A reader (who wishes to remain anonymous) emailed me today with the following request
Hi Robb, I have a friend who’s currently in the conversation phase with her husband about gun ownership. She’s pretty level headed, but one of her biggest hang ups is that she thinks having a gun in the house will make the household less safe on net, not more safe. She’s highly educated (JD, MS), intelligent, and isn’t afraid of evil mind control rays that might be emitted by a gun, but isn’t really conversant on a lot of the issues around gun ownership. Her gut reaction is that sport uses are the only real reason to have a gun around any more, and that owning a gun would be a net danger for her household, not a net increase in safety. Her husband wants it (apparently) for home defense. He is also highly educated (PhD) and intelligent. I have no doubt that they are both able to keep a firearm in the home without any safety concerns. Do you have some kind of handy ‘fact sheet’ that she can go over that has information about gun safety in the hands of responsible adults? I know you bandy around the statistic of crime rates among CC holders, so I thought you might have or could point to something for her.
I'm going to answer here on the blog so that others may chime in with facts and statistics to help. My reader's friends can rest assured that their anonymity is protected when they read through here.
This, of course, is a tall order. I'm not sure too many people keep statistics on how many kids didn't have a firearm accident, but we can of course can check accident rates via CDC's WISQARS tool (you can always check my numbers). This is what I will be using for the sake of this argument.
In a population of 69,274,641 children aged 0 to 16, there were 991 total firearms deaths for 2005. 103 of them were unintentional (accident). This gives a rate of .000015% accidental firearm death per child - .15 per 100,000.
Now, for all ages, out of a population of 295,895,897 people, there were 789 accidental deaths for the same year or .27 per 100,000.
There is no conclusive evidence using the WISQARS data that suicides are affected by the availability of a firearm. While slightly over half of the 32,637 suicides were by firearm (17,002), I take the position that people who are serious about committing suicide will do so however they can. The firearm, however, is no more to blame than pills, rope, or tall bridges.
Now, it is important to remember the scale of firearms available to the American citizen – the rough estimate is 9 firearms for every 10 people. That is approximately 270,000,000 firearms under non-military / non-police control. {edited for clarification – R} The percentage of the populace that own firearms is nowhere near 90%, but closer to 40-50%, so it is safe to assume that most gun owners own more than one firearm.
Logically then, if a firearm increases the risk of an accident then multiple firearms increase the risk even more. Now… look at the rates of accidents. .27 per 100,000. Only 1 in ~400,000 people. And that's with a good chance of multiple firearm availability.
So, we've established that the risk of accidental death while having a gun in the household is relatively low. However, you cannot go by risk alone, you have to judge the benefit.
There's no hard numbers on self defense with firearms. The vast majority of self defense gun uses go unreported. I never reported the time I had to pull a gun to protect myself because there wasn't anything to report – the bad guys took off. The best we can offer is plenty of anecdotal evidence in the form of thousands of stories collected by newspapers around the country – I offer the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog. These are stories of people who have defended themselves, their families, and their property with firearms. These are the hidden stories you're not informed about when guns are discussed. Estimates range from 800,000 to 2,500,000 per year. Even using the lowest estimate of 108,000 defensive uses per year, that results in 36 per 100,000 or 133 times more uses to save lives than accidental deaths. Use the 2.5 million number and that's 844 per 100,000 or 3,125x!
The truth lies somewhere in between those numbers. However, even using the absolute lowest estimate possible, it is clear that owning a firearm has an advantage.
What about accidents? Take this shocking statistic – Out of all the sports, hunting is the safest. Even billiards has a greater rate of injury.
I hope that this answers some questions, but before you can decide to have a gun in your house, you have to ask yourself a few as well.
Are you willing to train with the firearm so that you are competent enough to handle it? Will you store the firearms in a safe manner, away from children? Are you willing to take the additional risk that comes with a firearm, as small as it is? Are you willing to accept the responsibility, which is quite large? Will you follow the four rules, committing them to memory? Do you want to take responsibility for your own personal safety?
You must realize that the gun is only a tool and that simply owning it does not confer any sort of magical safety barrier around you or your family. You must possess the will to defend yourself before any tool can be effective. You must make the decision ahead of time that you will fight back against those who would harm you with or without a weapon. And finally, you must ask yourself the most uncomfortable question there is – are you willing to take the life of another human being in defense of your own.
I sincerely hope that my post here helps you make the right decision.
Update – Greg reminds me about the Cornered Cat, another great resource.