Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed

[onehandle]

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.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html

[tledford]

1. VERY interesting!

Thanks for the post and link!

[randome]

2. Teachers and principals have jobs to do.

They don't have the time to be on the alert every single minute of every day in case someone steals their gun and uses it.

The idea that more armed adults in a school would have prevented this is correct...if only the shooting itself is considered. When all other factors come into play -storage of teacher weapons, carrying them on one's person in full view of students, etc.- it is another story entirely.

It's one-dimensional thinking to say that armed adults on the premises would have prevented this.

[jimlup]

3. Thank you for posting this

Unfortunately, the Repukes who pass the fucking idiotic "pack heat everywhere to protect yourself" laws are not capable of understanding or acting on this information.

[Major Nikon]

4. 'Live by the sword, die by the sword' ironically comes from the bible

2,000 yrs later gun nuts (many of whom cling just as closely to their bibles) still haven't figured it out.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. It is from a source that effectively denies the existing of non discharge defensive gun use

The problem is that there is no honest way to measure DGUs that do not result in police involvement. Both sides make their claims with the appearance of scientific underpinnings, but there is clearly no way to gather the data.