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One view is you're safer if you've got a pistol in the glove box or strapped to your body. The other view is carrying a gun only increases your chance of getting shot.
Where's the truth?
It turns out researchers are as divided over guns as everyone else. What one Ph.D. calls reliable data another labels shoddy work.
My bias is for a society in which guns become as anachronistic as slide rules, so I was encouraged by new research by epidemiologist Charles Branas of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Looking at Philadelphia gun crime statistics, Branas' research team concluded that if you live in a city like Philadelphia, your chances of being shot in an assault are more than four times greater if you carry a gun. Yikes!
POWER TRIPPING
Branas' paper, which appears next month in American Journal of Public Health, doesn't definitively say why guns pose such a danger to the owner.
But the study does speculate that having a gun gives people a false sense of power.
They may be more likely to enter dangerous places, draw their weapon when they perceive a threat or have their gun wrested away and turned on themselves.
The paper, therefore, recommends that urban residents reconsider the notion that gun ownership is "a surefire defense against a dangerous environment." It notes that drawing a gun does work out sometimes, but it advises city dwellers not to count on it.
In an interview, Branas acknowledged the study is not the final word on the question of gun possession, but a first step that he hopes leads to more exacting experiments.
"We hope to be able to learn under what conditions users are able to appropriately and effectively use their firearms," Branas said.
I then asked Branas if he knew of research that contradicted his findings. To his credit, Branas said, "Yes." He mentioned Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist.
So I called Kleck and I found out just how heated the academic debate over guns is.
Kleck sent me a critique he wrote in response to Branas' study. In it he says the Philadelphia study is the "epitome of junk science" with an "an ideologically predetermined conclusion."
If those aren't fighting words, I don't know what is.
DUELING RESEARCH
Kleck told me research he and others have done demonstrates that "you're less likely to be injured or lose property if you use a gun" to protect yourself.
His critique says it's "virtually unheard of" for someone to be injured when drawing a gun for self-protection.
He told me medical and public health publications are guilty of ignoring "sound evidence" when they advise physicians to tell patients having a gun puts them at greater risk and they should disarm.
"I'm always for more research," Kleck said, "but we already have really good data on defensive use of guns."
So there you have it: two credible researchers, two opposing views.
One says having a gun dramatically increases your odds of getting shot, at least in a city. The other says using a gun to defend yourself almost always works.
All I know is I fear for civilization if progress is viewed as going back to the days of the Wild West.
So for me, I'm going to continue to go about my business unarmed. You might say I'm following Gandhi in trying to model the change I would like to see in the world.
Of course, it's easier when I don't think about how Gandhi was shot.
