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, in 1984, to Dr. Donald Reay, King County’s chief medical examiner. Together, we reviewed all fatal shootings that had occurred in the county between 1978 and 1983. 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.
The Seattle Space Needle at dusk with Mt. Rainier in the background (Photo by Dan … [+]
In 1996, colleagues and I conducted a more expansive study in Memphis, Tennessee, Seattle, Washington, and Galveston, Texas. Non-fatal shootings were included as well. We found that nonfatal and fatal suicide attempts, accidental shootings and firearm assaults in homes outnumbered self-defense shootings by a ratio of 22 to 1.
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 spent years designed a “case-control” 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.
In these community, each “case” households where a violent death occurred was matched with a “control” household in the same neighborhood that included an individual of the same age range, gender and race as the victim. Our analysis also took a number of important behavioral risk factors into consideration. The study revealed that homes with guns were nearly five times more likely to be the scene of suicide than similar households without guns, and nearly three times more likely to be the scene of a a homicide (mainly due to domestic violence). Our findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1992 and 1993, respectively. Since this work was published, other groups have published supportive findings, including more than 12 case-control studies that have found a link between readily available guns and suicide.
Finally, keeping a gun for protection doesn’t ensure that it will be reached. A 1995, Emory University colleagues and I examined 198 police-documented home invasions in Atlanta, Georgia. Three (1.5%) were successfully resisted with a gun. In six cases, an intruder reached the homeowner’s gun before the homeowner did.
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?
1. Fear of Crime
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.
Police investigate the scene of a shooting inside a restaurant in New Orleans. The Friday afternoon … [+]
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.
3. Advertising and Activism
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.
A guest sights a rifle in the Sig Sauer display at the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meetings … [+]
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.
Keeping a loaded firearm readily accessible for protection may seem like a reasonable precaution, but it puts the weapon within easy reach of curious children, an angry spouse or a depressed teen. If the gun is ever stolen in a burglary or smuggled out the door to school, it may harm many innocent people. That’s why safe storage is so important.