Guns do not Provide Protection

Guns Not Provide Protection

A majority of American citizens believe that owning a gun makes you safer and is the most effective method of protection but in reality, as research by UC San Francisco concluded [i] someone with access to firearms is three times more likely to commit suicide and nearly twice as likely to be a homicide victim as someone who does not have access.

Part of this apparent contradiction stems from the fact that protection and self-defense frequently get conflated, with the incorrect assumption that guns being effective for protection and effective for self-defense are the same thing - They are not. A gun in certain circumstances may provide an effective method of self-defense but at the same time greatly jeopardize the safety (protection) of the person using a gun in self-defense.  The legal definition of self-defense is “the use of force to defend oneself” On this basis i.e. the requirement to use force then nothing which can legally be owned by a civilian would be more efficient than a gun. Access to a gun provides a quick, simple, effective, and powerful method to repulse an attack. The problem is that thwarting an attack is not the same as keeping oneself safe and owning a firearm greatly increases the risk of death or injury to oneself or family members.

The link between firearm access, & suicide is covered in another post, but why does access to firearms double the chance of being a victim of homicide? There are several reasons which include the following:

·     Increased chance of being killed by a partner or other close relation living in the home. Many homicide victims are killed either by their own firearm or a firearm belonging to someone else living in the home. This is particularly true for women. Indeed, over half of American female homicide victims are related to intimate partner violence, with the vast majority of the victims dying at the hands of a current or former romantic partner[ii].

·   Increased chance of being involved in a murder-suicide incident, either as the victim or the perpetrator. This also highlights the fact that as well as making it more likely that having access to a firearm will make you a homicide victim it also significantly increases the chance that in a sudden fit of anger you become the murderer, particularly if you have a loaded gun at hand.

·       Being armed may make individuals take more chances, such as confronting intruders. This is not without risk when the intruder may also be armed.

·     Being armed makes you a target. When you are armed you present a danger to others and as such, they are more likely to shoot you to remove the threat you pose.

·     Any confrontation in which law enforcement officers are present pose a significant risk to anyone brandishing a firearm, regardless of whether the gun is being used to perpetrate a crime or to prevent a crime. Police have to react quickly and may not always come to the correct conclusion as to the motives of different gun wielders.

There are other studies that highlight the dangers to women of having a firearm at home:

In a study in the Journal of Trauma, A.L. Kellermann, director of the RAND Institute of health, and his coauthor J.A. Mercy concluded: “More than twice as many women are killed with a gun used by their husbands or intimate acquaintances than are murdered by strangers using guns, knives, or any other means.[iv]”

Another large case-control study compared women who were murdered by their intimate partner with a control group of battered women. Only 16 percent of the women who had been abused, but not murdered, had guns in their homes, whereas 51 percent of the murder victims did. In fact, not a single study to date has shown that the risk of any crime including burglary, robbery, home invasion, or spousal abuse against a female is decreased through gun ownership. Though there are examples of women using a gun to defend themselves, they are few and far between, and not statistically significant.[v]

Finally, what should be the most concerning statistic is that based on data from 25 high-income countries, women in the United States accounted for 84 percent of all female firearm victims and 70 percent of all female homicide victims, even though they only represented 32% of the sample population. The analysis concluded that more women are homicide victims when firearms are more available [vi]. This demonstrates the dangers of attackers having firearms whilst indicating little advantage if any in the women being armed to defend themselves. It must be remembered that most female homicides are not perpetrated by strangers as the NRA commercial gun-rights advocates would have us believe.

An important factor to consider in offsetting the potential benefit of having a gun available to repulse a violent or property crime against the risk involved in having access to a gun at all times is the timescale of the benefits and risks. The majority of the population will never be involved in a violent crime, or be at home during a property invasion, hence any potential benefit a gun may provide would be non-existent. Even those who are innocently involved in a violent or property crime situation will only experience the possible benefit of having access to a gun for perhaps 15 minutes of their life. On the other hand, the increased danger of suicide, accident, or homicide by a partner or family member when guns are quickly available is omnipresent. Except for law enforcement officers, the only people this may not apply to would be criminals who are much more likely to be frequently involved in situations where they require a gun.

Although guns do not provide an effective method of protection there are many other ways in which individuals can protect themselves or family members including the following:

Protection against property crime

·         Fitting burglar alarms

·         Setting up CCTV

·         Fitting high-quality locks

·         Living in a low crime area

·         Ensuring adequate insurance on property and contents

Protection against violent crime

·         Avoid confrontation

·         Avoid walking alone at night

·         Avoid flaunting high-value items

·         Avoid entering high crime hotspots

In conclusion, guns may be considered to be an effective self-defense method however, they are used much less frequently than gun-rights advocates claim. Protection however is far more important than self-defense and it is clear that guns do not help protect people. All evidence suggests that the presence of firearms substantially increases suicide risk for men, homicide risk for women, and accidental risk for children.

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[i] Kurtzman, L. (2014, January 21). Access to Guns Increases Risk of Suicide, Homicide. Retrieved from https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/01/111286/access-guns-increases-risk-suicide-homicide

[ii] Khazan, O. (2017, July 20). Nearly Half of All Murdered Women Are Killed by Romantic Partners. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/

[iii] Dumenko, S. (2016, September 20). NEW NRA AD PLAYS LIKE A HORROR MOVIE: 'DON'T LET HILLARY CLINTON LEAVE YOU DEFENSELESS'. Retrieved from https://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/nra-ad-hillary-clinton-leave-defenseless/305929The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care: July 1992 - p 1-5. R

[iv] Kellermann, A. Mercy, J. (1992, July). The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care: July 1992 - p 1-5. Retrieved from https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/abstract/1992/07000/men,_women,_and_murder__gender_specific.1.aspx

[v] Defilippis, E. (2014, February 23). Having a Gun in the House Doesn't Make a Woman Safer. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a-gun-in-the-house-doesnt-make-a-woman-safer/284022/

[vi] Hemenway, D. Miller, M. Shinoda-Tagawa, T. (2002, February). Firearm availability and female homicide victimization rates among 25 populous high-income countries. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11379728_Firearm_availability_and_female_homicide_victimization_rates_among_25_populous_high-income_countries

[vii] Violence Policy Center. (2017, May). Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self Defense Gun Use. Retrieved from https://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable17.pdf