Will New Jersey mandate that guns can be sold only if they can be operated exclusively by someone with the correct fingerprint or wearing a special electronic ring? The New Jersey State Senate is holding hearings today on the "Childproof Handgun" bill, which is being touted as a measure that will reduce the rate of accidental gun deaths and suicides among children.

Who can oppose such a law?

Well, despite the obvious feel-good appeal of these rules, gun locks and safe storage laws are more likely to cost lives than to save them. Accidental gun deaths among children are fortunately much rarer than most people believe. Consider New Jersey during the five years from 1995 to 1999. With more than 1.5 million children under the age of 15, there were only two accidental gun deaths in that age range--an annual rate of .0000003 per year. Including any suicides committed with guns would raise the average to .0000008 deaths per year. With 1.1 million adults in New Jersey owning at least one gun in 1996, the overwhelming majority of gun owners must be extremely careful or the figures certainly would be much higher.

According to national studies, those who fire a gun accidentally are not your typical person. Shooters overwhelmingly have problems with alcoholism and long criminal histories, particularly arrests for violent acts. They are also disproportionately involved in automobile crashes and are much more likely to have had their driver's license suspended or revoked. The problem is that those who are most at risk are the least likely to obey the law.

Academic studies of safe storage and gun lock laws have also found no evidence that they reduce the total number of suicides even if a few studies have found some small reductions in suicides committed with guns. There are simply too many ways to commit suicide.

However, the law poses real risks. The most obvious problem is that gun locks are costly. My research indicates that it is those who are most threatened by crime--poor people, particularly blacks living in high crime urban areas--who benefit the most from being able to protect themselves. "Smart locks," even when they become reliable, will add hundreds of dollars to the price of guns and stop many poor people from being able to protect themselves and their family.

Locked guns are also not as readily accessible for defensive gun uses. Since criminals are deterred by potentially armed victims, gun locks may therefore increase crime. Exacerbating this problem are serious reliability issues. Fingers that are slightly dirty or not placed exactly on the fingerprint reading device may prevent the gun from firing. There is also the concern that "smart" locks relying on radio signals can be jammed by criminals.

Guns clearly deter criminals, with Americans using guns defensively more than 2 million times each year--five times more frequently than the 430,000 times guns were used to commit crimes in 1997. Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when one is confronted by a criminal.

Recent research that I have done, examining juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides for all the states in the United States from 1977 to 1996, found that safe storage laws had no impact on either type of death. However, what did happen 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 more than 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. 

John R. Lott, Jr., is a resident scholar at AEI.