Referencing some different study findings than those noted in the OP article of
another current thread, I wish to inquire about how to account for the contradiction between gun-owners' stated reasons for having guns and the facts showing the greater risks and lack of protection personal guns provide both inside and outside the home.
Surveys consistently find that the reason the majority of gun-owners give for owning a gun is for purposes of protection. E.g.,
America's Complex Relationship with Guns While this Pew survey found two-thirds of gun-owners asserting that protection is the primary reason for owning their guns, other surveys show as many as 88% of gun-owners giving this reason.
Yet, studies also consistently show that having a gun or guns in the home increases the risk that a family member or acquaintance will be killed or injured by firearm, either accidentally or intentionally, while providing no significant protection for persons in the home. E.g., from the review article,
Risks and Benefits of a Gun in the Home, by David Hemenway:
The main reason people give for having a handgun in the home is protection, typically against stranger violence. However, it is important to recognize that the home is a relatively safe place, especially from strangers. For example, fewer than 30% of burglaries in the United States (2003-2007) occur when someone is at home. In the 7% of burglaries when violence does occur, the burglar is more likely to be an intimate (current or former) and also more likely to be a relative or known acquaintance than a stranger.[78] Although people typically spend most of their time at home, only 5% of all the crimes of violence perpetrated by strangers occur at home.[79]
Hemenway goes on to cite data from the National Crime Victimization Surveys showing that in all confrontational incidents (not necessarily in the home) where a crime was threatened, attempted or completed, only 0.9% of victims reported using a gun for defensive purposes. Hemenway also gleans the findings of a 2004 study by Kleck involving 27,000 personal contact crimes, which found that the modes of resistance where the victim was least likely to be injured were running away/hiding, and calling the police (with injuries only 0.9% of the time in the case of the latter). In contrast, threatening the perpetrator with a gun was followed by an injury to the victim 2.5% of the time.
In the Chapter 1,
Firearms and Violent Death in the United States, by Miller, et al., in
Reducing Gun Violence in America, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, the authors report:
Kellermann et al. examined approximately 400 homicide victims from three metropolitan areas who were killed in their homes (Kellermann et al. 1993). All died from gunshot wounds. In 83% of the homicides, the perpetrator was identified; among these cases, 95% of the time, the perpetrator was not a stranger. In only 14% of all the cases was there evidence of forced entry. After controlling for illicit drug use, fights, arrests, living alone, and whether the home was rented, the presence of a gun in the home remained strongly associated with an increased risk for homicide in the home. Gun ownership was most strongly associated with an increased risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.[5]
[. . . ]
Household firearm ownership has also been consistently found to be a strong predictor of suicide risk in studies that examined individual-level data. U.S. case-control studies find that the presence of a gun in the home or purchase from a licensed dealer is a risk factor for suicide (Bailey et al. 1997, Brent et al. 1993, Brent et al. 1994, Brent et al. 1991, Brent et al.1988, Conwell et al. 2002, Cummings et al. 1997, Kellermann et al. 1992, Grassel et al. 2003, Kung, Pearson, and Lui 2003, Wiebe 2003). The relative risk is large (two- to tenfold), depending on the age group and, for younger persons, how firearms in the home are stored (Miller and Hemenway 1999, Brent et al. 1991, Kellermann et al. 1992).
Citing a study that examined all gunshot injuries (both fatal and non-fatal) in the home occurring in Memphis TN, Seattle WA, and Galveston TX from 1992-1994 in which the gun involved was known to be kept in the home, Hemenway reports the findings:
Home guns were 4 times more likely to be involved in an accident, 7 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault or homicide, and 11 times more likely to be used in an attempted or completed suicide than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.[99]
So how does one account for the contradiction between the primary reason that the majority of gun-owners assert for owning a gun and the findings showing that guns in the home increase the risk of death or injury to a family member or acquaintance while providing no significant protection to persons in the home, and the defensive use of guns outside of the home is extremely rare and more often results in injury to the victim than simply running away, hiding, and calling the police?
Analogously, if someone were to profess that he eats 4 tablespoons of salt every evening as a diuretic in order to lower his high blood pressure, most of us would recognize the (apparent) contradiction between his declared reason and the facts relating to consumption of that amount of salt. And there would seem to be limited ways to account for this contradiction: (a) the person is delusional, holding a false belief despite knowing the evidence to the contrary; (b) the person is merely ignorant of the evidence relating to salt; (c) the person is lying (there is some other reason he eats all that salt). At least, unlike the case with gun-owning, we cannot say that the person is knowledgeable of but indifferent to the risks to friends and/or family members due to his exorbitant consumption of salt.
It seems there are limited ways to account for the contradiction between gun-owners' declared reasons for gun-owning and the facts about gun-owning. How does one account for the contradiction?
