Injury Prevention recently explored firearm issues,
introducing what might be called the “Fabricius Method”
of analysis. Invented by ASU professor William
Fabricius with his 12-year-old son John Denton, it
works simply enough. They counted gunfire stories in
one newspaper, and concluded guns are rarely used
for anything good. I imagine many heartily embrace this
conclusion.
Injury Prevention recently explored firearm issues,
introducing what might be called the “Fabricius Method”
of analysis. Invented by ASU professor William
Fabricius with his 12-year-old son John Denton, it
works simply enough. They counted gunfire stories in
one newspaper, and concluded guns are rarely used
for anything good. I imagine many heartily embrace this
conclusion.
Newspaper reports however are an easily impeachable
incomplete data set lacking any controls. They are
selective, commercially driven, an arbitrary batch of
anecdotes. Scientific, statistically valid conclusions
cannot be thus derived. Additionally, newspaper bias
on guns is demonstrably great.[1]
Fabricius-and-son “found” Maricopa County had two
defensive gun uses (DGUs), seven gunshot suicides
and 81 gunshot incidents in 103 days. However, police
precincts locally receive gunshot reports in the
thousands. Official Arizona mortality reports suggest
161 gunshot suicides [2] during the study period, not
seven. If Fabricius’ count is 23 times too low, as
suicides imply, two DGUs represent 46 lives
saved/crimes prevented. Similar factors are posted on
my website, gunlaws.com.
If the team had used USA Today instead of a
community newspaper, the Fabricius Method would
have found zero lives saved and zero crimes prevented
by gunfire, for the entire country, for an entire year
(2001).[3] That is not science.
It is as if they compared obituaries and births, and
concluded America is terminal. The Fabricius Method
would find a preponderance of Blacks are athletes,
entertainers or criminals.
Fabricius-and-son derived hurtful, anti-human-rights
conclusions without support. They denigrated 13
scholarly reports that uniformly conflict with their
ill-advised non-science.[4]
Injury Prevention injured itself by publishing such
unprofessional work. A retraction is warranted, with
support for this methodology and its spurious
conclusions disavowed.
Fabricius should make clear whether ASU endorses
his work, as he implies, or extricate that fine university
from this humiliating Bellesiles-like debacle.
I appeal to you: Do not let your personal desire to reach
"The Fabricius Conclusion" (guns are bad)
compromise your professional judgment about "The
Fabricius Method" (counting local news stories is a
valid measure of firearms activity).
Alan Korwin
Author: Gun Laws of America
References
1. Lott Jr. JR, The Bias Against Guns.
Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing Inc. 2003; Bovard
J, Lost Rights. New York, NY: Palgrave - St. Martins -
Griffin 2000; Goldberg B, Bias. Washington, DC:
Regnery Publishing Inc.; Kates Jr. DB, and Kleck G, The
Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and
Violence. San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for
Public Policy 1991.
2. Arizona Dept. of Health Services Mortality Report,
Suicide Deaths by Gender, Means of Injury and Year,
Arizona Residents, 1992 - 2002.
3. Lott Jr. JR, The Bias Against Guns. Washington, DC:
Regnery Publishing Inc. 2003: 40.
4. Kleck G, Gertz M. “Armed Resistance to Crime: The
Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun”.
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1995.
Conflict of Interest Statement
I have written/co-written seven books on gun laws in
America, including the unabridged guide to federal gun
law (“Gun Laws of America”), and belong to:
The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence
The National Rifle Association
The American Civil Liberties Union
The Arizona Civil Liberties Union
Gun Owners of America
The Society of Professional Journalists
The Arizona Book Publishing Association
and numerous other groups.
The study by Denton and Fabricius [1] uses local newspaper accounts to discover
instances of defensive gun use in the Phoenix, Arizona area during a brief
period in 1998 and concludes that there are far fewer such occurrences
than reported by criminologists who performed nationwide telephone
surveys.
While telephone surveys are certainly vulnerable to some significant
sources of bias, including those re...
The study by Denton and Fabricius [1] uses local newspaper accounts to discover
instances of defensive gun use in the Phoenix, Arizona area during a brief
period in 1998 and concludes that there are far fewer such occurrences
than reported by criminologists who performed nationwide telephone
surveys.
