http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&u=/nm/20020301/sc_nm/health_children_dc


More U.S. Children Die Where Guns Are Common-Study
Thu Feb 28, 7:04 PM ET
By Christopher Noble
BOSTON (Reuters) - Children are much more likely to be murdered, commit suicide or die accidentally because of guns in states and regions with higher levels of household firearm ownership, according to a new study by Harvard researchers.

The study, published in The Journal of Trauma, is significant because it shows that the mere presence of firearms leads to more violent death among children aged 5-14, said Dr. Matthew Miller, the lead author.

"When most people buy a gun, they do so with the presumption that guns make them safer," Miller said in an interview. "Our results suggest strongly that this presumption is not warranted and that the children that parents seek to protect with guns are instead being killed by guns."

While other studies have shown links between teen suicide and guns, this is the first national study to examine the connection between firearm ownership and violent death among younger children, said Miller, associate director of Harvard's Injury Control Research Center.

The study looked at data from all 50 states from 1988 to 1997. In that period, 6,817 children between 5 and 14 years old died from firearms: 3,447 from homicides, 1,782 from accidental shootings and 1,588 from suicide.  The study showed that the five states with the highest gun ownership levels had many more firearm-related deaths among children than the five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership.

The two groups of states had almost the same number of children, but in the high gun-ownership states there were 253 accidental firearm deaths compared to just 15 in the low gun-ownership states.

There were 153 firearm suicides in the high gun-ownership states compared to 22 in the low-ownership states and there were 298 firearm murders in the high gun-ownership states compared to 86 in the low-ownership states.  Meanwhile, the rates of non firearm-related suicides and murders in the two groups of states were much closer, leading Miller to conclude the increase in deaths was attributable to the higher number of firearm-related deaths.

"The large difference in gun-related deaths compared with the low level of difference in non-firearm deaths allows us to say that guns are playing some role," Miller said.  The difference remains even when the data is controlled for poverty, education and urbanization, the study found.

"Although no conclusions about cause and effect can be made, this study provides compelling evidence that states with high firearm availability are states with high childhood firearm death rates," Dr. Therese Richmond of the University of Pennsylvania's Firearm Injury Center wrote in an editorial.

The five states with the highest rates of gun ownership are Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia. The five with the lowest are Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Delaware.

One sentence seemed to sum up the results of this study:

"no conclusions about cause and effect can be made"

States with more swimming pools have resulted in more drownings as well.....

I wonder what the odds are of someone getting into a car accident when they don't own a car?

just keep cigarettes out of there little hands as they kill more people every day(yes even little secound hand smoke kids)than guns or drownings,car accidents ,,,any thing,,,,

This smells. All other data shows accidental shooting and homocides have been dropping continually througout the 90's

Me thinks this is another fraudulant study.

WaahWaahWaah!

Why do the liberals want to save us all from ourselves ????

Life is hard & shit happens!

Seems like percentages would be in order here. ya know the whole apple to apple thing as opposed to apples to oranges.

I don't need no steenkin' saving. Thats why I have so many guns.

Benjamin Disraeli said it best...  "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."  He has proven nothing and the article even admits it.

It is interesting to note that one would likely get the same results by substituting cars, swimming pools, poisonous snakes, school buses, or down-hill ski resorts for guns.  Why do people waste their time on this kind of crap?

Well at least they don't have to try and commit suicide with a hammer or electric drill.  

I'm gonna guess that because of cultural differences, Hawaii drastically tilted this study.....

Quoted:
[i]"When most people buy a gun, they do so with [b]the presumption that guns make them safer[/b]," Miller said in an interview. "[b]Our results suggest strongly that this presumption is not warranted...[/b]
[/i]

This is bogus junkscience.  

These "researchers" are implying the guns don't make you safer which was NOT even taken into consideration in their "study".

They are not studying whether guns make you safer. To do that you need to look at CRIME and SELF-DEFENSE statistics.

As resident and self-appointed "Scientific Data Nazi" of this board, I will need to get the original article and data and then return with the "real" story behind this junkscience propaganda.


P.S. Several here have already made good points regarding swimming pools and automobiles and their correlation to childhood deaths also.

This study mentions "states" rather than urban versus rural areas. There's the areas of sudy I'd like to see. How much influence of the gangbanger mentality has on urban kids? Clearly there's a higher % or white kids who do suicied than black or hispanic. Be interested to see the murder rates on urban kids versus rual as well.

