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.

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.

More statistics about kids and guns

After taking a look at our own statistics, let's also look at others that are valid concerning kids and guns. This article highlights the number of very young children who are killed by gunshot wounds in the U.S. 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.

(...) 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.

There are other sources for information about children and gun deaths and injuries. The Centers for Disease Controls (CDC) lists causes of death, violent death, etc. by age category. And the Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence also has some good statistics that concur with what we are posting on this site. From that site:

U. S. children ages 5 to 14 are killed with guns at a rate 11 times higher than the combined rates of 22 other populous, high income countries (Richardson, p. 1).

Twenty-two percent of U.S. teenagers (ages 14 to 17) report having witnessed a shooting (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, p. 6).

African-American children and teens are almost five times as likely as their white peers to be killed by firearms (11.30 per 100,000 African-American kids vs. 2.31 per 100,000 white kids) (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC)).

Firearm homicide is the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle crashes) for young people ages 1-19 in the U.S. (NCIPC)

82 percent of youth firearm suicide victims used a firearm belonging to a family member, usually a parent (Harvard School of Public Health, 2002).

The unintentional firearm-related death rate for children 0-14 years old is 9 times higher in the U.S. than in the 25 other countries combined (CDC, p. 101)

As we continue writing about kids and shootings of and by children, we remind our readers that we can do more to protect the lives of our children.

One Month of Kid Shootings: January 2012 Statistics

In the first month of Kid Shootings, we have reported on 169 separate shootings and reports of gun crimes which involve children age 17 or under, from 37 states and D.C. The reports span the full range of types of shootings: homicides, attempted homicides, accidents, kidnappings, stray bullets, defensive shootings, law enforcement shootings, and one suicide. Most kids were victims. Some were shooters. Some just found the family gun and handled it without supervision. But there was one thing that nearly all of them had in common: children were in possession of or in the proximity of firearms, with tragic consequences. So many shootings could have been prevented if only the adults owners had unloaded and locked their firearms, or simply removed them from the home.

Caveat: The articles of gun crimes and shootings that we post mostly come from Google Alerts and keyword searches for very recent online news articles, and we have posted every single one that we could find, whatever the circumstances of it. But they don't represent every shooting out there. Some child-involved shootings and gun crimes simply don't get reported in the media, particularly suicides (which are, of course, very personal), accidental discharges which don't actually injure anyone, or incidents in small, rural areas. And not all that are reported online are filtered to us in a Google Alert. Every time we do a "deep dive" and investigate more thoroughly, other stories pop up, and we hear stories from local law enforcement officers, crime scene cleanup professionals, and school officials which never make it to the news.

Everyone can see the statistics. You can read them at the top of this blog, or in the sidebar. But the huge numbers fail to register in our minds. Just over 3,000 kids are killed by gunfire, according to one estimate, and 17,500 are injured. That's almost as many kids killed in just one year as the total number of American soldiers killed in combat in the entire Iraq war, and more than all allied forces (U.S. and allies) casualties in the entire war in Afghanistan. This is the real cost of our "freedom" to own guns and the lax gun regulation in America. But the huge numbers fail to register in our minds. We've grown numb to them, as a nation. This blog looks beyond the numbers to the individual cases.

When you read the individual stories, see the pictures of the kids, understand the circumstances, the problem of guns in our society becomes more clear. The rhetoric of the pro-gun lobby takes on a hollow sound. More concealed guns on the streets wouldn't have stopped most of these, if any. Opposing Child Access Prevention laws seems barbaric. And the idea of having more guns in more hands is a glaringly deadly proposal.

So what percentage of all shootings are reported by Kid Shootings? Let's look at one statistic: deaths by gunfire. One estimate is that just over 3000 kids are shot dead each year. That's 267 a month. Around 60 of those are suicides (based on the CDC report for 2006-2007), which aren't typically reported in the media. Here at Kid Shootings, we reported on 51 deaths of children by firearms. That's about 19% of all fatal shootings of kids (or about 25% of non-suicide shootings). So one assumption is that we are finding and publishing reports on around 19% of cases out there. I'm already shocked by the number we publish, but the full scale of the problem hits home when you realize that we are just scraping the surface.

Here are the statistics for our posts for January, 2012

Total number of gun crimes and shootings posted on: 169

Total number of children who were victims: 175 (see below; doesn't count intentional shooters)
Total number of children who were intentional shooters (doesn't count accidents): 21

Total children killed: 51

Total children injured: 100

Total non-injured (shot at but missed, kidnapped at gunpoint, etc): 24

Ages:

17: 37

16: 44

15: 26

14: 21

13: 11

12: 7

11: 5

10: 7

9: 4

8: 4

7: 4

6: 3

5: 4

4: 4

3: 7

2: 6

1: 2

0-1: 3

"teen": 17

"child": 15

Gender:

Boys: 165

Girls: 46

Unknown: 16

Status:

Victims: 146

Shooters: 40 (21 of which seemed intentional)

Types of shootings:

Homicide: 39

Attempted Homicide: 50

Accidental: 41

23 involved children "playing with" or handling unsecured guns

3 were from gun owners "cleaning a gun" when the gun discharged

2 were hunting accidents

Stray Bullets: 21 (5 were apparently from New Year's celebratory gunfire)

On School Grounds: 8

Clearly Gang-Related: 8

Drug-Related: 5

Defensive: 7

Law Enforcement: 3

Kidnapping: 2

Murder/Suicide: 1

Hostage: 2

Pellet / BB Gun-Related: 4 (3 of which on school grounds, 2 were fatal)

Toy Gun-Related: 1

These numbers, as troubling as they are, are the real cost of our lax gun regulations, and children pay the price for it.

What are YOU going to do to reduce kid shootings?