While telephone surveys are certainly vulnerable to some significant
sources of bias, including those related to recall and self-reporting, it
is hard to imagine that anyone would consider the methods used by Denton
and Fabricius to be sound.
We belive that this work is fundamentally flawed for at least two reasons.
First, the findings of criminologists confirm the intuitively obvious fact
that most instances of defensive gun use are never reported to the police.
Those who successfully use their guns in self-defense often would just as
soon not involve the police. If a shooting does not result in a wounding
or death, the police might very well never learn of the occurrence. If an
individual wounded in such an incident did not seek medical attention
(which would be subject to mandatory reporting to authorities), the police
(again) would likely never learn of the incident. Finally,
criminologists' surveys cited by Denton and Fabricius indicate that in the
majority of defensive gun uses the firearm is not actually discharged.
Instead, mere brandishing of the weapon deters the intentions of a
criminal.
Second, the authors apparently assume that newspaper accounts are a
reliable means of counting incidents of defensive gun use reported to the
police. As sociologist John Lott documents in his recent book (The Bias
Against Guns), newspapers routinely run stories of the criminal use of
guns but rarely report defensive gun uses, which are considered much less
"newsworthy." This judgment of newsworthiness may simply be based on the
notion that an incident in which nobody actually got shot is less
interesting to readers, but it probably also reflects the well-documented
anti-gun bias of news reporters and editors.
Given that the data collection methods employed by Denton and Fabricius
are clearly inadequate to discover the actual number of defensive gun uses
in the area and during the time period they attempted to examine, it is
certainly impossible to use their data as the basis for drawing any valid
conclusions.
I must say that I am nothing short of astonished that a journal produced
by the elite BMJ Publishing Group would have accepted this manuscript for
publication.
Reference
1. J F Denton and W V Fabricius. Reality check: using newspapers, police reports, and court records to assess defensive gun use. Inj Prev 2004; 10: 96-98.
Our study had the specific, stated objective of determining whether
New York’s ban on drivers’ use of hand-held phones led to short-term and
long-term changes in the use rates of hand-held phones while driving. Our
intent was not to assess the relative safety effects of hands-free versus
handheld devices. In the discussion, we note that any subs...
Our study had the specific, stated objective of determining whether
New York’s ban on drivers’ use of hand-held phones led to short-term and
long-term changes in the use rates of hand-held phones while driving. Our
intent was not to assess the relative safety effects of hands-free versus
handheld devices. In the discussion, we note that any substitution of
hands-free phones for handheld phones may have diluted any potential crash
effects of the law, but that we were not able to assess the extent to
which such substitution took place.
There is a growing body of experimental research on the effects of
drivers’ phone use on driver performance. As we state in the introduction
to our study, there are experimental studies that suggest that performance
degradations are similar for conversations with hand-held or hands-free
devices. There also are studies that show impairments associated with the
manual aspects of using phones that are not fully hands-free. It is
unknown whether the findings of experimental studies apply to real-world
driving, and the association between phone use and crash risk is not
addressed with these methods. Thus, we do not agree with you that “there
is a large body of evidence showing that there is no safety benefit to be
gained from hands free devices.” Rather we believe it is an unsettled
issue. We also are not aware of evidence from real-world studies of
drivers to support the assertion that bans on drivers’ use of hand-held
phones produce more frequent and longer calls on hands-free devices with
more negative consequences. This also remains an unsettled issue.
Reference
1. Hockey. Handheld vs Handsfree [electronic response to A T McCartt and LL Geary; Longer term effects of New York State’s law on drivers’ handheld cell phone use] injuryprevention.com 2004http://ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/10/1/11#42
McCartt and Geary in their recent article in IP [1] have glossed over
the problem with banning hand held phones in that there is now a large
body of evidence showing that there is no safety benefit to be gained from
hands free devices ie they are both dangerous. The problem with outlawing
handheld but allowing handsfree phones is the implicit message that
handsfree is somehow safer. The problem was rec...
