Is the frying pan the #1 domestic weapon?
Dear Cecil: I went to lunch with some friends on Sunday. There’s one girl who thinks she knows everything and is always peppering us with stories and factoids to show off. Sunday she throws this nugget out: In domestic killings, the number one weapon used is not guns, but frying pans. This can’t be true, can it? It sounds like something Saturday Night Live would have the NRA saying in a skit. — Hokienautic, via the Straight Dope Message Board To believe this bogus stat is to give credence to its bogus implications: Number one, that women commit some huge chunk of domestic murders since presumably it’s women swinging those pans. Number two, that when women do kill their partners, a frying pan is honest to God how they do it. We’ll start with implication #2. According to U.S. Justice Department statistics from 1990 to 2004, when American women decide they’ve had it with the man in their life, they address the situation using “blunt objects” only 2 percent of the time. As one might expect
