Gun In Home Leads to What?

[fickman]

Maybe playing devils advocate here but.....Are they saying that in instances of a gun being used, that it is more likely to be used on a family member than a criminal? I do believe they are obfuscating the issue and making the study and statement seem to say that of ALL guns in homes the most likely use of them is domestic violence which would be an outright lie.

They are usually inferring that you're more likely to shoot your teenager sneaking in late at night or have your toddler find the firearm and accidentally discharge it than you are to use use it against a real criminal.

The dataset that they use to make this claim, as stated above, is very tainted with all sorts of factors that would not pass the scrutiny of an honest, scrupulous statistician. If people would scrutinize the datasets, methodology, and assumptions of these studies before embracing the findings, this particular claim would've been put to bed years ago.

[rm9792]

I am absolutely sure the results are tainted. They need to have every single instance of this happening both family and criminal to get an accurate assessment and there is no way they would have this. What if it is family and criminal at the same instance? Bet it would go in the Family column. Even a statistical sampling would be affected by regional factors for example.

[HankB]

Remember that bona-fide bad guys have "families" too.

I've seen more than one TV report where kids were in a home where marijuana was being grown commmercially . . . and even a few that had things like meth labs in the basement.

You think genuine gangsters haven't fathered kids with women they're actually married to and live with?