From firearms-alert-owner Sun Jan 15 13:07:31 1995 Received: (chan@localhost) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.9/8.6.5) id NAA13122 for firearms-alert-outgoing; Sun, 15 Jan 1995 13:03:58 -0800 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.9/8.6.5) with ESMTP id NAA13116 for ; Sun, 15 Jan 1995 13:03:56 -0800 Received: from mail.crl.com (mail.crl.com [165.113.1.22]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.9/8.6.5) with SMTP id NAA05665 for ; Sun, 15 Jan 1995 13:03:54 -0800 Received: from crl9.crl.com by mail.crl.com with SMTP id AA19091 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sun, 15 Jan 1995 13:02:21 -0800 Received: by crl9.crl.com id AA27858 (5.65c/IDA-1.5); Sun, 15 Jan 1995 13:02:26 -0800 Date: Sun, 15 Jan 1995 13:02:25 -0800 (PST) From: "Edgar A. Suter" To: No1Patriot@aol.com Cc: dfw@netcom.com, christopher farley , firearms-alert@shell.portal.com, firearms-politics@cup.hp.com, fap@world.std.com, DRGOTWW@aol.com, Christieh@aol.com, shealey@netcom.com, 74157.632@compuserve.com, larry.pratt@prn-bbs.org, MarkB17@aol.com, HeatWB27@aol.com Subject: LENGTHY post on Wintemute, scientific misconduct, and cars/guns In-Reply-To: <950115141100_1930098@aol.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: firearms-alert-owner@shell.portal.com Precedence: bulk Status: RO Several people have noted a recent AP release from Garen Wintemute MD of UC Davis, a prohibitionist "researcher who was investigated [perhaps perfunctorily] for scientific misconduct, prevarication, at the request of D.I.R.P.P. Wintemute's current claim that gun deaths have exceeded automobile deaths is flawed for several reasons [discussed below]. His claim is based on PRELIMINARY data UNAVAILABLE to us for review and criticism. Given Wintemute's history of false claims, we are sketical of his claims and of his interpretations. Two excerpts follow - the first is an excerpt from Kates DB, Lattimer JK, and Cottrol RJ. "Public Health Literature on Firearms - A Critique of Overt Mendacity." a paper presented to the American Society of Criminology annual meeting. New Orleans, LA. November 5, 1992.; the second is an excerpt from my paper, Suter EA. "Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. March 1994; 83: 133-48., an excerpt that addresses the initial appearance [though not specifically Wintemute's current caim about "preliminary" data from 1993] of the "gun deaths are beginning to exceed car deaths" claim. ************************************************************************* * Edgar A. Suter, MD suter@crl.com * * Chair, DIRPP Doctors for Integrity in Research & Public Policy * ************************************************************************* First, the Kates, Lattimer, Cottrol excerpt: In short, even indulging these assumptions in the CDC's favor, this Report amply justifies the charge Dr. O'Carroll denied: that the CDC assumes its anti-gun conclusions from the outset and then attempts to find evidence to support it; that, in the firearms area at least, the CDC employs procedures which are "anathema to any unbiased scientific inquiry...." Giving the CDC the benefit of both dubious assumptions, its Report nevertheless falls within the legal criteria for fraud by non-disclosure and negligent misstatement --misrepresentations which those making them could not reasonably have believed true, said misrepresentations being made without disclosing that the makers had no idea whether they were true or false and thus no reasonable basis for assuming that they were true.[1] (We note that a very similar misrepresentation is offered by the premier health literature anti-gun advocate, Professor Garen Wintemute.[2]) ... 3. More falsified comparisons between handgun and long gun misuse Wintemute's mendacious claim that from "the early 1970s" gun availability and gun murder increased "in parallel" is noted above. We use the harsh term mendacious advisedly for no plea of mere ignorance can be believed of Professor Wintemute, the most prolific of the health writers on firearms issues. Indeed, the article in which this falsehood appears is one of his numerous studies of firearms death trend data.[3] He was doubtless well aware that from "the early 1970s" on through 1987 (the year in which his article appeared), gun homicide declined rather than rising "in parallel" to the enormous increase in firearm availability. Nothing other than duplicity explains either Wintemute's contrary claim or his assertions in a later article that: While [handguns] account for only approximately 25% of the firearms in the United States, they are used in 70-75% of firearms homicides, approximately 70% of firearm suicides, and a like number of unintended firearms deaths.