(January 6, 2013 at 3:35 pm)Brakeman Wrote:(January 6, 2013 at 2:01 pm)jonb Wrote: You don't, you have a gun in your house which means it is statistically more likely your family will be killed by a gun. What sort of parent does that make you?
As you may guess, sometime statistics may be misleading, false, or wrongly applied. I like doing a quick check to make sure it is true as applied to me.
My entire family tree from my grandfathers on down, mostly in east Tennessee, has never had a child* injured or killed by a firearm kept in the household. That's several hundred people, and knowing my extended families as well as I do, I am sure there are firearms in 95+ percent of the homes and have been for 80 years plus.
My personal experience directly contradicts your claims. If your broad claims are true, then there is a subset in the population that is greatly skewing the results. What is it? Why didn't you name this over-represented segment? Is the reason for the omission dishonesty or ignorance?
*Younger than 16 years old. One 10 yr old boy was slightly injured by putting rifle cartridges in a fire in which pieces of the brass hit him in the belly. Nothing too serious ( I was alright with a band aid ).
To my knowledge no member of my large family has had their home burgled, and that information goes back to about 1905ish. It is in the nature of these things, like car accidents that they are occasional random occurrences, which is why an analysis of statistics is more useful than stories of personal experience.