Home | Issues   Click Here to Download a pdf version for printing.  "Once upon a time . . . " Sometimes it seems that news reports about guns or gun owners should begin with that phrase. Those four short words would inform readers that while the story to follow will be presented as fact, it is really fiction, or better said, a myth or a fable. Unfortunately, non-truths, through constant repetition, have come to displace facts in the public dialog about guns in America. Some of these fables, as many fables do, started out with a grain of truth, but were later misrepresented and twisted to serve a particular political purpose. Others are the product of "advocacy science"-- research designed to promote a particular point of view. Still others are just incorrect assumptions that over time are given the imprimatur of fact. Whatever their source, it is vital that they be exposed as the fictions they are so that they might no longer influence the national debate. Table of Contents FABLE I: A gun in the home makes the home less safe. FABLE II: The Second Amendment to the Constitution does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. FABLE III: NRA opposes all "reasonable" gun regulations. FABLE IV: "Gun control" laws prevent crime. FABLE V: It is because of the Brady Act's five-day waiting period and the "assault weapons" law that crime has decreased. FABLE VI: Firearm accidents are a large and growing problem, we need laws mandating how people store their firearms. FABLE VII: Allowing people to carry guns for protection will lead to more violence and injuries. FABLE VIII: We should ban all firearms that have no legitimate, "sporting" purpose. FABLE IX: Gun violence is an epidemic that can be cured by public health measures. FABLE X: Firearms manufacturers should be financially liable for the actions of criminals who misuse guns. FABLE XI: Firearms are unsafe because they are not regulated under consumer protection laws. FABLE XII: Hunting and the "gun culture" teach kids to be violent. FABLE XIII: Foreign countries such as England and Japan have much less crime than the U.S. because of their stronger gun laws. FABLE XIV: There are too many gun dealers in the U.S. FABLE XV: A gun show "loophole" exists that allows many criminals and terrorists to purchase guns. NOTES: Footnotes Back To Table Of Contents FABLE I: A gun in the home makes the home less safe. Firearms are used three to five times more often to stop crimes than to commit them,1 and accidents with firearms are at an all-time recorded low.2 In spite of this, anti-firearm activists insist that the very act of keeping a firearm in the home puts family members at risk, often claiming that a gun in the home is "43 times" more likely to be used to kill a family member than an intruder, based upon a study by anti-gun researchers of firearm-related deaths in homes in King County (Seattle), Washington.3 Although Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay originally warned that their study was of a single non-representative county and noted that they failed to consider protective uses of firearms that did not result in criminals being killed, anti-gun groups and activists use the "43 times" claim without explaining the limitations of the study or how the ratio was derived. To produce the misleading ratio from the study, the only defensive or protective uses of firearms that were counted were those in which criminals were killed by would-be crime victims. This is the most serious of the study's flaws, since fatal shootings of criminals occur in only a fraction of 1% of protective firearm uses nationwide.4 Survey research by award-winning Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, has shown that firearms are used for protection as many as 2.5 million times annually.5 It should come as no surprise that Kleck's findings are reflexively dismissed by "gun control" groups, but a leading anti-gun criminologist was honest enough to acknowledge their validity. "I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country," wrote the late Marvin E. Wolfgang. "I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. . . . What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. . . . I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology."6 While the "43 times" claim is commonly used to suggest that murders and accidents are likely to occur with guns kept at home, suicides accounted for 37 of every 43 firearm-related deaths in the King County study. Nationwide, 58% of firearm-related deaths are suicides,7 a problem which is not solved by gun laws aimed at denying firearms to criminals. "Gun control" advocates would have the public believe that armed citizens often accidentally kill family members, mistaking them for criminals. But such incidents constitute less than 2% of fatal firearms accidents, or about one for every 90,000 defensive gun uses.8 In spite of the demonstrated flaws in his research, Kellermann continued to promote the idea that a gun is inherently dangerous to own. In 1993, he and a number of colleagues presented a study that claimed to show that a home with a gun was much more likely to experience a homicide.9 This study, too, was seriously flawed. Kellermann studied only homes where homicides had taken place--ignoring the millions of homes with firearms where no harm is done--and used a control group unrepresentative of American households. By looking only at homes where homicides had occurred and failing to control for more pertinent variables, such as prior criminal record or histories of violence, Kellermann et al. skewed the results of this study. After reviewing the study, Prof. Kleck noted that Kellermann's methodology is analogous to proving that since diabetics are much more likely to possess insulin than non-diabetics, possession of insulin is a risk factor for diabetes. Even Dr. Kellermann admitted, "It is possible that reverse causation accounted for some of the association we observed between gun ownership and homicide." Northwestern University Law Professor Daniel D. Polsby went further, writing, "Indeed the point is stronger than that: 'reverse causation' may account for most of the association between gun ownership and homicide. Kellermann's data simply do not allow one to draw any conclusion."10 Back To Table Of Contents FABLE II: The Second Amendment to the Constitution does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. "If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis." 1 Anyone familiar with the principles upon which this country was founded and upon which it has operated for the last two centuries will recognize this claim's most glaring flaw: In America, rights, by definition, belong to individuals. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal" and "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," while governments derive their "powers" from the consent of the governed. The Constitution and Bill of Rights repeatedly refer to the "rights" of the people and to the "powers" of government. In each case, rights belonging to "the people" are undeniably the rights of individuals. As the Supreme Court recognized in U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990), "'the people' seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and established by 'the People of the United States.' The Second Amendment protects 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,' and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to 'the people.'. . . It suggests that 'the people' protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are a part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community." Future U.S. President James Madison introduced in the House of Representatives the amendments that became our Bill of Rights. In notes for his speech proposing the amendments, Madison wrote that "They relate first to private rights." Several days later, William Grayson wrote to Patrick Henry, telling him that "[A] string of amendments were presented to the lower House; these altogether respected personal liberty."2 A week later, Tench Coxe referred to the Second Amendment in the Federal Gazette, writing that "the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."3 Samuel Adams warned that "The said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms."4 Dozens of essays have been written by the nation's foremost authorities on the Constitution, supporting the traditional understanding of the right to arms as an individually possessed right, protected by the Second Amendment. For example, Prof. Akil Reed Amar of the Yale Law School and Alan Hirsch, like Amar a former Yale Law Journal editor, wrote: "We recall that the Framers' militia was not an elite fighting force but the entire citizenry of the time: all able-bodied adult white males. Since the Second Amendment explicitly declares that its purpose is to preserve a well-regulated militia, the right to bear arms was universal in scope. The vision animating the amendment was nothing less than popular sovereignty--applied in the military realm. The Framers recognized that self-government requires the People's access to bullets as well as ballots. The armed citizenry (militia) was expected to protect against not only foreign enemies, but also a potentially tyrannical federal government. In short, the right to bear arms was intended to ensure that our government remained in the hands of the People." 5 By contrast, only a few law journal articles advocating the anti-firearm groups' view have appeared, most written by those groups' employees. (A bibliography of Second Amendment-related books, law reviews and other published works is available at www.nraila.org and from the NRA-ILA Grassroots Division.) Gun control supporters insist that "the right of the people" really means the "right of the state" to maintain the "militia" mentioned in the amendment, and that this "militia" is the National Guard. Such a claim is not only inconsistent with the statements of America's early statesmen and the concept of individual rights as understood by generations of Americans, it misdefines the term "militia." For centuries before the drafting of the Second Amendment, European political writers used the term "well regulated militia" to refer to the citizenry on the whole, armed with privately-owned weapons, led by officers chosen by themselves. America's statesmen defined the militia the same way. Richard Henry Lee (who before ratification of the Constitution was the author of the most influential writings advocating a Bill of Rights) wrote, "A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves . . . and include all men capable of bearing arms. . . . To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms. . . ."6 Making the same point, Tench Coxe wrote that the militia "are in fact the effective part of the people at large."7 George Mason asked, "[W]ho are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers."8 The Militia Act of 1792, adopted the year after the Second Amendment was ratified, declared that the Militia of the United States (members of the militia obligated to serve if called upon by the government) included all able-bodied males of age. As the U.S. Supreme Court observed in U.S. v. Miller (1939), "The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the [Constitutional] Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense . . . bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time." The National Guard was not established until 1903. In 1920 it was designated one part of the "Militia of the United States," the other part remaining all other able-bodied males of age, plus some other males and females. However, in 1990, in Perpich v. Department of Defense, the Supreme Court held that the federal government possesses absolute, unlimited power over the Guard. (The Court never mentioned the Second Amendment, noting instead that federal