[4] The least of the problems with this is that the best estimate then available (from the NIJ Literature Evaluation, of which Professor Wintemute was well aware) was that handguns were c. 37% of the total gun stock, not "approximately 25%." Far more egregious is his assertion that handguns are involved in c. 70% of accidental gun fatalities -- a figure almost double their actual involvement as shown the 1979-1988 National Safety Council data, the only national data on the subject.[5] Similar is Professor Wintemute's misrepresentation of handgun involvement in suicide. In a typical year (1980) there are well over 15,000 gun suicides -- of which only about 2100, or 13.7% can be identified as being by handgun. As with gun accidents, this 13.7% figure is under-inclusive because the kind of firearm is not identified in many of gun suicides. Presumably, some proportion of these unidentified gun suicides involved handguns. Assuming that handguns account for the same percentage in unidentified suicides as in those in which the kind of firearm is identified, however, handguns are involved in only 41% of gun suicides -- not the 70% claimed by Professor Wintemute. While these particular calculations come from POINT BLANK, a source not published when Wintemute wrote, the raw data was available to him in publications of the National Safety Council. That raw data (the 13.7% handgun suicide figure given above) was, of course, even more at variance with Wintemute's 70% handgun suicide figure. Per the text accompanying n. 10 supra, Professor Wintemute may indeed be so ignorant of firearms as mechanisms that he really does believe "handguns uniquely lethal". But that does not explain or excuse his fudging firearms death statistics, with which he clearly is familiar, in order to fabricate support for that belief. 4. The defensive value of firearms possession Equally indefensible are the following falsehoods from an article co-authored by Professors Wintemute and Teret (the latter being a health writer nearly as prolific as Wintemute): [H]andguns are often advised as necessities for self-protection, and that is why most handgun owners have bought them. Yet there is little scientific evidence to support the claims that guns are effective devices for protection.*** there are no studies that examine the results of resisting a robbery with a gun per se [but a study which did not determine kinds of weapons used] indicated that attempts to resist [robberies in Chicago] place the victim at much greater risk of being injured or killed.[6] Having thus mendaciously disposed of the possibility of contrary evidence, the authors offer only a brief study of a single medium-sized city as supposedly proving guns ineffective as defensive weapons. When this article was written Teret and Wintemute (though perhaps not their co-authors) were well aware that "scientific evidence", in the form of nationwide data documenting widespread defensive use of firearms, had become available by the late 1970s and that it had been repeatedly corroborated in various polls of criminals and victims through the 1980s and beyond.[7] Moreover, by the time they wrote, this and other data of defensive gun use had been reviewed in at least seven different academic publications. The earliest data were reviewed in the NIJ Literature Evaluation (1) when it appeared in 1981; (2) in its subsequent commercial incarnation in 1983; and (3) in another paper published in 1984 by one of the Evaluation's authors.[8] This evidence from victims was supported by a 1982-3 National Institute of Justice-sponsored survey among 2,000 imprisoned felons in state prisons across the nation in which: 34% said they had been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim," and 69% knew at least one other criminal who had also. Answering two other questions: 34% of the felons said that when thinking about doing a crime they either "often" or "regularly" worried that they "Might get shot at by the victim"; and 57% agreed that "Most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police."[9] A summary of these results (4), was published in 1985; (5) Kleck also summarized them[10]; and (6) in 1986 the results of the whole survey were published (ARMED AND DANGEROUS, supra). As this volume is among the central studies in the field of guns and gun control, it is inconceivable that neither Teret nor Wintemute were aware of it in 1991 when the passage quoted above was published. Finally, in February, 1988, some three years before Wintemute et al's claim that the issue was virtually unstudied, came #7, the premier review of the defensive use of firearms.