To the extent that data does exist, it does not tell the whole story. Even if researchers could gather and study every relevant death certificate and hospital record, we would still be unable to fully understand the nature of the safety problems that cause the reported deaths and injuries. It would be impossible to tell, for example, if a loaded chamber indicator might have helped avoid the accident by alerting the gun user that a live round was in the chamber. Similarly, reports rarely make clear whether an available manual safety was deployed when the trigger was pulled or whether the weapon lacked this basic safety feature. Indeed, most reports don’t even name the gun that misfired.
Making matters worse, as a society, we are hopelessly divided about responsibility for gun accidents. The NRA argues that all guns are safe when used properly and that accidents, when they occur, are always the fault of the shooter. They point to the existence of safety rules which, if uniformly followed, would certainly prevent many accidents.
On the other side, those who advocate better regulation point out that many guns are defective or are foreseeably misused. It is impossible to prevent guns from being dropped, accidentally pointed in the wrong direction from time-to-time, or from being found by children who do not appreciate their danger. Moreover, they argue, not every gun user is well trained and fully attentive. Many believe that basic safety features and minimum design standards would avoid both accidents caused by defects and help mitigate foreseeable negligence.
Not surprisingly, the primary responsibility for many reported gun accidents is hard to pin down. Some see criminal negligence when a gun that the user believed to be unloaded goes off, whereas others point out the absence of a clear indicator on the gun to alert the user that there is a round in the chamber. Similarly, when a child finds a loaded gun and accidentally kills herself or a family member, some blame the incident on the absence of parental supervision while others focus on the lack of a manual safety, the lightness of the trigger pull, or the absence of a safe storage law. Frequently, both viewpoints are right. There are almost certainly many incidents that are characterized as intentional when reported, or treated as criminal negligence, that also also have elements of a preventable accident.
In the absence of data and of a national discussion about the best ways to make guns more safe, this journal of media reports about gun accidents is intended to create a record, from disparate sources in multiple communities, that demonstrates the nature and types of accidents that do occur and their consequences. For the most part, readers are left to form their own conclusions about whether it would be worth the effort, in time and avoided suffering, to engage in meaningfully dialogue about whether, as a society, we are doing everything necessary to make guns as safe as possible.