This commentary was written by Andrew K. Gentile of Sheffield. Gentile is a long-time gun owner and used to be on a shooting team.
Among gun enthusiasts, the world is often simplistically divided into good guys and bad guys. The gun enthusiasts’ call to arms is, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” We are led to believe that there is a bad guy who can harm us or our families. It is this hypothetical bad guy we are taught to fear, never a family member or acquaintance. And despite that this “bad guy” story is complete fiction, it sells a lot of guns, and it advances a lot of careless gun policies.
Our fear of bad guys is frequently refreshed by news of mass shootings, which are especially frightening because of their randomness. If you’re going grocery shopping you don’t expect to get shot. More importantly, there is nothing you can do to prevent such an event because you did nothing to cause the event. But you can buy a gun.
Owning a gun for hunting or sport is very different than owning one for self-defense. A gun for hunting is typically unloaded before it is brought into the house, and it is then locked in a safe. But if your purpose in having a gun is to fend off a bad guy who could come through your door at any moment, then you and your gun must be prepared at all times. A gun for self-defense must be easily accessible, loaded and not locked up in a safe. Unfortunately, having such a gun in your home is in itself a significant risk, and it is probably a greater risk than the one you intend to mitigate.
For a prospective gun owner, the question to ask is: does having a loaded gun in the house increase or decrease your risk of being a victim of a shooting?
Before you had the gun, you had the risk of the stranger bad guy. But now there are the added risks of accidental shootings, of your child finding the gun, of the gun being stolen and used against you, of losing the gun, of the gun being used by one family member against another, or of using the gun on yourself.
According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, in 2020 guns accounted for 24,292 suicides, 19,384 homicides, and 27,000 unintentional firearm injuries. In 2020, firearms were the leading cause of death among children.
Of those 19,384 homicides, the majority of victims were killed by someone known to them, not by strangers. Data published by Statista show that for murders where the victim-offender relationship was known, only 1 in 5 murders were by strangers. In data from 1998 to 2002, the Department of Justice showed that just 26 percent of all murders were by strangers. According to a recent article in Psychology Today, less than 10 percent of gun homicides in 2020 were by strangers and of those, only 5 percent were female victims. Futures Without Violence publishes data showing that of females killed with a firearm, two-thirds were killed by their intimate partner.
Published data on homicides show that strangers are far less a threat than family members or acquaintances. Females are more at risk of being killed in their homes than on the streets. If you are female, why would you want a loaded gun in your home?
Gun deaths are not evenly distributed among races. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, black people are 12 times more likely than white people to be killed by a gun, Native Americans are 4 times more likely, and Hispanics are twice as likely. White people are the least likely in this group to be killed by a gun, yet white people are the most likely demographic to own a gun.
When it comes to suicide, white people are at the top of the rankings. White people, both men and women, account for the highest suicide demographic group. White males make up only 30 percent of the population but 72 percent of firearm suicides. In Vermont, 88 percent of gun fatalities are suicides, and nearly all are white men. This high percentage is common in rural states. According to a study by Harvard University, suicide rates are higher in states where guns are prevalent. Wyoming, Alaska and Montana rank, in order, as the states with the highest percentage of gun ownership per household. They also rank in that same order for the highest suicide rates in the U.S.
Unfortunately, there is almost no discussion in the media about inter-family murders, suicides, or firearm accidents and their relationship to easy access to guns, despite that these should be far greater concerns to a prospective gun owner than a random attack by a stranger. A loaded, easily accessible gun in the house is a risk and should be mitigated by deliberate changes in behavior, such as not allowing alcohol or drugs in the house. Regrettably, many people do not consider owning a gun a risk.
Political slogans exaggerate the threat of the bad guy stranger, and for many politicians, gun ownership is a proxy for patriotism. The myth is that buying a gun instantly bestows both freedom and invulnerability upon the gun owner. The unfortunate reality is that many misinformed people are arming themselves against an imaginary enemy, ironically increasing their chances of being the victim of a shooting.
There is nothing wrong with owning a gun. I own several. But keeping a loaded, easily accessible gun in preparation for a highly unlikely shootout with an imaginary enemy is both misguided and dangerous. For almost everyone, owning a gun for self-defense is much more of a risk than a benefit.
