The researchers calculated that for every 100,000 people in that situation, 12 will be shot to death by someone else over five years. In comparison, eight out of 100,000 who live in gun-free homes will be killed that way over the same time span.
Those numbers suggest the risk rises 50%, but Studdert said it was actually higher: in a separate calculation designed to better account for where people live and other factors, the researchers estimated the risk was more than twice as high.
In particular, the researchers found, people who lived with handgun owners had a much higher rate of being fatally shot by a spouse or intimate partner. The vast majority of such victims, 84%, were women, they said.
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.