# A 1976 handgun-control fundraising poster and the number it left out

A 1976 poster from the Committee for the Study of Handgun Misuse in Chicago puts a printed hole beside a young woman's temple and asks for tax-deductible gifts to bring "handgun facts" to the public. Library of Congress.

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      We need handguns like we need a hole in the head

      A 1976 handgun-control fundraising poster and the number it left out
      A 1976 Chicago gun-control poster, "We need handguns like we need a hole in the head," pairs a woman's face with handgun statistics. Library of Congress.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appealCard stacking
      Date1976Made byCommittee for the Study of Handgun Misuse (Gun Control Project, Chicago)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeFord AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceLibrary of Congress , retrieved September 27, 2026SourcePublic domain (published without copyright notice c. 1975-76; LoC: No known restrictions on publication) Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A 1976 poster from the Committee for the Study of Handgun Misuse in Chicago puts a printed hole beside a young woman's temple and asks for tax-deductible gifts to bring "handgun facts" to the public. Library of Congress.

## What the sheet prints

A young woman's face fills the upper half, with a round white hole printed near her temple. The headline runs above her. Below is a block of text that builds, paragraph by paragraph, on the refrain "nothing is done," and ends with an address for contributions. An excerpt from the FRAME transcription:

WE NEED HANDGUNS LIKE WE NEED A HOLE IN THE HEAD.

[...]

Over 70% of these handgun murders are committed by previously law abiding citizens against people they know. So if you own a handgun to protect yourself against a criminal, the odds are far greater that you will kill someone you know, or even love. Yet nothing is done.

[...]

But when 77% of the public want handgun control legislation, as the 1975 Harris Poll states, something must be done.

We need your help to bring handgun facts to the public.

Control Handguns

Excerpt from the transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. The full text also cites 10,340 handgun deaths in 1973 and 11,124 in 1974.

## Who issued it

The Committee for the Study of Handgun Misuse, Inc., with an address on North Dearborn in Chicago, signs the sheet as the Gun Control Project. It is a private advocacy group asking for private money. The Library of Congress holds the poster (item 2015649957) and notes no known restrictions on publication; the archive records it as public domain, published without a copyright notice, retrieved 27 September 2026.

## How to read it

The central step is a change of denominator. "Over 70% of these handgun murders" describes killings that already happened, divided among relationships. "The odds are far greater that you will kill someone you know" is a claim about an individual owner's risk, which would need the number of owners and the number of defensive uses to compute. The sheet gives neither. The poll figure then does a different job: it tells the reader the crowd has already decided.

Citizens are entitled to argue for any law they like, and a private committee raising money for a cause is exactly how a free country is supposed to settle a contested question. Handgun deaths are a serious subject, and the poster was right to raise them. It asked for handgun control legislation, which bears on a right the Second Amendment names, and a reader weighing that request deserved the missing figure before deciding.

The other side of the same fight used the same move in reverse a year later; see "We asked four leading crooks". Both posters are read together in the case study Two lobbies, one toolbox.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, "We need handguns like we need a hole in the head," 1976. Committee for the Study of Handgun Misuse (Gun Control Project, Chicago). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, retrieved by the archive 27 September 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (published without copyright notice c. 1975-76; no known restrictions on publication).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/we-need-handguns-hole-in-head-1976/