The point of the study can be summed up by one of the researchers who worked on the study. “We found zero evidence of any kind of protective effects” from possessing a firearm in one’s home, said David Studdert, a Stanford University researcher.

However, the study is so flawed even the left-leaning Associated Press admitted it had serious issues. The author wrote:

The study has several shortcomings. For example, the researchers said they could not determine which victims were killed by the handgun owners or with the in-home weapons. They couldn’t account for illegal guns and looked only at handguns, not rifles or other firearms.

The dataset also was limited to registered voters in California who were 21 and older. It’s not clear that the findings are generalizable to the whole state, let alone to the rest of the country, the authors acknowledged.

To put it simply, those conducting the study didn’t bother to find out how the victims were killed or whether the handgun in the home had anything to do with their deaths. They also chose not to find out if the weapons were obtained legally or illegally, which makes a difference when discussing gun control legislation.

Nevertheless, there are still folks pretending the study’s results should be taken seriously.

Cassandra Crifasi, a gun violence policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University called it a “landmark study” and insisted that it “contributes to our understanding of the potential causal relationship between guns in the home and homicides.”

The study looked at about 600,000 Californians who began living in homes containing firearms between October 2004 and December 2016. These people either started living with a person who already owned a handgun or with someone who purchased one after they began cohabitating.

Researchers found that for every 100,000 people living with a gun owner, 12 will be killed by someone using a firearm over five years. Conversely, about eight out of 100,000 people who don’t live with gun owners would meet the same fate.

“The rates are low” and the absolute risk is small, but it’s important to consider the increase in a person’s risk of being killed, Studdert noted.

While this particular study focused only on California, Crifasi argued that the risk is likely higher in states without extremely restrictive gun laws.

The Associated Press also pointed out that the study “goes further in addressing the perception that handguns are still worthwhile because of the safety they provide against being murdered.”

“The reason people have guns in their home is for protection from strangers,” said David Hemenway, director of Harvard University’s Injury Control Research Center. “But what this is showing that having a gun in the home is bad for people in the home.”

If these folks wished to successfully argue that possessing firearms makes one less safe, they didn’t exactly knock it out of the park with this one. Let’s say the study’s findings are accurate. Even in that case, it wouldn’t exactly be a winner when it comes to advocating for more gun control. If a person never drives a car and doesn’t even possess one, they would be far less likely to die in a car accident. It is common sense.

However, the risk that gun ownership might pose to those who possess guns is still not nearly as threatening as becoming the victim of a violent crime. Even the most conservative of studies reveal that Americans use guns far more often each year to defend themselves or others than they do to victimize other people – or even themselves. A gun owner is more likely to use their weapon in self defense than in suicide or the commission of a crime. It seems interesting that the study did not address this, but not surprising. Perhaps this is why fewer Americans are supporting more restrictive gun control laws – the anti-gun crowd’s arguments are no longer as effective as they used to be.