My Research Project: Children and Firearms

1. Working title: Children and Firearms: On Accessibility and the Need for Practical Solutions

2. The issue: Every year in the United States, an alarming amount of children under the age of 14 are injured or killed by firearms. Research has shown a significant relationship between firearm availability and increased risk of death and injury.

3. Purpose for working on this project: As an advocate for gun control, I have strong beliefs concerning gun ownership, access, and safety. The problem of children having easy, often unsupervised access to firearms is particularly disturbing to me. The number of guns owned by citizens in the United States is more than that owned by the military and is a number that is surely incongruent with the number of people who possess the proper safety skills and soundness of mind to be trusted with a gun. That being said, if a vast number of adults are abusing the pro-gun privileges granted to them as U.S. citizens, then the outlook for children living in gun-owning households is frightening and highly problematic.

4. Readers' needs, interests, values, and beliefs: Readers of this research project will likely be tracking down information on the problem of children having easy access to firearms—such as statistics, the existing condition of the problem, and potential solutions. Considering that the tone of this paper is one that is concerned with eradicating this problem—not just objectively reporting on it—the interests, values, and beliefs of the readers will likely be aligned with my own. My hope is that, for those who do not possess the values expressed in this paper or do not see the topic as a viable issue of concern, they will at least glean enough information about the problem to consider viewing it through a different lens.

5. Research question: What are the areas in which efforts are currently being made to remedy the issue of firearm-related deaths among children in the United States, by specifically targeting the problem of widespread gun availability?

6. Review of key findings: In 2010, the number of children who were killed by guns was 2,694, and the statistics show that only automobile accidents trump guns as the leading cause of death among children in the U.S. (Miller, Azrael, and Hemenway 267; "Protect Children, Not Guns 2013" 5). While the rates of gun-related deaths and injuries have been on a steady decline since 2006 ("Protect Children, Not Guns 2013" 5), the United States maintains higher numbers than any other developed nation in the world (Hepburn et al. 423). Research has shown a significant relationship between firearm availability and increased risk of death and injury (Grossman 707; Miller, Azrael, and Hemenway 267; "Protect Children, Not Guns 2013" 5).

A national survey conducted at the turn of the century revealed that 34% of children under the age of 18 live in a household wherein they have access to at least one firearm (Schuster et al. 590). According to the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), "40 percent of gun-owning households with children store their guns unlocked" ("Protect Children, Not Guns 2013" 10). Furthermore, approximately 946,000 of these gun-owning households store their firearms unlocked and loaded, and an additional 425,000 homes store firearms unlocked and unloaded, but with easily accessible ammunition (Schuster et al. 591).

7. How I will locate additional information, ideas, and arguments about my issue: Now that I have already found a useful number of statistics that have solidified my topic as being a genuine issue of concern, I plan on searching for reports, case studies, and scientific evaluations that explore potential issues to this problem and their levels of success. Specifically, I will study documents that are related to proper methods of gun storage, gun safety skills, and ways in which legislation has attempted to remedy this problem. For opposing viewpoints, I plan on visiting gun advocacy websites and reading pro-gun literature.

8. Working bibliography:

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.

9. Key challenges: Some of the challenges I may encounter throughout the duration of this research project are: inability to locate additional sources that bolster my topic as a legitimate problem in need of solutions; discovery of information that invalidates my assertion that gun storage, gun safety skills, and legislation are viable solutions to the problem; or, similarly, lack of evidence that supports the credibility of these solutions.