[Vladiator]

Is it true "that having a gun in your home triples your risk of becoming a homicide victim? "

[coloradan]

It's as true as the similar stat that having diet soda in your fridge triples your risk of being fat. The "study" that came up with the factoid you cite confuses correlation with causation. Intentionally, I might add, because the person who did it, Arthur Kellerman, has been called on it before.

People who have diet soda might well be fatter than those who have sugared soda in their fridge - but do you really think that if you get diet soda, you will become fat? That is what the "study" is trying, miserably and dishonestly, to suggest.

[SUSSA]

According to Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig of Duke University, in study for the Police Foundation showed that Americans used guns 1.5 million times that year to protect themselves from violent criminals.

Cook and Ludwig's data shows as many as 630,000 lives saved in 1994 by armed self-defense. In other words, for every person wounded or killed by gunfire in 1994, nearly five lives were saved by the defensive use of guns.

A larger study done by Dr. John Lott, showed that guns are used more than 2 million times a year in self-defense. This puts the ratio of lives saved to people killed even higher.

These studies were serious studies, done by serious researchers. The study you quote has been debunked by reviewers. The truth is guns save lives.

[gc4nra]

Kellerman is a professor at Emory University.This is the same school that employs Michael Belleisles; who claimed in his study that colonial Americans didn't own firearms. He has been discredited also!