power over the Guard is not restricted by the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16.) Thus, the Guard is in fact the third component of the United States Army, behind the Army and Army Reserve. The Framers' independent "well regulated militia" remains as they intended, America's armed citizenry. The most thorough examination of the Second Amendment and related issues ever undertaken by a court is the Oct. 16, 2001, decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Fifth Circuit in U.S. v. Emerson, a case that centers around an individual indicted for possessing firearms while under a certain kind of restraining order, in violation of federal law. The court upheld the indictment against Emerson, noting that restrictions on the right to arms are permissible if they are "limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions or restrictions for particular cases that are reasonable and not inconsistent with the right of Americans generally to individually keep and bear their private arms as historically understood in this country." The court then devoted dozens of pages of its decision to a comprehensive examination of the Second Amendment's history and text, and court decisions and scholarship on the amendment and related issues. It began with an examination of the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Miller (1939), which individual rights opponents commonly claim supports the notion of the Second Amendment protecting only a "collective right" of a state to maintain a militia, or a "sophisticated collective right" of a person to keep and bear arms only when in service with such a militia. The Fifth Circuit disagreed. "We conclude that Miller does not support the [Clinton Administration's] collective rights or sophisticated collective rights approach to the Second Amendment. Indeed, to the extent that Miller sheds light on the matter it cuts against the government's position." The court then turned to the history and text of the Second Amendment. "There is no evidence in the text of the Second Amendment, or any other part of the Constitution, that the words 'the people' have a different connotation within the Second Amendment than when employed elsewhere in the Constitution. In fact, the text of the Constitution, as a whole, strongly suggests that the words 'the people' have precisely the same meaning within the Second Amendment as without. And as used throughout the Constitution, 'the people' have 'rights' and 'powers,' but federal and state governments only have 'powers' or 'authority', never 'rights.'" The court concluded, "We have found no historical evidence that the Second Amendment was intended to convey militia power to the states, limit the federal government's power to maintain a standing army, or applies only to members of a select militia while on active duty. All of the evidence indicates that the Second Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights, applies to and protects individual Americans. We find that the history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of its text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are a member of a select militia or performing active military service or training. We reject the collective rights and sophisticated collective rights models for interpreting the Second Amendment. We hold, consistent with Miller, that it [the amendment] protects the right of individuals, including those not then actually a member of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to privately possess and bear their own firearms." More recently, the U.S. Department of Justice officially adopted the historically correct interpretation that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right. In briefs filed May 6, 2002, with the U.S. Supreme Court, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson wrote that the position of the United States is that "the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms." Back To Table Of Contents FABLE III: NRA opposes all "reasonable" gun regulations. Anti-gun activist groups claim that all of their proposals--including gun bans, prohibitive taxes, registration and licensing to name a few-- are "moderate and reasonable." Those who oppose such ideas, they say, are "unreasonable." And they claim that NRA opposes all gun laws. The truth is, NRA supports many gun laws, including federal and state laws that prohibit the possession of firearms by certain categories of people, such as convicted violent criminals, those prohibiting sales of firearms to juveniles, and those requiring instant criminal records checks on retail firearm purchasers.1 NRA has also assisted in writing gun laws. The 1986 federal law prohibiting the manufacture and importation of "armor piercing ammunition" adopted standards NRA helped write.2 When anti-gun groups accuse NRA of opposing the law, they lie. NRA, joined by the Justice Department and Treasury Department, opposed only earlier legislation because that legislation would have banned an enormous variety of hunting, target shooting and defensive ammunition.3 The sponsor of the earlier bill, Rep. Mario Biaggi (D-N.Y.), felt that his original goals were met by the NRA-backed bill that became law. "Our final legislative product was not some watered-down version of what we set out to do," Biaggi said on the floor of the House. "In the end, there was no compromise on the part of police safety." Similarly, the anti-gun lobby also continues to falsely claim that NRA opposed all efforts to ban "plastic guns." In truth, no "plastic" firearms existed then or now. NRA only opposed a bill that would have banned millions of commonplace handguns, and instead supported an alternative, the Hughes-McCollum bill. That 1988 legislation prohibited the development and production of any firearm that would be undetectable by airport detectors, and enhanced airport security systems to counter terrorism. In the end, the NRA-backed legislation passed Congress with wide bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Reagan. At the state level, NRA has worked with legislators to write laws requiring computerized "instant" criminal records checks on purchasers of firearms and those who carry firearms for protection in public. Because crime can be reduced by correcting deficiencies in criminal justice laws and policies, NRA has worked with legislators and citizens' groups in many states to increase the length of prison sentences for violent criminals, to sentence violent criminals to prison rather than probation, to prevent the parole of the most violent convicts, and to expand prison capacity. There is nothing "moderate" or "reasonable" about the agenda of anti-gun groups. Prohibiting people from keeping guns loaded at home for protection against criminals is not "moderate" (currently the law in the District of Columbia and inherent in legislation that would require guns at home to always be locked.) A prohibition or 1,000% tax on hunting, target shooting and personal protection ammunition is also not "moderate"4 nor is a 1,400% increase in firearm dealer licensing fees and fingerprinting people who buy miscellaneous handgun parts, such as springs and pins.5 When low-income Americans are the people most likely to be attacked by violent criminals,6 prohibiting guns inexpensive enough for them to afford for protection7 is not reasonable. It is also not reasonable to prohibit people who pass criminal records checks from buying two handguns in a given month8 or to prohibit them from carrying a gun for protection.9 And when computerized criminal records checks of gun buyers can be completed in only a matter of minutes, it is unreasonable to delay their firearm purchases with a week-long waiting period.10 The siren call to bow to the demand for "reasonable" gun control is not unique to the United States. In three nations that have much in common with the United States--Australia, Canada and Great Britain--gun owners did not unify to fight the incremental imposition of restrictive gun laws touted as "reasonable and necessary." As a result, firearms are severely restricted in Canada and Australia and almost entirely prohibited in Great Britain. British gun owners failed to resist the passage of "reasonable" gun laws and have seen their rights almost completely disappear in the space of a few decades.11 England changed from a nation with almost no restrictions on gun ownership and no crime, to a nation where all but certain rifles and shotguns are banned and crime is rising.12 The clear lesson for American gun owners is simple: if you don't fight for your liberties, you lose them. Back To Table Of Contents FABLE IV: "Gun control" laws prevent crime. So overwhelming is the evidence against this myth that it borders on the absurd for anti-gun groups to try to perpetuate it. There are thousands of federal, state and local gun laws. The Gun Control Act of 1968 (Public Law 90-618, 18 U.S.C. Chapter 44) alone prohibits persons convicted of, or under indictment for, crimes punishable by more than a year in prison, fugitives, illegal drug users, illegal aliens, mental incompetents and certain other classes of people from purchasing or possessing firearms. It prohibits mail order sales of firearms, prohibits sales of firearms between non-dealer residents of other states, prohibits retail sales of handguns to persons under age 21 and rifles and shotguns to persons under age 18 and prohibits the importation of firearms "not generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes." It also established the current firearms dealer licensing system. Consider the following gun control failures. (Unless otherwise noted, crime data are from the FBI, Uniform Crime Reports.) Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun sales took effect in 1977 and by the 1990s the city's murder rate had tripled. During the years following the ban, most murders--and all firearm murders--in the city were committed with handguns.1 Chicago imposed handgun registration in 1968, and murders with handguns continued to rise. Its registration system in place, Chicago imposed a D.C.-style handgun ban in 1982, and over the next decade the annual number of handgun-related murders doubled.2 California increased its waiting period on retail and private sales of handguns from five to 15 days in 1975 (reduced to 10 days in 1996), outlawed "assault weapons" in 1989 and subjected rifles and shotguns to the waiting period in 1990. Yet since 1975, the state's annual murder rate has averaged 32% higher than the rate for the rest of the country. Maryland has imposed a waiting period and a gun purchase limit, banned several small handguns, restricted "assault weapons," and regulated private transfers of firearms even between family members and friends, yet for the last decade its murder rate has averaged 44% higher than the rate for the rest of the country, and its robbery rate has averaged highest among the states. The overall murder rate in the jurisdictions that have the most severe restrictions on firearms purchase and ownership--California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C.