Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
The study found that having a gun in the home was not associated with any increased risk of non-gun homicide, only with gun homicide.
Dan Day writes:
Gun homicide in the home of the victim, Tim, which is what the study examined.
So now we have the totally unremarkable finding that if you get shot in your own home, there's likely to be a gun in the home. And drowning victims are usually found near water. Big deal.
The study found that overall homicide was associated with gun ownership, not just gun homicide. There are two plausible mechanisms to explain this:
Guns make violence more lethal
People at risk of homicide acquire guns for defence.
If 2. is true we would expect non-gun homicide to be just as strongly associated with gun ownership as gun homicides are. It isn't, which suggests that 1. is the more probable explanation.
