Does carrying a gun make you safer? Early research results suggest the opposite
By McClatchy-Tribune News Service
October 15, 2009
PHILADELPHIA -- Meleanie Hain of Lebanon, Pa., used to tell the news media that she carried a Glock 26 pistol everywhere she went to protect herself and her children. Then last week she was shot to death by her husband in what police called a murder-suicide.
For years, researchers have been trying to investigate whether carrying a gun is protective or risky. But getting the answer through science has proved elusive. Now, University of Pennsylvania researcher Charles Branas has tried a new tack -- employing methods normally used by epidemiologists to study cancer and other diseases.
Branas compared a group of shooting victims to a similar set of "controls" who had not been shot. His results, he said, show that guns did not, on average, protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault -- and in fact raised the risk by four times or more.
"People shouldn't feel that firearms are going to enhance their safety," Branas said. The study was published in the current issue of the prestigious American Journal of Public Health.
(More here.)
October 15, 2009
PHILADELPHIA -- Meleanie Hain of Lebanon, Pa., used to tell the news media that she carried a Glock 26 pistol everywhere she went to protect herself and her children. Then last week she was shot to death by her husband in what police called a murder-suicide.
For years, researchers have been trying to investigate whether carrying a gun is protective or risky. But getting the answer through science has proved elusive. Now, University of Pennsylvania researcher Charles Branas has tried a new tack -- employing methods normally used by epidemiologists to study cancer and other diseases.
Branas compared a group of shooting victims to a similar set of "controls" who had not been shot. His results, he said, show that guns did not, on average, protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault -- and in fact raised the risk by four times or more.
"People shouldn't feel that firearms are going to enhance their safety," Branas said. The study was published in the current issue of the prestigious American Journal of Public Health.
(More here.)
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