--is 8% higher than the rate for the rest of the country. New York has had a handgun licensing law since 1911, yet until the New York City Police Department began a massive crackdown on crime in the mid-1990s, New York City's violent crime rate was among the highest of U.S. cities. The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 imposed unprecedented restrictions relating to firearms nationwide. Yet, compared to the five years before the law, the national murder rate averaged 50% higher during the five years after the law, 75% higher during the next five years, and 81% higher during the five years after that. States where the Brady Act's waiting period was imposed had worse violent crime trends than other states. Other failures of the federal waiting period law are noted in the discussion of Fable V. The record is clear: Gun control primarily impacts upon upstanding citizens, not criminals. Crime is reduced by holding criminals accountable for their actions. Increasing incarceration rates -- Between 1980-1994, the 10 states with the greatest increases in prison population experienced an average decrease of 13% in violent crime, while the 10 states with the smallest increases in prison population experienced an average 55% increase in violent crime.3 Put violent criminals behind bars and keep them there -- In 1991, 162,000 criminals placed on probation instead of being imprisoned committed 44,000 violent crimes during their probation. In 1991, criminals released on parole committed 46,000 violent crimes while under supervision in the community for an average of 13 months.4 Nineteen percent of persons involved in the felonious killings of law enforcement officers during the last decade were on probation or parole at the time of the officers' killings.5 Enforce the law against criminals with guns -- The success of Richmond, Virginia's Project Exile, strongly supported by NRA, has grabbed the attention of the Administration, Members of Congress, big city mayors and criminologists. Project Exile is a federal, state and local effort led by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Richmond that sentences felons convicted of illegally possessing guns to a minimum of five years in prison. Following the implementation of Project Exile, the city's firearm murder rate was cut by nearly 40%.6 Recognizing the program's success, Congress in 1998 approved $2.3 million to implement Project Exile in Philadelphia, Pa., and Camden County, N.J. In 2002, the Bush Department of Justice took the Project Exile concept nationwide, targeting violent felons with guns under Project Safe Neighborhoods. Back To Table Of Contents FABLE V: It is because of the Brady Act's five-day waiting period and the "assault weapons" law that crime has decreased. (Unless otherwise noted, crime data are from the FBI, Uniform Crime Reports.) Anti-gun groups and the Clinton-Gore Administration tried to credit those two laws and, thus themselves, with the decrease. However, violent crime began declining nationally during 1991, while the Brady Act didn't take effect until Feb. 28, 1994 and the "assault weapons" law not until Sept. 13, 1994. Crime in America has declined for several other reasons. New York City, which accounted for one in 10 violent crimes in the U.S. a decade ago, cut violent crimes significantly with a widely-acclaimed crackdown on a broad range of crimes and implementation of new police strategies.1 The incarceration rate has doubled nationally.2 Additionally, during the 1990s the U.S. population aged and became less prone to violence--most notably the membership of drug gangs.3 The "assault weapon" law has been irrelevant to the decrease in crime. Not only did that law take effect well after the decrease began, "assault weapons" were and are used in only a very small percentage of violent crime.4 "Assault weapons" are still widely available on the commercial market because of increased production before the federal law ceased their manufacture. Furthermore, the law permits the manufacture of firearms that are identical to "assault weapons" except for one or more attachments.5 The Brady Act's waiting period was never imposed on many high-crime states and cities, but instead was imposed on mostly low-crime states. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were always exempt from the waiting period6 because they already had more restrictive gun laws when the Brady Act took effect.7 Those areas accounted for the majority of murders and other violent crimes in the U.S. Furthermore, during the five years the waiting period was in effect, more than a dozen other states became "Brady-exempt" as well by adopting NRA-backed instant check laws or modifying pre-existing purchase regulations. Even in states where waiting periods have been in effect, criminals have not been prevented from obtaining handguns. Only 7% of armed career criminals and 7% of "handgun predators" obtained firearms from licensed gun shops8 in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, and four of every five prison inmates get their guns from friends, family members and black market sources. 9 Eighty-five percent of police chiefs say the Brady Act's waiting period did not stop criminals from obtaining handguns.10 According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), handgun purchase denial statistics often cited by gun prohibitionists, "do not indicate whether rejected purchasers later obtained a firearm through other means."11 Summarizing the waiting period's failure, New York University Professors James M. Jacobs and Kimberley A. Potter wrote: "It is hard to see the Brady law, heralded by many politicians, the media, and Handgun Control, Inc. as an important step toward keeping handguns out of the hands of dangerous and irresponsible persons, as anything more than a sop to the widespread fear of crime."12 Waiting periods and other laws delaying handgun purchases have never reduced crime. Historically, most states with such laws have had higher violent crime rates than other states and have been more likely to have violent crime and murder rates higher than national rates. Despite a 15-day waiting period (reduced to 10 days in 1996) and a ban on "assault weapons," California's violent crime and murder rates averaged 45% and 30% higher than the rest of the country during the 1990s. When Congress approved the Brady bill, eight of the 12 states that had violent crime rates higher than the national rate, and nine of the 16 states that had murder rates higher than the national rate, were states that delayed handgun purchases. In Brady's first two years, the overall murder rate in states subject to its waiting period declined only 9%, compared to 17% in