Gunsafe was formed to help the press, the politicians, and the public understand the positive side of gun ownership. For the sake of discussion, let's forget guns for a moment. Let's look at automobiles.

Every time you ride in a car, you take a risk. If you have small children in your home, merely owning an automobile can be risky; a child may swipe your keys and get behind the wheel. And deaths in U.S. motor-vehicle accidents far outnumber other accidental deaths and even homicides.

Still, you own your car and use it daily because you know that the benefits are much greater than the risks. You know that your safety in your car depends mainly on your own skill, attentiveness, and experience. If you have children, you've taught them that it's dangerous for them to drive before they're old enough for lessons.

Whether or not you realize it, you have decided that you are better off with the car than without it.

The ownership and use of firearms also carry risks. Firearms can be useful tools for some criminals. Accidents are possible. Firearms and children can make a nightmarish mix.

But actual experience shows these risks are minute when compared with the benefits. And the benefits touch everyone.

The main benefit is that civilians use firearms for lawful self-defense more than 2 million times a year in the United States. This creates a deterrent effect that keeps crime down for those who own guns—and for those who don't. And our primary purpose at Gunsafe is to communicate this statistic and put faces on it.

Why?  An intelligent individual—or legislative body—should consider the benefits as well as the risks before making a decision. Unfortunately, legislation pertaining to firearms tends to be debated without any discussion of the benefits of civilian firearms ownership. Instead, the discussion usually focuses on the aspects of gun ownership that are sensationalized on the TV news—children hurt in gun accidents, and disgruntled employees committing murder in the workplace.

Incidents like these are actually very rare, but they receive publicity all out of proportion to how infrequently they occur. So the risk is made to appear much larger than it really is.

On the benefit side, most cases of civilians defending themselves are unreported. The reasons include the fact that in most cases of lawful self defense, no shot is fired; the firearm is merely displayed. Also, most such incidents are not reported to the police, because the civilian resolved the problem without police help.

The members of Gunsafe own firearms mainly to protect themselves and their families. They know that the police can't be everywhere, that the police have no legal duty to protect any particular individual, and that criminals fear armed citizens more than they fear the police.

The members of Gunsafe also know that civilian ownership of firearms, for protection from criminals, tyrants, and invaders, was the intent of those who passed the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The minds behind those amendments intended quite the opposite of a State monopoly on the use of force.

Send mail to webmaster@gunsafe.org with questions or comments about this web site.