Children Routinely Injured or Killed by Guns, U.S. Study Shows; Access to Loaded, Unlocked Firearms

[Robb]

Children Routinely Injured or Killed by Guns, U.S. Study Shows; Access to Loaded, Unlocked Firearms Remains a Problem

While gun control issues usually surface after major incidents like the fatal shooting of 20 elementary school students in Newtown, Conn., a new study shows that children are routinely killed or injured by firearms.

The study, conducted by the Colorado School of Public Health, Denver Health and Children's Hospital Colorado, was published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It examines trauma admissions at two emergency rooms in Denver and Aurora over nine years and found that 129 of 6,920 injured children suffered gunshot wounds.

"In 14 percent of these cases children managed to get access to unlocked, loaded guns," said the study's lead author Angela Sauaia, M.D., Ph.D., at the Colorado School of Public Health and the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "In an area with so much disagreement, I think we can all agree that children should not have unsupervised access to unlocked, loaded guns."

The study shows that at least 14 children between the ages four and 17 are injured by firearms every year in the Denver metro area alone. That number excludes those found dead at the scene. It also doesn't count those who did not go to the emergency department, so Sauaia believes the injury rates exceed 14 or roughly 2 percent of all child trauma admissions.

The number of gun injuries to children has changed little over the years.....

Read More: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130423161907.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

The authors pose an interesting question, and I pose it to you: Are we as a society willing to accept 14 or more children shot each year in each of our cities is an acceptable number?

[Robb]

1. One more finding to add, this stunned me:

“When we examined the data we found that seven percent of the injuries to children were related to violence and of those 38 percent were related to guns,” she said. “If the injury was gun related, the odds of dying were 10 times greater than from any other kind of injury.”

[Fumesucker]

9. Guns are carefully engineered to kill

Most things the general public comes into contact with are designed exactly the opposite, to be safe as possible.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

11. But they are engineered well for user safety

[Common Sense Party]

2. No. The government should provide free gun safes to every gun owner.

That's the best solution I can see.

[Robb]

3. Your best solution is to address 14% of the problem?

Way to phone it in, man.

[Common Sense Party]

4. Talk to Dr. Sauaia. She agrees with me that that is the problem.

[pipoman]

5. Maybe some context would be helpful

such as a list of the top 10 or 20 causes..without that perspective, it's hard to say..for instance what is the #1 cause and what percentage. Do we not care about other preventable accident/injury/death causes?

[abelenkpe]

6. Adults gun owners should be required to lock up

Their guns if and when children are present in their homes the same way adult drivers are required to provide child safety seats.

[Walk away]

7. Why would anyone trust a person who needs to own a gun with...

keeping it away from children because it's a "requirement". If they are too stupid to figure it out on their own, I doubt a "requirement" will help them.

[abelenkpe]

8. I understand your skepticism

My family back east (conservative, gun owning, freepers) view child safety seats as unnecessary invasive big government complaining that they raised their kids without them. But they do use child safety seats for their grandchildren because of the regulations requiring them to do so. Pretty sure that regulations requiring guns to be locked up around children would be equally successful and save many children.

And this is my conservative fathers idea!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

10. In CA they are required to do both and most that I know do

A gun lock comes with every firearm as well. Its certainly something that I support

[abelenkpe]

12. I knew I liked this state for a reason :)

Even my conservative family in VA locks up their guns. It does seem like the responsible thing to do.