Advice about stopping children from shooting people

In looking at an article about a recent shooting of one child by another, we found this link to an article written in April by a Judith Palfry, Pediatrician. From the article:

Last December, in the days after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, my husband and I wanted the public to know that gun injuries are too common in our children's lives. We wanted doctors and nurses to redouble efforts to help families decrease the threat that guns pose to children and to offer hope and encouragement that there really are positive things we can do to increase our children's safety. So we wrote an article for the New England Journal of Medicine

For the article, we didn't have to look far to discover that guns are as much a threat to our children and grandchildren as infectious diseases and other health disorders. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6,570 people ages 1 to 24 died from firearm injuries in 2010. That's 18 people every day and a staggering seven a day for children ages 1 to 19.

In 2010, firearms caused twice as many deaths as cancer, five times as many as heart disease and 15 times as many as the recorded infections. Protecting children from gun violence is not a political decision, it's a public health imperative.

Guns kill teenagers who get into scuffles over weighty and trivial matters. They kill sad boys and girls who make the impulsive decision to end it all right now, and can because they have the lethal means right in their hands. And they kill little children who play act what they see adults doing around them or on television or the internet.

The article then goes on to list the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) about how to reduce gun injuries and deaths of children:

"The best preventive measure against firearm injuries and deaths is not to own a gun. However, if you choose to have firearms in your home, adhere to these rules for gun safety:

• Never allow your child access to your gun(s). No matter how much instruction you may give him or her, a youngster in the middle years is not mature and responsible enough to handle a potentially lethal weapon.

• Never keep a loaded gun in the house or the car.

• Guns and ammunition should be locked away safely in separate locations in the house. Make sure children don't have access to the keys.

• Guns should be equipped with trigger locks.

• When using a gun for hunting or target practice, learn how to operate it before loading it. Never point the gun at another person and keep the safety catch in place until you are ready to fire it. Before setting the gun down, always unload it.

• Do not use alcohol or drugs while you are shooting.

Considering the number of incidents of shootings of and by children on this blog, this is good advice. Gun injuries and deaths are preventable.

Gun industry targets younger children to sell more guns

The gun industry is trying to appeal to younger and younger children to get them interested in shooting sports. From an article:

Threatened by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry has poured millions of dollars into a campaign to ensure its future by getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children.

The industry's strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an affordable military-style rifle for "junior shooters" and sponsoring semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the websites of their makers.

The pages of Junior Shooters, an industry-supported magazine that seeks to get children involved in the recreational use of firearms, once featured a smiling 15-year-old girl clutching a semiautomatic rifle. At the end of an accompanying article that extolled target shooting with a Bushmaster AR-15 -- an advertisement elsewhere in the magazine directed readers to a coupon for buying one -- the author encouraged youngsters to share the article with a parent. "Who knows?" it said. "Maybe you'll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!" (...) 

Firearms manufacturers and their two primary surrogates, the National Rifle Association of America and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, have long been associated with high-profile battles to fend off efforts at gun control and to widen access to firearms. The public debate over the mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and elsewhere has focused largely on the availability of guns, along with mental illness and the influence of violent video games.

Little attention has been paid, though, to the industry's youth-marketing initiatives. Proponents argue that introducing children to guns can provide a safe and healthy pastime, and critics counter that it is potentially dangerous.

The NRA has for decades given grants for youth shooting programs, mostly to Boy Scout councils and 4-H groups. Newer initiatives by other organizations go further, seeking to introduce children to high-powered rifles and handguns while invoking the same rationale of those older programs: that firearms can teach "life skills" like responsibility, ethics and citizenship.

Still, some experts in child psychiatry say that encouraging youthful exposure to guns is asking for trouble. Dr. Jess Shatkin, the director of undergraduate studies in child and adolescent mental health at New York University, said that young people's brains "are engineered to take risks," making them ill suited for handling guns. "There are lots of ways to teach responsibility to a kid," Shatkin said. "You don't need a gun to do it."

