In order to be effective, requirements for such safety devices must be combined with an effective and vigilant enforcement authority. At the federal level the most efficient way to implement such oversight would be to vest the Department of the Treasury with basic health and safety authority over firearm manufacture and distribution. At the state level, one approach would be to vest state attorneys general with such authority. All firearms, and handguns in particular, are inherently dangerous products. The risks presented by guns can be reduced, but not eliminated.
Handguns are responsible for the vast majority of firearms death and injury.
No combination of safety devices can adequately reduce the risks associated with this category of firearm. The most effective approach to reducing death and injury would be to ban the sale and possession of handguns. The Academy has 53,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Beginning in the fall of 1995 the Violence Policy Center undertook a project designed to put a face on the numbers representing children and youth killed and injured in unintentional shootings. From October 1995 to June 1996 the VPC used a national clipping service to collect news clips from daily and weekly newspapers of reported incidents of unintentional shootings involving children and youth.