Not exactly thorough. Did it cut down on the rate of successful robberies? Nonfatal assault outcomes? Animal attacks? There are more reasons than just stopping murders to have a handgun.
Living with a handgun owner particularly increased the risk of being shot to death in a domestic violence incident, and it did not provide any protection against being killed at home by a stranger, the researchers found.
People who lived with handgun owners “did not experience such fatal [stranger] attacks at lower rates than their neighbors in gun-free homes”, the researchers wrote, noting that stranger homicides at home were “a small minority” of the homicides observed in the study.
The study focused only on homicide risk and did not examine how living with a handgun owner might increase or decrease the risk of being victimized in other ways, including by nonfatal assault, home invasion, or property theft.