Today was a memorable day.
I was called a “****ing idiot” on
Facebook for the first time! This,
amazingly enough, was on a thread about the accidental shooting death of a
child in Waycross. You can probably
guess what the argument was about.
If you agree with the name caller, you probably think I just
blindly follow the “liberal agenda” and want to disarm the honest citizens that
have loaded guns in their homes to defend themselves. Further, you believe that if children are
taught the safe use of weapons, they are protected. In addition, if children are armed, they also
can protect themselves. The logical
question is what are both adults and children protecting themselves from.
Scientific studies have agreed that the National Rifle
Association’s number of “2.5 million” defensive shootings per year is an
extravagant myth. I’ll acknowledge that
I haven’t read all the scientific studies, but I can cite two: one from the National Journal of Epidemiology
and another from the Violence Policy Center.
Both agree that the presence of a gun in the home correlates clearly
with an increase in the number of both homicides and suicides. The VPC states that the annual average of “self-protective
behaviors involving firearms” is approximately 67,740. This study used data from the National Crime
Victimization Survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice. The VPC also found that in 2010 “there were
only 230 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm”
compared with 8,275 criminal gun homicides in the same year, “not counting gun
suicides or unintentional shootings”.
And this: the number of Americans
killed by guns since Newtown: 3,458.
Another agreement in this line of scientific research: “Those persons
with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home
of dying from a homicide in the home”.
I remember an early lesson in creative writing: if a gun makes an appearance in the course of
the story, it must be used at some point.
For me, that is analogous to having a gun in the home; it will be
used. And guns do kill people. Handguns were created for that purpose.
I have also read a lengthy New York Times Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html?_r=1&&pagewanted=print. Its main tenet is that accidental shootings
of children occur twice as often as recorded because of variations in
classification in different jurisdictions.
In addition to actual available data, the huge lobby of the NRA
publicizes its own data discounting the numbers and offering up their own. The New York Times compiled their own study
in 5 states: California, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio and Minnesota. In the first four, they identified roughly
twice as many accidental killings corresponding to the federal data. In Minnesota, there were 50% more.
Other interesting data:
60% of accidental firearm deaths involved handguns instead of long guns;
and that percentage grows to 85% in children under 6. Also, while most deaths are with older
children, the third most common age is 3, and more than half of the self-inflicted
shootings involve children 5 and under.
Very enlightening to me was an experimental study published in 2001 in
the journal Pediatrics. Researchers
watched through a one-way mirror as boys ages 8-12 (in pairs) were left alone
in examination room at a clinic in Atlanta.
An inoperative .38 caliber handgun was concealed in a cabinet
drawer. Within 15 minutes, ¾ of the 64
children involved in the study had found the gun. 2/3 of the boys handled the gun, 1/3 pulled
the trigger and one child (following the NRAs directive to children) went to
tell an adult about the gun. This boy
was ridiculed by his peers. In addition,
90% of the boys said they had had gun safety education. Dr. Kellerman, co-author of the study and
dean at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences stated “Why,
if we have childproof aspirin bottles, don’t we have childproof guns?”
Actually, the technology for childproof, or “smart guns”
does exist, but the enormous lobbying power of the NRA has ensured that will
never happen. In fact, the lobbying
power of the NRA controls everything about guns in this country and even
repetitive mass shootings do not weaken their message.
I am positive my feelings and beliefs on this issue are not
political in nature, but human and maternal.
There was a loaded gun in my home when my son was a child. Of course, he knew guns were dangerous and
that he shouldn’t touch it; he was an unusually smart kid. However, first and foremost he was a
kid. Kids can be impulsive and boys are
drawn to guns (shooters and victims are overwhelmingly male). You can’t watch a boy ages 10-14 all the
time; there will be the opportunity to seek out the forbidden. I remember the feeling of terror that
something like that could or would happen; the gun was not in the house for
very long.
I’m sorry if I offend anyone, but how can a parent even
think of taking the risk of losing a child?
Things happen, not everything is preventable—but this one is. Our children will always be at risk with
bikes, skates, cars and even computers. There
is a minimum age for legally driving; most parents don’t want their young
children behind the wheel of a car. But
an amazing number of people put guns in the hands of children as young as 3 or
leave the guns where a toddler can pick it up.
We all have different ideas and styles of parenting, but one
thing stands alone and is universal throughout nature: a parent’s
primary job is to protect a child until he or she is old enough to do a
fair job of it on their own. To say that
believing this is threatening the rights of all good, honest, god-fearing
American citizens—is to say that there is something terribly wrong in the
United States of America.
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