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Branas compared a group of shooting victims to a similar set of "controls" who had not been shot. His results, he said, show that guns did not, on average, protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault — and in fact raised the risk by four times or more.
Researchers randomly chose 677 of those victims for the study. They came from various occupations — taxi drivers, bartenders, nurses and drug dealers. Fifty-three percent had criminal records. Six percent had guns with them when they were shot.
Adding corrections for race, neighborhood, sex and even drug trade ties, as Branas did, "doesn’t alter the underlying flaw in the reasoning," Kleck said.
In an e-mail, Kleck explained his view with an analogy. "It is precisely as if medical researchers found that insulin use is more common among persons who suffer from diabetes than among those who are not diabetic (something that is most assuredly true), and concluded that insulin use raises one’s risk of diabetes."
Does carrying a gun make you safer? Researcher uses science to find an answer
By Faye Flam / The Philadelphia Inquirer | Thursday, October 15, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Around the Nation
Branas compared a group of shooting victims to a similar set of "controls" who had not been shot. His results, he said, show that guns did not, on average, protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault — and in fact raised the risk by four times or more.
"People shouldn’t feel that firearms are going to enhance their safety," Branas said. The study was published in the current issue of the prestigious American Journal of Public Health.
Several statisticians, however, called this conclusion a stretch, and questioned whether the Penn group could account for all differences between the shooting victims and the comparison group.
Researchers randomly chose 677 of those victims for the study. They came from various occupations — taxi drivers, bartenders, nurses and drug dealers. Fifty-three percent had criminal records. Six percent had guns with them when they were shot.
Branas offered several possible explanations. Having guns could induce people to behave differently, he said, perhaps emboldening them to stand up to attackers. Another possibility, he said, is that people are having their firearms turned on them.