This is just like the "in TX ccw permit holders have committed [b][i]thousands[/b][/i] of crimes, including rape and murder" that the Milwaukee newspaper printed in an editorial. More forked tongue lies from freedom fearing pussies.

Try comparing crime rates among permit holders to crime rates in the general public and you'll see a different picture. To bad public schools have helped most people become too stupid to understand even subtraction and division.

The antis have cooked the numbers to say that guns are dangerous. They don't prove anything to me except that there some pretty stupid people in this world.

I heard this crap on the radio the other day.  It immediately followed a story describing a convicted murderer being put to death - his scraeming curses and then his eyes and mouth wide open.  I have nothing against descriptive news stories, but I guarantee you would never have heard as detailed a description of a murder victim.  Just "Joe Blow was killed by a GUNMAN".....

Most media sickens me.

What the hell do you expect out of Harvard? That school is almost as bad as Berkley. I would earn a 1.5 GPA at Yale than a 4.0 at Harvard.

Their survey don't mean a thing.

Ban them!  Do it for children [>(]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict there are fewer drownings in the desert where no water is available.
[:D]

"When most people buy a gun, they do so with the presumption that guns make them safer," Miller said in an interview. "Our results suggest strongly that this presumption is not warranted and that the children that parents seek to protect with guns are instead being killed by guns."


...OH! So that's why they included homicide numbers.[>:/]

I looked at the Journal of Trauma online at:
http://[url]www.jtrauma.com[/url]

I found the listing for the article as follows:
[i]Firearm Availability and Unintentional Firearm Deaths, Suicide, and Homicide among 5–14 Year Olds[/i]
Mathew Miller, MD, MPH, ScD; Deborah Azrael, PhD; [b]David Hemenway[/b], PhD

Unfortunately, I do not have a Journal account, so I cannot download the article.  If someone can get the electronic version, please post it online.

I have highlighted David Hemenway above, who is well known as an anti-gun junk scientist at Harvard.  His publications include gems like:
The "Psychic Cost" Of Holiday Gift-Giving
http://[url]i2i.org/failsafe/SuptDocs/OpEdArcv/op971217.htm[/url]

Not having access to the article itself, I can only comment on what the illiterate press has written about it, specifically:

[i]The study showed that the [b]five states with the highest gun ownership levels[/b] had many more firearm-related deaths among children than the [b]five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership[/b].[/i]

This raises the obvious question:  What happened to the other forty states?  If you are statistically comparing gun ownership and child deaths, it is just as easy to look at all fifty rather than just ten.  Hmmm.  This would not be the first time that statistical analysis has been selectively performed by the gun-banners.

BS Alert!

We need to let the Journal and article authors know about OUR findings.  We're all preaching to the choir here, as usual.  Doesn't do the RKBA cause much good.

{preach-to-choir}
Mathew Miller, MD, MPH, ScD; Deborah Azrael, PhD; David Hemenway, PhD... What a bunch of useless pricks
{/preach-to-choir}

sounds like another unfounded "Bellisles study" to me.
looks like a lot of statements with no proof, just a lot of 'i want it to be that way, so it is' bs.

Ok, I found the article online in PDF format:

http://[url]www.hsph.harvard.edu/press/releases/trauma_article.pdf[/url]

A quick read reveals the following:

1) One of the authors is David Hemenway, well known as an anti-gun junk scientist.  See:
The "Psychic Cost" Of Holiday Gift-Giving
http://[url]i2i.org/failsafe/SuptDocs/OpEdArcv/op971217.htm[/url]

2) The article was funded by grants from:
a) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (continuing many years of throwing taxpayer money at the gun control movement)
b) Joyce Foundation (the premiere source of funds for gun control "studies")
c) Center on Crimes, Communities and Culture of the Open Society Institute (the Open Society is a George Soros creation that has declared war on legal gun ownership)

3) A direct quote from the article:
--- Begin quote ---
Direct measures of household firearm ownership are [b]not available[/b] at the state level for [b]all 50 states[/b]. When all 50 states are analyzed (at the state level), proxies for firearm availability are two derived measures:
(1) Cook’s Index, developed and previously validated at the city level; and (2) the fraction of all suicides that involve a gun. Both of these measures have been used in cross-sectional studies within the United States, and Cook’s Index has also been independently correlated with household gun ownership levels across 14 industrialized nations.

[b]Cook’s Index[/b] for a given state in a given year [b]is calculated[/b] by averaging (over all age groups) [b]the percentage of all suicides committed with a firearm and the percentage of all homicides committed with a firearm[/b]. That is, Cooks Index = (fraction of suicides with guns + fraction of homicides with guns)/2.
--- End quote --- (Emphasis added)

So in other words, they "predict" the average level of gun ownership in a state by using the number of firearm homicides and firearm suicides in a state!  Talk about fudging your data!

