Guns Make It Too Easy To Kill

This is a hard fact to argue with -- that an abused woman is five times more likely to be killed by her abuser if that abuser owns a gun. While this does not mean the only way to kill is with a gun, it does tend to show that owning a gun makes it very easy to kill. Here are some other interesting facts (from the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence):

In 2007, 4,177 women were killed with firearms in the United States. Just over half of firearm deaths to women are suicides (2,171) and just under half (1,865) are homicides(National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC)).

In 2008, 7,451 women were treated in emergency rooms for a gunshot wound. Sixty-six percent of the injuries (4,892) were assault-related (NCIPC).

16 in every 1,000 U.S. women have been threatened with a gun (Sorenson, 2006, p.235).

For women, living in a home with a gun raises the risk of suicide by a factor of 4.6 (Bailey, 1997, p. 777).

For women, living in a home with a gun raises the risk of homicide by a factor of 3.4 (Bailey, 1997, p. 777)

Among high-income countries, the U. S. accounts for 32 percent of the female population but 70 percent of all female homicides (Hemenway, 2002, p. 100).

U.S. women's firearm death rate is 12 times higher than the combined rate of 22 other populous, high-income countries (Richardson, p. 4). 

Gun owners are 7.8 times more likely than non-gun owners to have threatened their partners with guns (Rothman, p. 62).

Over 90 percent of female homicide victims are killed by someone they know (VPC, p. 3, based on 2008 data). 

When firearms are used in a family or intimate assault, death is 12 times more likely than if another weapon is used (Saltzman, p. 3043).

An abuser’s access to a gun is associated with an 8-fold increase in the risk of homicide (Campbell, p. 1090).

In two thirds of battered women’s households that contained a firearm, the intimate partner used the gun against the woman, usually threatening to shoot/kill her (71.4 percent) or to shoot at her (5.1 percent). (Sorenson and Wiebe, p. 1412).