Up to 100 children a year die from accidental shootings, research shows | World news | theguardian.com

Up to 100 children a year die from accidental shootings, research shows | World news | theguardian.com:

by Ed Pilkington

"The tragedy of children killed accidentally by guns in the US is laid bare in new research that shows that as many as 100 boys and girls aged 14 and under are dying each year, substantially more than federal statistics have previously suggested.

Everytown and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America – affiliated groups that campaign for stronger gun laws – have studied the incidents of publicly reported unintentional gun deaths involving children in the period of a year from 15 December 2012 to 14 December 2013.

The report exposes a long list of lives cut short as a result of largely preventable calamities.

Like the one that befell two-year-old Sincere Smith in Conway, South Carolina, who was relaxing after a heavy meal of chicken and mac and cheese on Christmas day when he spotted an object on the living room table. It was a .38-caliber handgun that his father had bought two weeks before and had left on the table while he went to make a phone call. Sincere picked it up and fired a single shot through his own chest; he died en route to hospital."



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