ACCIDENTAL DEATHS

Myth: Accidental gun fatalities are a serious problem

Fact: Firearm misuse causes only a small number of accidental deaths in the U.S. For example, compared to accidental death from firearms, you are:

- Four times more likely to burn to death or drown
- 17 times more likely to be poisoned
- 19 times more likely to fall
- And 53 times more likely to die in an automobile accident

Fact: In 2001, there were only 65 accidental gun deaths for children under age 13. About 11 times as many children die from drowning.

Fact: In 1993, there were 1,334 drownings and 528 firearm-related accidental deaths from ages 0-19. Firearms outnumber pools by a factor of over 30:1. Thus, the risk of drowning in a pool is nearly 100 times higher than from a firearm-related accident for everyone, and nearly 500 times for ages 0-5.

Fact: Medical mistakes kill 400,000 people per year - about one fully loaded jumbo jet per day - or about 286 times the rate of all accidental firearm deaths. This translates into 1 in 6 doctors causing an accidental death, and 1 in 56,666 gun owners doing the same.

Fact: Around 2,000 patients each year - six per day - are accidentally killed or injured in hospitals by registered nurses.

Myth: Innocent bystanders are often killed by guns.

Fact: Less than 1% of all gun homicides involve innocent bystanders.

Myth: Citizens are too incompetent
to use guns for protection.

Fact: About 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person - about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an innocent person are less than 1 in 26,000.116 And that is with citizens using guns to prevent crimes almost 2,500,000 times every year.

Myth: Gun accidents are flooding emergency rooms.

Fact: The rate of gun accidents is so low the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn't even mention them in their annual safety reports.

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