Steve Sanetti, the president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said it was better to instruct children in the safe use of a firearm through hunting and target shooting. The shooting sports foundation, the tax-exempt trade association for the gun industry, is a driving force behind many of the newest youth initiatives. Its national headquarters is in Newtown, just a few miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza, 20, used his mother's Bushmaster AR-15 to kill 20 children and six adults last month. Its $26 million budget is financed mostly by gun companies, associated businesses and the industry's annual trade show, said its latest tax return.

Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.

Shooting range proposed across the street from a Florida school

Parents and other members of Jacksonville Beach, Florida, are upset today because of a proposal to install an indoor shooting range across the street from a school.

From an article:

The only thing separating Montessori Tides School from a prospective pistol range are the two lanes of Penman Road. The school is 200 ft. from the building the range would open in, and for parents, that's simply not enough space. 

"Accidents happen," said Montessor Tides parent Steve Kowkabany. "We're concerned with 2-4,000 people coming to this range per month that an accident can happen and when it does its within a few hundred feet of all of our children." 

Two other schools would be within a 1,000 ft radius of the range, including a school for autistic children as well as a Duval public preschool. Florida law says that's perfectly legal, but parents say the rules aren't black and white." 

"There's a federal law prohibiting people with weapons that are not locked up and unloaded and licensed within 1,000 ft of a school zone," said Kowkabany. "They claim they can meet that we think that's very difficult to enforce." 

The people who want to open the shooting range acquired a conditional use application, obtained by Action News. In it, they say they are looking for a "safe location for beaches people," pointing out that the next nearest range is 10 miles away. They also propose an "upscale experience," with retail and flat screen TVs. 

Kowkabany says he has no problem with the idea of a pistol range, just not right across the street from where he drops off his two-year old every morning. 

"I own guns, my wife is a former Marine we shoot guns," he said. "We're all for a gun range at the beach but in a safe location."

Even though gun ranges stress safety, incidents certainly do happen at them, often with deadly consequences.  Here is a list of 39 that have happened so far in 2012.

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Washington state considers adding a child access protection law

The Washington State Legislature is considering the addition of a child access protection law, mandating safe storage of guns in homes with children, to reduce the number of shootings involving children getting their hands on unsecured firearms.

From an article:

Susie Tracy of the Washington State Medical Association said, “I think there is a lot of interest in the public in safeguarding our children, and we certainly encourage you to move forward in some manner to do that.” 

Some are pushing to require gun owners to use firearm locks and safe storage, an idea some lawmakers are already considering. 

“I’m all for using safety devices on firearms, that really ought to be much more strict,” Goodman said. 

But Brian Judy of the National Rifle Association said, “I have to ask again, why are we doing this for firearms? What’s the point?”

Obviously, the point is that, in many homes, guns are not secured away from children, and tragedies result.  But this doesn't sit well with the philosophy of the NRA that there should be no reasonable restraints of any kind with guns.

Here at the Kid Shootings blog, we have so far chronicled at least 278 unintentional shootings so far this year across the nation, most of which are due to children accessing guns.  We have also chronicled at least 131 cases where guns were taken by kids onto school property, 35 of which resulted in shootings.

As we detail on another page, Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws are common-sense legislation that require gun owners to store their weapons in such a way as to prevent access by minors without appropriate supervision.  As of 2008, 27 states and the District of Columbia had CAP laws, according to a Legal Community Against Violence February 2008 report.  At least three large cities also have CAP laws (Chicago, Cleveland, and Portland).  

• In 12 states where CAP laws had been in effect for at least one year, unintentional firearm deaths fell by 23% from 1990-94 among children under 15 years old (Cummings, 1997).
• CAP laws are correlated with reducing gun suicides among those aged 14 through 17 by 10.8%, and a reduction of 8.3% by anymethod (Webster, 2004).
• CAP laws are correlated with a reduction of non-fatal gun injuries among both children and adults by 30-40% (DeSimone, 2005).

See our CAP Law page for more relevant statistics.

For parents who own guns

This article is a plea for parents to keep guns away from their kids. From the article:

Most gun owners believe they are responsible. And they well may be, but that can’t mean much to the family of Lourdes Guzman DeJesus, the 13-year-old Homestead girl fatally shot on a school bus by 15-year-old Jordyn Alexander Howe, a boy showing off the gun his stepfather left on a closet shelf.

Nor does it negate the fact that over the past five years more than 10,000 children died by gunfire in the United States — 570 in Florida alone.

As adults, we all hold some responsibility for Lourdes’ death — for not doing more, for not demanding more, to keep our children separate from our guns.

Jordyn Howe’s mother reportedly didn’t know there was a gun in her home. But her teenage son did. He knew exactly where his stepfather kept the apparently loaded and unlocked firearm. That’s not unusual. Studies show that most kids know if and where a gun is kept in their home, even when their parents say their children have no idea. And when parents believe their kids would never dare touch their gun — that they know better — that doesn’t pan out either. Many kids admit they already have.

If a doctor had asked Jordyn if there was a gun in his home, he may have said, “Yes,” perhaps bringing about a lifesaving conversation with his mother. Jordyn’s doctor could have facilitated an important revelation to Ms. Howe, and helped her discuss preventing a potential tragedy with her husband, perhaps removal of the gun from the home — the safest option. Or, if the stepfather was determined to keep his gun at home, she could have guided him to ensure the weapon was stored locked and/or unloaded, which in a home with children substantially reduces the risk of gun death and suicide.

However, just about the time that Jordyn would have been due for his 14-year-old medical checkup, the Florida Legislature passed the nation’s first law banning doctors from asking questions about access to firearms.

There is a lot of good advice here for how and why to keep guns away from kids. Please read the whole article. Lives depend on it. And remember- every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.

Article: Understanding Kids, Gangs, and Gun Violence

From a New York Times opinion article, entitled "Understanding Kids, Gangs, and Gun Violence" by SUDHIR VENKATESH, regarding the problem of access of guns to minors in gangs, particularly in the blood-drenched streets of Chicago:

CHICAGO hit a grim milestone last week, when it recorded its 400th murder for the year. Homicides are up about 25 percent over last year. Chicago has surpassed New York and Los Angeles as a hub of gun-related violence, most of it involving young people. Since 2001, it has recorded more than 5,000 gun-related deaths, compared with the 2,000 American military deaths in the war in Afghanistan. 

I’ve been studying violent crime for more than a decade — first as anacademic researcher, then briefly as a senior adviser to the F.B.I. — and have been struck by the ways in which our efforts to stop gun violence are not as targeted and efficient as they should be. 

Until I started observing gangs and criminals, I used to think that young, violent criminals were generally adept in gun use. I learned the reality was far worse. Gangs and drug crews had caches of high-powered weapons but no formaltraining. Their members could not match a gun to its proper bullet. Few knew how to load, clean or shoot. Their aim was woeful: they injured one another — not to mention bystanders — as often as their enemies. It would be ludicrous to train gang members to shoot better (even if it would reduce the number of innocent bystanders who get shot, it would empower criminals). So big-city mayors, and their police departments, understandably focus on gun access.....

Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.

Chicago teens write about violence and urge change

Chicago teens are urging the mayor and police superintendent to do something to reduce violence, particularly gun violence, in their city.  Many share their particular experiences, and, according to the article, are entering a college writing program with an emphasis in reducing violence.

From the article:

For the last two years, the Columbia College’s Columbia Links writing program, intended for high-school students, has seen more and more teen applicants come in wanting to explore the topic of violence in their neighborhoods. 

“They’re asked on the application what issue facing Chicago teens they’d like to focus on. Overwhelmingly, it was violence,” Executive Director Brenda Butler said. 

They’d be diverted — to topics like teen joblessness and attributes of rap music. 

But this bloody summer, with murders up 27 percent, most of the teens insisted. 

“It has become so much a part of their lives it can’t be ignored. So we said, ‘Go ahead.’ The result was poignant, revealing, candid and uncensored,” says Butler. 

“Don’t Shoot. I Want to Grow Up,” is a compilation of letters and essays addressed to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Supt. Garry McCarthy that the students hope to give them as their summer program heads toward a closing ceremony Thursday. 

