Gunplay: Finding Practical Means to Save the Lives of Children

America has a lethal love affair with firearms. The United States possesses both high ease of access to firearms and one of the highest homicide rates in the industrialized world. Despite their bloody purpose and reputation, many in America resist any and all forms of gun regulation on principle. The firearm controversy rages across dinner tables, airwaves, and classrooms across the country. Many politicians believe that moving against guns will destroy their future political careers. Despite all the grandiose rhetoric of the heroic gunslinger defending his domicile from intruders, children suffer injury and death at horrific rates in the United States, and the nation as a law-making body must move to drastically reduce the rates of such tragic and senseless violence.

Firearms are especially prevalent in the United States. Many Americans would go so far as to say that they love their guns. Many regard their weapons as the only real line of defense they have against home invasion. However, despite the common argument in favor of private defensive measures, studies are inconclusive in terms of whether or not firearms save more innocent lives than they destroy. Studies on defensive firearm use “face many methodological challenges, and it is difficult in such studies to determine whether the outcome of a defensive use would have been worse without access to a firearm and whether a locking mechanism would have prevented timely defensive use of a firearm” (Schuster et al. 591). Numbers demonstrate the depth of the American affinity for lethal weaponry. While the American people account for less than five percent of the global population, they own “an estimated 35 to 50 percent of all civilian-owned guns in the world” (“Protect Children” 4). Many in the United States regard gun ownership with a sense of pride and masculinity, and some of them believe that guns serve as a deterrent to government tyranny. Fitting, according to the most recent estimate, “U.S. civilian gun ownership is as high as 310 million, about one gun per person. In contrast, U.S. military and law enforcement agencies possess 4 million guns” (“Protect Children” 4). As intimidating as this could be to any aspiring dictator or invading foreign power, the sheer quantity of these firearms has resulted in bloodshed and heartbreak.

Guns facilitate death unlike any other consumer product. These devices make murder quick, impersonal, and executable at long range, and, despite all the talk about their ability to protect a household, they present an unacceptable threat to children. For all the warnings adults can give them, research has shown “that when young children find guns, they are more likely to play with them” (Himle et al. 1). One only needs to perform a short Google search to see the horrible consequences of gunplay among children. According to Schuster et al., “Children as young as 3 to 4 years are able to pull the trigger to most handguns, and children of all ages may find firearms in the home and accidentally shoot someone” (588). Unintentional firearm injuries have brought terrible suffering to the children of the United States. In the year 2002, 762 people, 60 of them being children under the age of 15, died from unintentional firearm injuries. However, fatal injuries “reflect only a fraction of the total number of unintentional injuries caused by firearms. Children under age 15 suffered 823 nonfatal unintentional firearm injuries serious enough to require an emergency department visit, a ratio of 14 nonfatal firearm injuries for every fatality” (Hepburn et al. 423). Sadly, many of these fatalities result from many people’s failure to properly appreciate the severity of children having access to firearms. Although there are many different ways by which a child can be injured by a stray bullet, “studies have shown that a high percentage involved gun play by one or more children” (Himle et al. 1). Children are a curious lot, and they are all too happy to push boundaries and seek what is prohibited to them. As a result of this combining with readily available guns, on American soil, “only motor vehicle crashes and cancer claim more lives among children 5-14 years old than do firearms” (Miller et al. 267). Beyond the horror of a child innocently ending her life for the sake of curiosity, there are those adolescents who, caught in the pain of that tumultuous age, take their parents’ weapons and end their lives willingly.

Studies associate firearms being present in a household with an increased risk of suicide among both adults and adolescents. In a study of people who attempt suicide and who succeed in it, “investigators found that 75% of the guns were stored in the residence of the victim, friend, or relative” (Grossmen et al. 707). As sad as it is for an adult to end his life in despair, many children, though mostly adolescents, “also use firearms from the home to commit suicide, and some steal firearms from the home or elsewhere to use when committing a crime” (Schuster et al. 588). Suicide by gunshot is regarded as quick, painless, and easy, all attributes that could be quite appealing to someone to whom the pain of life has become so overwhelming. Despite all the risks to children’s safety, “studies have found that many firearm owners, including those in homes with children, do not keep firearms locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition” (Schuster et al. 588). Storing firearms so negligently facilitates many children’s finding the weapon and ending their lives. Inquisitive children find their way to these forbidden objects, and the majority of youth who committed suicide “obtained the gun from their home, usually a parent’s gun” (“Protect Children” 5). No matter what, keeping a gun in a house in of itself presents a certain risk to the children within, but many children can get access to a weapon in their own households with disturbing ease.

Firearms are relatively commonplace in America. Despite their lethality, there is no reason to believe that “where there are more guns parents care less about their children’s welfare. Yet, unintentional firearm deaths are an order of magnitude greater in high-gun compared with low-gun states” (Miller et al. 272). It is a fair assumption that if a family decides to keep a gun in the house, they should be prepared to take on an appropriate level of responsibility regarding safety. However, in many cases, guns are kept loaded and unlocked, stored perhaps in a nightstand by the parents’ bed. Children are more likely to live with guns in the house as they get older, and “the percentage of children living in homes with firearms increases with the child’s age, from 28% for children younger than 1 year to 38% for children aged 13 to 17 years” (Schuster et al. 588). There are a wide variety of firearms available, and children cohabitate with all imaginable types. Among households with both children and firearms, “53% had a handgun, 61% had a shotgun, 65% had a rifle, and 2% had another type of firearm. Sixteen percent had only handguns, 14% had only shotguns, 14% had only rifles, 0.3% had only other types of firearms, and 56% had more than one type of firearm” (Schuster et al. 588). Many areas and demographics within the United States are readily accepting of guns and have relatively lax safety standards about them. Compared to households in other regions, households with both children and firearms in the American South are more likely “to have firearms unlocked and loaded or with ammunition. Homes with a teenager are more likely than homes with children in some younger age groups to store firearms in this manner, as are homes with people in protective services” (Schuster et al. 590-591). Some households go farther than this. In many cases, “adolescents own or have access to firearms, so special efforts may be warranted to address firearm safety issues directly with adolescents” (Schuster et al. 592). Clearly, adolescents and children in the United States have an unusual set of opportunities to get their hands on firearms. Coupling this with young people’s signature lack of common sense, the disastrous results of these opportunities haunt many of America’s cemeteries.

Guns do not kill people, but their presence ensures a higher likelihood of death. Children in low gun or high gun states are not any more likely to be violent with one another. However, “the disproportionately high level of overall lethal violence where guns are more available suggests that where there are more guns, violence is more likely to turn lethal” (Miller et al. 272). In the United States as a whole, many find the proportions of child victims of firearm violence disturbing. More American children are shot dead than American soldiers. In fact, “166,500 children and teens died from guns on American soil between 1963 and 2010, while 52,183 U.S. soldiers were killed in action in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined during that same period” (“Protect Children” 4). Beyond this, American toddlers provide their own corresponding statistics. 2010 saw 82 children under the age of five slaughtered in gun violence, “compared to 55 law enforcement officers killed by guns in the line of duty” (“Protect Children” 7). For all the romantic rhetoric surrounding the virtues of gun ownership, it cannot be denied that they present a very real hazard to public safety. Overall, an American child under the age of fifteen “is 5 times more likely than a child in the rest of the industrialized world to be murdered, 2 times as likely to commit suicide and 12 times more likely to die a firearm-related death” (Miller et al. 267). Such rates of juvenile fatality clearly indicated that there is insufficient information regarding protecting children from the weapons, and there are inadequate precautions made to actively prevent the violence from happening.

It would not be fair to put the responsibility of these accidental deaths on the children themselves. Children lack the proper experience to understand the risks associated with such weapons. While schools and other organizations use many programs intended to teach children the proper actions to take should they find a weapon, investigations into these programs “have shown existing programs to be ineffective for teaching safety skills, or the skills taught have not generalized beyond the study conditions” (Himle et al. 1). While the children might repeat the maxims they are required to memorize and act appropriately upon finding a weapon when they are known they under observation during program exercise, researchers would often find that, if they are not aware of being under observation, they will behave with a typical child-like inquisitiveness.

In one particular study, experimenters and a police officer “presented the children with information regarding the dangers of firearms and instructed the children not to touch guns and to tell an adult immediately if they ever found one. Unfortunately, this instructional approach failed to decrease the children’s gun-play behavior” (Himle et al. 1-2). Many parents will agree that telling children not to do something and reasoning with them why not is not enough to keep them from doing it.

Another approach involves skills building, wherein the goal of the gun education program is to teach children to “discriminate between real and toy guns, to resolve problems without resorting to the use of aggressive behavior, and to make safe decisions (including not touching and telling an adult should they ever find a firearm). Although the exact procedures used to teach these skills are unclear from the study, the children were no less likely to touch or handle a firearm after participating in the program” (Himle et al. 2). Essentially, a gun owner must assume that no matter how much you instruct a child on properly dealing with these weapons, the child will not internalize the instruction.

Some parents go so far as to attempt to teach children how to handle the weapons. In a related and singularly tragic case, “Caroline Sparks, 2 years old, was shot in the chest and killed accidentally by her 5-year-old brother in Kentucky in May. The little boy had gotten the weapon, a .22 caliber Crickett single-shot rifle marketed to children, for his birthday” (“Protect Children” 10). The existence of this marketing strategy seems strange in a society that outlaws marketing cigarettes to children and speaks volumes of the flaws in the way some people fetishize the weapons.

As long as the weapon is loaded, it presents a very real risk to nearby human life. Even a gun without a magazine can still have a round in the chamber, and it is not always immediately apparent if a weapon has a round in its chamber or not. A household with both children and firearms should take care to keep the weapon unloaded and ammunition inaccessible to children’s prying hands. There are many chilling stories of innocent childhood occurrences turning deadly when children have easy access to weaponry.

In one instance, “Brandon Holt, a 6-year-old from Ocean County, New Jersey was shot in the head and killed by his 4-year-old neighbor during a play date. The 4-year-old had gone into his home and brought back a loaded .22 caliber rifle. He accidentally fired the gun from about 15 feet away from his friend” (“Protect Children” 10). Keeping a loaded gun in a house is directly correlated with firearm injuries to children within it. Regardless of whether the injuries are accidental or suicide attempts, firearms involved are “less likely to be stored locked or unloaded, and case ammunition was less likely to be locked” (Grossmen et al. 711). However, there are ways to keep the weapons away from children and the children secure from stray bullets. According to Grossmen et al., “the practices of keeping the reference firearm unloaded, locked, and the ammunition locked were all associated with significantly decreased risks of a shooting event for… firearms” (711). Educating gun owners provides a key aspect of preventing further juvenile death from foolish or negligent weapon storage.

If one is to protect his child from the gun he keeps in his house, he should ensure the gun is properly stored. Rather than teaching children the dangers of guns and expecting them to police themselves, “securely storing guns is perhaps a more plausible strategy for unintentional gun injuries among toddlers and young children, but the plausibility of this strategy to reduce youth suicide is less clear” (Grossmen et al. 707). A gun owner has access to a variety of safety mechanisms. One can go to a sporting goods store and acquire a trigger lock that “fits around the trigger to prevent it from being squeezed, and the lock is removed with a key, a combination, or another mechanism. Firearm lockboxes also are available, including models that are portable and that attach to a bed frame” (Schuster et al. 588). However, not all these methods are created equal. In a study aiming to evaluate the effectiveness of various gun-locking mechanisms, “only the use of a lockbox/safe was associated with a statistically significant decreased [overall result] for a firearm injury” (Grossmen et al. 711). Also worth noting is that, in one study, the use of redundant locking mechanisms “was not associated with any additional protective effect beyond that observed for use of a single device” (Grossmen et al. 711). Locking the gun away, however, is not all that should be done to prevent injuries.

Current law grossly fails to adequately protect children from gun violence. According to an amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Act made in 1976, “the Commission shall make no ruling or order that restricts the manufacture or sale of guns, guns ammunition, or components of guns ammunition, including black powder or gun powder for guns. As a result, the CPSC can regulate teddy bears and toy guns but not real guns, despite the fact that they are one of the most lethal consumer products” (“Protect Children” 10). Researchers positively associate the risk of gun-related injury or death to children with the numbers of weapons in the state. According to Miller et al., “children 5-14 years old were more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries, suicides and homicides if they lived in states (or regions) with more rather than fewer guns… The relationship between guns and violent death among children remains statistically significant even after controlling for state-level poverty, education, and urbanization” (272). Overall, the implication here is highly detrimental to the argument that guns are essential to the defense of the self and kin.

