I live with my partner. Neither of us owns a gun. Concerned about reports of rising crime rates in our neighbourhood, my partner decides to buy a handgun to help keep us safe. Is our home safer now? Am I?

Millions of Americans may have asked themselves these questions, or versions of them—especially in the wake of horrific mass shootings like those in Buffalo and Uvalde. Record-breaking spikes in gun sales over the last two years, alongside surveys indicating that self-protection continues to be the dominant reason for buying guns, underscore a widely-held belief that a gun in the home has security benefits.

new study from my research team, recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, shows no such benefits. We found the opposite: people living in homes with guns face substantially higher risks of being fatally assaulted.

Mass shootings are the most visible form of gun violence in America. But they account for a small fraction of all fatal shootings. Most of these deaths are lesser-known, private tragedies that occur in homes and on the streets.

We […]

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