Handguns produced today are primarily pistols with 10-round magazines. Therefore, the introduction of personalized guns could greatly increase the lethality of the country's privately held gun stock. Gun owners can, of course, commit suicide using their own firearms, whether they are personalized or not. Perhaps for this reason, smart gun advocates focus particularly on teenage suicide, often using numbers suggesting that personalized guns would thwart every firearm suicide death of an American age 19 or under. This optimistic assertion fails to take into account the reality of gun use and possession by teenagers and young adults.
Many young people own guns themselves or have access to guns with parental permission.
It would be a fairly unusual murder that is committed by a perpetrator using someone else's gun. Homicides occur most frequently between people who know one another often spouses, intimate acquaintances, or other family members typically as the result of an argument. Particularly in these scenarios, there is no reason to assume that assailants would not be using their own guns, personalized or not. Smart gun advocates commonly claim the technology could stop virtually all fatalities stemming from unintentional injuries. They particularly focus on deaths of children, although they are a small portion of overall fatalities in this category.