I know a lot of people like to look down on their fellow Americans to the extent they even consider them to be so, but the hardest statistics we have on your concern is fatal gun accidents per year, and they've gone down from 800 to 500, actually 486 for 2019 from the CDC's most recent statistics, as the population has increased by 50%, the number of gun owners has massively increased and the number of guns owned by them has as much as doubled.
The "massive increase" is hard to get numbers for due to our culture war, but no one sane doubts it, and there's obvious reasons for it and the last fact which is on more solid ground, the nationwide sweep of "shall issue" or better concealed carry regimes and then add the "troubles" of the 21st Century starting with 9/11. And how many states went "Constitution Carry," we don't need no stinking licences this year? We're up to 21 total per Wikipedia.
Another question is how many fatal gun accidents were intentional suicides that the medical examiner, for whatever reason, didn't want to enter as such.
I know of one which was blatant second degree murder, but the perp was a "friend" visiting with a few others to the victim's home, all around 14 years old. Taking a gun on its way to the safe you found in a part of the house no one was supposed to be in, pointing it at your "friend's" head and pulling the trigger was ruled an unfortunate "accident."
See a bunch that just so happened to occur while the gun was "being cleaned," you can even begin that without emptying the chamber so you can work on the barrel.
The "massive increase" is hard to get numbers for due to our culture war, but no one sane doubts it, and there's obvious reasons for it and the last fact which is on more solid ground, the nationwide sweep of "shall issue" or better concealed carry regimes and then add the "troubles" of the 21st Century starting with 9/11. And how many states went "Constitution Carry," we don't need no stinking licences this year? We're up to 21 total per Wikipedia.