Science shows that you and your family will all be much safer if you get rid of the guns in your home. Not only does that make simple common sense, a recent survey of all available scientific research shows it (once again) to be the case.
Nevertheless, under the brazenly biased brain washing of the National Rifle Association, many in our community are still violently opposed to such scientific findings even being published. Many here in our burg, ever fearful, publicly oppose all reasonable gun regulations, even when they are the law. We are here in Fort Collins a cowboys and Indians, shoot-em up, western breed type of populace, even if not western bred. (Our local sheriff, who could act as a spokesman for the NRA, apparently thinks everybody needs a gun because he said he would not enforce any new gun regulations even though they are the law. He likes to exercise personal choice as to which laws are “real” laws. See my old editorial here.)
A wonderful op-ed in the Los Angeles Times should help our local folks take a more realistic view of the matter. We can start to see why many health agencies view simple gun-regulation laws as a public health issue.
Does owning a gun make your home more dangerous? Most professionals who research the effects of gun ownership say yes. This is what David Hemenway, a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health saw when he began sending out monthly surveys almost a year ago to scientists engaged in research in public health, criminology, or other social sciences. A clear majority found that a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide, makes women more likely to be victims of homicide, and make homes more dangerous.In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, titled, “There’s scientific consensus on guns – and the NRA won’t like it,” Hemenway writes: Recommended: Gun laws: How much do you know?Scientific consensus isn’t always right, but it’s our best guide to understanding the world. Can reporters please stop pretending that scientists, like politicians, are evenly divided on guns? We’re not.Of the 150 scientists who responded, most were confident that a gun in the home increases the chance that a woman living there will be murdered (72 percent agreed, 11 percent disagreed), that strict gun control laws reduce homicide (71 percent versus 12 percent), that more permissive gun laws have not reduced crime rates (62 percent versus 9 percent), that guns are used more often in crimes than in self-defense (73 percent versus 8 percent), and that a gun in the home makes it a more dangerous place to be (64 percent versus 5 percent).
Eighty-four percent of the respondents said that having a firearm at home increased the risk of suicide.These figures stand sharply at odds with the opinions of the American public. A November 2014 Gallup poll found that 63 percent of Americans say that having a gun in the house makes it a safer place to be, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000. [Thanks to the lies of the NRA–BJG] According to the same survey, about 40 percent of Americans keep a gun in the home.
Source: Where does science fall on the gun control debate? – CSMonitor.com
A very interesting article, worth the read.