4) 21 states actually have some gun ownership data available from a BRFSS survey.  There are large differences in the Cook's Index between states with similar BRFSS gun ownership numbers.  Look at a list of states with both BRFSS and Cook Index numbers:
State Cook's Index BRFSS
Rhode Island 0.45 0.14
Delaware 0.48 0.28

Colorado 0.57 0.38
Wisconsin 0.58 0.49

New Mexico 0.59 0.43
Oregon 0.6 0.49

Kansas 0.65 0.41
Arizona 0.67 0.33
Idaho 0.67 0.57

Even the BRFSS numbers look suspicious; can Colorado really have a lower gun ownership level than Wisconsin?  Arizona than Kansas?

5) They chose only ten states for a close look - the five highest gun owning states and the five lowest gun owning states.  Bear in mind that "gun owning" is determined by the Cook index (which is calculated from firearm homicides and suicides), so naturally, the five highest gun owning states have the highest number of firearm homicides and suicides!

6) The authors claim that they have analyzed non-firearm homicides and suicides among children, which they claim show no significant relationship to gun owning states, but the raw numbers are not provided, so the reader has to accept their claim upon faith. The absence of these numbers are interesting.  Japan, which has no firearms, has a higher suicide rate than the United States, which is awash in firearms.  Could there be a similar story here?
--- To be contd. ---

(Contd.)

7) Noteworthy references in the article:
From Arthur Kellerman, who has made a career out of gun control junk science:
Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, Somes G, et al. Suicide in the home in relation to gun ownership. N Engl J Med. 1992;327:467–472.
Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB, et al. Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home. N Engl J Med. 1993; 329:1084 –1091.
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 –1262.

8) Selected quotes from the Editorial comment that concludes the article:
...Are we really to believe then that plentiful firearms and healthy children can coexist?...
...These findings reinforce the belief that high levels of firearm availability place our children at risk and seriously undermine attempts to improve their health and welfare.
...civilian registration of all firearms would provide valuable and accurate data on firearm availability.  Registering a firearm should be no different from registering a car and should not infringe on legal firearm ownership.

9) Noteworthy references in the Editorial comment:
Diaz T. Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America. New York, NY: New Press; 1999:69 –84.
(The above book is written by Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center, the most virulent organization of the anti-gun movement.  His book purports to show that the gun manufacturers have been recklessly manufacturing guns indifferent to the murders being committed with them).

10) Outright falsehoods:
Claim: In the United States,only motor vehicle crashes and cancer claim more lives among children than do firearms.
Fact:
Children Accidental Death Rates (Ages 0-14)
Cause Number
Motor-vehicle 2,900  
Drowning 965  
Fires, burns 676  
Mechanical suffocation 474  
Ingestion of food, object 185  
Firearms 142  
Source: Figures are for 1997. National Safety Council, Accident Facts: 2000 Edition, at 10, 11, 18

(Contd.)

11) References and facts noteworthy by their absence from the article:

Fact: Accidental gun deaths among children have declined by over 50 % in 25 years, even though the population (and the gun stock) has continued to increase.
Sources: Kopel, Guns: Who Should Have Them? at p 311 and National Safety Council, Accident Facts: 2000 Edition at 10, 11, 18

Fact: More children will die in a car, drown in a pool, or choke on food than they will by firearms. As seen by the chart on the previous page, children are at a 2,000 percent greater risk from the car in their driveway, than they are by the gun in their parents' closet. Children are almost 7 times more likely to drown than to be shot, and they are 130 percent more likely to die from choking on their dinner.
Source: National Safety Council, Accident Facts: 2000 Edition at 10, 11, 18

Fact: The reason that so many Americans own guns is that guns don't just kill, but also save lives.  Law abiding citizens in America use their guns, including handguns, to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times a year, far more than the estimated 500,000 crimes committed with guns every year.  In almost all these cases, the mere display and brandishing of the gun by the citizen causes the criminal to retreat to safer pastures, with no shots being fired, and with no one getting hurt.  Not surprisingly, these non-events seldom make the news.
Source: Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164.

Whew!  I spent a whole hour on that!

I think I will package this up and ship it off to KABA or some other site for publication.

BTW, I have created a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with the numbers from the study, so if you want to do your own analysis, let me know and I can send it to you.

That is just plain annoying.