Prised from dead hands

摘要

Packing heat may backfire. People who carry guns are far more likely to get shot than those who are unarmed, a study of shooting victims in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has found.rnIt would be impractical - not to say unethical - to randomly assign volunteers to carry a gun or not and see what happens. So Charles Branas's team at the University of Pennsylvania analysed 677 shootings over two-and-a-half years to discover whether victims were carrying at the time, and compared them to other Philly residents of similar age, sex and ethnicity. The team also accounted for further potentially confounding differences, such as the socioeconomic status of their neighbourhood.