Today’s Idiot
Courtland Milloy has a screed against the new found freedom in DC to freely own a handgun carry it from one room to another. He cites (incorrectly) the Kellermann study:
Several studies have shown that a gun in the home is up to 22 times more likely to be used for suicide or to kill a family member than to fend off a burglar.
It’s one study. The study showed it to be 43 times more likely. And the study is misleading because included in the number are murders of one criminal by another who live at the same house. Also, the study completely discounts any defensive gun use that does not result in someone’s death (which is estimated to occur between 750K and 2M times per year, depending on who you talk to). If you’re going to use bogus statistics at least get the bogus statistics correct.
The rest of his screed compares gun owners to children.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:48 am
76% of statistics are just made up.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:50 am
And, as my stats teacher told me, had a decimal when making them up. it lends them a greater degree of believability. After all, it sounds all exact and stuff. So:
75.8% of statistics are just made up
March 15th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
If guns are used defensively one million times a year, doesn’t that mean we should be seeing statistics showing 22 million people a year committing suicide or having their own guns used on them? I must have missed that article…
March 15th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
…and 65.2456789522445678% of all statistics claim a higher degree of precision than they really have.
March 16th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I feel 78% better after giving up my job in statistics. Jack.