Quote:
Originally Posted by kel
In doing so you may feel safe, but statistically you increase the chance of getting shot with your own weapon. You do not increase the chance of coming out of an encounter unscathed (some would argue maybe me :-)
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This is a common misperception based upon Kellermann's infamous "43X" statistic. What Kellermann actually found (you have to read the endnote, and most people who quote it don't read that far) was that if you own or have access to a gun, your chances of committing SUICIDE by gun go up dramatically. Your chances of being shot accidentally go up a tiny bit, but almost all of the "43X is related to suicide. And it's not that guns cause suicide, it's just that guns are a popular choice for people contemplating suicide, and people who don't have guns but are contemplating suicide often BUY guns to kill themselves with. As for the "accidentally shot and killed with their own gun" bit, for the last year that figures are available, there were fewer than 1,000 accidental gun deaths of all kinds in the US for that year. There are 300 million guns. You do the math, and tell us if 1,000 out of 300,000,000 is something you're overly worried about.