According to statistics, “on average, where there are more guns children are not protected from becoming, but are rather much more likely to become, victims of lethal violence” (Miller et al. 273). Though guns have not been tied to an actual increase in violence, they are statistically shown to make violence more lethal. In fact, on the exact same day as the massacre at Newtown, “a man attacked children with a knife at an elementary school in China. Twenty-three children were injured, but none died. In family and intimate assaults, the use of a gun increased the risk of death 12 times” (“Protect Children” 10). If society is to continue to have these weapons, it must bring to bear new laws to keep them away from children and, more than that must understand the threat these weapons represent in a much more realistic and serious manner.

Despite gun rights activists’ assertions that more guns in more capable hands will resolve the problem of violent crime in America, others propose a wide variety of strategies to control the guns themselves. Some of them are technological, such as “inclusion of trigger locks with all firearms for sale, manufacture of ‘personalized’ firearms that can be fired only by authorized users, and addition of an indicator to firearms that signifies when ammunition is in the firing chamber” (Schuster et al. 591). However, laws aimed at preventing the negligent storage of guns using current technology have seen some success.

Child Access Prevention laws (CAP) aim to legally enforce gun storage safety measures in households with children. States have been bringing these laws into effect relatively recently. According to Hepburn et al., “Florida passed the first of these laws in 1989 and by January 1, 2003, 18 states had enacted laws that allow the owner of a firearm to be held criminally liable if a child gains access to a firearm and uses or displays it in a dangerous manner” (423). Strangely enough, the threat of legal action does what the risk of the death of a child could not. These laws are correlated with their intended result, and “most states that enacted CAP laws experienced greater subsequent declines in the rate of unintentional firearm deaths for children age 0 to 14 compared with states without the laws…” (Hepburn et al. 426). Why some states passed CAP laws and saw no decrease in the violence is unclear, but it could have been due to the implementation and enforcement of the laws. CAP laws and adult educational programs “designed to reduce accessibility of guns to youth, by keeping households’ guns locked and unloaded, deserve further attention as one avenue toward the prevention of firearm injuries in this population” (Grossmen et al. 714). Overall rates of gun injury among children have been falling over the past few decades, and, with these laws and other measures in place, the nation would see this fall accelerated.

For all the laws Congress might pass, gun regulation will do absolutely nothing unless gun owners actually take proper precautions to keep their weapons away from children. These laws will mean nothing unless they can help effect greater gun security in households. Unless American culture as a whole puts these weapons in their proper perspective as LETHAL weapons and accepts that children must always be assumed to lack a proper understanding of what lethal weapons are, these instances of children killed through accident or their own mental illness will continue. It takes a whole village to raise one child, and it takes a whole society to protect a child from gun violence.

Works Cited

Grossman, D. C. "Gun Storage Practices and Risk of Youth Suicide and Unintentional Firearm Injuries." JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 293.6 (2005): 707-714. Print.

Hepburn, Lisa, Deborah Azrael, Matthew Miller, and David Hemenway. "The Effect of Child Access Prevention Laws on Unintentional Child Firearm Fatalities, 1979-2000." The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care 61.2 (2006): 423-428. Print.

Himle, Michael B, Raymond G Miltenberger, Christopher Flessner, and Brian Gatheridge. "Teaching safety skills to children to prevent gun play.." Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 37.1 (2004): 1-9. Print.

Miller, Mathew, Deborah Azrael, and David Hemenway. "Firearm Availability And Unintentional Firearm Deaths, Suicide, And Homicide Among 5-14 Year Olds." The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care 52.2 (2002): 267-275. Print.

"Protect Children, Not Guns 2013." Children's Defense Fund. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.

Schuster, M. A., T. M. Franke, A. M. Bastian, S. Sor, and N. Halfon. "Firearm Storage Patterns in US Homes With Children." American Journal of Public Health 90.4 (2000): 588-594. Print.