This feature appears in the May ‘17 issue of NRA America’s 1st Freedom, one of the official journals of the National Rifle Association.
2015 firearm accidents at an all-time low while firearm sales soared to an all-time high.
Accidental deaths by firearms reached an all-time low in 2015, according to statistics released by the National Safety Council. Firearms were involved in only 0.3 percent of all accidental deaths for that year.
The Washington Examiner reports that, of the 146,571 accidental deaths occurring nationwide that year, only 489 involved a gun. That is the lowest number ever recorded since the NSC began tracking accidental deaths in 1993.
Guns were not a leading cause of death in any age group cited in the study, trailing suffocation, auto accidents, drug overdoses and falls.
Contrast that decline with skyrocketing gun sales: The FBI conducted more than 23 million background checks in 2015, also an all-time high.
Gun control advocates will be hard-pressed to explain why accidental gun deaths declined 17 percent in 2015, while background checks for firearm purchases continued at a record pace.
We’re curious how Bloomberg’s Everytown For Gun Safety will react to this news; after all, they’ve hijacked “gun safety” for their name. However, the only tool the group uses to pursue this goal is a hammer, with which they beat gun owners, legislators and employers in hopes they will submit to their restrictive schemes. When the universe of guns is expanding, they can hardly claim that their tactics deserve the credit.
However, NRA members—being the people who literally wrote the book on gun safety—are certainly justified in citing our efforts to train and equip millions of gun owners in the safe and responsible handling of firearms as contributing to this good news.