McCartt and Geary in their recent article in IP [1] have glossed over
the problem with banning hand held phones in that there is now a large
body of evidence showing that there is no safety benefit to be gained from
hands free devices ie they are both dangerous. The problem with outlawing
handheld but allowing handsfree phones is the implicit message that
handsfree is somehow safer. The problem was recognised by NHTSA several
years ago and resulted in them not recommending outlawing handheld phones
only, the reason being that it would increae the frequency and duration
of hands free use with negative consequences. Both New Zealand and Sweden
have recently recommended not outlawing handheld phones for the same
reasons.
References
(1) A T McCartt and L L Geary. Longer term effects of New York State’s law on drivers’ handheld cell phone use. Inj Prev 2004; 10: 11-15
We are responding to the inquiry of Mr Freedman about whether we had
conveyed our findings to OSHA.[1] The data reported in our article 'Nail
gun injuries in residential carpentry: lessons from active injury
surveillance'[2] were collected
over a three year period. We presented results on several occasions in
national meetings where OSHA representatives were in attendance including:
the following:...
We are responding to the inquiry of Mr Freedman about whether we had
conveyed our findings to OSHA.[1] The data reported in our article 'Nail
gun injuries in residential carpentry: lessons from active injury
surveillance'[2] were collected
over a three year period. We presented results on several occasions in
national meetings where OSHA representatives were in attendance including:
the following:
Nail gun injuries in construction: Needs for gun control measures?
National Occupational Injury Research Symposium, National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health, Pittsburgh, Pa. October 2000.
Nail gun injuries in residential carpentry. Making Science Work for
You: A Symposium for Safety Practitioners. National Safety Council
Congress and Expo. Atlanta, Georgia. September 2001.
Understanding and preventing injuries from pneumatic nail guns.
Roundtable presentation: 12th Annual Construction Safety and Health
Conference and Exposition, May 2002.
Active injury surveillance in residential construction. National
Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) Symposium 2003: Working Partnerships-
Research to Practice. National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health. Washington, D.C. June 2003.
While the reports varied somewhat as you might expect in an active
surveillance project, the findings were quite stable over the three year
period.
We would like to point out that OSHA can require that employers
provide tools that meet certain standards or specifications, but it does
not have regulatory authority over the manufacturing industry as Mr Freedman implies.
References
(1) Freedman N. Impact of injuries attributed to lack of sequential triggers on nail guns on madatory legislation [electronic response to Lipscomb et al. Nail gun injuries in residential carpentry: lessons from active injury surveillance] injuryprevention.com 2003http://ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/9/1/20#31
(2) H J Lipscomb, J M Dement, J Nolan, D Patterson, and L Li. Nail gun injuries in residential carpentry: lessons from active injury surveillance. Inj Prev 2003; 9: 20-24.
Dear Editor
Injury Prevention recently explored firearm issues, introducing what might be called the “Fabricius Method” of analysis. Invented by ASU professor William Fabricius with his 12-year-old son John Denton, it works simply enough. They counted gunfire stories in one newspaper, and concluded guns are rarely used for anything good. I imagine many heartily embrace this conclusion.
Newspaper rep...
Dear Editor
The study by Denton and Fabricius [1] uses local newspaper accounts to discover instances of defensive gun use in the Phoenix, Arizona area during a brief period in 1998 and concludes that there are far fewer such occurrences than reported by criminologists who performed nationwide telephone surveys. While telephone surveys are certainly vulnerable to some significant sources of bias, including those re...
Dear Editor
Regarding the eLetter by McCartt and Geary.[1]
Our study had the specific, stated objective of determining whether New York’s ban on drivers’ use of hand-held phones led to short-term and long-term changes in the use rates of hand-held phones while driving. Our intent was not to assess the relative safety effects of hands-free versus handheld devices. In the discussion, we note that any subs...
Dear Editor
McCartt and Geary in their recent article in IP [1] have glossed over the problem with banning hand held phones in that there is now a large body of evidence showing that there is no safety benefit to be gained from hands free devices ie they are both dangerous. The problem with outlawing handheld but allowing handsfree phones is the implicit message that handsfree is somehow safer. The problem was rec...
Dear Editor
We are responding to the inquiry of Mr Freedman about whether we had conveyed our findings to OSHA.[1] The data reported in our article 'Nail gun injuries in residential carpentry: lessons from active injury surveillance'[2] were collected over a three year period. We presented results on several occasions in national meetings where OSHA representatives were in attendance including: the following:...
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