Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 18:14:44 -0400 Reply-To: [E--rS--r] at [aol.com] From: [E--rS--r] at [aol.com] Subject: 2 letters Frequently I am asked permission to reprint or otherwise "use" the materials I post to the internet. The answer is always "Of course, that I why I post them to the net." I _want_ you to use the information. If you like my exact words, concepts, or sound bites, use them well and frequently. Best to you all, Edgar **************************** May 9, 1996 Letters to the Editor Pittsburg Tribune Review 622 Cabin Hill Drive Greensburg PA 15601 Dear Editor, Ms. Holly Richardson of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence [letters 5/7/96] presented a grossly misleading perspective of the scientific literature on the protective value of guns. She misrepresents Dr. Kellermann's long-discredited "43 times as likely to kill the homeowner" fallacy. Reviewing all fourteen studies of the protective uses of firearms finds that as many as 2.5 million Americans use guns annually to protect themselves, their families, and their property - 400,000 of these defenders believe that they "would almost certainly have lost their lives" if they did not have a gun for protection - lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs averted, and property protected. We would not dream of counting the number of criminals killed by the police to measure of the effectiveness of law enforcement. Why would we use a burglar body count as such a measure for homeowners? Only one-in-a- thousand (0.1%) of those 2.5 million annual protective uses of guns result in the death of the attacker. For every attacker killed by a homeowner, a thousand attackers are apprehended or scared away -- 98% of the time without the gun even being fired, as in my own case a year ago when I scared off 3 assailants by reaching for my legally licensed, concealed, high-capacity, semiautomatic handgun. No one was hurt, no one went to the emergency room, no police report was filed, and my story didn't splash the evening news. Instead I went home and hugged my little boy. Dr. Kellermann's subsequent research "finding" that a gun in the home increases risk used a method that cannot distinguish between "cause" and "effect." Kellermann's illogical conclusion would be like finding more insulin in the homes of diabetics and so concluding that insulin "causes" diabetes. Interestingly Kellermann's own data show that when a homeowner is killed only rarely is the "gun in the home" the instrument of the homeowner's death. How then can the gun "cause" the death? Does the gun magnetize murderers to the homeowner's doorstep? Does the gun emit magic rays that cloud the mind of otherwise good people? Of course not. If we put Kellermann's research in context with all the other scientific evidence, all we can conclude is that fear of crime causes people in high-risk areas to buy guns for protection -- hardly a momentous finding. Even the National Crime Victimization Survey, one of the studies most cited by the anti-self-defense lobby, shows that guns are the safest and most effective means of protection - safer than not resisting or resisting with less powerful means. All this explains why the 28 states that allow law-abiding, mentally-competent adults to protect themselves outside the home with concealed handguns have lower rates of crime for every category of crime indexed by the FBI. Yours, Edgar A. Suter MD National Chair Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc. ********************** To several newspapers Dear Editor: As the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has already admitted and the Wall Street Journal recently reported (Health Hazard, Bennett & Sharpe, WSJ. 5/1/96, pp 1&6), the CDC has used strategic lies to promote their AIDS agenda obtaining wasteful ill-effect. On the topic of guns and violence the CDC has used similar strategic lying and misconduct with equally adverse impact on public policy. The CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) has funded gun prohibition newsletters using tax money and diverted tax funds earmarked for study of farm injuries to fund a rally with Sarah Brady in Iowa (while posturing to the media that one reason NCIPC shouldn't be disbanded is that they study farm and other injuries). CDC's Directors have been very clear in their statements of their personal agenda supporting gun bans, but pose before the media as "objective scientists" concerned about children. CDC's tax-funded researchers, such as Dr. Arthur Kellerman (originator of the "43 times as likely" and other long-discredited yet oft-quoted fallacies) have similarly been exposed in the scholarly medical, legal, and criminological literature as biased researchers (among many: Kates et al. "Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda" U. Tenn. Law Review, Spring 1995; Suter E. "Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review" J. Med. Assn. Georgia, March 1994.), condemned by their own words and work. All this misconduct has been called to the attention of Congress by our national non-profit think tank of physicians, by other phsyician organizations (such as Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership), and by innumerable independent scholars. Naturally the CDC has nurtured the convenient fiction that they are objective and loving scientists who are being martyred by the bloodthirsty demons at the National Rifle Association. Sad to say, the CDC's liars in lab coats have prostituted themselves to serve a political agenda at the expense of taxpayers. If CDC's NCIPC is disbanded as it should be (it is far too tainted to be salvageable and other agencies already do the research more competently with less bias), they only have themselves to blame. Yours truly, Edgar A. Suter MD National Chair Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc.