1) A gun in the home increases the risk of homicide, suicide, and accidental death. Contrary to what many people believe, having a gun in your home doesn’t make you safer but instead endangers you and your loved ones. A gun in the home makes the likelihood of homicide three times higher,suicide three to five times higher, and accidental death four times higher. For every time a gun in the home injures or kills in self-defense, there are 11 completed and attempted gun suicides, seven criminal assaults and homicides with a gun, and four unintentional shooting deaths or injuries.
2) Many children live in homes with loaded and unlocked guns. Every parent and grandparent needs to be careful where their children play and ask if there is a gun in the home. One third of all households with children younger than eighteen have a gun and more than 40 percent of gun-owning households with children store their guns unlocked.
3) Guns make violence more deadly. Contrary to what the gun industry says, guns do kill people. Guns make killing easy, efficient, and somewhat impersonal, thereby increasing the lethality of anger and violence. An estimated 41 percent of gun-related homicides and 94 percent of gun-related suicides would not occur if no guns were present.
4) Better enforcement of current gun safety laws is needed but is not enough. There is no question that we need to improve enforcement of current gun laws so that federal agencies have the information and authority they need to deny gun purchases to criminals and those who are a danger to themselves and others, and so that these agencies can go after illegal gun trafficking. However, this isn’t enough. Under current law almost anyone can buy a gun without a background check. Federal law requires that anyone purchasing a gun from a federally licensed dealer submit to a background check. But private sales, like many sales at gun shows and increasingly on the internet, do not require a background check.
5) The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is forbidden from regulating the sale and manufacture of guns. A 1976 amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Act specifically states that the Commission “shall make no ruling or order that restricts the manufacture or sale of guns, guns ammunition, or components of guns ammunition, including black powder or gun powder for guns.” As a result, the CPSC can regulate teddy bears and toy guns but not real guns, despite the fact that they are one of the most lethal consumer products.
6) Common sense gun safety laws help reduce gun violence while protecting the legal use of guns.
7) Loopholes in prior gun safety laws prevented them from being as effective as necessary. The 1993 Brady Law, which required federal background checks for guns purchased from licensed retailers, did not require such checks for guns bought through private sales. Today, 40 percent of guns are bought from private sellers. The 1994 assault weapons and large capacity magazine ban did not apply to weapons and magazines manufactured prior to the ban, allowed importation of rifles that could accept large capacity magazines, and allowed the manufacture and sale of “copy cat” assault weapons with only small differences from banned models.
8) Common sense gun safety regulations protect lawful ownership and use of guns. The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004 protected the rights of gun owners by exempting every shotgun and hunting rifle in use at the time. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proposed 2013 legislation reinstating the ban specifically exempts over 900 sporting weapons. Background checks do not prevent legal gun purchases.
9) The majority of Americans, including gun owners and NRA members, support common sense gun safety regulation. Almost three-quarters of NRA members (74%) and more than four out of five gun owners (85%) believe that all potential gun buyers should be subject to a criminal background check. Nearly two thirds of Americans (65%) and half of gun owners (50%) believe that allowing people to own assault weapons makes the country a more dangerous place.
10) Armed school guards and teachers will not necessarily make children safer but will jeopardize the futures of some children. Armed guards or officers are already in about onethird of our nation’s public schools. Columbine High School had an armed guard, and Virginia Tech had a full campus police force. There is no evidence that armed guards or police officers in schools make children safer.
11) Criminal background checks work; and making them universal at the federal level would make them far more effective. Since its implementation in 1994, the Brady Law, which instituted a federal background check requirement for sales through licensed dealers, has denied 2.1 million firearm purchase applications. However, its impact has been limited by the ability of criminals to access firearms through private sellers, who are not required to perform a background check.
12) Universal background checks will not lead to a registry of gun owners. The Brady Law of 1994 explicitly bans the creation of a registry of gun owners. Under the law, instant criminal background checks have been made on over 100 million gun sales in the last decade, without leading to the formation of any gun registry.
13) The NRA has actively prevented enforcement of current gun safety laws. Since the 1970s, the NRA and its allies in Congress have worked to attach amendments, known technically as riders, to appropriations bills that make it more difficult for the federal agencies responsible for overseeing firearms dealers to regulate criminal or negligent dealers. By banning the disclosure of data on gun sales, known as trace data, to the public, banning any electronic storage of firearms sales records, and prohibiting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives(ATF) from requiring dealers to inventory their stock of weapons, these amendments make it incredibly difficult for the government to trace the source of crime guns and to identify dealers engaging in selling guns to criminals.
14) The NRA represents a small minority of gun owners. The NRA is clearly out of sync on some issues with both gun owners and NRA members. For example, polling data show that 85 percent of gun owners46 and 74 percent of NRA members support universal background checks,47 a policy position which the NRA vehemently opposes.
So there you go. The next time one of your crazy conservative relatives wants to tell you that "the government is coming to take away all of our guns," or that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" or that "if you criminalize owning guns, only criminals will have guns," you will have some facts to shut their misinformed asses down.
Yes I understand that facts do not always work on these people, but I also know that if we are as passionate about gun violence as they are about "clinging" to their guns, and we have facts as well, we just might get something substantial on the books to protect our children.
The President asked us not to forget, I am honoring that request.
(P.S. All the information and footnotes you need to back up these statistics are contained in the link at the top of the page.)
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