--- title: We need handguns like we need a hole in the head url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/we-need-handguns-hole-in-head-1976/ description: A fundraising poster puts a young woman's face under the headline 'We need handguns like we need a hole in the head', with a round white hole printed… section: Collection --- [Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/) [![We need handguns like we need a hole in the head](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/we-need-handguns-hole-in-head-1976.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/we-need-handguns-hole-in-head-1976.jpg) # We need handguns like we need a hole in the head A fundraising poster puts a young woman's face under the headline 'We need handguns like we need a hole in the head', with a round white hole printed beside her temple. The text turns the figure that 'over 70%' of handgun murders are committed against people the killer knows into the claim that an owner is far more likely to 'kill someone you know, or even love'. The image stages the harm on one face; the odds claim moves from a share of murders to a risk per owner without the second number it would need. - **Date:** 1976 - **Period:** [Cold War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=cold-war) - **Made by:** Committee for the Study of Handgun Misuse (Gun Control Project, Chicago) - **Region:** [North America](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=north-america) - **Country:** [United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-states) - **Medium:** [Poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=poster) - **Issuer type:** [NGO](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=ngo) - **Regime:** [Ford Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=ford-administration) - **Leader:** [Gerald Ford](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=gerald-ford) - **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public) - **Purpose:** [Fundraise](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=fundraise) - **Themes:** [Health](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=health), [Security and surveillance](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=security-surveillance) - **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) - **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are - **Source:** [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2015649957/), retrieved September 27, 2026 - **Rights:** Public 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 ## Text on the object Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked ``` WE NEED HANDGUNS LIKE WE NEED A HOLE IN THE HEAD. That 10,340 people were killed by handguns in 1973 is unsettling enough. But the number has increased to 11,124 in 1974. Nothing is done. 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. Over 200,000 more people a year are injured, robbed, or raped at the business end of a handgun. Again nothing is done. Before the end of 1976, almost 3 million new handguns will be added to the 40 million already in circulation. Still 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 Send your tax-deductible contributions to: THE COMMITTEE FOR THE STUDY OF HANDGUN MISUSE, INC. 109 N. Dearborn, 18th Fl. Chicago, IL 60602 GUN CONTROL PROJECT ``` The sentence 'Over 200,000 more people a year are injured, robbed, or raped at the business end of a handgun' is split across the column break in the source layout (the first clause ending the left column, the rest opening the right column); reassembled here into one sentence, matching the poster's own reading order. [← SWAPO: The People Armed (c. 1976 solidarity poster)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/swapo-the-people-armed-1976/) [We asked four leading crooks for their opinion on gun control →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/four-leading-crooks-gun-control-1977/) ## Using the same techniques - [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal) - [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling) - [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity. - [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating) - [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal) - [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal) - [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal) - [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)