[11] From numerous local studies (including, ironically, the one cited by Webster, Chaulk, Teret & Wintemute), it calculated that armed civilians kill as many as 2,800 violent felons annually: this is 5-6 times more violent criminals "killed by gun-wielding American civilians in justifiable or excusable homicides than are killed by police officers." Moreover, based on multiple national poll results it can be calculated that victims use handguns to defend against about 645,000 crimes annually. (Handguns were used another 215,000 times annually to defend against dangerous snakes and animals.) Perhaps most important, from other national survey data it appears that gun-armed victims are only half as likely to suffer injury as victims who submitted without resisting at all (many of whom are nevertheless gratuitously injured by their attackers). In addition, of course, criminals were far less likely to complete a rape or robbery attempt against gun-armed resisters than against those who submitted. Significant of the defensive value of guns is that victims who resisted with knives, clubs or other weapons were about four times more likely to suffer injury than those who used a gun to resist. (Victims who resisted without firearms were about twice as likely to suffer injury as victims who submitted. On the other hand, those who resisted were much less likely to be robbed or raped.) These findings have been confirmed and extended by several new national surveys which are discussed (along with the earlier data) in ch. 4 of POINT BLANK.[12] While that discussion was not available when the Webster, Chaulk, Teret & Wintemute article was written, at least one of the surveys could not have escaped the attention of researchers who, like Teret and Wintemute, are intensely interested in firearms issues. It was the TIME magazine cover story for Jan. 29, 1990, over a year before their article was written. However disagreeable the NIJ Felon Survey, and Kleck's various works, may be to Wintemute et al, those studies prove the falsity of the assertion "there is little scientific evidence to support the claims that guns are effective devices for protection." Some of Kleck's conclusions (but not those of the NIJ Felon Survey) have been questioned by reputable scholars.[13] Even though Kleck's work (which has proved persuasive to scholars previously inclined to contrary views[14]) has received criticism, its existence, and that of the NIJ Felon Survey, belies Wintemute, et al's mendacious denial of the existence of "scientific evidence to support the claims that guns are effective devices for protection." Of course it is possible that Wintemute et al. have some counter-argument(s) which would undermine or even completely refute Kleck and/or the NIJ Felon Survey. If so, they should forthrightly state them. It is dishonest and deceptive to fail to cite Kleck and the Felon Survey while solemnly asserting that "there is little scientific evidence ... there are no studies...." [1] Compare the following standard legal definitions: California Civil Code Sec. 1572, "Actual fraud [includes]... 2. The positive assertion, in a manner not warranted by the information of the person making it, of that which is not true, though he believes it to be true." and Sec. 1710 "A deceit [includes] ... 2. The assertion, as a fact, of that which is not true, by one who has no reasonable ground for believing it to be true." [2] Wintemute, "Firearms as a Cause of Death in the United States." 27 J. of Trauma 532, 534 (1987) ("Since the early 1970s year-to-year changes in new firearm availability and firearms homicide have often occurred in parallel."). For what it is worth, Professor Wintemute's formulation is slightly less mendacious than the CDC's. [3] Wintemute, "Firearms as a Cause of Death in the United States." 27 J. of Trauma 532 (1987). See also: Wintemute, "Closing the Gap Between Research and Policy: Firearms", INJURY PREVENTION NETWORK NEWSLETTER, Winter, 1989-90; Wintemute, "The Choice of Weapons in Suicide", Am. J. of Public Health 78: 824-826 (1988); Wintemute, et al. "The Epidemiology of Firearm Death Among Residents of California." 146 Western J. of Medicine 374-377 (1987); Wintemute, Teret, Kraus, Wright, Bradfield, "When Children Shoot Children: 88 Unintended Deaths in California." JAMA 257: 3107-3109 (1987); Teret & Wintemute, "Handgun Injuries: The Epidemiologic Evidence for Assessing Legal Responsibility", 6 HAMLINE L. REV. 341, 34950 (1983); Webster, Chaulk, Teret & Wintemute, "Reducing Firearms Injuries", ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Spring, 1991: 73-9. [4] Wintemute, "Closing the Gap Between Research and Policy: Firearms." INJURY PREVENTION NETWORK NEWSLETTER, Winter, 1989-90, at p. 20. [5] See discussion at Table 2 and accompanying text and notes, supra. [6] Webster, Chaulk, Teret & Wintemute, "Reducing Firearms Injuries", ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Spring, 1991 at. pp. 75 and 76 (emphasis added). [7] Given the repeated publicizations of the data as they came forth (see text infra), it is inconceivable that Wintemute and Teret did not know of it. Moreover, as early as