts your life in frequent danger of being murdered, then it's only natural that you would obtain a gun in an effort to protect yourself from those risks. Those same risky behaviors are also likely to cause your death eventually. Owning the gun was not the cause of your death, your chosen lifestyle was. Thus the "reversed causation" factor. Simply put, the gun-ownership was not the cause of your death, your risky lifestyle caused your gun-ownership.

I guess it's time somebody expanded the wikipedia article on logistic regression as a method of calculating the individual effects of various causes which are intertwingled in result. Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Since the first news reports of this "43 to 1 study", Kellerman himself and almost all of his staff have been distancing themselves from their own work and "conclusions" and especially how his study has been reported by the news media and by the gun-control lobby.

yeah, yeah. once again, Where and when did that happen?Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This now infamous "Kellerman study" is one of the most frequently exploited pieces of "junk science" used by the gun-control lobby to justify their politcal agenda. Gun-control politicians, the news media, as well as popular entertainment media continue to quote and mis-quote the "Kellerman study" in-spite of the fact that this "study" was proven to be deeply flawed, biased and probably fraudulent as soon as it's "conclusions" were first published. The fact that Kellerman himself had no experiance or education that would in any manner qualify him to run such a study is consistantly ignored by the gun-control lobby. Mis-quotes and distortions have been the rule rather than the exception with regards to the gun-control lobbies to use this "study".

Since it's first press release, Kellerman has spent years trying to "massage" his data to make it "seem" to indicate that simply owning a gun drastically increases the "risks" to the gun-owner of death. Kellerman and his staff have also fought repeatedly to prevent anyone outside of his group from ever being able to get a look at the actual raw data from which he drew his "conclusions". Since Kellerman's "study" was funded, at least in-part, by the US Federal government the taxpayers are entitled to full access to the raw data used to come up with Kellerman's "conclusions". Even after repeated court-orders for Kellerman to produce this data, Kellerman repeatedly defied these orders in various ways in an attepmt to cover up the fact that almost everything reported about the study were either outright false or at least wildly distorted.

Over the years since the infamous "43 to 1" press releases Kellerman has "revised" his ratio of "increased risk" downwards to the point where this ratio was of no statistical significance, far less than 1% "increased risk" linked to gun-ownership. These "revisions" have been excused by Kellerman by various improvements in his mathematical processing of the raw data. Considering his lack of statistical experiance, it's not surprising that he would continually find math errors in his work that needed to be corrected.

The gun-control lobby also ignores the various changes in the Kellerman study numbers. They prefer the original hysteria-value of "43 to 1".

Some examples of the many flaws in the Kellerman study would be:

First, Kellerman's study relied on manually gathered cases from just 2 of the thousands of counties in the USA and Kellerman himself hand-picked those counties. As opposed to the John Lott study of gun ownership which took data systematically from all USA counties.

that would be 3 counties. maybe I'll get back to this nonsense later. And you don't do yourself any favors by quoting John Lott in an argument, these days.

Second, Kellerman rejected all cases of defensive gun use (DGU) except those few which met the following narrow requirements:

1) Attacker was killed. 2) Attack took place inside the gun-owners own home. 3) Attacker was killed by a gunshot fired by the gun-owner. 4) Gun-owner was the lawful owner of the gun used to kill the attacker.

These rules resulted in the total rejection of all but a tiny fraction of one percent of gun-owner experiances relating to gun use in responce to a violent attack. In almost all cases the attacker runs away when they see their intended victim is armed with a gun, with no shots fired by anyone. Of those few cases where the defender actually fires a shot, normally the attacker is not wounded at all, only a fraction are wounded. Only a few cases survive Kellerman's filters for consideration for the study.

Next you'll denounce all car accident related deaths studies because they don't talk about people saved because they were driven to a hospital, not to mention people getting parking tickets. This is a study about gun related deaths in the home of the gun owner after all. Lars T. 17:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Next Kellerman divided these selected cases into 2 catagories:

A) Cases when gun-ownership was bad. B) Cases when gun-ownership was good.

To get into the "Good" catagory Kellerman set up another set of narrow requirements:

1) Attacker had to be a total stranger to anyone inside the house at the time. 2) No criminal charges were filed against the gun-owner. 3) No law-suits were filed against the gun-owner.

