This Thanksgiving, when talk around the table turns to politics and current events, you can help set the record straight on some of the most common myths about guns.
Myth: More guns in more places make us all safer.
Fact: The NRA’s vision of guns for anyone, anywhere, anytime actually puts everyone at risk. Without a background check, there’s no way to tell the difference between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun. Most states don’t require safety training, or even a criminal background check, to openly carry a loaded firearm in public.
Myth: Having a gun at home make women safer from domestic violence.
Fact: Women are five times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner when a firearm is present.
Myth: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Fact: If more guns stopped gun crime, we’d be the safest country in the developed world. Instead, Americans are 20 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in other developed countries.
Myth: Hiding your guns is enough to keep them away from your kids.
Fact: The only proven way to keep guns safely away from children is to store them locked and unloaded. A Harvard study found that more than two-thirds of children know where their parents keep their guns, even when the parents think they don’t. And more than a third have actually handled the gun without their parent’s knowledge.
Myth: Congress hasn’t passed a background checks law, which proves that Americans don’t support background checks on gun sales.
Fact: Congress’ failure only proves that too many lawmakers cater to the gun lobby instead of the American people. 92 percent of Americans - including 82 percent of gun owners - support background checks for all gun sales. In Washington State, the only state where the question was put to the people in the 2014 election, an overwhelming majority of votes passed a ballot initiative to require background checks for all gun sales.