other states. Even anti-gun researcher David McDowell has written, "waiting periods have no influence on either gun homicides or gun suicides."13 Handgun Control's Sarah Brady admitted that a waiting period "is not a panacea. It's not going to stop crimes of passion or drug-related crimes."14 The Brady Act waiting period also led to fewer arrests of prohibited purchasers, compared to NRA-backed instant check systems. For example, between November 1989 and August 1998, Virginia's instant check system led to the arrests of 3,380 individuals, including 475 wanted persons.15 The General Accounting Office (GAO) found that during the Brady Act's first 17 months, only seven individuals were convicted of illegal attempts to buy handguns.16 The Dept. of Justice, citing statistics from the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, stated that during Fiscal Years 1994-1997 only 599 individuals were convicted of providing false information on either federal forms 4473 (used to document retail firearms purchases) or Brady handgun purchase application forms.17 The vast majority of persons who applied to buy handguns under the Brady Act's waiting period were law-abiding citizens. The GAO reported that during the Act's first year, 95.2% of handgun purchase applicants were approved without a hitch. Of the denials, nearly half were due to traffic tickets or administrative problems with application forms (including sending forms to the wrong law enforcement agency). Law-abiding citizens were often incorrectly denied as "criminals," because their names or other identifying information were similar to those of criminals and triggered "false hits" during records checks. GAO noted that denials reported by BATF in its one-year study of the Brady Act, "do not reflect the fact that some of the initially denied applications were subsequently approved following administrative or other appeal procedures."18 Due to NRA-backed amendments that were made to the Brady bill before its passage in 1993, the Brady Act's waiting period was replaced in November 1998 by the nationwide instant check system.19 However, in June 1998, President Clinton and the anti-gun lobby announced their desire for the waiting period to continue permanently along with the instant check. White House senior advisor Rahm Emanuel falsely claimed on June 14, 1998, that "The five-day waiting period was established for a cooling off period for crimes of passion."20 As the inclusion of its instant check amendment made clear, however, the Brady Act was imposed not for a "cooling off period," but for a records check obstacle to firearm purchases by felons, fugitives and other prohibited persons. Furthermore, during congressional hearings on the Brady bill on Sept. 30, 1993, Assistant Attorney General Eleanor Acheson testified for the Department of Justice that there were no statistics to support claims that handguns were often used in crimes soon after being purchased.21 Emanuel also brazenly claimed that, "Based on police research, 20% of the guns purchased that are used in murder are purchased within the week of the murder." But this was a falsehood typical of anti-gun advocates: BATF reports that, on average, guns recovered in murder investigations were purchased 6.6 years before involvement in those crimes.22 The Clinton-Gore Administration and anti-gun groups wanted a waiting period because it complicates the process of buying a gun and therefore may dissuade some potential gun buyers. A waiting period also can prevent a person who needs a gun for protection from acquiring one quickly. The anti-gun lobby opposes the use of firearms for protection, claiming "the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes"23 and self-defense is "not a federally guaranteed constitutional right."24 Back To Table Of Contents 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 mistakes during medical care.2 Since 1930, the U.S. population has more than doubled, the number of privately owned firearms has quintupled, and the annual number of fatal firearm accidents has declined by 74%.3 Among children, fatal firearm accidents have declined 84% 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 To these activists a 19-year-old gangster who is shot by police during a convenience store robbery is a "child." In some instances, they even 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 Along with misrepresenting accident and other statistics in an effort to frighten people into not keeping guns in their homes, anti-gun activists also advocate "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.) Both concepts are intended 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 impose one storage requirement upon all gun owners. Individual gun owners have different factors to consider when determining how best to store their guns. They alone are capable of making the decision that is best for themselves. Gun safes and trigger locking devices have been on the market for years, of course, and remain available to anyone who decides that those products fit 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 Eagle¬Æ Gun Safety Education program for children pre-K through 6th grade has reached more than 15 million youngsters nationwide. NRA's Home Firearm Safety Manual advises: "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." Back To Table Of Contents FABLE VII: Allowing people to carry guns for protection will lead to more violence and injuries. Anti-gun rhetoric is its most outlandish when the subject turns to right-to-carry laws, under which people obtain permits to carry firearms concealed for protection against criminals. For years, gun control supporters have tried to convince the public that the average person is neither smart enough, adept enough nor responsible enough to be trusted with firearms, especially where using firearms for protection is concerned. In his book, More Guns, Less Crime,1 Prof. John R. Lott, Jr. provides