All other cases went into the "Bad" catagory.

Meaning, if the attacker happens to turn out to be the bag-boy at your local grocery store and you don't even know his name, but you recognise who he is, then Kellerman counts that case in the "Bad" catagory. Again, only a few cases survive Kellerman's filters for consideration for inclusion in the "Good" catagory.

Once all cases were filtered-out and divided up, Kellerman simply compared the number of cases in each catagory and made his announcement to the media of "43 to 1". The gun-control lobby has gone wild with the propaganda ever since.

Any fair-minded person who bothers to read the criteria and methods used by Kellerman and who then bothers to give some thought to the implications of those methods will quickly determine for themselves that the Kellerman study had only one value and that was to produce a useful tool for the gun-control lobby to use in it's never-ending propaganda war against law-abiding citizens iinherant rights to own firearms for self-defense or any other proper purpose.

On the other-hand, gun-control lobby zealots will see their second favorite thing, useful lies.

---

Kat 17:55, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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(moved from VfD): Arthur Kellermann I admit the page I wrote about

                Kellerman was POV, but I strongly believe that no
                exploration of the firearms politics issue would be close to
                complete without reporting on the people involved and the
                tactics they use to push their agenda. Understanding how
                the opinions of the general public are being manipulated
                and by whom is a vital side of the issue of gun ownership.
                I would ask that someone fix it and someone from the
                other side add to it for balance. I can try to locate some
                info that the other side says about the Kellerman study,
                however, since Kellerman himself has disavowed it, I'm
                not sure what I will find. By the way, I only just discovered
                Wikipedia, so I have loads to learn about how to write
                articles. Libdemplus Aug 6, 2003
                (UTC)

There's some errors on this Kellerman page.

Kellermans studies were peer reviewed, and they were not a small sample size.

[a=http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2002/decjan/silenced.html][/a]

More worrisome to Kellermann was the impact of such rhetoric on federal funding for firearm injury prevention research. “My case-control study was the result of a painstaking, ten-year effort in three U.S. cities,” he says. “It required substantial funding to conduct it accurately and objectively. The findings were rigorously peer reviewed. I won two major research awards in part as a result of this work. But none of this mattered when people started playing politics.

Dr. Kellermann to Surgery

I think the last chunk of this Kellermann page, about the 1986 study, needs to be chopped, maybe make it its own page. I think it's more biased than the original author realizes, and there's just too much of it for the main Kellermann page. Any comments? gzuckier

Well, I agree so away we go. let the editing wars begin. Gzuckier 17:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Here's all I cleaned off the article itself, just so nobody can say I was just deleting opposing points of view.

He is the author of an often mis-quoted 1986 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on the effects of firearms ownership. It is often mis-reported that this study shows that, in households where firearms are kept, "a gun owner is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder.", which the study does not state.

While this specific study was funded by "The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation", the US Center for Disease Control have funded the bulk of the many firearms related studies conducted by A.L. Kellerman since 1986.

This 1986 study has been widely quoted and mis-quoted by advocates of gun control.

An example of media mis-quotes of this study by a gun control advocate: The Charlotte Observer published an article entitled "Women and Guns" by Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe on Jan 16, 1993. In it, she writes:

  "I understand the impulse to pick the sort of personal safety 
   sold with a matching holster.  But that sense of security is 
   false.  Guns in the home are 43 times more likely to kill a 
   family member or friend than an intruder.  
   They raise the level of violence, not safety."

Below is the text of the summary of the 1986 Kellermann study which was the source of the "43 times more likely" figure and the common mis-quotes by gun control advocates. See also a listing of Kellermann's other studies at the bottom of this page.

"Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths  
in the Home," Arthur L. Kellermann and Donald T. Reay, The New 
England Journal of Medicine 314, no., 24 (June 12, 1986)1557-1560.

The article is reprinted in:
The Gun Control Debate, You Decide ed. Lee Nisbet, 
Prometheus Books, 1990, 239-244.

Procedure:
  The medical examiner case files for every firearm related 
death in King County, Washington (1980 population = 1,270,000 
including Seattle = 494,000 and Bellevue = 74,000) between 
January 1, 1978 and December 31, 1983 was reviewed. 

Incomplete records were corroborated with information from 
police case files and interviews of investigating officers.

