Children’s Defense Fund research from 2010 shows that guns kill more infants, toddlers and preschoolers than they do police officers in the line of duty.
American youth are 17 times more likely to be shot dead than the young of the other industrialized nations (that is 1600 % greater chance of children being shot dead as a child in our country).
A gun in the home increases the risk of suicide by 3 to 5 times, homicide by 3 times, and accidental death by 400 percent.
Since 1963, three times as many American children and teens have been shot dead than soldiers killed abroad – in 2010, five times more children and teens were shot dead than soldiers killed in Iraq and Afgghanistan.
Gun violence kills more black youth (from one to nineteen years old) every year except for car accidents. Below are stunning graphs that demonstrate these facts (courtesy of ScienceBlogs.com (the pump handle)
The San Bernardino shooting this week is just the tip of the gun violence iceberg we face daily in this country because of NRA lobbying to make guns easier to get than good healthcare. In Florida it’s still a crime for a doctor to ask questions about the safety of guns in the homes of young children.
We are becoming a colder, meaner people with every mass shooting and child gun death that occurs.
Buy our book or donate Share this article with at least one friend or network.
Three People Shot In One Week By Toddlers
More Americans Shot By Toddlers Than Terrorists
Two Year Old Shoots Florida Mother To Death (a state that fines doctors for telling mothers to lock up their guns).
More Young Americans Now Die From Guns Than Cars (Forbes 8.26.15) Dan Diamond
The United States is one of the greatest nations in the world. But compared to our peers, we’re one of the worst when it comes to gun violence.
In America, you can be shot at an elementary school. You can be murdered at a church or movie theatre.
You can even be executed on live TV — and yet there’s no real expectation of gun reform.
Gun-related violence and death is a real public health problem in America, researchers say. And these three charts illustrate why.
1. Gun-related deaths in America wildly outpace our peer nations
More than 32,000 people per year are killed by guns in the United States — at least.
The total number’s incomplete because some gun-related deaths are left out of CDC statistics, Adrienne LaFrance wrote at The Atlantic earlier this year. That’s partly because of privacy concerns, the mystery over some police-related shooting data … and the political consequences of taking on the gun lobby, LaFrance points out.
Notably, the CDC has avoided some research into gun-related injury, and the Washington Post suggests that “fear and funding shortfalls” are to blame.
