Do Guns Save Lives?

gun

I live in a part of the country where it’s common to see billboards and bumper stickers proclaiming that: “Guns Save Lives!”.  Recently, as I pulled into my local gun club where I practice before every season, it was emblazoned on the back bumpers of nearly half the vehicles in the lot.

I’ve long been curious about this claim, and honestly, a little dubious about its accuracy – especially given the spate of mass shootings lately.  But I also know that the media tends to sensationalize the tragic and under-report the mundane.  Cable news could do around-the-clock coverage of the murders that didn’t  happened on a given day.  But they don’t.

It’s a difficult problem, familiar to social scientists, of trying to observe events that haven’t happened.  Every time there is a murder or death resulting from firearms, we have another piece of evidence linking the death to guns.  We don’t however have an easy way of knowing if or when guns helped prevent a death.  Over time, we collect more data (and media coverage of the latest mass shooting) that connects guns to tragic human loss while we rarely hear about situations where guns prevented tragedy – except in the movies.

It’s difficult to count lives that aren’t lost.  But we still have ways to answer the question: do guns save lives?  But before we get to that, let’s first examine the rationale behind the claim that they do.

At first blush it seems plausible that guns might save lives.  For instance, if an armed perpetrator entered your home intent on doing harm, it’s reasonable to believe that if you had a gun, you could shoot the intruder before he got the chance to hurt anyone in your family — and therefore save lives.  We see this scenario played out on television and in the movies all the time: our armed hero shoots the bad guy and saves the innocent people (his family, his girlfriend, or his country). It’s such a common scene in popular culture that it may seem like common sense to believe that guns save lives.

Another argument rests on the belief that shots don’t have to be fired for guns to save lives.  The logic goes like this: if a criminal feared that owners of the home he was about to invade were armed and might shoot him, he may be deterred from entering the house in the first place.  From this view, having more guns in the hands of “good” people will increase the overall deterrent effect and thus lives will be saved.  Played out to its logical end, if everyone in a society had a gun, the risk to would-be criminals would be too high to make crime pay.

It’s hard to imagine a deranged person exacting such a deadly toll armed with only his fists or a knife… or a slingshot.

But to others, the claim that guns save lives sounds absurd.  Guns are tools designed specifically to kill. How could a lethal weapon, particularly if it is widely available, lead to anything but more deaths? Stories appear in the news every day describing someone being shot and killed.  In recent months we have seen tragic mass shooting deaths in El Paso, Dayton, Thousand Oaks and too many other places to list.

Folks who have a hard time seeing guns as life-savers can point to episodes like these where an unstable individuals acquire guns and commits heinous crimes.  Without guns these deranged souls would have much less lethal means at their disposal.  Guns make it more likely that lives will be lost during such violent outbursts. It’s hard to imagine a deranged person exacting such a deadly toll armed with only his fists or a knife, or a slingshot.

So if guns truly save lives, we should be able to find evidence to back it up.  While it may be difficult to observe “non-events” it is still possible to answer the question by comparing different countries and states.

Guns Save Lives Billboard

For example, in 2009 there were 9,146 murders in the U.S. committed with firearms.  In the U.K. there were only 39.  The US population is five times larger than the UK so that accounts for some of the variation. But the size of the population comes nowhere close to explaining the fact that the firearm homicide rate in the US is more than 230 times greater. If we adjusted the rate to reflect the UK’s smaller population, there would only have been about 200 murders by firearms in the U.S that year.

A key difference between these two countries is the number of guns per capita.  In the US there are nearly 90 guns per 100 residents (the most in the world) while the number in England, Wales and Scotland is around 6. So the belief that more guns in the hands of more people saves lives is undermined by this comparison.  If the believers in deterrence were right, we should see far more gun murders in the UK than the US when in fact the opposite is true.

We can also do useful comparisons between states within the U.S. Researchers find that states with high levels of gun ownership have higher incidence of homicide generally.  Murder rates in states in the top quartile in gun ownership were 114% higher than those in the bottom quartile.   And a study from the Violence Policy Center found that the top five states in gun ownership had significantly higher firearm related homicides than the bottom five states.  In fact gun murder rates were four to ten times higher in states with the highest rates of gun ownership compared states with the lowest levels of gun ownership.

Comparisons like these cast doubt on the claim that guns are saving lives. The evidence suggests the opposite is more likely the case with murder rates increasing — rather than decreasing — when guns are more prevalent.

Two of every three gun-related deaths each year in the US is self-inflicted

But to get a fuller assessment of the relationship between firearms and lives saved or lost, we have to factor in other gun-related deaths like suicides and accidents. In fact, suicides account for the overwhelming majority of firearm deaths each year. In 2010 there were more than 19,000 suicides by firearms.  That’s roughly two of every three of the 30,000 gun-related deaths reported each year in the U.S.   Researchers have pointed to the suicide problem as the forgotten public health epidemic noting that the focus on murders obscures the dangers of having guns that are easily accessible at a time of personal crisis.  The ease of access to guns — particularly in those households that own them — almost certainly contributes to the high suicide rate.

There are many issues surrounding guns and gun control that remain difficult to resolve.  Do we still have, or need, the right to bear arms?  Should we restrict certain types of guns? If we decide to implement more rigid gun control, how would we get all the guns out the the hands of bad people?  These are fair questions that warrant further consideration. 