Gunshot deaths involving the intentional shooting of one 
person by another were considered homocides.  

Self-protection homocides were considered "justifiable" if they 
involved the killing of a felon during the commission of a crime; 
they were considered "self-defense" if that was the determination 
of the investigating police department and the King County 
prosecutor's office.  

All homocides resulting in criminal charges and all unsolved 
homocides were considered criminal homocides.

Data:
6 year period 
743 deaths from firearms (= 9.75 / 100,000 per year) 
= 22.7 percent of all violent deaths in King County 
                           excluding traffic deaths 
= 45% of all homocides (national avg. = 61%) 
= 49% of all suicides  (national avg. = 57%) 
= <1% of all accidental deaths 
= 5.7% of deaths in undetermined circumstances

inside a house or dwelling = 473 deaths (63.7%) 
in the home where the firearm invovled was kept = 398 (53.6%)

breakdown of 398 deaths in home where gun was kept:
suicides  = 333 (83.7%) 
homocides =  50 (12.6%) 
accidents =  12 (3%) 
unknown   =   3 (0.7)

breakdown of suicides with guns in home where gun was kept: 
male victim   = 265 (80%) 
female victim =  68 (20%) 
blood tested for ethanol = 245 (74%) 
blood alcohol test positive = 86 (35% of those tested) 
blood alcohol level above 100 mg/dl = 60 (24.5% of those tested)
handgun used = 226 (68%) 
long gun used = 107 (32%)

breakdown of homocides with guns in home where gun was kept: 
male victim   = 30 (60%) 
female victim = 20 (40%) 
blood tested for ethanol = 47 (94%) 
blood alcohol test positive = 27 (54% of those tested) 
blood alcohol level above 100 mg/dl = 10 (21% of those tested) 
handgun used = 34 (68%) 
long gun used = 16 (32%) 

{homocides continued, triggering events}
occurred during altercation in the home = 42 (84%)   
self-defense during altercation = 7 of 42 (17%) 
justifiable homomcide of burglars = 2 of 50 (4%) 
resulted in criminal charges = 41 of 50 (82%) 
total self-defense and justifiable = 9 of 50 (18%)

breakdown of accidental deaths with guns in home where gun was kept:
male victim = 12 (100%) 
blood alcohol test positive = 2 (17%) 
handgun used = 11 (92%)

deaths excluding suicides = 65 (50 homocide, 12 accident, 3 unknown) 
victim was stranger = 2 (3%) 
victim was friend or acquaintance = 24 (37%) 
victim was resident = 36 (55%)   
victim of homocide was resident = 29 (45% of total, 58% of homocides)      
resident shot by family member except spouse = 11 (31%)     
by spouse = 9 (25%)      
by self = 7 (19%)      
by roommate = 6 (17%)      
by other = 3 (8%)

Conclusions:
ratio of killed by stranger to killed by person known = 12:1
ratio of accidental deaths to self-protection homocides = 1.3:1 
ratio of criminal homocides to self-protection homocides = 4.6:1 
ratio of suicides to self-protection homocides = 37:1
ratio of suicides, criminal homocides, and accidental deaths  
to homocides for self-protection = 43:1
end ------------

Kellermann's study method was drawn from the earlier study cited below.

Rushforth NB, Hirsch CS, Ford AB, Adelson L. Accidental firearm fatalities in a metropolitan county (1958-1973). Am J Epidemiol 1974;100:499-505.

A study of accidental firearm fatalities in Cuyahoga County. Ohio, (Metropolitan Cleveland) from 1956-1973, inclusive, has shown a threefold increase in the rate of such deaths since 1967. They are more frequent in the central city than in the suburbs, show a male preponderance, are more common in nonwhites, have a peak prevalence in the 25-34-year age range and usually happen in the home. Approximately half of the adult victims had been drinking alcoholic beverages when shot. It is hypothesized that the frequency of accidental firearm fatalities is primarily related to the number of guns, particularly handguns, in civilian possession. The data indicate that a loaded firearm in the home is more likely to cause an accidental death than to be used as a lethal weapon against an intruder.

