Gun Ownership Rates Tied to Domestic Homicides, but Not Other Killings, Study Finds

That means that women, who make up most victims of domestic homicide, are among those most at risk, said Aaron Kivisto, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Indianapolis and the lead author on the study.

“It is women, in particular, who are bearing the burden of this increased gun ownership,” he said.

The study, published Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined firearm ownership on a state-by-state level from 1990 to 2016. It found that while firearm ownership was associated with rates of gun homicide involving intimate partners and other family members, there was no significant association between gun ownership rates and the rates of other kinds of gun homicide, such as those involving friends, acquaintances and strangers.

“That was probably the most surprising finding,” Kivisto said.

“It is not a risk that is equally shared across the population,” he added.

The study reaffirms a well-known connection between access to guns and abusive relationships turning deadly, at a time when intimate partner homicides are on the rise. Research has shown that women killed by their partners are more likely to be killed with a firearm than by all other means combined, and the presence of a gun in domestic violence situations can increase the risk of homicide for women by as much as 500%, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Both men and women were at increased risk for domestic homicide when firearm ownership increased, the study found. “But the important caveat to that is, whereas men are victims in about 3 out of 4 typical homicides that occur, it fully reverses when we are talking about intimate partner homicide,” Kivisto said. “Women are 3 in 4 victims of intimate partner homicide.”

Other research has found an association between firearm ownership and homicide rates overall, but when Kivisto and a team of researchers parsed out the relationship between victim and offender, they found no association between the rates of gun ownership and nondomestic firearm homicides.

One possibility for the finding, the researchers hypothesized, is that perpetrators in nondomestic homicides are more likely to obtain their weapons illegally, or to buy a weapon legally shortly before the crime.

“These might not be gun owners as we tend to think of them, but gun obtainers,” Kivisto said.

The study estimated firearm ownership by state by looking at state hunting license data, as well as the ratio of firearm suicides to total suicides. The rate of estimated firearm ownership varied widely, ranging from about 10% in Hawaii to 69% in Wyoming, with an average ownership rate of 39%.

States with the highest firearm ownership had a 65% higher incidence rate of domestic firearm homicide compared to states with lower ownership rates.

The study comes as gun deaths overall are on the rise.

In 2017, there were 39,773 gun deaths in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When adjusted for population size, it was the highest rate of firearm deaths since the mid-1990s. Nearly two-thirds of the deaths were suicides.

A recent study found that intimate partner homicides are also on the rise, fueled primarily by gun violence. In 2017, 926 of 1,527 women killed by partners were killed with guns, the study found. Overall, gun-related domestic killings increased by 26% from 2010 to 2017.

The most recent study did not take into account state gun laws, which have been an emphasis of advocates seeking to limit access to guns in the wake of mass shootings.

These kinds of public shootings, which loom large in the national consciousness, account for only a small percentage of gun deaths. But in an analysis of shootings with four or more victims from 2009 to 2017, Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization that works to reduce gun violence, chronicled a connection in domestic violence: In at least 54% of shootings in which four or more people were killed, the perpetrator also shot a current or former intimate partner or family member.

A number of states have enacted laws to limit access to guns among people who have been convicted of domestic violence or are the subject of a protective order, and Kivisto said the study’s findings underscored the importance of those laws.

“Guns are a real risk factor,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.