A mayoral spokesman said a meeting with McCarthy is being arranged for the teens. 

“I want to tell them how I now hate going on social networks because it might be someone me or my friends know, killed in gun violence,” said Diamond Trusty, 16, of Humboldt Park, a junior at Prosser Career Academy where Dantril Brown attended. 

“You log on to Twitter, and it’s always, ‘R.I.P. trending.’ Someone else gone.” 

One student, Raymond Roundtree, 17, of Bronzeville, a sophomore at Options Laboratory High School, writes he and his friends now call Chicago “Chi-raq.” 

For young black males, it may as well be war-torn Iraq. “I have been jumped, been pushed to fight, and have been robbed. ...I became immune to violence,” he writes.

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Florida Girl Scouts may no longer go door-to-door due to gun threats

The Girl Scouts of Florida may no longer do door-to-door sales anymore, due to reports of solicitors being greeted at the door by armed individuals.

From an article:

"Obviously in today's world, you don't know what you are going to stumble across," said Sue Stewart, CEO of Girl Scouts of Southwest Florida. "Girls are facing risks by being in the public and being more known."

Stewart says those risks may change the way they sell cookies in order to keep the girls safe.

"I think the recent out break of gun violence that we are going to look at how girls proceed with door-to-door sales," she said.

In the past couple of weeks, we've heard three reports of people going door to door and being greeted with a gun.

Two-thirds of U.S. adolescents experience uncontrolled anger

According to a recent study, two-thirds of American adolescents experience uncontrolled anger where they threaten violence.  From an article:

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adolescents have experienced an anger attack that involved threatening violence, destroying property or engaging in violence toward others at some point in their lives. These severe attacks of uncontrollable anger are much more common among adolescents than previously recognized, a new study led by researchers from Harvard Medical School finds.

The study, based on the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement, a national face-to-face household survey of 10,148 U.S. adolescents, found that nearly two-thirds of adolescents in the U.S. have a history of anger attacks. It also found that one in 12 young people -- close to six million adolescents -- meet criteria for a diagnosis of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), a syndrome characterized by persistent uncontrollable anger attacks not accounted for by other mental disorders.

The results were published July 2 in Archives of General Psychiatry.

Please keep in mind that, according to another study, one-third of homes with children also have guns in the home.  42% of those keep at least one gun unlocked.  14% keep at least one gun loaded and unlocked.  See HERE for a revealing graphic showing these and other statistics, and how gun owners underestimate the danger.

What happens whey you have a home with an unlocked gun and a child with uncontrolled anger who threatens violence?

Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.

Article: Gun Culture May Contribute to Suicide Rate in Rural America

From an article in The Atlantic:

Gun Culture May Contribute to Suicide Rate in Rural America

Excerpt from the article:

According to a recently published survey of Midwestern mental health clinicians, one of the challenges rural therapists face is telling parents of troubled youths to lock up their guns. The Midwestern counselors in the survey "agreed that nearly everyone owned and used guns," and said that in a lot of their clients' homes, guns were so commonplace that they became "part of the furniture." 

Parents in these areas often need to be reminded that guns are involved in half of all youth suicides, and that having them in the home makes it easier for young people to end their lives.

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Newscast: Keeping guns away from children

Keep guns away from children.  Lock them up.  Store the ammo separately.  ASK about guns where your children play.

A good newscast and article:

It's a question many parents ask themselves: How do you keep a gun close by for personal protection, but also keep it away from your kids? After another child dies accidentally shooting himself -- the issue is raising more concern.

4-year-old Jaylen Johnson found his mother's gun in her car Sunday, and accidentally shot himself in the head. 

With tragedies like Sunday's, some people are questioning whether parents can protect their children, and protect their homes and cars with guns. Experts at Lock and Load in Tyler say it is possible - especially with devices like a gun vault. All you do is type in the code, and your gun is quickly ready to use. 

"It's tragic," Robert Quates from Lock and Load said. "Gun safety is one of your top priorities if you're going to be in the market to buy a firearm, have a firearm."

Richard Bryan agrees -- he lives with his 10-year-old grandson.