There were 148 accidental firearms deaths from 1958 to 1973. Eighty-three per cent were due to handguns. During this same period of time, 23 burglars, robbers, or other intruders who were not relatives or acquaintances were killed in self-defense. The ratio of accidental firearms deaths to justifiable homicides of an intruder or other unknown assailant was 6.4:1.

The study did not look at suicides and criminal homicides. The authors postulate that the increased rate of accidental firearms fatalities was due to increased availability of guns, but no data is given on firearms ownership rates.

end---------

Gun control advocates state that the 1986 Kellermann study proves their point, that owning a gun is an unaceptable threat to yourself, your family, your freinds and to society in general. They accept the final conclusion of the study as indisputeable fact and full justification for their positions.

Gun rights advocates counter that the entire study is not only suspect for the integrity of its data, but also that it is entirely mis-leading in its basic methodology to the point where it proves nothing more interesting than the fact that suicides make up the bulk of gunshot deaths, which has been known since gunshot death records begin. Gun rights advocates state that the only purpose for this biased and carefully manipulated study was to create a useful headline for the gun control lobby to use to frighten the public with.

Objections: (In no particular order)

• No peer review- The primary source for the data were case files which were reviewed only by the study's authors and categorised and tabulated only by their judgment. Neither the case files nor any extracts from them have ever been made available for peer review or published. Clear oppoutunity for bias with no chance of achedemic review.

• Small sample area- The study was conducted in one single county in the USA out of several thousands of USA counties. King county, Washington state (includes Seattle). No study with such a tiny sample area can be validly applied to the entire USA for such a complex issue.

• Lethal-only filter- The study excluded all cases where an attacker was either wounded or unharmed and survived the encounter with the armed gun owner. Fatal self-defense uses of firearms account for far less than 1% of all defensive gun uses (DGU). Gun owners, even while defending their own lives, will avoid firing their gun except as a last desperate resort to stopping an attack. The lack of a dead body does not mean the gun failed to protect the gun owner or their family.

• Stranger-only filter- The study classifies as "homocides for self-protection", (ie, the "good case") only those cases where the attacker was a total stranger to the gun owner. This means that if the gun owner is violently attacked by someone he/she knows, even slight aquaintences, and the gun owner uses a gun to stop the attack by killing the attacker, this study still counts that case as a "criminal homocide".

• Accusation equals guilt assumption- The study authors assumed that any gun owner who is accused or charged in relation to a case of gunshot homocide in his home was automatically guilty of the crime and thus the case was placed in the "criminal homocide" category. The authors made no effort to discover if the charges were later dropped by the police after further investigations cleared the gun owner. Other studies have found that as high as 40% of jury trials for such cases find the gun owner was justified in the shooting. Such cases where the gun owner was later vindicated would properly reduce the number of "bad cases" and increase the number of "good cases".

From the above study, a chart shows "increased risk factors" as follows:

Household illicit drug use 5.7 : 1 
Home rented 4.4 : 1 
History of Domestic violence 4.4 : 1 
Lived alone 3.7 : 1 
Gun in home 2.7 : 1 
Household arrest record 2.5 : 1

========================

The Memphis TN Commercial Appeal recently (Feb 2009) posted the Handgun Permit Holders database on their website. I entered my name and got my vital statistics, made available for anyone to see (the CommAppe have removed DOB and Street address after earlier protests.) In the arguments on this in the Comments and Letters section, gun control advocates have repeatedly referred to Kellermann's "43 times" as an argument to attack the right to privacy of gun permit holders. The Kellermann 43 are used in arguments on public policy today by gun control advocates. If, as claimed, gun control advocates have misrepresented what Kellermann wrote and since there has been a backlash to that misrepresentation that has reflected badly on Dr. Kellermann and affected public policy, that is notable and should be covered in the Kellermann Wikipedia entry. If Kellermann's research does not back the Handgun Control talking point allegedly based on Kellermann's research, that is notable. Naaman Brown (talk) 11:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup

I have edited this article to remove large sections of unsourced (and highly biased) text, and cleaned it up a bit. In the future, please remember to only add cited, verifiable, and unbiased facts. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Getting here a bit late, but you deleted 5 links to Kellermann's papers containing the quotes presented in the text, then complained that they are unsourced? Gzuckier 17:29, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