However, we are able to answer one question with near-certainty: guns do not “save lives.” Whether you are an avid hunter, a gun collector, or a staunch defender of the Second Amendment doesn’t change the fact that guns are more likely to take life than save it.  Nor does it change the fact that having a gun in your home increases the chances that the lost life will be yours — or someone close to you.

We can answer one question with near-certainty: guns do not save lives.

This does not mean that a gun has never played a role in saving a life.  It’s quite possible that this has happened.  But the claim being made on those billboards and bumper stickers is not: “Guns might occasionally save lives” .  Those rare and unknowable cases don’t come close to offsetting the wide-spread and persistent pattern of lost life attributable to guns.  Where there are more guns, there is almost always more gun-related death. The notion that guns save lives may be an article of faith for many, but it is not one based on the facts.

Suggested Reading:

3 thoughts on “Do Guns Save Lives?

  1. The only true, accurate and honest comparison to see if guns save lives doesn’t involve Britain or any other nation. We’re talking the USA here. Compare number of gun deaths to number of police reports where guns were used in self-defense. FBI, when they’re not trying to destroy some politician, does a pretty fair job of compiling their Annual Crime Report. Among those numbers we find between 2.5 and 2.7 MILLION instances each year where victims have fought back, and the bad guy killed, wounded or chased away. Not all instance need to have gunfire. There are many times when just letting an assailant know you are armed, but saying “I have a gun” or by showing it is all that is necessary to defend oneself.
    And remember, these are only the instances that are reported. How many illegal aliens, a prime target, have used their own weapons, but not reported it? How many convicted felons, no longer allowed to legally possess guns, have defended themselves and not reported it? As far as that goes, how many everyday “Joe Citizen” has protected themselves or their families, and since nothing came of it, opted not to report it.
    Full disclosure, i’m not a gun nut, but i did have a job years ago where i was required to carry concealed. One night after work i went to shoot pool and have a beer with some colleagues who were not required to carry. I left earlier than they. The next day they told me a guy came it demanding of another patron the $20 owed over a drug deal. When the other guy didn’t have the money he was shot. Fat R jumped on the guy and was wrestling with him on the ground, big R, the tough guy football star, yelled, “HE’S GOT A GUN” and everybody took off running.
    When they told me and said they wished I’d been there i began thinking. Here we are in a small enclose place, everybody’s had a beer or two – or more, and we have two people engaging in a gun fight. It occurred to me that, while i would be trying to not shoot anybody but the guy shooting at me, therefor shooting at a target clear of others, he had already killed one person, and they can only hang him once as the saying goes, so he wouldn’t be trying to only shoot at me, he’d be shooting my my general direction and not concerned with those about me.
    I don’t visit biker bars, gang club house bars, or any like that any more., and i haven’t carried for more than 30 years. I decided i didn’t care if i got shot, but didn’t want to shoot anybody else. Then i married. I now have two grandsons. I’m back in that position where it is up to me to protect them,.
    If i were still in Chicago or Portland in these times i wouldn’t step out my door with out a piece or two or three on me.
    Rodney King riots – police dispatcher tells cops surrounded on the scene “You’re on your own.”
    Chiefs of Police, Mayors, City Counsels telling police on the line, at the scene of riots, looting and arson to “Give them space. They’ll wear themselves out.” (Baltimore, Portland, and how many others.
    Yeah, i can depend on them for protection.

  2. I have seen many “Comparisons” of the U.S. to England, Europe and Australia, saying how less guns save lives. But they never mention the facts. They have a different reporting system, They have fewer by far large populations centers. I have only found one person who did a side by side comparison of facts! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa98FHuaU0&list=PLrXZC6QMQiVPDNGuQemVo6vXeiLC5Z3qJ The media does look for the facts that fit the sensational image they want to put out to the public. If you live in a area of high crime, Will you wait for 911 to respond? I assure you they will show up eventually with crime scene tape and chalk and take a report. They will not be available to protect you, your family or your property in time to do more then that.

    1. David,
      Thanks for your comment and for the link to an interesting video. While I don’t agree with everything in the video, I do agree that statistics can be (and often are) used selectively to build a case for a particular view point. I also agree about the solutions proposed to reduce crime in high population areas – education and jobs. However, nothing said really challenges the central point I’m making — namely that the claim that “guns save lives” is not supported by the available facts.

      I made the comparison between the US and the UK to demonstrate that having more guns does not in fact lead to fewer gun deaths. Even if there are minor reporting differences between the countries, the gap is so enormous that it cannot be dismissed as statistical trickery. Furthermore, I use comparisons _within_ the US to control for any problem we might encounter in a cross-country comparison. Here again, comparing states within the US, the conclusion is the same: more guns in hands of more people is correlated with higher, not lower, gun related deaths. Finally, I introduce the issue of suicide to highlight that most gun deaths do not occur in the course of a violent gun crime. Being suicidal and having access to a gun is a more dangerous mix than being suicidal and not having access to a gun. Guns in these cases aren’t saving lives.

      I understand that many people _believe_ guns make them safer. But the data just doesn’t support that belief. Thanks again for the comment!

Comments are closed.