Experts also cite the increase in the use of seat belts beginning in the mid-1980s as states enacted belt-use laws as well as a reduction in alcohol-impaired driving as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and other organizations changed the public’s perception of the problem and laws were enacted to increase the likelihood that intoxicated drivers would be punished. Graduated licensing laws are credited with helping to reduce the number of teen drivers crashing on our nation’s roadways. Between 1966 and 2000, the combined efforts of government and advocacy organizations reduced the rate of death per 100,000 population by 43 percent, which represents a 72 percent decrease in deaths per vehicle miles traveled. Despite this success, safety advocates continue to push for new improvements, such as backup cameras, to further reduce the death toll.

While the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is charged with enforcing our nation’s limited gun laws, it has none of the health and safety regulatory powers afforded other federal agencies such as NHTSA.

As Dr. David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, notes in his 2004 book Private Guns, Public Health: “[T]he time Americans spend using their cars is orders of magnitudes greater than the time spent using their guns. It

is probable that per hour of exposure, guns are far more dangerous. Moreover, we have lots of safety regulations concerning the manufacture of motor vehicles; there are virtually no safety regulations for domestic firearms manufacture.”

More than 90 percent of American households own a car while little more than a third of American households contain a gun. And yet, if charted out year by year as seen in the preceding graph, deaths nationwide from these two consumer products are on a trajectory to intersect.