Misfiring on Gun Numbers

by Jaime Sneider

A 13-year-old boy entered his school cafeteria on July 17, 2000 and discharged one bullet into the air. No one was injured. This seemingly trivial piece of news was nonetheless published in many major newspapers, including the New York Times and the Seattle Times, and exploited by numerous gun control advocates such as Handgun Control, Inc., who catalogue news stories in which guns are used with malicious intent.

Exactly one week later—although one would never know from listening to Sarah Brady or the junior senator from New York, who both capitalize on gun deaths and inflated statistics—the Centers For Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics released its latest data, which reveal that youth gun deaths decreased by 10 percent.

The number of deaths dropped from 4,223 in 1997 to 3,792 in 1998. Of course, the data are still misleading. The CDC defines “children” as all people between the ages of zero and 19. Our legal system, however, does not consider persons above the age of 18 to be minors and routinely prosecutes adolescents aged 14 as adults. So it seems ridiculous for members of society who are universally regarded as having reached adulthood to be subsequently classified as children.

Upon reading the report, one finds that the largest number of firearm deaths for males occurs in the key 15-19 age category. Males are the victims of more than 83.4 percent of all gun deaths, making their deaths essential in creating the illusion of a national “gun epidemic.”

Many of the “common sense” measures proposed by the 75,000 Mom March and other gun control advocates, such as trigger locks, are not targeted at preventing murder, but instead accidents and suicides committed by minors. Yet the bulk of gun deaths among Americans aged 15 through 19 is the result of gang violence; typically, these “children” do not purchase their guns legally. (Gang members have come, inevitably, to the same conclusion as Rosie O’Donnell’s personal security squad: if there is a trigger lock on the gun, it can’t be used with the immediacy required to kill someone.)

   If one considers only those individuals between the ages of zero and 14, a more realistic picture of the danger posed by firearms emerges. Gun accidents compose just over two percent of the total number of accidental deaths in this age group. To provide some context for the number of children who die in gun hazards, consider that while 2,566 youths died in motor vehicle accidents, 1,003 accidentally drowned, 661 accidentally suffocated to death, and 608 died from accidental burns, only 121 died in accidents involving guns in 1998. Unintentional fallings among 0-to-14-year-olds result in 120 deaths a year.

In response to a $1 million donation to a gun safety education fund established by the National Rifle Association, Sarah Brady of Handgun Control commented, “Learning ‘gun safety’ won’t stop the depressed 14-year-old from using his father’s unsecured gun to commit suicide.”

Despite the wailing of gun control advocates such as Mrs. Brady—who routinely cites the number of suicides committed with firearms as evidence of the need for further regulation—the 1998 CDC data demonstrate that further gun laws and trigger locks will probably not hinder a depressed 14-year-old, either.

Firearms were employed in roughly 47.53 percent of the 324 suicides among children aged zero to 14 in 1998. But an equal number of 0-to-14-year-olds committed suicide by suffocating themselves. Gun control zealots ought to remember that guns do not motivate young people to kill themselves, and gun laws will not prevent them from doing so with alternate means. Regulation won’t stop youth suicide, though it will likely encourage people to employ other methods (which may, incidentally, be more dangerous to the public at large).

If a law saves just one child, assert gun control devotees, it’s worth ratifying.

Such an argument, however, ignores the manifest capacity of gun ownership to thwart criminal behavior—and, indeed, to save lives. If those fighting for gun control truly wanted to help the children, they would consider taking up a different cause. As the above data demonstrate, many of the problems receiving little attention from the media and the public pose a much greater danger to children than do guns.