States with more guns have more police fatalities

A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health concludes that high rates of gun ownership triple the likelihood that law enforcement officers in the US will be killed on the job. These findings run counter to other ideas regarding high police fatality rates, including the expectation that police are more likely to be murdered simply because they are more likely to encounter violent criminals.

Law enforcement officers have three times the national average risk of being murdered on the job. This high occupational homicide risk exists despite officers’ training in dealing with violent criminals and protective equipment, as well as the fact that they carry their own firearms. Nearly all of these homicides are committed with firearms, and a previous study showed that only 10 percent of these deaths were caused by officers’ own guns.

These researchers probed the relationship between the prevalence of gun ownership and police deaths on the job. Using data from an FBI database of law enforcement officials’ deaths, they calculated police homicide rates by state. For gun ownership data, the researchers obtained the mean household firearm ownership per state using an annual nationwide survey known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.