On Sunday, October 11, 2015 at 6:09:49 PM UTC-7, Mohammad wrote:
> The NRA is wrong: Owning a gun is far more likely to harm you than protect
> you.
> By Evan DeFilippis and Devin Hughes
>
>
>
> Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association issued a passionate call to
> arms last year, painting a bleak picture of a dystopian America on the brink
> of collapse:
>
> We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home
> invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers,
> haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping-mall killers, road-rage
> killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of
> violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease
> that could collapse the society that sustains us all.
>
> LaPierre's central message: Owning a gun is the solution. The world is a scary
> place. There are bad guys everywhere threatening you and your family, and the
> only thing they're afraid of is a gun in your hands.
>
> Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this
> mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women)
> believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public's confidence in
> firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows
> that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners.
>
> A study from October 2013 analyzed data from 27 developed nations to examine
> the impact of firearm prevalence on the mortality rate. It found an extremely
> strong direct relationship between the number of firearms and firearm deaths.
> The paper concludes: "The current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis
> that guns make a nation safer." This finding is bolstered by several previous
> studies that have revealed a significant link between gun ownership and
> firearm-related deaths. This international comparison is especially harrowing
> for women and children, who die from gun violence in America at far higher
> rates than in other countries.
>
> Gun advocates often retreat to an "it could never happen to me" mentality.
>
> Behind such horrifying statistics are numerous heartbreaking tragedies, such
> as Zina Daniel, a woman from Illinois who was killed by her abusive
> ex-husband, or Caroline Sparks, who was only 2 when her 5-year-old brother
> accidentally killed her with his Crickett rifle.
>
> If we examine data from within the United States, the odds aren't any better
> for gun owners. The most recent study examining the relationship between
> firearms and homicide rates on a state level, published last April, found a
> significant positive relationship between gun ownership and overall homicide
> levels. Using data from 1981-2010 and the best firearm ownership proxy to
> date, the study found that for every 1 percent increase in gun ownership,
> there was a 1.1 percent increase in the firearm homicide rate and a 0.7
> percent increase in the total homicide rate. This was after controlling for
> factors such as poverty, unemployment, income inequality, alcohol consumption,
> and nonhomicide violent crime. Further, the firearm ownership rate had no
> statistically significant impact on nonfirearm homicides, meaning there was no
> detectable substitution effect. That is, in the absence of guns, would-be
> criminals are not switching to knives or some other weapons to carry out
> homicide. These results are supported by a host of previous studies that
> illustrate that guns increase the rate of homicides.
> Sandy Hook family members
> Family members who have lost loved ones to gun violence gather with members of
> Congress during a press conference on Dec. 10, 2014, in Washington.
>
> Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
>
> The evidence against firearm ownership becomes even stronger when suicides and
> accidents are included in the analysis--guns make both much more likely and
> more fatal. There can be nothing closer to a consensus in the gun debate than
> this point. Indeed, every single case-control study ever conducted in the
> United States has found that gun ownership is a strong risk factor for
> suicide, even after adjusting for aggregate-level measures of suicidality such
> as mental illness, alcoholism, poverty, and so on.
>
> One might accept that firearms are dangerous and that they substantially
> elevate the risk of homicide, suicide, and fatal accidents, but still believe
> that policies regulating gun ownership are ineffective--criminals, after all,
> won't follow them. However, another recent study from May of 2013 analyzed the
> impact of state firearm laws on firearm-related fatalities. It found that the
> most gun-restrictive states have significantly fewer firearm fatalities than
> the states with the least restrictive laws. The results are in line with
> previous academic studies tackling the same question.
>
> These findings are further supported by a case study examining the impact of a
> 2007 Missouri decision to repeal its permit-to-purchase handgun licensing law.
> The research concluded that the repeal was associated with a 16 percent
> increase in annual murder rates, indicating that state gun control laws have a
> significant impact on the homicide rate.
>
> Suppose a criminal has just broken into your house brandishing a firearm. You
> need to protect yourself and your family. Wouldn't anyone feel safer owning a
> gun? This is the kind of narrative propagated by gun advocates in defense of
> firearm ownership. It preys on our fear. Yet, the annual per capita risk of
> death during a home invasion is 0.0000002, which, for all intents and
> purposes, is zero.
>
> Despite the astronomical odds against being killed, this fear of home invasion
> often drives people like Becca Campbell of Ferguson, Missouri, to gun
> ownership. This past November, Campbell was riding home in a car with her
> boyfriend after purchasing a gun, preparing for the unrest expected to follow
> the grand jury decision about whether to pursue criminal charges against the
> policeman who killed Michael Brown. She joked that "we're ready for Ferguson,"
> waving the gun. Distracted, the boyfriend ran into the car ahead of them, and
> the gun fired, killing Campbell.