"He's only 10 years old and he does have toy guns with the orange tip on them, however, a 10-year-old is a 10-year-old and 10-year-olds like to play with guns," he said. "I keep my gun in my safe."

A safe is a great option -- and there are plenty of kinds.   

"$32 for safety is a reasonable price," Quates said.

But if you don't want to pay for those, there are more simple options.

"If you don't have a way to lock your firearm up, keep your ammo separate," Quates said.
That way, if a child finds the gun he or she is safe from injury. 

It is a federal law to keep your gun locked and away from your children, and even something as inexpensive and simple as a cable lock for only $3, can keep your children safe and alive.
Experts also say if your child is going to a friend's house, you should ask the child's parents if they have firearms, and if they are locked safely away. 

The Tyler Police Department is investigating Sunday's case and soon those detectives plan to meet with the Smith County District Attorney's office.

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Article: Children are Dying in Cities - Gun Control Is the Issue

A blog article written by Jay Lake, suggesting that the Second Amendment is outdated, particularly in regard to the safety of children, using Chicago as example.  From the article:

Sure, we all support some gun ownership. As a boy and a young man I hunted pheasants, ducks, and geese; for the last two, crouching in a chilly and cold duck blind on Wonder Lake. I kept my 12 gauge shotgun clean and well oiled, and the decoys lived in the garage.

But living now in Chicago is another matter. In one week last year, 52 people were shot, at least 8 fatally, in gang-related incidents.  A one year old girl was grazed on the ear on West Hastings Street, four men were shot in that incident. That same evening, a drive-by shooting over drug turf near South Kolin Avenue resulted in five people being hospitalized in serious to critical condition. Then, 10 minutes later, police were called to Humboldt Park, a short distance from where a Puerto Rican Day Festival was in full swing: two men were shot there, on West Division Street. Later, shortly after 9 PM, a fifteen year old girl was shot in the hand on West Evergreen Street.

We live in a much different world than the world our founding fathers knew. The old west was still new, and police were far sparser than today's law enforcers. It made sense to allow Americans to carry firearms, but it doesn't make sense today.

Some may consider the thinking of the drafters of the Constitution, and of the members of the Supreme Court, as it applies to gun ownership for a standing militia, and to oppose a potential tyrannical government. This is a compelling argument, but it may also be outdated and unrealistic.

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School shootings and violence on the minds of kids and adults

Kids and adults alike worry about school shootings and violence after several recent school shootings. This article discusses the fear that accompanies rumors of violence, social media comments and gossip and how they affect kids, parents and school administrators:

But here and across the country, real fear rising from tragedies like recent school shootings is infesting a digitally wired culture and launching gossip like shrapnel.

The pain falls heavily on real lives, and schools find they are powerless or caught off-guard.

“It’s a rampant problem and we are not doing a good job handling it,” said Larry Rosen, a professor who specializes in the psychology of technology at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

“We as a generation, and I mean everyone — teachers, parents, politicians — have to consider this a major issue that we have to tackle.” (...) 

Schools can’t monitor private Facebook pages. And even public pages like teenagers’ blogs and Twitter can pitch school officials into the gap between protecting the school’s learning environment and the teenager’s right of free speech, Lenhart said.

Once a rumor takes shape, the social media talk isn’t necessarily malicious — not when parents and students are fearing for their safety.

Just days after a Chardon, Ohio, teenager opened fire and killed three students Feb. 27, a girl at a high school an hour away in Girard, Pa., simply speculated aloud in class on whom she thought would be the type to bring a gun to their school.

That was a Friday. By Sunday, according to news reports, rumors online had turned the speculation into an actual threat that one 17-year-old student was coming to school with a gun the next day, on the one-week anniversary of the Chardon shooting.

Police went to his house that Sunday afternoon and found nothing to be concerned about.

But by then the family had been subjected to angry and hateful posts online.

This group of teens ( from article above) in the Kansas City area discussed how social media and gossip can affect real people's lives. The fears about the next school shooting can turn into a problem that schools and parents have to consider. Sometimes the rumors lead to an actual shooting.

