by Dr. Paul Gallant

On Election Day, voters in the state of Washington will have the chance to cast their ballot for I-676, an initiative which may spell the difference between saving lives, and costing them. I-676 reads "Shall the transfer of handguns without trigger-locking devices be prohibited and persons possessing or acquiring a handgun be required to obtain a handgun safety license?" The initiative contains a smorgasbord of measures, all ostensibly aimed at making firearm ownership in America safer.

Those opting for I-676 may think their vote will save lives. That's a mistake, because I-676 is not about firearm safety. Containing some of the most restrictive provisions imaginable, I-676 is about removing the means for effective self-defense from the hands of law-abiding citizens, and making handgun ownership as difficult - and as legally perilous - as possible. Enactment of I-676 will end up costing lives.

The reality today is that firearm "safety" is a phony issue. Fatal firearm accidents fell in 1994, to the lowest annual number since record-keeping began in 1903. That number dropped even lower by almost 7% in 1995.

In 1993, there were 1,334 drownings and 528 firearm-related accidental deaths, between the ages 0-19 years. While drowning deaths would seem to outnumber firearm accidents by almost 3 to 1, that's not a fair comparison of the relative risks of accidental death.

According to the National Spa and Pool Institute, there were approximately 6 million residential pools (where the overwhelming majority of drownings occur) in the U.S. in 1993. Lawfully-owned firearms in private hands in America are estimated at 200 million. With firearms outnumbering pools by a factor of over 30 to 1, the real risk of accidental death from drowning in a pool is nearly 100 times higher than from a firearm. From age 0-5, the disparity is even more dramatic - there, the risk of drowning skyrockets to 500 times the risk from a firearm!

Any accidental death is tragic. But is the impetus for passage of I-676 really the reduction of accidental deaths? If the goal is to save lives, wouldn't all the effort - and all the money - spent on urging passage of I-676 be put to far wiser use by simply substituting "pool" for "handgun" in the language of the initiative? How many more children might live if I-676 required a minimum 8-hour safety course for "pool" owners?

Measures like I-676 shrewdly exploit the emotions of uninformed Americans, to advance an agenda of firearm-prohibition, under the guise of public "safety".

What is the human toll we can expect from firearm-prohibition? In 1995, Dr. Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz released the results of their research, and found 2.5 million or more instances of firearms used for self- defense, yearly. Dr. Kleck commented:

"Since as many as 400,000 people a year use guns in situations where the defenders claim that they 'almost certainly' saved a life by doing so, this result cannot be dismissed as trivial. If even one-tenth of these people are accurate in their stated perceptions, the number of lives saved by [would-be] victim use of guns would still exceed the total number of lives taken with guns."

"Safety" measures like trigger-locks and mandatory storage laws render firearms inaccessible for the immediacy of self-defense.

Shortly after Kleck & Gertz released their findings came a stunning admission by criminologist Marvin Wolfgang, in the Fall 1995 issue of the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology:

"I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. I hate guns ...[but Kleck and Gertz] have provided an almost clearcut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years....I cannot further debate it."

Further testimony about lives saved with a firearm came earlier this year from the University of Chicago. In a 15-year study, using data from all 3,054 counties across America, Dr. John Lott and David Mustard summed up their findings:

"...if you're interested in reducing murder and rape, then letting law-abiding, mentally competent citizens carry concealed weapons has a positive impact.....The net effect of allowing concealed handguns is clearly to save lives."

The deterrent effect of firearms carried by some citizens benefits all the rest of society, as well, because it's the criminal's perception that many armed citizens may be walking the streets which is responsible for the deterrence in criminal behavior that Dr. Lott found.

When good people are armed instead of just the bad - with guns that work - all credible evidence tells us that Americans are safer. Measures like I-676 make that firearm equation one-sided. Instead of saving lives, I-676 will more likely send us down the fast track in the wrong direction.