Researcher: Owning a gun for safety like hiding from lightning under a tree

In video uploaded to YouTube on Saturday, Arthur Kellermann of the RAND Corporation said that keeping a gun in your home was a bad way to protect your family.

"It's natural to want to do everything you can to keep you family safe, especially if you live in a dangerous neighborhood," he told the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. "In a thunderstorm, it is also natural to take cover under the nearest tree, but that doesn't make it a good idea."

Kellermann has published several studies on gun ownership, which found keeping a firearm in the home increased the odds a family member would become a homicide victim. Not surprisingly, gun rights advocates have claimed that his research is flawed.

"The facts are this: While there are occasionally instances where someone uses a gun for self-defense effectively, the number of times a gun in the home is involved in the death of a child, the death of a family member, [or] the death of a visiting relative who is depressed vastly overwhelms the number of cases where a gun is used for self-defense," he explained.

"That work has been out and available for over 15 years, and multiple studies have shown homes where guns are kept are actually more likely to be the scene of a homicide or a suicide than homes in exactly the same neighborhoods without guns."

He advised those who wished to keep a gun in the home to store it in a highly secure location that couldn't be accessed by intruders or distraught family members.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below: