{"id":91877,"date":"2023-04-15T01:28:16","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T06:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=91877"},"modified":"2023-04-15T01:28:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T06:28:16","slug":"91877","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=91877","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Thinking About Absolute vs. Relative Risk of Negative Outcomes with Firearms<\/a><\/p>\n

Lately, I have been working on the chapter of my book on American gun culture that explores negative outcomes with firearms.<\/p>\n

Although I differ from most scholars studying guns by beginning not with gun deviance but with\u00a0the normality of guns and gun owners,<\/a>\u00a0I do take negative outcomes seriously.<\/p>\n

Trying to get a better understanding of how the United States compares to other countries in the world in terms of negative outcomes with firearms, I recently stumbled upon the\u00a0Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and its cross-national Global Burden of Disease (GBD) database<\/a>\u00a0(more about IHME GBD at the end).<\/p>\n

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The scope of the IHME GBD data is impressive:<\/p>\n

The Global Burden of Disease is collected and analyzed by a consortium of\u00a0more than 9,000 researchers<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0162 countries and territories<\/strong>. The data capture premature death and disability from\u00a0370 diseases and injuries<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0204 countries<\/strong>\u00a0and territories<\/strong>, by age and sex, from 1990 to the present.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even better, the database is publicly accessible (though permission must be requested to download) through the IHME website:\u00a0https:\/\/vizhub.healthdata.org\/gbd-results\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I will be looking at the data to better understand how the United States compares to other nations in terms of homicide, suicide, and accidental death rates. Today I begin with the most straightforward of the three: accidental death by firearm.<\/p>\n

This is interesting not only in itself, but also because it highlights something important about understanding risk when it comes to firearms. I am not among those who deny that firearms introduce risk into the lives of their owners. As I have argued on this blog and on my \u201cLight Over Heat\u201d YouTube channel,\u00a0guns are tools that are by design dangerous<\/a>, so\u00a0gun owners assume a certain amount of risk<\/a>\u00a0for themselves and their loved ones when they bring firearms into their homes and lives. The key is to be thoughtful in understanding and mitigating risk.
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