FABLE VI: Since firearm accidents are a large and growing problem, we need laws mandating how people store their firearms.
To the contrary, fatal firearm accidents in the United States have been decreasing dramatically from year to year, decade to decade.1 Today they're at an all-time low among the entire population and among children in particular, and account for only 1% of fatal accidents. More common are fatal accidents involving, or due to, motor vehicles, falls, fires, poisoning, drowning, choking on ingested objects, and admitted mistakes during medical care.2 Since 1930, the U.S. population has more than doubled, the number of privately owned firearms has more than quadrupled, and the annual number of fatal firearm accidents has declined by 65%.3 Among children, fatal firearm accidents declined 24% during 1997 and 75% since 1975.4

Anti-gun activists exaggerate the number of firearm-related deaths among children more than 500%, by counting deaths among persons under the age of 20 as deaths of "children."5 In some instances, they have pretended that persons under the age of 25 were children, and Handgun Control, Inc., on at least one occasion, pretended that anyone under the age of 35 was a "child."6

When anti-gun activists misrepresent accident and other statistics and still fail to frighten people into not keeping guns in their homes, they turn to gun storage. "Mandatory storage" laws (to require all gun owners to store their firearms unloaded and locked away) and "triggerlock" laws (to require some sort of locking device to be provided with every gun sold) are designed to prohibit or, at least, discourage people from keeping their firearms ready for protection against criminals, the most common reason many people buy firearms today.

NRA opposes such laws because it would be unreasonable and potentially dangerous to set one storage requirement for all gun owners to meet. Individual gun owners have different factors to consider when determining how best to store their guns. That decision is made best in the home, not in a legislature. Gun safes and trigger locking devices have been on the market for years, of course, and remain so, available to those who decide that purchasing them fits their individual needs.

Storage and triggerlock laws could also give people the false impression that it is safe to rely upon mechanical devices, rather than upon proper firearm handling procedures. Mechanical devices can fail and many trigger locking devices pose a danger when installed on loaded firearms.

Mandatory storage laws also would be virtually impossible to enforce without violating the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches. American gun owners and civil libertarians are keenly aware that in Great Britain, a mandatory storage law was a precursor to that country's prohibition on handgun ownership.

Most states provide penalties for reckless endangerment, under which an adult found grossly negligent in the storage of a firearm can be prosecuted for a criminal offense. Responsible gun owners already store their firearms safely, in accordance with their personal needs. Irresponsible persons are not likely to undergo a character change because of a law that restates their inherent responsibilities.

NRA recognizes that education has been the key to the decline in firearm accidents. NRA's network of 39,000 Certified Instructors and Coaches nationwide trains hundreds of thousands of gun owners each year. Separately, NRA's award-winning Eddie EagleŽ Gun Safety Education program for children pre-K through 6th grade has reached more than 12 million youngsters nationwide. Our Home Firearm Safety Manual advises that: "The proper storage of firearms is the responsibility of all gun owners," and that gun owners should "store guns so they are not accessible to untrained or unauthorized persons."