The name of Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” is a source of laughter among the knowledgeable, since America’s shooting community started teaching gun safety in 1899, making a total of 121 full years of a hobby community volunteering the time and effort to teach first the shooters and then anyone with an interest the principals of living with and using guns safely.
In chart form, here are the results. Before 1972 these numbers were taken from private and industry groups such as the National Safety Council. After 1972, these numbers were taken from the Center for Disease Control’s massive study of the causes of death from the National Death Certificate Survey.
This chart ends at 102010,. It has not been updated simply because the number of fatal firearms accidents has become very small, and is padded with hunting accidents such as falls out of tree stands, falls into deep water, and other mischances that have nothing to do with firearms.
The long term trend does continue, with a late CDC report shown below. Just remember that that the death certificate survey favors urbanized areas where politicians have denied the shooting community’s efforts to teach gun safety , and includes a substantial number of non-firearms deaths.
And the bottom line is simple enough. All this progress toward the absolute minimum number of gun accidents of any kind and come at the shooting community’s expense.
But Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” has spent a substantial fraction over the contributions of money, time, and effort donated by the law abiding members of the shooting community – and never spent a dime on teaching gun safety. Not one thin dime!
If the law abiding gun owners could get permission to teach small children who see a gun to STOP what they are doing, and GO get an adult, and to teach Col. Jeff Coopers Four Rules of Firearms Safety to those children who have reached the age of reason, the number of actual firearms accidental deaths would drop by some 400 fatalities a year within five years.
Unfortunately, actually teaching gun safety is “promoting gun culture” to gun banners.
Well, gun culture is a lot better than no culture at all. Back when anyone with the price could buy and carry a gun, the murder rate was one one eighth the current national rate. A man might lose his scalp to one of my ancestors, but he was very unlikely to be murdered.
Stranger