I can get stats that are on “my side”.
My son doesn’t own a gun because he feels a need to own a gun, he likes to go to the firing range and send a few off. As far safety, I’ll ask him if he feels safer here or in other countries, my guess is he will say he feels safe most anywhere.
So he doesn't feel a need to own one but he owns one?....just pray that one day he doesn't go nuts and use it against himself or a loved one. Because stats are here to support that gun owners are most likely to get hurt with their own or hurt someone within the household.
Link the stats please.
no problem.
Packing heat may backfire.
People who carry guns are far likelier to get shot – and killed – than those who are unarmed, a study of shooting victims in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has found.
It would be impractical – not to say unethical – to randomly assign volunteers to carry a gun or not and see what happens. So
Charles Branas‘s team at the University of Pennsylvania analysed 677 shootings over two-and-a-half years to discover whether victims were carrying at the time, and compared them to other Philly residents of similar age, sex and ethnicity. The team also accounted for other potentially confounding differences, such as the socioeconomic status of their neighbourhood.
Despite the US having the
highest rate of firearms-related homicide in the industrialised world, the relationship between gun culture and violence is poorly understood. A recent study found that
treating violence like an infectious disease led to a dramatic fall in shootings and killings.
Overall, Branas’s study found that people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher.
Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed