@ AA
New to the thread and we posted simultaneously...
Fair enough, but it is linked in two other places.
So, you're telling me that there is risk inherent in gun ownership. One wonders what the risks of knife or car ownership are?
No idea. Is that relevant? There is tangible benefit from car (transport) and knife (cooking!) ownership, but the study showed no added benefit for the one thing people advocate guns give you: protection.
The study also makes the point that one is 2.7% more likely to be murdered.
No, it's 2.7
times more likely, or 270%. That's statistically significant. The margin of error on a sample size of 388 is 4.97%.
I'm far more likely to be killed in a car crash when you look at the tables in that study
Of course you are, but that is not what the study is looking at. What it is doing is comparing [you with a gun in your house] with [you without a gun in your house] and finds that [you with a gun in your house] is 2.7
times more likely to die from homicide than [you without a gun in your house]. It also compares other variables (6 were found to be statistically significant), but the one we are concerned with in this conversation is guns. I'm happy enough to discuss those other factors or causes of death in another thread, but this one is concerned with guns.
One wonders if they were in North Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington DC or more normal places.
The study states where the samples were taken:
The homicides which were studied came from three metropolitan areas. The first two were Shelby County, Tennessee (which includes Memphis), and King County, Washington (which includes Seattle), both from August 1987 to August 1992. The third was Cuyahoga County, Ohio (which includes Cleveland), from January 1990 to August 1992. King County is predominately white and enjoys a relatively high standard of living. Cuyahoga County is 25 percent African-American, as is 44 percent of Shelby County. The poverty levels of these counties were 5, 11 and 15 percent, respectively. (The national poverty rate in 1992 was 15 percent.)