"More then two of three of the one million Americans who have died by firearms violence since 1962 were killed with handguns — a total now in excess of 670,000," notes Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a national educational organization working to reduce gun death and injury in America.
Despite all the popular culture images of gun use, it wasn't until the mid-1880s that Americans had any interest in firearms. Now one-third of the 190 million weapons in the country's "domestic arsenal" are handguns. And they bring a lot of fear, physical pain, and death in their wake. Total costs to Americans of gun violence is measured in tens of billions of dollars.
Although the gun industry has played upon fear of violent crime as a marketing tool (63 percent of owners report possessing their guns for this reason), the majority of homicides in America result from confrontations between people who know each other and not from criminal attacks by strangers. Even more shocking is Sugarmann's revelation that suicide is "the hidden face of American handgun violence" — nearly six of ten suicides shoot themselves.
Another alarming statistic is that in 1997 alone, 142 kids 14 years old or younger were killed by guns unintentionally — 12 children every month or one child every two and one half days. Now the rampage of shootings in schools has drawn more attention to how easy it is for youth to get guns.
The good news is that gun ownership is declining. Only one out of six Americans actually owns a handgun, which is why the NRA has targeted women and children (using gun safety teaching tools as a ploy) for new marketing campaigns.
Sugarmann believes that the time is ripe for action: "The gun-control movement is at a crossroads. It can either continue down a course defined by polling, politics, and the lowest common denominator — the 'common sense' approach embodied in 'gun safety.' Or it can adopt an agenda shaped by the reality of gun violence in America that truly represents the public interest: banning guns." How can this be? According to the author, the number of Americans who favor a handgun ban exceeds the number who actually own them.