> 523097351SO00018_GUN_SHOP_N
> Steven King helps a woman shop for a handgun for home defense on Nov. 12,
> 2014, in Bridgeton, Missouri.
>
> Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
>
> Moving from state-level analysis to the household or individual, the risks for
> gun owners become even more apparent. A recent meta-analysis of 16 studies
> examined the relationship between firearms and gun deaths. Gun ownership
> doubled the risk of homicide and tripled the risk of suicide. This research is
> bolstered by a national survey that found that a gun in the home was far more
> likely to be used to threaten a family member or intimate partner than to be
> used in self-defense.
>
> Gun advocates may counter that this doesn't reveal the entire picture. After
> all, case studies of these fatal gun incidents can't capture the benefits that
> widespread defensive gun use bestows on society. However, despite the NRA's
> mantra that there are millions of defensive gun uses every year, empirical
> data reveals that DGUs are actually extremely rare. Criminal uses of firearms
> far outnumber legal defensive uses. The evidence shows that there may be fewer
> than even 3,000 DGUs annually. In comparison, there are 30,000 gun deaths
> annually, and many more injuries and shattered lives. The costs of gun
> ownership unequivocally outweigh the benefits.
>
> In light of the overwhelming evidence that guns are a public health threat,
> gun advocates often retreat to an "it could never happen to me" mentality.
> This worldview is tragically mistaken. Consider the case of Veronica
> Dunnachie. She was, by many gun advocates' definition, a good gal with a gun.
> A strident voice for gun rights, she was an open carry advocate, dedicated to
> expanding the unlicensed open carrying of firearms. In Texas, open carry is
> currently restricted to long guns; she pushed to include handguns. She
> frequently attended rallies and protests organized by Open Carry Tarrant
> County (an offshoot of Open Carry Texas). In a domestic dispute on Dec. 10,
> she allegedly shot and killed her husband and stepdaughter. Horrified,
> Dunnachie called a friend, telling him she "had just done something bad" and,
> at his urging, checked herself into a nearby mental health clinic.
>
>
>
>
> Everyone likes to pretend that he or she is more rational, more responsible,
> and more immune to the risks that gun ownership poses relative to the average
> American. Yet, we know from gun violence statistics that many are simply
> misjudging their own competency. Everyone thinks he or she is above average,
> but half are mistaken.
>
> Rather than gangbangers and maniacal criminals going on killing sprees, it is
> cases like Dunnachie's that drive gun violence. FBI data reveal that about
> twice as many homicides result from arguments than from felonies, and gang
> violence is only a small contributor. In a careful study of the relationships
> between homicide victims and perpetrators, analyzing data from 1981-2010,
> Michael Siegel and his colleagues reveal that for every 1 percent increase in
> gun ownership, there is a 0.9 percent increase in nonstranger homicide.
> Although stranger homicide does increase slightly as gun ownership rises, the
> increase is not statistically significant. This indicates that there is no
> deterrence effect from firearm ownership and that a firearm significantly
> increases the owner's chances of killing or being killed by somebody he or she
> knows.
>
>
> Gun advocates may argue that this reality is a consequence of the fact that
> there are too few guns; perhaps nonstranger homicides would be lower if
> everyone you knew were packing heat. Yet a study examining data from the
> National Crime Victimization Survey found that people who used any weapon
> other than a gun for defense were less likely to be harmed than those who used
> a firearm.
>
> So before you purchase a gun for self-defense, please pause to reflect. Your
> weapon is much more likely to end up being used to harm than for good, even if
> you're one of the "good guys." The odds are not in your favor.
>
> Evan DeFilippis writes on public health and gun violence at the Atlantic,
> Huffington Post, Boston Review, and ArmedWithReason. He manages the evaluation
> of poverty-reduction projects in Nairobi, Kenya.
>
> Devin Hughes is the founder of Hughes Capital Management, LLC, a registered
> investment adviser. He writes on gun control issues at ArmedWithReason.
>
>
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/01/good_guy_with_a_gun_myth_guns_increase_the_risk_of_homicide_accidents_suicide.single.html
Perhaps this research is better than the last time such a claim was made.
Here is a brief bit on their findings for this research: Results
Among the 27 developed countries, there was a significant positive correlation between guns per capita per country and the rate of firearm-related deaths (r = 0.80; P <.0001). In addition, there was a positive correlation (r = 0.52; P = .005) between mental illness burden in a country and firearm-related deaths. However, there was no significant correlation (P = .10) between guns per capita per country and crime rate (r = .33), or between mental illness and crime rate (r = 0.32; P = .11). In a linear regression model with firearm-related deaths as the dependent variable with gun ownership and mental illness as independent covariates, gun ownership was a significant predictor (P <.0001) of firearm-related deaths, whereas mental illness was of borderline significance (P = .05) only.
This is one report, possibly the first to use strict controls and not have a bias. Let's see what peer review says.