Research: Does a gun in the home really make a family less safe?
Research reviewed: Journal of Trauma (1998), American Journal of Epidemiology (2004), National Academies (2013), US Secret Service (2019) and JAMA Network Open (2022).
A line often heard in the United States is that a gun kept at home is far more likely to hurt someone in the family than to protect them. One study behind it, by Kellermann and colleagues in the Journal of Trauma (1998), found 13 legally justifiable or self-defence shootings in or around homes in three US cities, against 438 criminal assaults or homicides. But that study only counted cases where someone was actually shot, and its authors wrote that a gun can scare away an intruder "without a shot being fired". Police also recorded that the gun was brought to the scene from elsewhere in 295 of those 438 assaults, and was a gun kept in that home in only 49. A 2013 National Academies report found estimates of defensive gun use range from about 60,000 to more than 3 million a year, so how defence is counted changes the answer. COLFO is looking at international research and trends to grow its reference library, so licensed firearm owners can use our site to find reliable information from around the world.
