People who own firearms are exceedingly careful with them. Police kill as many as 330 innocent people a year. Selected categories, United States, 1998. On balance, storage mandates will likely increase deaths and injuries by making guns difficult to use for self-defense. Taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding people by making them more difficult to get, use, and keep, decreases risks for criminals.
Armed citizens deter crime because criminals, like everyone else, prefer to avoid getting shot.
Wright and Rossi s 1986 survey of convicted felons in the United States found its subjects more worried about armed victims than police. John R. Lott, author of the most careful study to date on the effect of concealed carry on crime, estimates that adopting concealed carry laws throughout the United States would have prevented about 1,500 murders and 4,000 rapes in 1992 alone. Some of them, like Columbine, were at schools. Law-abiding citizens using guns stopped murderers in control of schools in Pearl, Mississippi, and Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Gun-control laws do not reduce undesirable behaviors.