Turns out, guns don't protect

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Most American gun owners say they own firearms to protect themselves and their loved ones, but a study published this week suggests people who live with handgun owners are shot to death at a higher rate than those who don’t have such weapons at home. “We found zero evidence of any kind of protective effects” from living in a home with a handgun, said David Studdert, a Stanford University researcher who was the lead author of the Annals of Internal Medicine study.

The study followed nearly 600,000 Californians who did not own handguns but began living in homes with handguns between October 2004 and December 2016, either because they started living with someone who owned one or because someone in their household bought one. It found that the absolute risk of living with a handgun owner was small, Studdert said, and that “the rates [of homicide] are low”. But it was important to consider the increase in a person’s risk of being killed, he added.

The researchers calculated that for every 100,000 people in that situation, 12 will be shot to death by someone else over five years. In comparison, eight out of 100,000 who live in gun-free homes will be killed that way over the same time span. Those numbers suggest the risk rises 50%, but Studdert said it was actually higher: in a separate calculation designed to better account for where people live and other factors, the researchers estimated the risk was more than twice as high.

People in homes with handguns more likely to be killed, major study finds | US news | The Guardian