Truth? You can't handle the truth!

"think of the kids, man". Yep, I get that a lot when discussing child access prevention (CAP) laws regarding firearms. It seems that the anti-rights establishment is pushing for access prevention laws, not just for children, but teens, young adults and, well everyone. Think of the kids, man. Let's assume for a moment that these anti-rights bigots truly are concerned with the welfare of the kids. If so, firearms must be the biggest threat to children, including teens, so let's look at the facts that we have. Over at the CDC, they keep a searchable database of what kills people and the age, race and gender of the deceased. I conducted a few searches about what kills children ages 0-17 and this is what I found.



2009 transportation related deaths: 3,115. 2009 firearm related deaths:1,392 Hmm. seems like a child is nearly 2 1/4 times more likely to be killed while traveling than by a firearm. I guess the anti-rights bigots really aren't concerned with the welfare of the kids. As Joan A. Peterson once said

Denial of the fact that bullets from guns kill almost as many people every year as car accidents. And I do say ACCIDENTS.

So I suppose that it's ok for a child be killed accidentally by an automobile, but not a firearm. Well, let's see how many children are killed accidentally by automobiles, surely it must be less than firearms, since it's acceptable. According to the CDC, in 2009 there were 2,938 accidental motor vehicle related deaths to persons age 0-17. My goodness, certainly firearms must have accidentally killed more kids than that! Nope, there were 83 accidental firearm related deaths. For anyone who didn't break out the calculator yet, that's over 35 times more kids are accidentally killed by motor vehicles than by firearms. Again, it's not looking like the anti-rights bigots are concerned with the kids.



Think of the kids, man, CAP laws would prevent suicide. In 2009 there were 1058 suicides in the age group 0-17. (Much to my surprise, the youngest suicide was 6 years-old). Of those suicides, 401 were committed with a firearm. You would think that firearms are the predominate method of suicide, but you'd be wrong. It seems that suffocation leads the pack with 555. Yeah, if the anti-rights bigots were truly concerned about the kids, man, they'd be calling for CAP laws on rope.


CDC 2009 Injury Deaths, age group 0-17

    injury                 all  intents     accidental    suicide
Transportation        3115             3099             6
Suffocation             2159              1133         555
firearm                   1392                 83          401
poisoning                 467                344           42


6 year-old committing suicide? Really? Apparently so. The Daily Caller reports

Samantha Kuberski, a first-grader in McMinnville, Ore., crawled into an unused crib, tied one end of a belt around her neck, the other on a bar of the crib, and hanged herself, according to reports.