Gun Control & RKBA

Most Americans think so. According to recent Gallup polls, 63 percent of adults believe having a gun in the house will make them safer and 56 percent think the country would be safer if more people carried concealed weapons. But numerous studies suggest that owning a gun can actually increase a person's risk of bodily harm and death. Research published this year in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that the 80 million Americans who keep guns in the home were 90 percent more likely to die by homicide than Americans who don't. A paper in the American Journal of Public Health, meanwhile, determined that a person with a gun was 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than someone who was unarmed.

When I read about violent gun deaths it usually seems to involve some criminal either getting shot while committing a gun crime or killing someone with a gun. So if you are a criminal that commits gun crimes I would imagine that you are MUCH, MUCH likelier to be killed with a gun than someone who owns a gun and doesn't go around robbing/shooting. So I'd think this study would be much more helpful if it separated out homes that own a gun where the owner was already a criminal and those that don't. And of course, suicides should be a separate category altogether, since they tell us nothing about crimes committed using guns.