If you live with a gun owner, you're 2X more likely to be murdered

[mainer]

This is an excellent study out of California. It controls for neighborhoods, so it compares you with your neighbor, not with people in the neighborhood across town. The predominant gun victims in these households are women. It looks at homicides, not suicides.

And if the homicides occurred at home, you're 7X more likely to be fatally shot than if you don't have a gun-owning spouse.

Of 595 448 cohort members who commenced residing with handgun owners, two thirds were women. A total of 737 012 cohort members died; 2293 died by homicide. Overall rates of homicide were more than twice as high among cohabitants of handgun owners than among cohabitants of nonowners (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.33 [95% CI, 1.78 to 3.05]). These elevated rates were driven largely by higher rates of homicide by firearm (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.83 [CI, 2.05 to 3.91]). Among homicides occurring at home, cohabitants of owners had sevenfold higher rates of being fatally shot by a spouse or intimate partner (adjusted hazard ratio, 7.16 [CI, 4.04 to 12.69]); 84% of these victims were female.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M21-3762#.Yp4EF0Jzv9g.twitter

[Bucky]

1. One common false trope about gun violence is that it's bullying victims who do the shooting

But more often than not, it's the bullies who do most of the shootings. Now the majority of them are victims of bullying, of course, from earlier on in life. But the reality is that, although the victim "having had enough" and finally striking back is a more compelling narrative, the habit of harming other people usually needs to be built up over time before someone is emotionally capable of pointing a gun and squeezing a trigger

[Towlie]

2. No, you're only one time more likely. 2X more likely would be 3 times as high.

 
?

It's something that always bothers me. The fallacy of saying "X times higher" when you really mean "X times as high" is something that's usually seen in advertising.

Overall rates of homicide were more than twice as high among cohabitants of handgun owners...

[mainer]

5. That's your huge objection to my posting the study?

If I’d said “twice as likely” it would be OK?

Or is there something else you’d object to?

[ret5hd]

7. reminds me of the "magazine" vs "clip" distractions.

[Model35mech]

6. Yes, it's based on x times as high as the current rate of occurence. What bugs me is

that many times it's reported without saying anything about what the current rate of occurrence is.

If the current rate, x is small, say 0.0000001 then 2x is going to be, 0.0000002, which, honestly remains relatively small.

But it can still be, and often is, hyperbolized for rhetorical effect as a DOUBLING rate of risk with no reference to the actual magnitude of original risk being doubled.

When someone says the risk is doubled or tripled, or has a 200% or 300% increase, the question begged is what original magnitude or percentage is being talked about.

It's really not a trivial thing. Finding a high slope in the increase of risk can truly be a very important thing, it draws attention to a high rate of change over time. As an epidemiological statistic that is often an early warning signal in the data.

But examination of that statistic requires interpretation. Does it change anything about detecting and/or mitigating the risk? When the real number of events remains small, the events may still make detection unlikely (despite expensive efforts at detection), and possibilities for outcomes of mitigation rather minimal (although they are likely to be more expensive than the cost of detection).

[NickB79]

3. Which is why red flag laws are absolutely VITAL for reducing gun violence

[Kid Berwyn]

4. I hope Congress fully funds needed research like this.

We need to show how access to guns IS a national health crisis. Perhaps it will lead to progress in how we think about guns.

Oh. And a really big FUCK YOU to Wayne LaPierre and his online toad horde.

[kimbutgar]

8. In the 80's I dated a cop who kept his gun by his bedside

He told me a story that his ex girl friend and him got into an argument and she pulled the gun on him. I only dated him a few times and on our last date we went to Santa Cruz beach and he had the gun in his cooler. I knew then and there I could never seriously date him. I was able to end the relationship easily because I was newly divorced and told him I wasn’t emotionally ready for a relationship. We still stayed friends as he lived on my street. But that gun freaked me out because I knew then having guns in your home could lead to gun deaths of the owners and family members. My aunt in the 1930’s had a gun in her home and her 6 year old son was playing with the gun and he shot his 4 year brother who died. My memory of this second cousin is that was sad all his life over the guilt. And my aunt never seemed to forgive him. They had a such a strained relationship that he was sent to live with my grandmother.

My mother hated guns so much and refused to ever have one in our home.