Firearm Safety
in America

2006

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 30-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 77%, while the U.S. population has more than doubled and the number of firearms has quintupled. Among children, such deaths have decreased 90% 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 2003, there were 762 such deaths nationally, including 56 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, 0.25 per 100,000 population, down 93% 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 24% since 1993.
• Firearms are involved in 0.65% of accidental deaths nationally, and in 1% among children. Most accidental deaths involve, or are due to, motor vehicles (40%), poisoning (17%), falls (15%), suffocation (5%), drowning (3%), fires (3%), medical mistakes (2%), environmental factors (1%), and bicycles and tricycles (1%). Among children: motor vehicles (45%), suffocation (16%), drowning (15%), fires (9%), bicycles and tricycles (2%), poisoning (2%), falls (2%), environmental factors (2%), 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® 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 25,000 schools, civic groups, and law enforcement agencies to reach more than 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's then-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, and likely 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have claimed that 13 children are killed with guns every day. 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") 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 6.5 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 Network. 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® was introduced nationwide.

1. See BATFE, "Annual Firearm Manufacturers and Export Reports" (www.atf.gov/firearms/stats/index.htm).

2. FBI, Crime in the United States 2004 (www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/) and BJS (http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/).

3. See http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/or wonder.cdc.gov.

4. Available at http://www.nsc.org//.

5. See www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=127.

6. For more on NRA training programs, visit http://www.nrahq.org/education/index.asp (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 800-231-0752.

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.