Laws, or for that matter exaggerations of the risks involved in gun ownership, make people lock up their guns or cause them not to own a gun in the first place, will result in more deaths, not fewer deaths. Recent research that I have done examining juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides for all U.S. states from 1977 to 1996, found that safe storage laws had no impact on either type of death. What did happen, however, was that law-abiding citizens were less able to defend themselves against crime. The 15 states that adopted safe-storage laws during this period faced over 300 more murders and 3,860 more rapes per year. Burglaries also increased dramatically.
Laws frequently have unintended consequences.
Sometimes even the best intentioned ones cost lives.