"Only 30 percent of his papers address the issue" Seems highly judgemental. This appears in Other Works section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.174.36.176 (talk) 06:50, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

recent edits

reverted unsourced bs which parrots unsourced gunloon website bs Gzuckier 17:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

"Parrots" "gunloon"... Yeah, no bias displayed by Gzuckier... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.230.63.56 (talk) 07:39, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

letters

Rather than deleting[1] these letter refs, I am moving them to the talk page for further consideration. SaltyBoatr (talk) 20:52, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Letters in response: firearm injury prevention

• Kellermann AL. (2008) Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. (Opinion). Washington Post. p. B02. ref http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062702864.html Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. - washingtonpost.com

• Kellermann AL. (2001) Response to Kleck (letter). Homicide Studies. Sage Publications. Vol. 5, pp. 276-278.

• Ash P, Kellermann AL. (2001) Reducing Gun Carrying by Youth (letter). American Medical Association. Archives of Pediatrics. Vol. 155, pp. 330-331.

• Kellermann AL. (1995). Weapon involvement in home invasion crimes (letter). Journal of American Medical Association. Vol. 275, pp. 281.

• Kellermann AL, Somes G, Rivara FP. (1994). Guns and homicide in the home (letter). New England Journal of Med. Vol. 330, pp. 368.

• Sloan JH, Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, et al. (1989) Handgun regulations, crime, assaults and homicide: a tale of two cities (letter). New England Journal of Medicine. Vol. 320, pp. 1216-1217.

• Kellermann AL, Reay D. (1986) Firearm-related deaths (letter). New England Journal of Med. Vol. 315, pp. 1484.

SaltyBoatr (talk) 20:52, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the major problem here is that the heading "Letters in response" is quite unclear... I'm not even sure to what they're responding, much less able to make an informed decision about their appropriateness for inclusion. This isn't a disagreement on content; we should just simply present a summary of the points in prose with inline citations.  :) //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 21:57, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

No usable data.

I have not made any changes to the article, but encourage others to make the following changes: At no point is a base number cited for these percentages.

For example if one person commits suicide with a firearm, and then two criminals are shot and killed by the police the following year, it would be correct to state there was a 100% increase in violent gun deaths in one year, 1/3 of all firearms related deaths are suicide, and It would also be truthful to say that 100% of firearms deaths involve criminal activities.

Without a base number this community would be considered a high crime area with a major gun problem and a high rate of suicide. If we know the base number we can determine that this community of 250,000 people is a peaceful place with excellent police coverage.

74.61.115.52 (talk) 23:25, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

"Critics"

The article makes frequent mention of critics who are often unnamed and sometimes even uncited:

• Critics of this study noted that it was restricted to firearm-related deaths, effectively excluding incidents in which gun owners used their firearm to injure and frighten away an intruder.
• He then developed the now much criticized 43:1 ratio that states every time a gun is used in self-defense, it is 43 times more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide, or accidental shooting.
• Critics of Kellermann's 1993 paper responded with a number of objections: (e.g. the guns/homicide association could simply reflect the fact that people already at risk of homicide are more likely to acquire guns for self-protection; the study population was urban and therefore higher risk in general, compared to suburban or rural areas), and (e.g. that members of rival gangs were tabulated as "family member or intimate acquaintance"; that the data was cherry-picked).
• Kellermann also was criticized for not reporting what fraction of homicides in his sample were committed with guns kept in the victim's home.[15]
• Critics also claimed that it was suspicious that Kellermann did not release his data immediately upon publication. SUNY-Buffalo's Lawrence Southwick, among others, publicly speculated "that Kellermann's full data set would actually vindicate defensive gun ownership." [1](404 link)
• Critics claimed, however, that this was only a truncated version of Kellermann’s full dataset, arguing that it omitted his crucial data on whether guns used in the firearm homicides he studied belonged to anyone in the victim’s household... (citation is to his own paper, not to any critics)
• Once this information was taken into account, it was claimed that the effect of household gun ownership on the risk of homicide could not have been more than 6% of the effect that was estimated by Kellermann.[18]

This is a BLP - unsourced "criticism" can and should be deleted. "Critics" should be named and their criticism attributed to them. Is this a biography or a debate? Check out the bio on his "critics", like Don Kates or Gary Kleck. Felsic (talk) 17:17, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Several editors including myself have cleaned this up.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:58, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Criticism vs Attack

