Does Having a Gun in the Home Put You at Risk? [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/does-having-gun-home-put-you-risk

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What do we know about guns in the home and violence? Consider a 2004 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Researchers sought to determine whether having a firearm increases the risk of a violent death in the home and whether risk varies by storage practice, type of gun, or the number of guns in the home. Among the findings:

People with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home.
They were also at greater risk of dying from a firearm homicide (risk varied by age and whether the person was living with others at the time of death).
The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home.
People with guns in the home were more likely to have died from suicide committed with a firearm than from suicide using a different method.
Bottom line: Researchers found that no matter what kind of storage was used, no matter the type or number of guns, having a gun in the home increased the risk of firearms homicide and suicide.

A reasonable person might weigh the risk of suicide or homicide and decide that the threat of an intruder is greater. Proponents of lax gun safety laws argue that guns can effectively be used to deter crime in the home. But is that really true? The data is shaky. CNN’s David Frum reports that government figures from the National Survey of Criminal Victimization indicate 100,000 uses a year of guns in self-defense against crime, most of the time by displaying the weapon to stop a criminal.