People with firearm access are far more likely to experience gun violence than to use their weapon for self-defense, according to a new Rutgers Health study.
Although self-defense is the primary reason most firearm owners report carrying, less than 1% of adults with firearm access surveyed by the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center used a gun for self-defense in the past year.
The research challenges the narrative that gun owners carrying around a firearm for self-defense are routinely preventing tragedies, said Michael Anestis, executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers and lead author of the study.
“It certainly could happen,” said Anestis. “The issue is, it just happens so much more rarely than a lot of the tragedies that are not part of the narrative.”
The New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center estimates approximately 97.8 million U.S adults have household firearm access. More and more gun owners cite self-defense, instead of other factors like hunting or sport shooting, as a major reason they own a gun.
However, the Rutgers Health study, which surveyed 3,000 adults with firearm access from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults in May 2024, found adults with firearm access are far more likely to be exposed to gun violence, both throughout their entire lives and in the past year.
For example, 34% said they lost a friend or loved one to firearm suicide in their lifetime and 33% said they had heard gunshots in their neighborhood in the past year.
The study also found that in the rare instances where someone reported firing at a perceived threat, those individuals were more likely to have experienced gun violence themselves.
About 60% of the instances of shooting a firearm at a threat occurred among individuals who had previously been shot, despite such individuals accounting for only 2% of the sample.
That means the majority of gun violence is happening “amongst a small group of folks who have been harmed by guns,” said Anestis.
The New Jersey Second Amendment Society, a non-profit, civil rights organization, condemned the study as highly biased in a statement sent to NJ Advance Media.
“If this ‘study’ had any validity, then we should immediately disarm all politicians, judges, and Governor Murphy for their own safety. Millions of Americans every year use firearms to safely protect themselves and loved ones against violent criminals, including women against sexual assault. The fact is: disarming the innocent is the cruelest form of violence and only emboldens violent criminals for easy victims,” said President Alex “Alejandro” Roubian in a statement.
The study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, is not saying “guns are bad, don’t get one,” said Anestis. “It’s saying the story people are being sold by people who profit off guns isn’t accurate.”
“What bothers me is how many people are looking through a distorted lens that doesn’t help them and doesn’t align with their values, which are that they want to protect themselves and keep their families safe. But they’re pursuing it in a way that is not as likely to help them as they think it is,” said Anestis.
Research shows that people living in a home with access to firearms are at a higher risk of suicide and more likely to be a victim of a homicide.
Firearms also present a risk for intentional or unintentional injury to children. Data recorded during 2003-2021 by the National Violent Death Reporting System identified 1,262 unintentional firearm injury deaths among children aged 0–17 years, with the majority fatally injured in their own home. Approximately 67% of shooters were playing with or showing the firearm to others when it discharged.
Access to a firearm is also associated with an increased risk of intimate partner violence and domestic homicide, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, the country’s largest gun violence protection organization.
“None of that is what the firearm owner intended when they purchased the gun,” said Anestis. “People are making decisions based off something that feels real to them and overlooking all the other risks.”
New Jersey has seen a jump in the number of people seeking carry permits since a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a New York law requiring people to demonstrate a particular need for carrying a gun in order to get a license to carry one in public. Although New York was at the center of the case, the ruling immediately affected other states with similar laws, like New Jersey.
The Attorney General’s Permit to Carry dashboard shows that since the decision, 65,104 applications have been filed and all but 333 were approved. Prior to the court ruling, 1,585 carry permit applications were received between December 2019 and June 2022. Of those, 39 were denied.
Before the landmark ruling, New Jersey was one of eight states that had a concealed carry permitting processes that could deny an applicant if they have not shown a “justifiable need” to carry a weapon publicly. That was defined as “urgent necessity for self-protection, as evidenced by specific threats or previous attacks which demonstrate a special danger to the applicant’s life that cannot be avoided by means other than by issuance of a permit to carry a handgun.”
Stories by Jackie Roman
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Jackie Roman may be reached at jroman@njadvancemedia.com.