Article: Guns are not made with children in mind

A short article about the lethal purpose of guns, how easily they are fired, and the danger of having them around children, in light of the recent shootings in Washington state: 
http://mynorthwest.com/11/645177/Experts-Guns-are-not-made-with-children-in-mind

From the article:  "Experts: Guns are not made with Children in mind"

"There's no such thing as a safe gun. The point of a gun is that it is dangerous," said John Clark, a firearms instructor at Wade's Eastside Gun Shop in Bellevue, Wash. "Its primary purpose is to kill people, and sometimes we lose sight of that fact."

Clark said it is up to individual gun owners, not manufacturers, to ensure that firearms are safe around children. In fact, he said most firearms do not have a safety switch, but instead are equipped with "passive controls" to ensure the gun doesn't fire unless the trigger is pressed.

Many popular pistols, however, take just five pounds of pressure to fire, making it relatively easy for a toddler to pull the trigger. 

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Stop the Violence, Save the Children - Street Murals Raise Awareness

A short but informative article was released in the Sacramento Bee, entitled "Stop the Violence, Save the Children" by Michael McNielly.

With over 280 million guns in civilian hands, the terrible truth is that there is no place to hide from gun violence. Children and teens are not safe from gun violence at school, at home, or anywhere else in America. With children in the home we should properly store firearms and ammunition. A cable-style gun locking device and preventing easy accessibility from children is a safe solution.  

It is vital that we recognize the risk to children of unsupervised access to guns and understand that there are common sense steps that we must take to protect our children.

He then goes on to describe a nationwide street mural project to bring attention to the issue, continued from and effort back in 1992.

He ends with some very relevant statistics.  Below are three of them:

• Children and teens killed by firearms are more likely to be boys (90 percent). Boys ages 15 to 19 are almost 10 times as likely as girls that age to commit suicide with a firearm. 
• The majority of gun violence deaths among children since 1990 have been homicides, while nearly one-third have been suicides.
• There are no federal laws that prevent child access to guns.

Are We Desensitized When a Child Is Shot to Death?

HERE is a good article from BET.com, articulating the need for us not to be desensitized to child shootings, especially in urban areas where reports are more commonplace, and the issue of race in relation to this issue.

Similar to unemployment and lack of job opportunities in the Motor City, a default answer would be race. Perhaps if the bloody, lifeless body of little Kade’jah were that of hipster and young suburbanite Sarah killed in her downtown loft, news stations would have been more interested.

Unfortunately, the reality remains that perhaps the death of the pre-teen wasn’t news-y enough. It wasn’t out of the norm. In a city that had 27 slayings in the first 30 days of the New Year, perhaps the death of the young girl was too ordinary of the “regular” news.

It’s disheartening to know that even child killings have become a commonplace, but the desensitization doesn’t stop with Kade’jah Davis. According to FBI figures, nearly 40 percent of all missing persons are people of color and critics say that the most media attention is reserved for white women.

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Good article on kids and guns, after recent Durham shooting

How do kids get their hands on guns? How does America rate for child deaths, compared to other countries.

An excerpt from the article:

The statisics are pretty horrific. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of children under the age of 5 who die from firearms is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. Children in the U.S. are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a gun accident than children in these other countries, the organization says.

So how are children getting to these guns?

A RAND-UCLA study found that 61 percent of families who have both children and firearms in their home do not keep their firearms locked and unloaded, and ammunition in a separate location. Nine percent reported keeping their guns loaded and unlocked.

And while parents may think the top shelf of a closet is a safe place for a weapon, they should never underestimate a child’s curiosity and inventiveness.

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New article about kids and toy guns

What should a parent do when a small child, mostly boys as it turns out, uses other objects as guns and makes claims of "shooting" someone? This new article in TodayMoms answers some questions for parents about little boys and toy guns or objects used as guns. From the article:

Not at all, said Michael Thompson, psychologist and co-author of the best-selling book “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys.” It’s normal, he explained, for boys to be interested in what men do, and in whatever it takes to be strong and powerful like their dads and the other heroes in their lives.

