Self-defense is commonly cited as a reason to own a gun. But research has shown that a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder.(Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay. “Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm Related Deaths in the Home.” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 314, no. 24, June 1986, pp. 1557-60.) The use of a firearm to resist a violent assault actually increases the victim’s risk of injury and death(FE Zimring, Firearms, violence, and public policy, Scientific American, vol. 265, 1991, p. 48).
Dr. Jeffrey A. Roth does cite that there may be some self-defense benefit: victims who defended themselves with guns were less likely to report being injured than those who either defended themselves by other means or took no self-protective measures at all. Thus, while 33 percent of all surviving robbery victims were injured, only 25 percent of those who offered no resistance and 17 percent of those who defended themselves with guns were injured. For surviving assault victims, the corresponding injury rates were, respectively, 30 percent, 27 percent, and 12 percent. (Kleck, Gary, “Crime Control through the Private Use of Armed Force,” Social Forces, 35 (1988):1-22.)
But he goes on to argue that these statistics are “an insufficient basis for the personal decision whether or not to obtain a gun for self-protection…. First, the decision involves a trade-off between the risks of gun accidents and violent victimization. Second, it is not entirely clear that the relatively few robberies and assaults in which victims defended themselves with guns are typical of these types of crimes and that the lower injury rates resulted from the self-defense action rather than some other factor. Perhaps offenders lost the advantage of surprise, which allowed victims not only to deploy their guns but also to take other evasive action.”
Research by Dr. Arthur Kellerman has shown that keeping a gun in the home carries a murder risk 2.7 times greater than not keeping one. That is, excluding many other factors such as previous history of violence, class, race, etc., a household with a gun is 2.7 times more likely to experience a murder than a household without one, even while there was no significant increase in the risk of non-gun homicides!
Obviously, there is a problem with criminals having access to guns, which is why so many people feel they, too, need a gun for self-defense. But this is a vicious cycle: FBI Crime Reports sources indicate that there are about 340,000 reported firearms thefts every year. Those guns, the overwhelming amount of which were originally manufactured and purchased legally, and now in the hands of criminals. Thus, the old credo “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” is silly. What happens is many guns bought legally are sold or stolen, and can then be used for crime. If those 340,000 guns were never sold or owned in the first place, that would be 340,000 less guns in the hands of criminals every year. Part of the reason there are so many guns on the street in the hands of criminals is precisely because so many are sold legally. Certainly, there will always be a way to obtain a gun illegally. But if obtaining a gun legally is extremely difficult, the price of illegal guns goes way up, and availability goes way down. Thus, it is much more difficult for criminals to obtain guns.