Deadly price kids pay for stray bullets
STRAY bullets have taken a high toll on Cape Town’s children, the National Firearms Summit heard during its first day of sitting at Parliament yesterday.
“We looked at the children coming in with gunshot (wounds), and over the past 20 years we’ve seen a total of 476 children, under the age of 12, who were admitted after being shot,” Professor Sebastian van As of the Red Cross Children’s Hospital told MPs and others attending the two-day event.
Van As, a surgeon, has been head of the hospital’s Paediatric Trauma Unit for the past 15 years.
The Red Cross Children’s Hospital, which is affiliated to the University of Cape Town, serves the western parts of the metropole.
Of the 476 children treated by its trauma unit from 1991 to 2010, 43 percent were the victims of crossfire.
“The vast majority of them are hit in crossfire. So, there is a fight somewhere, bullets are flying… and the child happens to be there and catches the bullet.”
Others were shot deliberately by an adult (9 percent); shot deliberately by another child (3 percent); shot while playing with a firearm (2 percent); shot by gangsters (5 percent); or were the victims of an “accidental” shooting (14 percent).
The summit is being hosted by Parliament’s police portfolio committee.
Van As showed his audience photos of children with gunshot wounds, as well as X-ray photos of bullets and shrapnel lodged in young bodies.
One was of a very young child from the Cape Flats, whose poor family lived in a wendy house. “During the night there was a gang fight and they (the child’s parents) heard some shooting… In the morning, they went to pick up the child from the cot and (found) one of the bullets had gone through the wall into the child. The bullet lodged next to the heart.”
Another photo was of a small baby, his tiny head swathed in bandages after being hit by a stray bullet.
“This child didn’t make it. He was in intensive care for two or three days and then died,” said Van As.
He said the Firearms Control Act, which came into effect in 2004, had led to a big reduction in the number of children being admitted to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital with gunshot wounds. “It led to a reduction of about 70 percent. It really had a massive impact.”
It had also resulted in a significant drop in the number of gun-related deaths in Cape Town, which nearly halved between 2001 and 2005.
Van As questioned whether owning a firearm really made the people who owned them any safer. He said studies carried out in the US had found that of all the shots fired in the home or garden, only 3 percent were in self-defence. “Of which half were in self-defence against a family member. Only 1.5 percent (were fired) in selfdefence against a stranger.”
Van As spoke of the effect of violence on children. “Guns have a devastating effect on our society… Children are disproportionately affected by guns because they’re always innocent. They are not the ones who are shooting, they are the ones being shot. They are sitting ducks. They are being hit by stray bullets.”
He suggested the minimum age for gun ownership be raised to 25. “The reason for that is your decision-making process, to understand the future consequences of your actions… only matures at 25,” he said. – Sapa
THE VAST MAJORITY OF THEM ARE HIT IN CROSSFIRE. SO, THERE IS A FIGHT SOMEWHERE, BULLETS ARE FLYING… AND THE CHILD HAPPENS TO BE THERE AND CATCHES THE BULLET