DID YOU KNOW? Living in a home with a gun raises the risk of suicide and homicide for women.

• In 2006, 4,184 women were killed with firearms in the United States.  Just over half of firearm deaths to women are suicides (2,149) and just under half (1,905) are homicides (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC)).
• In 2007, 7,181 women were treated in emergency rooms for a gunshot wound.  Sixty-seven percent of the injuries (4,808) 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)

DID YOU KNOW? Because of high household gun ownership, women in the United States are at higher risk of homicide victimization than are women in any other high-income country.

• 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).
• Gun owners are 7.8 times more likely than non-gun owners to have threatened their partners with guns (Rothman, p. 62).
• Murder is the leading cause of injury-related death for women in the workplace (Hoskins, 2005). 
  

• Women are more than twice as likely to be shot to death by their male intimates as they are to be shot, stabbed, strangled or killed in any other way by a stranger (Kellermann, p. 1).
• For non-fatal injuries treated in emergency rooms, women are 3.6 times more likely than men to be shot by a current or former spouse than by a stranger (Wiebe, p. 405). 
  
• 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).
• Firearms appear to be more common in homes where battering has occurred (36.7 percent) than in the general population (16.7 percent) (Sorenson and Wiebe, p. 1412).
• 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).
• Batterers threaten their victims with guns by threatening to shoot them, cleaning, holding or loading a gun during an argument, threatening to shoot at a pet or person the victim cares about, and shooting a gun during an argument with the victim (Rothman, p. 62).
• The health-related costs of rape, physical assault, stalking, and homicide by intimate partners exceed $5.8 billion each year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003).
  

SOLUTION: Without stronger, sensible gun laws, thousands upon thousands of people will continue to die and be injured needlessly each year.  The Brady Campaign fights for sensible gun laws to protect you, your family, and your community.

Sources

Azrael, Deborah, and David Hemenway. “’In the safety of your own home’: results from a national survey on gun use at home.” Social Science & Medicine 50 (2000): 285-91.

Bailey, James E., et al, “Risk Factors for Violent Death in the Home,” Archives of Internal Medicine, 157(14) (1997):777-782

Campbell, Jacquelyn C., et al, “Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a Multisite Case Control Study,” American Journal of Public Health, 93(7) (July 2003): 1089-1097

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Press Release: CDC Reports the Health-Related Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women Exceeds $5.8 Billion Each Year in the United States, Office of Enterprise Communication, April 28, 2003, available at www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r030428.htm

Hemenway, David, Tomoko Shinoda-Tagawa, Matthew Miller, “Firearm Availability and Female Homicide Victimization Rates Among 25 Populous High-Income Countries,” Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association 57(2) (Spring 2002):100-104.

Hemenway, David and Azrael, Deborah, “The Relative Frequency of Offensive and Defensive Gun Uses: Results from a National Survey,” Violence and Victims 15(3) (2000): 257-272

Hoskins, Anne B. “Occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities among women,” Monthly Labor Review, October 2005, accessed 8/25/2009 at http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/10/art4full.pdf

Kellermann, AL and Mercy JA, “Men, women, and murder: gender-specific differences in rates of fatal violence and victimization,” Journal of Trauma, 33(1) (1992): 1-5

National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (2006 (deaths) and 2007 (injuries), most recent year available), www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/.  Calculations by Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2009

Rothman, Emily F, et al, “Batterers’ Use of Guns to Threaten Intimate Partners,” Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association 60(1)(2005): 62-68

Saltzman LE, et al, “Weapon Involvement and Injury Outcomes in Family and Intimate Assaults,” Journal of the American Medical Association 267(22) (June 1992):3043-0937

Sorenson, Susan B., ”Firearm Use in Intimate Partner Violence,” Evaluation Review, 30(3) (2006):229-236.

Sorenson, Susan B. and D. J. Wiebe, “Weapons in the Lives of Battered Women,” American Journal of Public Health 94 (2004):1412-1417

Wiebe, Douglas J. “Sex Differences in the Perpetrator-Victim Relationship Among Emergency Department Patients Presenting with Nonfatal Firearm-Related Injuries,” Annals of Emergency Medicine 42(3) (2003): 405-412.

Zimring, Franklin, and Gordon Hawkins, Crime is not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997