Kids can’t tie their shoes, but they can fire guns
Roughly five times a week in America, children accidentally shoot themselves or someone else.
Just this past Saturday in Baton Rouge, for example, a 6-yearold boy was playing with a gun when he shot his 3-year-old sister. She survived, but the 5-yearold Detroit girl who found her grandmother’s gun under a pillow last week and shot herself in the neck did not.
Nor did the 3-year-old in Dallas, Ga., who found his dad’s .380caliber semiautomatic pistol on April 26 and shot himself in the chest. He was one of at least seven toddlers ages 1-3 who got their hands on guns in little more than a week in late April and shot themselves or someone else. Four of them killed themselves. One 2year-old in Milwaukee killed his mother when he found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and fired it.
These are kids, as one account pointed out, who still can’t tie their own shoes. But even a 1year-old can fire a gun, and this happens with depressing regularity. Toddlers have shot themselves or someone else at least 23 times this year, according to The
Washington Post. Altogether, 11 people died.
Include all children under 18, and the toll of unintentional shootings involving kids rises to 92 so far this year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, which began keeping its own statistics because available federal data don’t fully reflect the number of deaths and injuries from shooting incidents involving children.
This toll is a national scandal in a country that has as many guns as people and the world’s highest rate of firearm homicides.
You’d think gun owners would understand that kids are surprisingly good at finding guns that aren’t kept secured and unloaded, yet the toll goes on, year after year. There’s little political will these days to require much of gun owners. Laws that would require guns be kept locked up collide with gun owners’ protests that they can’t use a gun for home defense if it’s secured.
What to do? Begin by aggressively stigmatizing carelessness with guns in homes with children (or homes where kids visit), much the way drunken driving changed from something joked about to socially unacceptable.
Even though many gun rights advocates hate the idea, doctors could help by routinely asking patients whether they have guns and whether they secure them.
Parents would also do well to ask other parents those same questions before their kids have play dates. There’s a growing movement to do this, helped by a public service announcement that shows children playing at a home with sex toys that they’ve found (the message: “If they find it, they’ll play with it”).
And gun buyers should have the option to buy “smart guns” that fire only when an owner activates them, typically with a fingerprint or an electronic device. Gun rights advocates are fighting to keep smart guns off the market because of fears that the technology will become mandatory.
Of course, there’s no sure way to eradicate the adult stupidity and negligence that keep putting guns where kids can find them. But each of these strategies can help. It’s time to try them all.