What does scientific research say about gun ownership, open carry, etc.?

[Silent3]

Sorry for risking turning this forum into the gungeon. I'm hoping my fellow skeptics can help me out here without getting too emotional.

Let me start out by saying I'm not for "banning guns", the straw man position that gets thrown in your face by a lot of people any time you mention being for any sort of gun restrictions whatsoever.

On the legal side, I'd like to see licensing requirements at least as strong as for driving a car, background checks that don't have so many loopholes. I'd like to see restrictions on things like semi-automatic weapons and large capacity magazines.

Apart from whether it's legal or not, I've come to believe that the feeling of additional safety someone gets from keeping a gun at home are mostly illusory, making gun ownership a bad choice for most people. The statistics I've seen in the past show accidental deaths and suicides and homicides of family members outweigh the number of times someone's life is saved by having a gun to deter an intruder.

I got into an argument recently about open carry when I posted this cartoon on Facebook:



I was presented with statistics that purport that open carry deters crime. I don't doubt that it sometimes does, but I do doubt that it deters crime as often as people claim they've deterred a crime by having their guns on display. I also suspect that when many people carry guns -- open or concealed -- you're likely to get an escalation of violence that has to be weighed against any benefits in deterring crime.

While I can (and already have started to) see what I can learn from the University of Google, has anyone here done more thorough, and hopefully unbiased, research into the subject? I'm willing to consider that I'm suffering from confirmation bias on my own views, and will consider objective evidence to the contrary.

[Arkansas Granny]

1. I don't have any evidence to offer, but will be interested to see what this thread might turn up.

[libodem]

2. Gun phobe here

They make me nervous. I would not keep one in my home. I figure the mere presence of a firearm makes me statistically more likely to be shot with it than if the is one no where around.

Signed

Scared Shitless

[Warpy]

3. It pretty much says the greatest predictor of getting somebody in the family shot

is the presence of a gun in the home.

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full

[Silent3]

4. That's the kind of thing I've heard before that makes it seem...

...terribly unlikely that "open carry" is going to be any more beneficial for general out-and-about-in-public safety than having a gun at home is for home safety, but it doesn't directly refute claims that open carry makes the world a safer place.