Gun accidents by toddlers are increasing. (photo: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)
Toddlers
Have Shot at Least 23 People This Year
By Christopher Ingraham, The
Washington Post
02 May 16
This
past week, a Milwaukee toddler fatally shot his mother after
finding a handgun in the back seat of the car they were riding in. The case
drew a lot of national attention given the unusual circumstances: Little kids
rarely kill people, intentionally or not.
But
this type of thing happens more often than you might think. Since April 20,
there have been at least seven instances in which a 1- , 2- or 3-year-old shot
themselves or somebody else in the United States:
- On
April 20, a 2-year-old boy in Indiana found the gun his mother left in
her purse on the kitchen counter and fatally shot himself.
The
next day in Kansas City, Mo., a 1-year-old girl evidently shot and killed herself
with her father's gun while he was sleeping.
On
April 26, a 3-year-old boy in Dallas, Ga., fatally shot himself in the chest with
a gun he found at home.
That
same day, a 3-year-old boy in Grout Township, Mich., shot himself in the arm with
a gun he found at home. He is expected to survive.
On
April 29, a 3-year-old girl shot herself in
the arm after grabbing a gun in a parked car in Augusta,
Ga. She is also expected to survive.
Last
year, a Washington Post analysis found that toddlers were finding guns and
shooting people at a rate of about one a week. This year, that
pace has accelerated. There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings
since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year.
In the
vast majority of cases, the children accidentally shoot themselves. That's
happened 18 times this year, and in nine of those cases the children
died of their wounds.
Toddlers
have shot other people five times this year. Two of those cases were fatal:
this week's incident in Milwaukee, and that of a 3-year-old Alabama boy
who fatally shot his 9-year-old brother in
February.
These
numbers represent only a small fraction of gun violence involving children. For
instance, the pro-gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety has found at least 77 instances this year in which a
child younger than 18 has accidentally shot someone. And there is a whole different universe of gun
violence in which toddlers are shot, intentionally or not, by adults.
Looking
at a map of where toddlers are pulling the trigger, some states stand out
sharply. Georgia
is home to the highest number of toddler shootings, with at least eight
incidents since January 2015. Texas and Missouri are tied for second place with
seven shootings each, while Florida and Michigan are tied for fourth, with six
shootings apiece.
You
might think that toddler shootings are simply a function of population — the
more people who live in an area, the more toddlers are likely to shoot someone.
But that doesn't appear to be wholly the case. California and New York are two
high-population states that have seen only three toddler shootings between them
since 2015.
And
Illinois, home to infamously high rates of gun violence in
Chicago, has not seen a single toddler shooting since 2015.
This
suggests that other factors may be at play in the states that see
disproportionately high numbers of shootings by toddlers. Missouri and Georgia,
for instance, have fairly lax laws regulating
how guns are stored to prevent child access. On the other hand, New York
has nosuch child access laws in place, yet only one toddler has shot
someone there since 2015.
Perhaps
other factors are at play as well. There could be cultural factors — norms
surrounding gun use and ownership, for instance — that may make these shootings
more likely in some areas than in others.
Sussing
out cause and effect in these cases, in other words, is still largely a
guessing game. And it's a game made much more difficult by Congress's efforts
to restrict the type of gun research that agencies such as the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention are allowed to conduct.
Until
2004, for instance, the CDC routinely asked Americans about
whether they stored guns at home, and whether they made a habit of locking them
up. That's no longer the case.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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