# Report: Guns in the home provide greater health risk than benefit **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 28, 2011, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014 "2011-04-28T11:02:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/61 "2011-04-28T15:28:45Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > The thing that makes me uncomfortable about these epidemeological studies about gun ownership But it’s not an honest attempt to quantify the real risk/benefit ratio of gun ownership. See, I shouldn’t have even responded, just waited for this post so I could +1 it. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/62 "2011-04-28T15:28:54Z")
Why has this thread morphed into a question about gun control? The OP says NOTHING about gun control. The question is whether people in a home that contains a gun are safer or less safe because of the gun. How about addressing that question before debating whether the answer requires some kind of public policy change or not. ---
**Author:** ![DrumBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e79b87/32.png) [@DrumBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrumBum)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/63 "2011-04-28T15:48:17Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Do you know that people who own cars are far more likely to be in a car crash than people who don’t? But no one is lobbying to take our cars away, even if the chance of dying in an auto-related accident goes up greatly with car ownership. I hear analogies like this - with swimming pools a close second - and I am unclear on how these causes of death are even related to gun deaths. I would think that cars and swimming pools are seldom used as a tool to rob banks or shoot up a school. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/64 "2011-04-28T15:53:05Z")
> [@DrumBum](#): > > I hear analogies like this - with swimming pools a close second - and I am unclear on how these causes of death are even related to gun deaths. I would think that cars and swimming pools are seldom used as a tool to rob banks or shoot up a school. I think you’ll find that cars are frequently part of robbing a bank. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/65 "2011-04-28T15:54:17Z")
And swimming pools a close second. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/66 "2011-04-28T15:57:18Z")
> [@DrumBum](#): > > I hear analogies like this - with swimming pools a close second - and I am unclear on how these causes of death are even related to gun deaths. I would think that cars and swimming pools are seldom used as a tool to rob banks or shoot up a school. And the pool is an interesting example because like a gun it does very little. People have all sorts of justifications for owning one, but most of the time it sits unused. Meanwhile, both are a draw for children. Like a gun a pool left unsupervised is deadly. Without a proper fence and cover it will cause accidental death. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/67 "2011-04-28T16:00:00Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > The word “racist” should be banned from an intelligent discussion of serious issues because it inhibits the discussion. More to the point, your racist arguments should be banned from this particular discussion because they are an attempted threadjacking. ---
**Author:** ![Nadir](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nadir/32/7302_2.png) [@Nadir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nadir)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/68 "2011-04-28T16:02:41Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > How many really need to use firearms on a daily basis? Carry at least one with me all the time. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/69 "2011-04-28T16:09:50Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > I think you’ll find that cars are frequently part of robbing a bank. They are frequently a key piece of equipment for drive-by shootings as well. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/70 "2011-04-28T16:11:06Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > The thing that makes me uncomfortable about these epidemeological studies about gun ownership is that the vast majority of gun deaths in the home are from suicides. And these are lumped in as to suggest that the numbers are coming from people who misidentified their spouse and shot them in the middle of the night, or whose kids found the guns and accidentally shot themselves Similarly, statistics on “children killed by shooting” tend to include teenage (and even post-teenage) gang-bangers under a label that evokes the image of little Millicent stumbling upon Daddy’s gun and accidentally shooting herself with it. > [@](#): > > Guns used in a positive way - for example to stop an in-progress burglar - is difficult to measure and almost never do these agenda-driven studies actually give an honest attempt to quantify the positive impact of guns. Indeed. It’s legitimately difficult to tally all the cases where defensive gun usage consists of 1)criminal commits crime, 2)criminal sees armed would-be victim, 3)criminal realizes that he has something else to do at the moment, such as go home and put on clean underwear. This makes it easy to ignore a scenario that is (by any reasonable estimate) far more common that the easily-noted examples of criminals actually getting shot by their would-be victims. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/71 "2011-04-28T16:12:32Z")
> [@DrumBum](#): > > I hear analogies like this - with swimming pools a close second - and I am unclear on how these causes of death are even related to gun deaths. I would think that cars and swimming pools are seldom used as a tool to rob banks or shoot up a school. Granted, but once you bring your firearm to the bank or school it is no longer a question a health risk in the home, and so is irrelevant to the study cited in the OP. And criminals should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law whether they rob a bank with a pistol or with a trained skunk. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/72 "2011-04-28T16:16:03Z")
> [@DrumBum](#): > > I hear analogies like this - with swimming pools a close second - and I am unclear on how these causes of death are even related to gun deaths. I would think that cars and swimming pools are seldom used as a tool to rob banks or shoot up a school. By the same token, I don’t see any indication that anyone’s in-home banks or schools were a factor in a study of gun risk in the home. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/73 "2011-04-28T16:16:32Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Why has this thread morphed into a question about gun control? > > The OP says NOTHING about gun control. The question is whether people in a home that contains a gun are safer or less safe because of the gun. > > How about addressing that question before debating whether the answer requires some kind of public policy change or not. Because we thought is is a self-evident statement and an trivial observation that people around guns are more likely to be sho tthan people who are not around guns, and so we skipped right to the implications of the OP’s study. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/74 "2011-04-28T16:22:11Z")
