Guns and Kids Don’t Mix

Every few weeks we read about a gunshot accident involving a child – the 10-year-old son of a policeman who got his hands on his father’s gun and shot himself, the 12-year-old killed by his friend when playing with his father’s gun, and so on. There are several hundred of this sort of accidental shootings a year in the USA, where gun laws are fairly liberal. In most cases, the parents state that the gun was hidden, or locked up, or their child didn’t know about it. But how true is this, in fact?

Two physicians from Alabama have reported their findings from a survey they conducted. They obtained answers to their questionnaire from 314 sets of parents and their children.

Two hundred of the 314 homes contained guns. Three-quarters of the children said they knew where the gun in their house was kept; and this number was about the same for those older and those younger than 10.

Alarmingly, almost 4 in 10 of the parents who said the child didn’t know where the gun was kept were contradicted by their child. And 1 in 5 of the parents who said their child hadn’t handled the gun was also contradicted by the child. These discrepancies were unrelated to whether the guns were locked away or had ever discussed gun safety with their children.

I grew up in the UK where even the policemen didn’t carry guns, so it’s been a little hard for me to embrace the US love affair with firearms. Clearly the NRA is indirectly responsible for many of the children’s deaths and injuries produced by guns, as this study bears out – parental control is clearly ineffective. Let us hope that the need for guns in the homes is lessened, and in those homes where it’s thought to be necessary, effective precautions are taken to keep them out of children’s hands. And don’t forget – sometimes it’s a grandparent who’s responsible.