October, 1991 one of the authors of this paper discussed the data with Professor Teret who indicated that he was well aware of it at that time. [8] J. Wright, P. Rossi & K. Daly, WEAPONS, CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: A Literature REVIEW AND RESEARCH AGENDA (Washington, D.C., Gov't. Print. Off.: 1981), ch. 7; same, UNDER THE GUN: FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES (1983) at 142ff.; Wright, Wright, "The Ownership of Firearms for Reasons of Self Defense" in D. Kates (ed.), FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE (1984). [9] ARMED AND DANGEROUS: A SURVEY OF FELONS AND THEIR FIREARMS, supra at 145, 150, 154 and table 7.1. [10] Kleck, "Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research", 49 LAW & CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS 35, 45 (1986). [11] Kleck, "Crime Control Through the Use of Force in the Private Sector", 35 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 1 (1988). This study included material on robbery (a subject on which Wintemute, et al claimed there were no studies). See also Kleck and DeLone, "Victim Resistance and Offender Weapon Effects in Robbery", forthcoming in J. QUANT. CRIMIN. (1993). [12] Since POINT BLANK's publication Kleck's figures have been further supported by the congruent results of a Los Angeles Times poll of Southern California gun owners. (Results are not yet available from the Times Poll but were summarized in articles appearing on pp. A1 and A26-29 of the May 17, 1992 edition.) [13] Cook, "The Technology of Personal Violence" in M. Tonry (ed.) 14 CRIME AND JUSTICE: A REVIEW OF RESEARCH 1 (1991) and McDowall, Lizotte and Wiersma, "General Deterrence Through Civilian Gun Ownership: An Evaluation of the Quasi-Experimental Evidence", 29 CRIMINOLOGY 541 (1989) -- but note that Lizotte agrees with Kleck's overall conclusions, disagreeing only on a particular point Kleck offers in support; see next footnote. [14] See, e.g. Toch & Lizotte, "Research & Policy: The Case of Gun Control" in P. Suedfeld & P. Tetlock, PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL ADVOCACY (NY Hemisphere Press, 1990) ("when used for protection firearms can seriously inhibit aggression and can provide a psychological buffer against the fear of crime... [Apparently,] high saturations of guns in places, or something correlated with that condition, inhibit illegal aggression."), T. Gurr, VIOLENCE IN AMERICA (Sage, London, 1989), v. 1 at 17-8 ("guns can be an effective defense. [UCLA historian Roger] McGrath's historical evidence [from the 19th Century] shows that widespread gun ownership deterred [burglary and robbery] while simultaneously making brawls more deadly. Modern studies, summarized by Kates, also show that widespread gun ownership deters crime. Surveys sponsored by both pro- and anti-gun groups show that roughly three-quarters of a million private gun owning citizens report using weapons in self-defense [annually], while convicted robbers and burglars report that they are deterred when they think their potential targets are armed."). ... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now, for my excerpt discussing the concept and data regarding the "gun deaths are beginning to exceed car deaths" claim. Please remember, Wintemute's current claim (unlike Koop and Lundberg's claim discussed in my excerpt) regards PRELIMINARY data that is UNAVAILABLE to us for our review and criticism. Wintemute is attempting to put a "spin" on the data even before the data are released. ... ... Aberrant data, illogical analysis, weak analogies, and gross exaggerations are not a basis for public policy Koop CE and Lundberg GD. "Violence in America: A Public Health Emergency." JAMA. 1992; 267: 3075-76. methodological and conceptual errors: * claimed 1 million US gun homicides per year - a 35-fold exaggeration * lumped gun accidents, homicides, and suicide in a comparison with automobile accidents alone * used data from 2 exceptional states, rather than data from the 48 states where gun deaths were falling faster than auto deaths * the authors' weak analogy concluded that registration and licensing of guns would decrease deaths, though offering no data to show that registration and licensing of automobiles resulted in such a decrease * postulated that controls appropriate to a privilege (driving) are also appropriate to an inalienable human right to self-preservation(gun ownership). * dismissed - without analysis or authority - the constitutional and natural rights to gun ownership * though the authors promote a public health model of gun ownership, the "bullet as pathogen" vogue, guns meet none of Koch's Postulates of Pathogenicity An editorial by Koop and Lundberg[1] promoting the guns and autos analogy demonstrated deceptions common amongst prohibitionists - the inflammatory