December 14, 2012 by David K. Sutton
Fact of the Day: On The Whole, Guns More Likely To Harm Than Protect
Today’s Fact of the Day comes from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:
On the whole, guns are more likely to raise the risk of injury than to confer protection.
- A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide (11x),criminal assault or homicide (7x), or unintentional shooting death or injury (4x) than to be used in a self-defense shooting. (Kellermann, 1998, p. 263).
- Guns are used to intimidate and threaten 4 to 6 times more often than they are used to thwart crime (Hemenway, p. 269).
- Every year there are only about 200 legally justified self-defense homicides by private citizens (FBI, Expanded Homicide Data, Table 15) compared with over 30,000 gun deaths (NCIPC).
- A 2009 study found that people in possession of a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault (Branas).
