[Brian Pfleuger]

Well, they're STARTING with homes where a homicide or suicide occurred and then checking to see how many of those homes contain a firearm. This automatically excludes the tens of millions of homes that contain firearms that DON'T have suicides or homicides.

I'm speculating here but I would guess that attempted suicides and homicides are more likely to be "successful" if the weapon of choice is a firearm so looking only at "successful" events would automatically bias toward firearms being present.

At the very least, I would think that attempted homicides and suicides would have to be included, otherwise you're automatically biased by the "effectiveness ratio" of firearms versus other methods.

Seems like the only true measurement would be to know the total number of homes that have and do not have firearms and the total number of both "attempted/failed" and "successful" suicides and homicides in each set.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that homes with firearms have a higher rate of "successful" homicides and suicides but I'd be willing to be that the ATTEMPT ratio is the same.