People who own guns for protection might turn their weapons on themselves
Impulsive suicides in moments of despair are disturbingly common. Suicides by gunfire outnum- ber gun murders each year (Miller and Hemenway,
2008). In 2011, just about 20,000 people ended their lives with firearms. Murderers dispatched about 11,000 individuals using bullets that year (CDC, 2013b). So Americans were almost twice as likely to die by their own hands as to be shot dead by a criminal that year. When police officers decide that they want to die, they know that “eat- ing the gun” and then pulling the trigger will not fail to meet their goal.
Guns owned for protection can accidentally discharge and claim a significant number of lives and mar many others
During 2011, almost 600 people perished from accidental discharges of firearms. Many more were wounded by bullets from loaded guns that went off unexpectedly (CDC, 2013b). Over 135 of these accidental deaths by gunfire were of children and teenagers (Brady Center, 2013a). These troubling figures turn out to be underesti- mates. Investigative journalists reviewing deaths of children from firearms discovered that such fatal accidental shootings took place roughly twice as often as the official records indicate because of inconsistencies in the ways authorities classify these cases (Luo and McIntre, 2013). Some of these unintentional deaths from stray bullets are particularly poignant if not outrageous:
A licensed security guard is showing his permitted concealed handgun to another member of his congre- gation who is interested in buying a gun for his 21st birthday. The guard thinks the gun is unloaded, but he forgets that one bullet is still in the chamber. The gun discharges accidentally, and the bullet penetrates the wall of a room in the church before striking the pastor’s 20-year-old daughter in the head. After a week in the intensive care unit, the young woman, who is the girlfriend of the young man shopping for a weapon, perishes in the hospital. (Daily Mail Reporter, 2012)
A mother is in a department store with her two-year- old son and her three other children. Left alone for a moment in a shopping cart, the toddler reaches into his mother’s purse. He discovers a small caliber handgun, for which she has a concealed weapons
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permit. He plays with it and it discharges one time, striking and killing his 29-year-old mother. (Geranios, 2014)
Besides these terrible accidents, gun control advocates bring up horror stories like the following incidents to illustrate how individuals who mistak- enly perceive themselves to be in grave danger might fire their guns in error, causing avoidable tragedies:
Two teenage boys play hooky from high school. When the father of one of the boys returns home unexpectedly in the early afternoon, they quickly hide in a closet. The father hears muffled noises, mistakes the boys for burglars, grabs his gun, and fires through the closet door. After the 15-year-old friend dies from his wounds, the father is arrested and charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and criminal posses- sion of a weapon, even though the victim’s parents did not want to press charges. (Friefeld, 2000)
Two teenage boys, 15 and 16, take a shortcut across a neighbor’s yard at night. A 74-year-old neighbor sees the shadowy figures, opens a window, and fires his handgun at what he suspects are burglars about to break into his home. One boy is wounded in the arm, and they both run home. The injured teen’s mother frantically drives them to the hospital and is involved in a head-on collision. She is killed and they sustain further injuries. The elderly man is indicted on charges of aggravated assault and faces up to 20 years in prison. (Thornburgh, 2008)
Overall, the rate of fatal shootings of children under 15 years of age, another important indicator of misuse and misjudged risks, is more than 10 times higher in the United States than in 25 other indus- trialized countries combined (Children’s Defense Fund, 2005). A child is hospitalized from a bullet wound every hour; and a child is killed by gunfire every other day (Goldstein, 2014).