Per Edit, Revert Discuss guidelines I'm starting a discussion based on the two uses of the word "attack" or "attacked", referring to the NRA and other gun rights entities response to Kellermann's work. The only reference for these claims do not actually say that the NRA attacked Kellermann; it actually uses the phrase to describe the activities of both pro and anti-gun organizations. Regardless, and more to the point, "attack" is highly sensational and non-neutral. If the word is indeed included, it should at least be attributed to a third party (for example: "ABC Newspaper reported the NRA has attacked Arthur Kellermann for his research"). That said, I feel strongly that "criticism" is much more in line with reality, and a neutral, encyclopedic tone. --2601:18C:8800:4600:C0B9:4C27:3E01:D719 (talk) 20:54, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Kellermann's studies, which indicate an increased risk of mortality associated with gun ownership, has been disputed by some researchers and by gun rights organizations and individuals, in particular by the National Rifle Association.

Can we say who these researchers, organizations, and individuals are, aside from just the NRA? The current text is too vague. Felsic2 (talk) 16:14, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the "critics" or "attackers" are Gary Kleck and Paul Blackman, the latter serving as NRA Research Coordinator. The Washingotn Post mentions criticism by Don Kates of public health researchers, of which Kellerman is one, but it doesn't list any specific criticism of Kellerman by Kates that I can see. Unless someone can come up with more, I'll replace the existing vague language with references to Kleck and Blackman. Felsic2 (talk) 00:01, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Reverted material must be discussed

I have reverted the addition of material to this article which is objectionable for a number of reasons. For one, "Criticism" sections are deprecated on Wikipedia - our article should present a single section on his research including a variety of responses, positive, negative or otherwise. For two, the section includes many examples of inappropriately-POV writing which states opinions as facts - for example, the line With so many complex variables, the authors should have used multiple logistic regression models, but used only one logistic regression model is perhaps a valid criticism (I do not know) but it cannot be stated in Wikipedia voice - it must be attributed to the critic who made the statement, which must be cited to a reliable source. These issues need to be addressed, and it starts with discussing the issues here on the talk page. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:53, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

While criticism sections may be deprecated, they are not forbidden, so far as I know. The goal is to fold that material into the article, rather than just wiping it out. Since this article is - as the original poster who included the material - biased pretty significantly in favor of Kellerman's research with no critical content to be found, this inclusion, which is well-sourced, is a good first step in balancing that POV bias. I agree that some of the wording is deficient - that's what we are here for, to edit it and bring it into conformity. Blanket reversion of a well-sourced section of material isn't really the way to approach it. I believe it should be included, and refined. Anastrophe (talk) 05:28, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

It essentially has to be rebuilt from scratch if it's going to be included, because of the above issues. It's not actually "well-sourced" because most of the criticism is presented as unsourced and unattributed factual statements - for an example, see the above-mentioned line, or The homicide rates of Seattle Blacks (36.6) and Hispanics (26.9) skewed their data — who says their data was skewed by this? or Kellermann and Reay had repeated the harshly criticized error of Rushfort — who says they repeated what harshly criticized error? The addition does not specify, and hence is unusable in Wikipedia. If you'd like to propose a rewritten version here, that would be a good place to start discussing it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:42, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I believe some of what you question is in the sources provided, particularly the main large paragraph, cited to the pubmed article, which of course is not directly reachable without a subscription. Its problem is that it provides too much material from one single source, without an easy way to verify it.

The other problem ultimately is that it's a BLP, which went zhoooooooom over my head, and which precludes leaving it in and refining it in userland. It would have to be rewritten and vetted here, first, so I will happily withdraw from this, as I don't have a dog in the fight, nor time to commit. Anastrophe (talk) 05:58, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, and that would be another problem; if the vast majority of this huge long proposed "criticism" section is sourced from a single critic's article in a state medical association journal, there's a big question of undue weight on that critic's viewpoint; if this is all essentially one person's argument, it ought to be mentioned, but it needs to be summarized in a couple of sentences at most. Otherwise that one single person would get essentially as much space here as every other source combined, which is not in keeping with how we write articles. I invite @Edogawa1: to join the discussion here and help shape this inclusion. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 06:06, 17 January 2018 (UTC)