Each year, firearms kill nearly 30,000 Americans--more than all other household and recreational products combined. Yet firearms are virtually exempt from federal health and safety regulation. The overarching framework of the VPC's research, education, and advocacy efforts is "guns as consumer products" and the need to hold the gun industry's products to the same health and safety standards that virtually all other consumer products must meet. The VPC's twin goals are to aid the general public's understanding of firearms violence as a public health, rather than solely a crime, issue (the vast majority of gun death is not felony related), and to use the VPC's research and public education activities to shape public policy while involving individuals and organizations from affected constituencies--consumer, youth, domestic violence, civil rights, faith, and public health--in a national movement to reduce gun death and injury.