use of aberrant and sculpted data to reach illogical conclusions in the promotion of harmful and unconstitutional policy. The authors attempted to draw a comparison between motor vehicle accidental deaths with all gun deaths. aberrant and sculpted data "One million US inhabitants die prematurely each year as the result of intentional homicide or suicide" is a 35-fold exaggeration[2] Whether carelessness or prevarication, such a gross distortion evokes, at best, questions regarding competence in this field. It is doubtful that the authors would lump deaths from surgery, knife attacks, and hara kiri to contrive some inference about knives, but to claim that Louisiana and Texas firearms deaths exceed motor vehicle accidents,[3] it was necessary to total firearm accidents, homicides, and suicides. Koop and Lundberg, as promoters of the fashionable "public health model" of gun violence, should know that the root causes and, hence, prevention strategies are very different for accidents, homicides, and suicides. Also, it is not that firearms deaths rose, but that, in just those two states, hey fell less rapidly than accidental auto deaths.[3] In the forty-eight other states the converse is noted, firearms accidents (and most other accidents) fell 50% faster than motor vehicle accidents - between 1980 and 1990, a 33% rate drop nationally for guns compared to a 21% drop for motor vehicles.[4] Should we base public policy on contrivances and exceptions? illogical conclusions Koop and Lundberg referenced a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report[3] that claimed seven reasons for the fall in motor vehicle accidents - better cars, better roads, passive safety devices, children's car seats, aggressive drunk driving enforcement, lower speed limits, and motorcycle helmets - but did not claim licensing or registration of cars was responsible for the fall. It is by a fervent act of faith, rather than one of science or logic, that Koop and Lundberg proposed their scheme. The selectivity of the analogy is further apparent when we recognize that licensing and registration of automobiles is necessary only on public roads. No license or registration is required to own and operate a motor vehicle of any kind on private property. The advocates of the automobile model of gun ownership would be forced by their own logic to accept use of any kind of firearm on private property without license or registration. Since any state's automobile and driver license is valid in every state, further extension of the analogy suggests that the licensing of guns and gun owners would allow citizens to "own and operate" firearms in every US jurisdiction. A national concealed firearms license valid throughout this nation would be a significant enhancement of self-protection, a deterrent to violent crime, and a compromise quite enticing to many gun owners. harmful and unconstitutional nostrums Crime and homicide rates are highest in jurisdictions, such as Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, and California, where the most restrictive gun licensing, registration, and prohibition schemes exist. Why are homicide rates lowest in states with loose gun control (North Dakota 1.1, Maine 1.2, South Dakota 1.7, Idaho 1.8, Iowa 2.0, Montana 2.6) and highest in states and the district with draconian gun controls and bans (District of Columbia 80.6, New York 14.2, California 12.7, Illinois 11.3, Maryland 11.7)?[5] [See Graph 18: "Representative State Homicide Rates"] Precisely where victims are unarmed and defenseless is where predators are most bold. Gun prohibitionists argue a "need" for national controls, yet similar national prohibitions have not stemmed the flow of heroin, cocaine, and bales of marijuana across our national borders. What mystical incantation will cause homicidal drug criminals to respect new gun laws when they flaunt current gun laws and ignore the most basic law of human morality, "thou shalt not murder"? The proponents of adding to the 20,000 gun laws on the books have yet to explain how "passing a law" will disarm violent, sociopathic predators who already ignore laws against murder and drug trafficking. ... [1] Koop CE and Lundberg GD. "Violence in America: A Public Health Emergency." JAMA. 1992; 267: 3075-76. [2] US National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Statistics of the United States. Washington, DC: US Govt. Printing Office. 1981 through 1990. [3] Massachusetts Medical Society. "Current Trends: Firearms-Related Deaths - Louisiana and Texas, 1970-1990." Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. April 3, 1992; 41(13):213-15 & 221. [4] National Safety Council. Accident Facts 1991. Chicago: National Safety Council. 1991. [5] FBI. Uniform Crime Reports Crime in the United States 1991. 1992 Washington DC: US Government Printing Office.