De Nardis, Paolo and Roberta Iannone. 2019 ‘Types of Homicide Committed with Legally Owned Weapons.’ Safety and Legality: Weapons in the Homes of Italians (Sicurezza e Legalità: le Armi nelle Case degli Italiani). Rome: Università La Sapienza. 12 April

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About 68% of the events are family homicides. In 60% of the cases the physical proximity between the perpetrator and the victim played a role in the murder (cohabitation, neighbours, etc.). In almost half of the cases the murderer committed suicide, and in another 3.5% of the cases the murderer attempted suicide. In 55% of the cases the murder occurred after a quarrel, and in 53% there had been a previous quarrel between the killer and the victim(s). In 36% of the cases it was apparently an unpremeditated act of impulse.

In only 1% of the cases was the murder racially or xenophobically motivated, and in only one case (0.35%) was it an act of common crime (a GPG killing a competitor for financial gain). Approximately 4% of the events were mass shootings, i.e. random killings in a public place of unidentified individuals, even if they belonged to a certain category, by persons motivated by an indiscriminate desire to kill.

In all cases, there were psychological problems or previous behaviour indicative of concern about the possibility of misuse of the weapons held.

[…] excessive self-defence- even culpable, as we have seen however included in the collection - does not have a significant statistical incidence. Only 2.45% of the events are related to cases of cases of excessive self-defence […] , and only in 3.86% did the event occur in excess of the defence of defence of property, often in a situation of putative self-defence […] . This figure scales down the discussion on legitimate defence, which actually concerns very few cases that the media tend to amplify excessively. to amplify.

[GPG = Guardia Particolare Giurata, Security Guard]

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