The NRA’s young victims
Whether perpetrated by a mass-killing psychotic, armed robber or enraged spouse, criminal gun violence takes the lives of thousands of American adults every year. No surprise there.
Now, another scandal in this weapon-awash nation is in the spotlight: the frequency with which children are shot, often because they, a friend or a caregiver pulled a trigger accidentally.
A new study in the journal Pediatrics , counting emergency rooms visits in 2009 from young people who were shot, zeroes in on the damage.
That year, 173 children age 4 or younger were sent to an E.R. after being shot — 133 of them victims of unintentional gunplay. The numbers go up with age: more than 200 children age 5 to 9 — 152 of them shot unintentionally; 699 children age 10 to 14 — 377 of them shot unintentionally.
Bullets entered more than 6,200 adolescents aged 15-to-19, the single most victimized group. Two-thirds of those were assaults, and 1,459 were accidents.
All told, more than 7,000 American young people are victims of gun violence in a year.
So, let the National Rifle Association mouth the claptrap that the only thing that stops a “bad guy with a gun” is a “good guy with a gun.”
The accidental deaths and injuries are not about good guys and bad guys. Yet the NRA has fought in court even against laws requiring gun owners to install trigger locks on weapons not in use — the time youngsters are most likely to get their hands on a gun.
Add up all the accidental shootings of young people in 2009, and you get 2,121 — almost six a day. Many of those deaths and injuries are the price American families pay, year in and year out, for the NRA’s absolutism in both keeping guns readily available for sale and barring the imposition of the slightest obligation on owners.