An American family compare handguns at a National Rifle Association meeting. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images
The Guardian
They compared 677 cases in which people
were injured in a shooting incident with 684 people living in the same
area that had not suffered a gun injury. The researchers matched these
“controls” for age, race and gender. They found that those with firearms
were about 4.5 times more likely to be shot than those who did not
carry, utterly belying this oft repeated mantra.
The reasons for this, the authors suggest,
are manifold. “A gun may falsely empower its possessor to overreact,
instigating and losing otherwise tractable conflicts with similarly
armed persons. Along the same lines, individuals who are in possession
of a gun may increase their risk of gun assault by entering dangerous
environments that they would have normally avoided. Alternatively, an
individual may bring a gun to an otherwise gun-free conflict only to
have that gun wrested away and turned on them.”
This result is not particularly
unexpected. Prof David Hemenway of Harvard school of public health has
published numerous academic investigations in this area and found that
such claims are rooted far more in myth than fact. While defensive gun
use may occasionally occur successfully, it is rare and very much the
exception – it doesn’t change the fact that actually owning and using a
firearm hugely increases the risk of being shot. This is a finding
supported by numerous other studies in health policy, including several
articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. Arguments to the
contrary are not rooted in reality; the Branas study also found that for
individuals who had time to resist and counter in a gun assault, the
odds of actually being shot actually increased to 5.45 fold relative to
an individual not carrying.
The rest of the article makes the point a bit more in depth. But it's basically what many of us have been saying for years.
One thing it highlights is the despicable and self-centered behavior of the NRA and gun-rights activists who insist guns do more good than harm. Some of them are honestly blinded by their bias, others I suppose are so morally bankrupt that they preach guns-are-the-answer even though they know better.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
This comment has nothing to do with the above idiocy, but I was hoping to hear some anguished bleating about this admirable, forward-thinking program. Come on, Mikeb, whine for me. You know how much I love that.
ReplyDeleteOr it could be that you refuse to recognize that your side only listens to studies that reach a predetermined conclusion. That kind of behavior isn't limited to one side only, but you'd do yourself a favor by seeing that the evidence on this question is mixed.
ReplyDeleteWhat I know is this: My choices make me safer. I don't insist that anyone else make my choice. Your side insists that everyone make the same choice.
With some of the lies and manipulations of statistics that you and your side have been caught in, you'll have to forgive me if I take this study with such a large grain of salt that I continue making my decisions based on my circumstances, experience, and reason, and not based on some study done by an academic who couldn't find his ass with both hands.
ReplyDeleteYou may find this hard to believe, but Fire Retardant Clothing actuality does more harm than good. It increases your chance of being burned. It's true. There's a new study that analyzed hundreds of burn victims and determined that five times as many people were wearing clothing that was supposed to protect them.
ReplyDelete