How gun accidents happen

called out first, but when she delayed in answering (still hoping to sneak back undetected) he decided to shoot first and ask questions later. All the training in the world didn’t stop this professional gun handler from nearly killing his own daughter. This is the way your gun is likely to be used when things go bump in the night.

Another teen accidentally shot himself while investigating a suspicious noise. (USA Today, 4-7-08, 9A) It sounds like something out of a slapstick movie, but it happens a lot more than you might imagine. And another time, a man was shot by police while he was holding a would-be burglar at gunpoint. (ABC New Phoenix, 10-8-09; the police assumed he was the burglar.) Such cases of mistaken identity are anything but uncommon. You might also accidentally shoot your spouse while retrieving the weapon in the dark in the middle of the night and fumbling around for the safety, one of the major causes of accidental shooting. This is even easier to do thanks to the wonderful invention of hair-line triggers, which are a super-sensitive trigger that takes only the slightest bump or squeeze to shoot. Bottom line: the math is against you.

3. You'll have an "accidental discharge"
Still many more gun accidents occur in the process of loading, unloading, or transporting weapons. Among all gun accidents (not just those involving children) accidental discharge is responsible for a good majority of the tragedies. Here are the common things that go wrong:

The person thinks the safety is engaged (Around 5% of all accidental deaths.)
The handler thought the gun was unloaded, or that the magazine was disengaged (Around 14% of all accidental deaths)
The trigger was bumped or pulled accidentally (Around 20% of accidental deaths)
The gun fired on its own due to a manufacturing defect or malfunction (Around 5% of accidental deaths)
The gun fired while holstering/unholstering (Around 1% of accidental deaths)
The gun is dropped and fires (around 11% of accidental deaths)
The gun fires while working the safety (Around 1% of accidental deaths) (Source: Karch et al., 2008)

The remaining cases are accidents where the exact cause is unknown. Any way you slice it up, handling a gun is dangerous. Just like knives, the more you handle them, the greater your risk of being cut.

4. Gun crimes aren't just committed by criminals
The NRA (National Rifle Association) and its spokespeople are notorious for the phrase: "When guns are criminalized, only criminals will have guns." They advocate for the right of "law abiding citizens" to carry weapons. Yet there's a gaping reality flaw in such an argument. The problem is, who do you think commits most gun homicides? They usually aren’t career criminals, nor helpless citizens gunned down in the course of another crime. Gun homicides usually occur because pissed off people happen to own a gun. They are frequently "law abiding citizens" in every other regard. Owning a gun greatly increases a persons chances of acting like a jack-ass and doing something stupid that will kill someone else and land themselves in prison.

Most homicides don't occur during robberies or other crimes; they occur because someone with a gun is enraged and decides it would be a good time to use their gun. There are a myriad of examples for this every year. To read about some of them, visit truechildsafety.com and search for stories involving children being shot.

Such situations don’t just adversely affect those involved. It has impacts on countless numbers of people. When someone is gunned down because of an argument, children lose a mother or father, the most abusive thing one could ever do to them. The perpetrator destroys his own family as well. Money is drained from family funds to pay for lawyers. The children lose a parent in the most horrible way, which results in higher stress levels than any assault or molestation ever would, and causes long-term harm that makes the things parents spend their time worrying about look like nothing in comparison. It would result in severe hardship on the remaining family