State legislatures across the country are debating requiring of "childproof" locks on guns. The Senate Judiciary Committee also plans to take up the matter. But policy analysts warn that the very rules that seek to save lives can result in more deaths.

• In 1995, there were 1,400 accidental gun deaths in the U.S. -- 200 of which involved children under age 14.

• By comparison, 2,900 children died in motor vehicle crashes, 950 children drowned, and more than 1,000 died from fire and burns -- often involving, in the latter two categories, swimming pools and space heaters.

• But swimming pools provide children an opportunity for health-building exercise, and space heaters keep people from getting sick or freezing to death.

• So, analysts say, policymakers have a responsibility to consider not only the dangers, but also the tradeoffs involved in banning products or hindering their use.

Trade-offs are evident in the gun-lock controversy. The locks consist of a mechanism that fits either into a gun's barrel or over its trigger, and can only be installed after a gun is unloaded. But locked, unloaded guns are no protection against intruders and would likely increase the number of innocent deaths resulting from crime.

A variety of polls show that there are at least 760,000, and possibly as many as 3.6 million, defensive uses of guns per year. In 98 percent of the cases, people simply brandished the weapon to stop an attack.

In Canada and Great Britain, both of which have tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries occur when the victim is at home. In the U.S., where greater gun ownership is still allowed, only 13 percent of burglaries occur while the owner is in his residence.

Surveys have established that criminals are much more concerned about armed victims than about the police.

Guns are only one part of the larger child-proofing issue, according to analysts. Harvard economist W. Kip Viscusi has shown that child-resistant medicine-bottle caps have resulted in 3,500 additional poisonings of children under age 5 annually from aspirin-related drugs. This has occurred because parents were less vigilent about safety due to lower perceived risk.

Source: John R. Lott Jr. (University of Chicago Law School), "Childproof Gun Locks: Bound to Misfire," Wall Street Journal, July 16, 1997.