The total number of firearms deaths in 1998 was 5.3 percent lower than in 1997, and the number of firearms deaths among those aged 19 and under experienced an overall decline of 35 percent between 1994 and 1998. A gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than to kill a criminal. Further, the authors count only those cases where the intruder was killed but exclude other defensive uses of firearms. Thus Kellermann et al are ignoring 999 successful defensive uses of firearms where the assailant is not killed. If we use Kellermann's data adjusted for reality, a firearm kept in a home is at least 167 times more likely to deter criminal attack than to harm a person in the home.
Firearms are among the leading causes of accidental death in children.