The second amendment of the constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. As the specter of gun violence continues in our workplaces, roads and schools, the question keeps arising: do guns keep you safe, or just increase the level of violence?
CeaseFirePA's simplistic statement is demonstrably false. As the number of guns in the United States has steadily risen by several million a year, to an all-time high, the number of accidental firearm-related deaths, in general and among children in particular, has decreased dramatically--86 percent, from 1975 to the present.
The most common causes of accidental deaths among children are motor vehicle accidents, suffocation, fire, drowning, bicycle accidents, poisoning, and environmental factors. Firearm accidents account for one percent.
NRA believes that firearms kept at home should be unloaded when not needed for use, more so if unauthorized persons might obtain access to the firearm. Many people keep firearms loaded when they are at home, for protection, of course. And, hundreds of times each day home owners use firearms for protection against criminals.
Whether to have firearms, and whether to keep firearms loaded at home is a decision for each person to make, based upon his or her circumstances. For CeaseFirePA to spew out ideologically-motivated soundbites that are flat-out factually incorrect may tell us something about them, but it adds nothing to our efforts to reduce accidents.
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