Faith In The Protective Power Of Firearms Is Misplaced

More than half of all Americans believe that gun ownership increases safety by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, according to the Pew Research Center. Most (80%) gun owners say owning a gun makes them feel safer. Faith in the protective power of guns is so pervasive that it has even shaped recent Supreme Court decisions. During a live-streamed conversation earlier this month, Oprah Winfrey asked Kamala Harris about her gun ownership. She quickly answered, "If someone breaks in my house, they're getting shot."

The data tell a different story. On average, keeping one or more guns in the home — particularly if one is kept loaded and readily available for protection — poses a greater threat to members of the household than to an intruder.

Relevant Research

Nearly 40 years ago, while working in Seattle's busiest ER, I saw many victims of shootings due to family violence, attempted suicide or accidents. I don't recall a single intruder who was shot in self-defense.

This observation led me to Donald Reay, then King County's chief medical examiner. Together, we reviewed all fatal shootings that had occurred in the county between 1978 and 1993. More than half (398 deaths) occurred in the home where the gun involved was kept. Two were intruders shot during attempted entry and seven were killed in self-defense. During the same period, guns kept in homes were involved in 12 accidental gunshot deaths, 41 criminal homicides and 333 suicides — a lopsided ratio of 43 to 1. The three remaining deaths were of undetermined intent.

A few years later, colleagues and I conducted a similar study in Memphis, Tennessee, Seattle, Washington, and Galveston, Texas. This time, we included non-fatal as well as fatal shootings. We found that fatal and nonfatal suicide attempts, accidental shootings and firearm assaults in homes outnumbered self-defense shootings by a ratio of 22 to 1.

Keeping a gun for protection doesn't ensure that it will be reached. A 1994 review of 198 police-documented home invasions in Atlanta, Georgia, determined that three (1.5%) were successfully resisted with a gun. In six cases, the intruder reached the homeowner's gun before the homeowner did.

Because body counts don't capture instances when a gun is used to frighten off an intruder or deter them from entering the home, a three-city team of researchers and I conducted a study in Seattle, Memphis and Cleveland, Ohio, to determine if homes where guns are kept are less likely or more likely to be the scene of a violent death.

To accomplish the task, we identified "case" households where a violent death occurred and matched each with a "control" household in the same neighborhood that included an individual of the same age range, gender and race as the victim. We also took a number of important behavioral risk factors into consideration. Our analysis revealed that homes with guns were nearly three times more likely to be the scene of a homicide (mainly domestic homicides ) and nearly five times more likely to be the scene of suicide than similar households without guns. Since our work was published, other research teams have generated similar findings.

Counter-Messaging

Despite this information, the percentage of gun owners who cite "protection" as their most important reason for owning a gun has doubled since 1999. What explains this increase?

Although crime in the U.S. has dramatically fallen since 1993, the public doesn't believe it. In 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since then, 60% or more of U.S. adults state that there is more crime nationally than the year before. One reason is that local news broadcasts a lot of violent crime stories because they hold viewers' attention. The adage, "If it bleeds, it leads" is still relevant today. Once broadcast, social media can nationalize a local story within minutes. This may explain, in part, why every in Gallup crime survey conducted since the 1990s, Americans are less likely to say that crime is up in their area than nationwide.

2. The 'Dickey Amendment'

All of the studies I cited earlier in this commentary were published before 1996. That year, Congress enacted the "Dickey Amendment" — a National Rifle Association-backed measure that sharply curtailed federal funding of firearm injury prevention research for the next 25 years. As time passed, the lack of new studies allowed the public to forgot what was already known. Some in Congress hope to reimpose an even stricter ban on firearm injury prevention research.

As the popularity of hunting declined, the firearm industry pivoted from marketing high-quality hunting rifles and shotguns, which are rarely used in crime, to deadlier weaponry. In Gunfight, author Ryan Busse, a former industry executive who opposed this shift, recalls the 2010 National Rifle Association convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he saw a large poster advertising the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle. It said, "Consider your man card reissued."

A longtime industry partner, the NRA offers an extensive training catalog to its members. One of the courses , "Basic Personal Protection In The Home," covers "the safe and efficient use of a handgun for protection of self and family." The NRA's Institute for Legislative Action backs the expansion of state "right-to-carry" laws, "stand-your-ground" laws and even laws to allow armed teachers in classrooms.

From the perspective of the industry and its allies, the shift to more dangerous weapons and a focus on self-protection paid off. Between 2000 and 2020, domestic firearm production nearly tripled, to more than 11 million guns per year. Almost 23 million firearms were sold in 2020, many to first-time buyers, according to CNN. Far from making America safer, gun deaths hit an all-time high in 2021, according to NPR. The following year, they dipped by 1% to 48,204, making 2022 the second-deadliest year on record.

Today, Americans own more firearms than citizens of the next 25 nations in the world combined . A 2019 study in Preventive Medicine determined that America's gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than the average among other high-income nations.

The Bottom Line

It's natural to want to do everything possible to keep your family safe. In a thunderstorm, it is also natural to take cover under the nearest tree. That doesn't make it a good idea.