Myth: Trigger locks will keep children from accidentally shooting themselves

Fact: 31 of 32 models of gun locks tested by the government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission could be opened without the key. According to their spokesperson, “We found you could open locks with paper clips, a pair of scissors or tweezers, or you could whack them on the table and they would open.”¹

Fact: 85% of all communities in America recorded no juvenile homicides in 1995, and 93.4% of communities recorded one or no juvenile arrests (not convictions) for murder.²

Fact: In 1996, even though there were around 80 million people who owned a firearm, there were only 44 accidental gun deaths for children under age 10, or about 0.0001%.³

Fact: California has a trigger lock law and saw a 12% increase in fatal firearm accidents in 1994. Texas doesn’t have one and experienced a 28% decrease in the same year.⁴ Also: trigger-locks render a firearm inaccessible for timely self-defense.

Fact: Children as young as seven (7) years old have demonstrated that they can pick or break a trigger lock; or that they can operate a gun with a trigger lock in place.⁵ Over half of non-criminal firearm deaths for children over age seven are suicides, so trigger locks are unlikely to reduce these deaths.

Fact: If criminals are deterred from attacking victims because of the fear that people might be able to defend themselves, gun locks may in turn reduce the danger to criminals committing crime, and thus increase crime. This problem is exacerbated because many mechanical locks (such as barrel or trigger locks) also require that the gun be stored unloaded.

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info