A new study published on Monday by Stanford University researchers shows that those who live with a handgun in the home are much more likely to die from homicide.
According to the study, there's no evidence that having a handgun in the home is an effective form of protection, and having one increases the risk of homicide for those in the house.
"People living with handgun owners are about seven times more likely to be shot by their spouse or intimate partner," said David Studdert, a professor of health policy at Stanford University and lead author of the study.
The study analyzed homicide rates of about 17.6 million Californians, over the age of 21, between 2004 and 2016.
Of this large portion of the population, around 600,000 began living with handgun owners over a 12 year period. This group either began living with a person who already owned a handgun, or bought one during that time period.
Based on the study's results, researchers found that people living with handgun owners were more than twice as likely to die by homicide, and nearly three times as likely to die from gun violence.
People were more than four times likely to be killed by a gun in a handgun-owning home compared to non-handgun owning homes.
And it's far less likely that an attack will be carried out by a stranger in these types of homes.
"Those kinds of attacks were much less common than attacks by family members, friends, spouses," he said.
The risk is even higher for women.
"We should recognize that the vast majority of those victims were women, about 84% were women," said Studdert.
"Women are disproportionately at risk because they are most commonly the person in that position, of living in a home with a gun, when they are not the gun owner," he said.