Depending on where you look about 1,300 children die every year in the United States from gunshot wounds. There is a never-ending set of pages chronicling the deaths and injuries to children logged for just this year on the Gun Violence Archive—a non-profit whose mission it is to detail and archive any and all gun-related violence. One of the many pushes that people make for gun safety in our country is for more “gun safety” programs. These are programs that try to educate everybody, young and old, in the best practices for gun safety. As Eureka Alert! reports, a new analysis of 10 previous studies concludes that gun safety programs for children between the ages of 4-9 years of age seems to have little to no affect on how safe these children will be when confronted with a real gun.
Gun safety training is essential, Holly said, because children in the United States have more access to guns than those in other developed countries and because most unintentional shooting deaths by children occur in their homes or at the residence of a friend or relative. Firearm injuries are the third-leading cause of death for all children aged 1 to 17 and are responsible for thousands of children being treated for open wounds, fractures and brain and spinal injuries. In addition, children who witness firearm injury can experience psychological effects, such as fear, anxiety and elevated stress.
"Although programs that used active learning strategies, such as modeling, simulation or feedback, were slightly more effective at teaching gun-safety skills than programs that handed out literature, the majority still failed to teach the children to put what they learned into practice," said Sallie Porter, assistant professor at the School of Nursing, who co-authored the study with Holly. "Children are very curious - especially about things that they have been warned not to handle."
What this means is that having a gun in your home, especially when young children are there means that your home is at a considerably higher risk of terrible tragedy. One of the worst findings in this report is that most parents are for shit when it comes to keeping their firearms safely out of reach.
Included among the findings from previous studies is that 85 percent of gun-owning parents did not practice safe gun storage and 72 percent believed their young children could differentiate a toy gun from a real gun.
If that number was 25 percent it would be far too high. Eighty-five percent means that most parents who own firearms should be visited by social services. Hey, you live out in Montana at the turn of the 19th century and worry about bears walking into your cabin? Yes, you can have a rifle just sitting around, since the chances that you are going to die as a result of “consumption” are considerably higher than from gunshot wounds. But everyone else? If you must own a gun and have children in your home, the very least you can do is be responsible and safe.