Does gun ownership make you safer?
If you ask the general public, most Americans say it does. According to a new poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 58 percent of Americans agree with the statement that “[g]un ownership does more to increase safety by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.” In comparison, 38 percent agree with the statement that “[g]un ownership does more to reduce safety by giving too many people access to firearms and increasing the chances for accidental misuse.”
This is a shift from 1999, when 41 percent of Americans agreed with the first statement and 52 percent with the second.
But if you look at the research, it seems the majority from 1999 had the right idea: Gun ownership decreases safety — on both an individual and collective level.
Individually, several studies have found that the presence of a gun in a home elevates the risk of death. A 2014 review of the research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, for instance, found that access to firearms was associated with a doubled risk for homicide and a tripled risk for suicide. A 2017 piece by Melinda Wenner Moyer in Scientific American also ran through the evidence, concluding that gun ownership was associated with a higher risk of homicide, suicide, and accidental shootings.
These facts need to be broadcast far and wide to counter the argument from the NRA and gun nuts who seem to think that banning military assault weapons would somehow render them impotent.
The truth is that if they need a gun to make them feel safe, or like they are a real man, then they are already impotent.
Source https://ift.tt/2pG9uU3
