A 2014 review in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluded having a firearm in the home, even when it’s properly stored, doubles your risk of becoming a victim

A 2014 review in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluded having a firearm in the home, even when it’s properly stored, doubles your risk of becoming a victim of homicide and triples the risk of suicide. It doesn't say that, exactly, since it doesn't distinguish between properly stored and not properly stored cases. It is a meta-analysis; they took a bunch of papers and did the best they could. We can't say that if they're properly stored it's about the same, or worse, or better. It also acknowledged some methodological limitations, including studying overall death rates, and not specifically deaths due to guns: ...we considered studies of suicide and homicide victimization by any means, and firearm-specific outcomes may differ. Another issue the study encountered, was that gun ownership rates were not directly available to many of the aggregated studies, which therefore relied on various proxies. What makes relying on a study like this to initiate a policy of reducing gun ownership not premature? Part of a more involved system of background checks would necessarily involve more action by dealers to verify that the customer's purchase is legal. Prosecuting and holding liable individuals who fail to follow established precautions when selling dangerous products is not unusual. We do have laws like this already -- FFLs do background checks for every purchase and if they fail to do so, they can lose their license. What are the expansions that you'd like to see?