I thought that this whole “We Need to Treat Guns Like Cars” argument has been thoroughly debunked. Guns are treated far more harshly than cars. With a car, anyone can buy one. A Convicted felon, license suspended, alcohol 14 year old can walk into a car dealership, lay down cash and buy a car without permission or notice to the state. If a person wants to take a car out on the public highways, he must be 16 years old (in most states), follow traffic laws and apply for a license. Then he has an unrestricted right to drive his car in any public place including school property. Counter to that: a simple purchase of a gun requires an FBI background check. Many localities severely limit your right to carry a gun in public and/or don’t even offer a license. The places that do issue licenses to carry a gun in public have a list of off-limits areas. I would love gun laws to be the same as car laws. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/75 "2011-04-28T16:34:13Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > People own guns for lots of different reasons. For my part, they are about 50% recreation and 50% political statement. That does not change the fact that can be, and have been, useful for self-defense. No, but the study suggests (leaving aside the issue of whether it is accurate) that they are _not_ useful as a self-defense tool, since they’re more likely to harm you than help you. Therefore, the question becomes whether their non-defense uses offer enough utility to offset the increased risk. In your case, that may be true, but in the case of someone who keeps one _solely_ for defense, it clearly isn’t. > [@Zeriel](#): > > I’d be curious as to where you live–in my experience, most gun owners use them for sport/recreation, and less than a third of gun owners have a handgun. Granted, I expect this to be the case because I’m small-city/rural. Orlando. We beat out Detroit for the third highest crime rate in the nation last year (though our violent crime rate is relatively low). I live in the 'burbs, as do most of my friends. I’ll admit that in my experience there are very few Dopers who own guns solely for self-defense. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/76 "2011-04-28T16:38:04Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > But the reality is that the presences of guns doesn’t drastically affect the total suicide rate, just the suicide by gun rate. If men want to commit suicide, they tend to choose a gun if available, and if not, something else. But then people with an agenda lump together all of these suicides, suggesting that the gun caused them rather than simply being a convenient tool for that purpose, and then talk about what a menace guns are. Just considering suicides, this isn’t true. During the debate on putting rails up on the Golden Gate Bridge, there was a lot of talk on suicide. It turns out that if you keep people from doing it easily, they often don’t do it at all. The vast majority of people kept from jumping off the bridge don’t try to do it again. In England, when they changed ovens to make it impossible to kill yourself by sticking your head in one (a la Sylvia Plath) the suicide rate plummeted. Thus, it is reasonably plausible to conclude that removing guns from the home would reduce the suicide rate. Not eliminate it to be sure, but reduce it. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/77 "2011-04-28T16:38:59Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > No, but the study suggests (leaving aside the issue of whether it is accurate) that they are _not_ useful as a self-defense tool, since they’re more likely to harm you than help you. Even then, you’re talking about the average. There are plenty of people who could still find themselves seeing a net benefit based even if the average is negative. Someone who is well trained in their use and has excellent safety, has no children (or well trained children), etc. almost certainly has a negligible risk. But the average risk also includes criminals that keep guns laying around the house because they expect a drive by at any time, or drunk retards who buy a gun and never learn how to use it and keep it in the drawer by their nightstand. So even if we were to concede that it’s on average a net bad, it could very easily be a net positive for a significant amount of people. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/78 "2011-04-28T16:39:51Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Okay, I’ll take a shot at it. … _snerk_ ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/79 "2011-04-28T16:41:19Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > And the pool is an interesting example because like a gun it does very little. People have all sorts of justifications for owning one, but most of the time it sits unused. > > Meanwhile, both are a draw for children. Like a gun a pool left unsupervised is deadly. Without a proper fence and cover it will cause accidental death. Where I live a new pool (or even spa) needs to be inspected, and there must be a fence or locked cover. That is a far more rigorous rule than there is for storing guns. Plus, pool owners don’t have a fit about this, unlike gun owners. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014/80 "2011-04-28T16:46:38Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > No, but the study suggests (leaving aside the issue of whether it is accurate) that they are _not_ useful as a self-defense tool, since they’re more likely to harm you than help you. Which is probably true, but it’s not the actual benefit of gun ownership. Like I said, it’s not the actual gun, it’s the potential. The US has higher gun ownership than Canada, and also has lower rates of home invasion (burglary while the home is occupied). It’s probably true that for those cases where the person is home the gun is of little benefit, but the overall point remains that higher gun ownership reduces the the incidents of home invasion. Thus gun ownership is actually beneficial in stopping home invasions before they occur. To put this in terms of numbers, let’s say there are 10 home invasions in an area with high gun ownership and in 100% of the cases the gun failed to safe the owner. Sounds like guns are useless. And that is the point the study is trying to make. But when compared to a neighbourhood without gun ownership, the number of home invasions goes up to 30. Which neighbourhood is better off? A study in Florida found that a program designed to teach single women to carry a gun reduced assaults even though the number of women carrying guns didn’t change. And I’d speculate that those women with guns were probably unlikely to use it effectively. It was the perception of gun ownership that reduced assaults, hence, gun ownership was a net benefit. If instead you passed a law saying no one is allowed to carry a handgun at night, a criminal (with or without a gun) has an incentive (less deterrent) to go after women. Create an environment where criminals perceive the potential for gun ownership and there is a net deterrent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-guns-in-the-home-provide-greater-health-risk-than-benefit/580014.md?page=5)