This is a good article for parents of young boys and how to talk to them when they want to "shoot" with toy guns or other things found around the house. It doesn't mean that they will grow up to be violent adults. One caution is offered by Thompson in the article:

When parents should worry, he said, is if their boys lack empathy, seem to really want to hurt others and are not remorseful after accidentally or intentionally hurting another child.

Youth gun violence in San Mateo County prompts discussion

There has been a lot of gun violence in San Mateo County in California resulting in the deaths of many youth. Because of the increase of violence and gang activity, new discussions are occurring about a solution. The linked article says this:

While homicide rates in San Mateo County have been relatively stable in recent years, government and law enforcement officials in the county are concerned about pockets of violence and the influence of youth gangs. In South San Francisco, shootings involving teenagers and young adults are “definitely on the high side, with gang involvement going up in recent years,” said city police Detective Ken Chetcuti.

“We had gone through a couple years with zero homicides,” he said, and then in December 2010, “there was a triple homicide. And we have had two more since then,” each involving youths.

There is also a financial and emotional toll on the community, as the article goes on:

“We are trying to stop this.

We can’t do it alone,” Gonzalez said. “Police on every block can’t do it. Families have to do their part.”

As for Aysha Haq, she’s trying to do her part as she fights through the grief of losing a son. “It’s a difficult time, but I gotta look at it this way: If I continue to fight and if I can make one person’s life better, it will be worth it,” she said. “The more people that fight with us, the better chances we will have to prevent someone else’s kid from getting shot.

Youth gun violence is preventable with reasonable community conversations.

Sacrificing Our Children in the Name of the Second Amendment

Just released is an excellent review of the effects of gun violence on the deaths of children in the United States compared to other countries, factors involved, and the role of the NRA and their ties to gun manufacturers to perpetuate gun sales despite the deaths.

The article is entitled Sacrificing Our Children in the Name of the Second Amendment, by Dr. Art Kamm.

He lays out the basic problem as follows:

The US experiences a grossly disproportionately higher rate of firearm deaths in children than other industrialized countries (ref). According to the CDC, the rate of firearm deaths in children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the US than 25 other industrialized countries combined. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in those other countries.

Often, pro-gun advocates say that shooting accidents where children find guns and accidentally fire them are caused by a lack of sufficient training of the child. However,

Although programs have been developed to educate parents and children about gun safety, the effectiveness of such programs in children is questionable (ref). In the June 2001 issue of Pediatrics a study was published entitled ‘Seeing is Believing: What Boys Do When They Find a Real Gun’ (ref). In that study, 29 groups of boys aged 8 – 12 years were observed in a room where a gun was hidden. Many of the children found and handled the gun, and half of the children actually pulled the trigger. ”More than 90% of the boys that handled the gun or pulled the trigger reported that they had previously received some sort of gun safety instruction.” And an article published by the American Academy of Pediatrics entitled “They’re Too Smart for That” (ref) examined parents’ beliefs about how children would react to finding guns, with particular emphasis on how parents reasoned about children’s actions. All respondents in the survey, regardless of gun ownership, geography, race, gender, education level, income, or child age, were equally likely (around 87%) to believe that their children would not touch guns they found, 52% reasoned that children were “too smart” or “knew better”. The conclusion of the article was that caregivers’ unrealistic expectations of children’s developmental levels and impulse control may effectively relieve adults of responsibility and place the burden on children to protect themselves.

So, clearly, gun safety education and parental assumptions about their children are not enough.

He then goes very thoroughly into the NRA lobbying efforts and ties to gun manufacturers, such as NRA board membership by individuals closely tied to manufacturers, and multi-million dollar donations to the NRA from manufacturers.

Such a link of a not-for-profit organization to profit-making corporations raises valid concerns regarding the objectivity of the organization, such as the effectiveness of its Eddie Eagle “gun safety” program

He shows fairly well that the driving force behind NRA efforts isn't about Second Amendment rights, but about profits of gun manufacturers, at the cost of American lives, and increasingly paranoid rhetoric to drive sales by an ever-dwindling number of gun owners.