[Quonuttott]

Firearm Safety In

America 2005


The number of privately owned guns in the U.S. is at an all-time high, and rises by

about 4.5 million per year.1 Meanwhile, the nation's violent crime rate has decreased every year since 1991 and is

now at a 27-year low.2 Below, statistics from 1981 forward are from the National Center for Health Statistics,3

while those prior to 1981 are from the National Safety Council.4 The NCHS' annual numbers, rates, and trends of

common accidents and selected other causes of death, for the U.S., each state, and the District of Columbia, are

available on the NRA-ILA website in spreadsheet format.5

• Firearm accident deaths have been decreasing
  
  for decades. Since 1930, their annual number has decreased 76%, while the U.S. population has more than doubled and
  
  the number of firearms has quintupled. Among children, such deaths have decreased 89% since 1975.
• Firearm
  
  accident deaths are at an all-time annual low, nationally and among children, while the U.S. population is at an
  
  all-time high. In 2002, there were 762 such deaths nationally, including 60 among children. Today, the odds are more
  
  than a million to one against a child in the U.S. dying from a firearm accident.
• The firearm accident death rate
  
  is at an all-time annual low, 0.26 per 100,000 population, down 92% since the all-time high in 1904.
• Firearms
  
  are involved in 1% of all deaths, and 1% of all deaths among children. Deaths involving firearms have decreased 19%
  
  since 1993.
• Firearms are involved in 0.7% of accidental deaths nationally, and in 1% among children. Most
  
  accidental deaths involve, or are due to, motor vehicles (41%), poisoning (16%), falls (15%), suffocation (5%),
  
  drowning (3%), fires (3%), medical mistakes (2%), environmental factors (1%), and bicycles (1%). Among children:
  
  motor vehicles (44%), suffocation (16%), drowning (16%), fires (9%), bicycles (2%), poisoning (2%), falls (2%),
  
  environmental factors (1%), and medical mistakes (1%).

Education decreases accidents. Voluntary firearms

safety training, not government intrusion, has decreased firearms accidents. NRA firearm safety programs are

conducted by 62,000 NRA Certified Instructors and Coaches nationwide. Youngsters learn firearm safety in NRA

programs offered through civic groups such as the Boy Scouts, Jaycees, the American Legion, and schools.6 NRA's

Eddie Eagle GunSafe(r) program teaches children pre-K through 6th grade that if they see a firearm without

supervision, they should "STOP! Don't Touch. Leave The Area. Tell An Adult." Since 1988, the program has been used

by more than 22,000 schools, civic groups, and law enforcement agencies to reach 18 million children.7

The "cars

and guns" myth. "Gun control" supporters advocate government intrusion, rather than education, to reduce accidents.

They claim that driver licensing and auto registration caused motor vehicle accident deaths to decline between

1968-1991, and that gun registration and gun owner licensing would reduce gun accidents. They ask, "We register

drivers and license cars, so why not guns and gun owners?"

Actually, vehicle registration and driver licensing

laws were not imposed to reduce accidents, nor did the increased regulation reduce accidents. Most vehicle

registration and driver licensing laws were imposed between the world wars, but motor vehicle accident deaths

increased sharply after 1930 and didn't begin declining until 1970. And despite more regulation of vehicles and

drivers over the years, vehicle accident deaths have increased during the last decade.

Between 1968-1991, the

years cited by the anti-gunners, the motor vehicle accident death rate dropped only 37% with vehicle registration

and driver licensing, while the firearm accident death rate dropped 50% without gun registration and gun owner

licensing. The truth is, the anti-gunners want registration and licensing not for safety, but to erect the

record-keeping apparatus necessary to make confiscation of privately owned firearms achievable in the future. The

first leader of Handgun Control, Inc. (since renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence) said that

registration was the second step in the group's three-step plan to confiscate all handguns.8

Another difference

between guns and cars is that the purchase and ownership of arms is a right expressly protected by the constitution,

whereas operating a vehicle on public roads is a privilege. A license and registration are not required to merely

own a vehicle or operate it on private property, only to do so on public roads. Similarly, a license and permit are

not typically required to buy or own a gun, or to keep a gun at home, but are usually required when hunting or

carrying a gun for protection in public places.

Anti-gunners' lies about children and guns. Brady Campaign

president, Michael Barnes, and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) claimed that 12 children die from gun accidents every

day. President Bill Clinton campaigned for so called "triggerlock" and "smart" gun laws, claiming that 13 children

are killed with guns every day. Possible 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed, "Every day in America

we lose 13 precious children to gun-related violence." The HELP Network put the figure at "an average of 9 children"

daily. Other "gun control" advocates have varyingly claimed 14 per day (or 5,000 yearly or one every 90 seconds).

Some count anyone under the age of 24 as a "child," to get even higher numbers.9 In fact, on average there is one

firearm-related death among children per day, including one accidental death every six days. Anti-gunners add the

relatively small number of firearm related deaths among children to the much larger number of deaths among juveniles

and young adults, and dishonestly call the total "children."

"Gun control" supporters point to a study claiming

that so-called "Child Access Prevention" (CAP) laws (which make it a crime, under some circumstances, to leave a gun

accessible to a child who obtains and misuses it), imposed in 12 states between 1989-1993, decreased fatal firearm

accidents among children.10 The study was produced by people from the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research

Center, a group active in the HELP (Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan) Network, which is dedicated to "changing

society's attitude toward guns so that it becomes socially unacceptable for private citizens to have handguns." The

study's flaws: Firearm accident deaths among children began declining in the mid-1970s, not in 1989, when "CAP"

laws were first imposed. Also, such accidents have decreased nationwide, not only in "CAP" states. And, also in

1989, NRA's Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program(r) was introduced nationwide.

1. See BATF, "Firearms Commerce in the

United States 2001/2002" (www.atf.gov/pub/index.htm#Firearms).

2. FBI, Crime in the United States 2003

(www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius), BJS (http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/), and FBI

(http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel...srel121304.htm and

www.fbi.gov/ucr/2004/6mosprelim04.pdf).

3. See www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars or

wonder.cdc.gov.

4. Available at www.nsc.org/.

5. See

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactShe...ad.aspx?ID=127.

6. For more on NRA training programs, visit

www.nrahq.org (click "Education and Training") or call 703-267-1500.

7. For more on the Eddie Eagle

program, visit www.nrahq.org/safety/eddie/ or call 703-267-1573.

8. Pete Shields, quoted in The New

Yorker, "A Reporter At Large: Handguns," July 26, 1976.

9. NRA-ILA "Not 12 Per Day" fact sheet,

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=21

10. Journal of the American Medical

Association, Oct. 1, 1997.



Posted: 1/21/2005