Talking about safety, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? I am pretty sure, the answer by many of you would be, possession of a weapon would assure safety. Do you really think possessing a gun or any weapon keeps you safer? Give it a thought. Matthew Miller, a professor of health sciences and epidemiology at the Northeastern University carried out a research which states that keeping a gun or any other weapon doesn’t keep you safer. You may wonder how is that possible, stick on to the article to know about it.
“One-third of all households have guns, and I just don’t think people are aware of the risks that they’re assuming for themselves, or imposing on everyone else who lives in that home,” says Miller. “I don’t think people have the information. I don’t think that they have internalized the risks.”
Miller is one of the nation’s leading researchers of gun violence and thus stepped forward to take on the responsibility for piecing together that information. He carried out research which clearly states that people in households with guns face increased risk of injury, death, and suicide, is painstaking. Americans are unaware of the fact that access to guns increases the risk of suicide and also the parents tend to forget to make their guns inaccessible to children who are at risk of doing harm to themselves. Over 40,000 deaths have been recorded by guns in the United States in 2017.
“As opposed to the thousands who are looking at health insurance, or the delivery of medical health care, or infectious disease,” Miller says. “The number of people who die by motor vehicles every year is about the same as dying by firearms. And 50 times as much money is spent on motor vehicle crash research—every year, federal funds—compared to funds spent on gun research.”
It was not at all an easy path for Miller as the path to this line of research was itself complicated and painful. There is an ardent need for the people to know about his research and just give it a thought.
“I don’t think human beings have all that much insight into why they do lots of things,” says Miller.
Priyanka Rawat