Nation's Children On Accidental Killing Spree

Everytown reports that children unintentionally shot and killed at least 157 people last year.

JR-15, the assault rifle for children that actually exists

Every kid knows they shouldn’t take candy from strangers (except on Halloween when there’s a whole entire holiday based upon that very premise). They know that if they catch on fire that they should “stop, drop and roll.” They know they shouldn’t run with scissors, that they should look both ways before crossing the street, and that they should wait a half hour after they eat to go swimming (although it turns out that one’s not actually true). There are all kinds of things that kids learn by rote to keep themselves safe. For me, one of those things was that if someone asks you if you want to see some guns, you get right the fuck out of that house and you never go back. Incidentally, this was how I ended up crossing the street alone for the first time.

I thought this was one that everyone else had heard as well, up until I started telling people that story and they looked at me like I was nuts, even though we all saw that episode of “Beverly Hills 90210” in which David’s friend Scott accidentally kills himself at his own birthday party while playing with his dad’s gun.

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As it turns out, that was a pretty good safety tip, and maybe even more useful than the one about strangers with candy. While only between 52 and 306 child abductions a year are “stereotypical kidnappings” in which children are abducted by a stranger, there were at least 527 accidental shootings by children under the age of 18 last year.

According to the gun safety organization Everytown, at least 157 people were killed and 370 were injured, unintentionally, by kids. This is the highest number of accidental shootings by children since Everytown first started compiling that data in 2015 — so it’s a problem that is actually getting worse, not better.

Via MSNBC:

The children who pulled the trigger were most often teenagers ages 14 to 17 or children ages 5 and under, according to Everytown’s data, which is compiled from media reports. Roughly half of the incidents involved children who shot themselves. In the other half, someone else was injured or killed — usually another child.

“The victim is often a sibling, a cousin or a friend,” said Sarah Burd-Sharps, senior director of research at Everytown. “It leaves multiple families facing grief and regret.” […]

Those who died include a 2-year-old girl in Indiana who shot herself with a gun she found in her home and an 8-year-old boy in Alabama who was shot with a firearm that had been removed from his mother’s car. In Florida, a 12-year-old boy died and a 15-year-old was injured by a 14-year-old who was playing with a gun that he thought was unloaded, according to police.

It is horrible to imagine losing someone to something this stupid and this preventable, especially to lose a child, but I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like for a kid who shot and killed their sibling or best friend by accident. I just can’t.

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James and Jennifer Crumbley, parents of mass shooter Ethan Crumbley, were both recently found guilty of four counts of manslaughter for having bought their son a gun and not safely storing it, but handling these things after the fact is really not the way to go.

We need actual, effective, preventative gun control, because it’s not just accidental shootings by children that pose a danger. In 2022, the most recent year for which we have data, we had the highest rate of firearm suicide in 50 years — 27,000 out of 50,000 suicides were committed using guns. Over half of all firearm deaths are suicides. Men who own firearms are eight times more likely to commit suicide and women who own guns are 35 times more likely to do so. People living with handgun owners are twice as likely to be victims of homicide as those who aren’t.

Alas, America’s gun owners are madly in love with the idea of themselves as rugged, badass cowboys — but how many of these rugged, badass cowboys have to get taken down by inadvertently armed toddlers before they get around to realizing that something needs to change?

PREVIOUSLY:

Mass Shootings Are A Choice

Kristi Noem Touts One-Year-Old Gun Toting Granddaughter

Perhaps James Crumbley Should Have Locked Up His Gun