

Do guns make us more safe, or less? Let’s look at the research.

by Fabius Maximus 23 January 2013



* There is compelling evidence that a gun in the home is a risk factor for intimidation and for killing women in their homes.

* The evidence is overwhelming for the fact that a gun in the home is a risk factor for completed suicide and that gun accidents are most likely to occur in homes with guns.

Here's some of that "hard data" I just dug out of that scholarly article referenced above:



American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LIFESTYLE MEDICINE -- published online 2 February 2011

by David Hemenway, PhD, -- Director, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Harvard School of Public Health





Accidents

According to death certificate data, from 2003 to 2007, more than 680 Americans per year were killed unintentionally with firearms. Data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (which has more comprehensive data on each shooting but currently is operating only in 18 states) show that two thirds of the accidental shooting deaths occurred in someone’s home, about half of the victims were younger than 25 years, and half of all deaths were other inflicted—the victim was typically shot accidentally by a friend or family member (eg, brother.)[3] It appears that the large majority of accidental shooting deaths in the home are from guns that were kept in the home.

Children aged 5 to 14 years in the United States have 11 times the likelihood of being killed accidentally with a gun compared with similarly aged children in other developed countries (Table 1).[4]

[...]



[Suicides]

The evidence linking suicide to gun availability is compelling. The American Association of Suicidology consensus statement on youth suicide concludes:



There is a positive association between the accessibility and availability of firearms in the home and the risk of youth suicide; guns in the home, particularly loaded guns, are associated with increased risk for suicide by youth, both with and without identifiable mental health problems or suicidal risk factors.[52]



Homicides

From 2003 to 2007, 33 Americans per day were murdered with guns. This includes almost 1 child (aged 0-14 years), 5 teenagers (aged 15-19 years), and more than 7 young adults (aged 20-24 years) per day. More than two thirds of all homicides in the United States during this period were firearm homicides. The US rate of firearm homicide for children aged 5 to 14 years is 13 times higher than the firearms homicide rate of other developed nations (Table 1), and our firearms homicide rate for 15- to 24-year-olds is 43 times higher. [...]

The presence of a gun makes quarrels, disputes, assaults, and robberies more deadly. Many murders are committed in a moment of rage. [...]



Intimidation

[...]

A study of battered women in emergency shelters in California (a state in which more than 600 000 women each year experience intimate partner violence) found that if there were a gun in the home, nearly two thirds of the male partners involved had used the gun to scare, threaten, or harm the women. In contrast, women rarely used the gun in self-defense; fewer than 7% of these women had used a gun in self-defense and only against batterers who had used a gun against them.[76]

[...]



Deterrence

Theoretically, knowledge that potential victims have access to firearms could increase the perceived cost of committing a crime to a potential perpetrator and thus prevent the crime from occurring. However, there does not seem to be credible evidence that higher levels of gun ownership and availability actually deter crime. A criminologist once claimed that publicized police programs to train citizens in gun use in Orlando (to prevent rape) and in Kansas City (to prevent robbery) led to reductions in crime.[80] However, a careful analysis of the data found no evidence that crime rates changed in either location after the training.[81]

[...]