Every day it seems like America’s gun problems continue to grow more severe, with gun violence in the United States reaching epic proportions. In 2020, for the first time ever, gun violence surpassed car accidents as the #1 killer of children, with more than 4,300 children and teens losing their life that year on the wrong end of a gun. (*1) So anyone who cares about the welfare of children should be deeply concerned about our growing gun problem.
The Scope of America’s Gun Problem
This epidemic of gun violence is a uniquely American phenomenon. Of all the children in the entire world killed by gun violence, 85% of those deaths involve American kids, despite the U.S. housing only around 4% of the world’s population Studies have found that children in rural areas of the U.S. are just as likely to die by gun violence as youth in urban communities, dispelling the myth that gun violence is mostly a ‘big city’ problem affecting minority groups.
The rate of gun violence here in America is 8-times that of Canada and 27-times that of Denmark. We have a murder rate that’s around 20-times higher than the average for most other developed nations. We also have a rate of accidental firearm death that’s 4-times higher than the average in other countries.
To put things in perspective, there are currently more Americans dying each day from gun violence (around 120) than there are Ukrainian soldiers being killed in the bloodiest days of combat with Russia (roughly 60 per day). Overall, the number of Americans killed by gun violence each and every year is equal to roughly 15 9/11 terrorist attacks. If we had a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 happening more than once a month, people would be, pardon the pun, up in arms. That’s how severe the gun problem is here in the United States, and yet much of the public remains rather complacent about it.
The Gun Self-Protection Myth & How It Fuels Gun Violence
We’ve always been an organization that favors personal freedom over oppression, and we respect a family’s right to own guns for hunting or special situations. But we’re also an organization that stands on science, and it’s here where any sort of defense of common gun ownership fails miserably.
Guns are marketed and promoted as a tool of self-defense, and most people own guns because they think having a firearm around will keep their family safe. A 2017 survey found 88% of gun owners had bought their weapon for self-protection. Guns are certainly effective at providing the illusion of safety; having one in your possession makes you feel empowered, as though you’re someone not to be trifled with, someone who can gain the upper hand in any situation. The problem is this feeling is just a mirage.
The truth of the matter id that the moment you obtain a gun for personal ‘protection,’ the risks to both you and your family skyrocket dramatically. In terms of the risk versus reward, it’s not even a close call: Based on real-world statistics of how firearms ultimately get used, that gun you bought for ‘self-protection’ is roughly 940 times more likely to be used for tragic purposes than legitimate self-defense. So having a loaded gun around to “protect’ your family is a lot like trying to keep your children safe by giving them hand grenades to play with, or playing a twisted game of Russian roulette where 940 chambers are loaded and only one is empty. Who in their right mind would play those odds, hoping to luck out and hit the gun protection lottery?
No matter how much gun enthusiasts try to portray firearms as a useful tool, in truth guns are the equivalent of cigarettes: A useless product that exacts a heavy toll on society and serves no legitimate purpose outside of hunting. And it really is the gun itself that’s the problem: Guns escalate arguments. They turn otherwise minor confrontations into horrible tragedies. They make ordinary human foibles deadly, and pair everyday human emotions with life and death implications. Who do you think is committing these escalating acts of gun violence? Most murders and assaults are committed by otherwise “law abiding gun owners” who lose their temper or are having a bad day.
Even if you are the victim of a crime, having a gun increases, not decreases, the odds that you’ll die or be seriously injured, because A) It encourages your attacker to meet your aggression with increased violence themselves, and B) Real-world self-defense happens in close physical proximity, where the physically stronger person will usually prevail, and your gun is just as likely to used against you as it is your adversary. Even when trying to defend yourself against a grizzly attack, your odds of dying or being seriously injured are 50% if you have a gun. If armed only with bear spray, those odds are a meager 8% – more than 6-times lower than the risk posed if you have a gun.
*1. You can find all the references and citations for the facts listed throughout this page in our eBook: Guns For Protection?
Information on Guns & the Problems They Pose
This is America, and you have the freedom to keep and carry a gun if you wish. But freedom must also be paired with responsibility. We offer up the following information in the hope that it will encourage more people to make more informed and responsible decisions, so that they stop endangering everyone around them in service to the delusional belief that having a gun around will keep them safe. If you or a loved one owns a gun, or if you’re simply concerned about gun violence in your community, please take the time to look over this information, and please share links to these pages with others. In a civilized society in the twenty-second century, there is no reason so many children should be dying over myths, fantasies and fairy tales about guns. It’s time to stop the bleeding.
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Arm yourself with information! Get our full eBook, Guns for Protection?, which is packed full of information you won’t find online. At just $4.99, it’s a must-read for anyone interested in the gun safety debate, and all proceeds from your purchase go to help kids in need.