Original URL: http://life.familyeducation.com/school-safety-month/violence/29712.html

The Facts About Kids and Guns

Each year, there are 34,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S. How many of those dead are children, and has that number increased in the last few years? Here are the facts.

Safety expert Gavin de Becker found out while researching his books, The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift, that:

• Every day, about 75 American children are shot. Most recover — 15 do not.

• The majority of fatal accidents involving a firearm occur in the home.

• Gunshot wounds are the single most common cause of death for women in the home, accounting for nearly half of all homicides and 42 percent of suicides.

• An adolescent is twice as likely to commit suicide if a gun is kept in the home.

• More teenage boys in America die from gunfire than from car accidents.

• Gunshot wounds are now the leading cause of death for teenage boys in America (white, African-American, urban, and suburban).

Researchers at familyeducation.com have collected the following statistics on kids and guns:

• Twenty-nine percent of high-school boys have at least one firearm; most are intended for hunting and sporting purposes.
  Six percent say they carry a gun outside the home.
  The National Institute of Justice, 1998

• From 1980 to 1997, gun killings by young people age 18 to 24 increased from about 5,000 to more than 7,500.
  During the same period, gun killings by people 25 and older fell by almost half, to about 5,000.
  The U.S. Department of Justice

• There are about 60 million handguns in the United States.
  About 2 to 3 million new and used handguns are sold each year.
  U.S. Senate Statistics

• Nearly 500 children and teenagers each year are killed in gun-related accidents.
  About 1,500 commit suicide.
  Nearly 7,000 violent crimes are committed each year by juveniles using guns they found in their own homes.
  Senator Herb Kohl, sponsor of the safety-lock measure.

• Every day in 1994, 16 children age 19 and under were killed with guns, and 64 were wounded in this country.
  National Center for Health and Statistics, 1996