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TUESDAY, June 10, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- At least one statistical study now confirms a popular belief: Keeping a gun in your home greatly increases the likelihood that you'll die from a gunshot wound.a study in the June issue of the journal
Annals
of Internal Medicine.
The study by the Violence Prevention Research Group at the University
of
California at Los Angeles appears in the June issue of the journal
Annals
of Internal Medicine.
It found that people who have guns in their homes were almost twice as likely to die in a gun-related homicide and 16 times more likely to use a gun to commit suicide than people who don't have guns in their homes.
Handguns accounted for 40 per cent of all domestic homicides and a third
of all suicides, the study found.
The study compared 1,720 homicide victims and 1,959 suicide victims
over age 18 with other American adults.
"Keeping guns at home is dangerous for adults regardless of age, sex, or
race," study author Douglas J. Wiebe says in a news release.
"Our findings suggest that, when violence occurs and a gun is
accessible,
the gun may be selected for use over a weapon that is less lethal. That
is
particularly significant in terms of suicide and domestic violence,"
Wiebe
says.
This study supports widely-debated studies published a decade ago in
the
New England Journal of Medicine that also linked the presence of
a gun
in the home to higher rates of suicide and murder.
The U.S. National Institute of Justice says that there are firearms
in 1 in every 3 households in the U.S., which works out to a total of nearly
200 million guns. In any 24-hour period, more than 160 people are treated
for gunshot wounds at U.S. hospital emergency rooms.
More information
Here's where you can learn more about the dangers of firearms.
