More to the point, even if you have an anger management problem, you’re still not likely to kill someone unless you have easy access to guns:
The more guns you own the more likely you are to be subject to angry outbursts that you cannot control.
This conclusion about Americans and their guns comes from a study published this week in the journal Behavioral Sciences. Researchers found that some 9 percent of people in the United States have both guns and significant anger issues.
“The new research also indicates that the 310 million firearms estimated to be in private hands in the United States are disproportionately owned by people who are prone to angry, impulsive behavior and have a potentially dangerous habit of keeping their guns close at hand,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “That’s because people owning six or more guns were more likely to fall into both of these categories than people who owned a single gun.”
The study, by psychology researchers from Duke, Harvard and other universities, states that “a large number of individuals in the United States self-report patterns of impulsive angry behavior and also possess firearms at home (8.9%) or carry guns outside the home (1.5%).”
The study’s findings are drawn from in-depth interviews with 5,563 Americans over the past decade. The key conclusion is that public policymakers’ focus on keeping guns from those with diagnosed mental illness does little to reduce the risks posed by the high level of private gun ownership in the United States.
“That’s because people owning six or more guns were more likely to fall into both of these categories than people who owned a single gun.”
They are going to be several standard deviations above the general public for paranoia as well. Not surprising. See Bundy, Cliven.
Correlation is not causation. You could infer that a tendency to angry outbursts makes you more likely to own a shitload of guns. That’s seems like the simpler conclusion. Guns don’t make their owners angry. Angry people are just more likely to arm themselves. Actually, I’m a pretty angry person (although I wouldn’t say I’m prone to violent outbursts), which is exactly why I would *never* have even one gun in the house.
They said was owning six or more guns was related to violent outbursts.