Unsafe Access to Guns Reportedly Leading Cause of Death Among Children and Teens

By Liz Fields
February 11, 2015 | 1:20 pm
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Across the US, children are being shot to death - in their homes, in their cribs, in playgrounds, and in supermarkets - essentially anywhere they have unsafe access to guns. And 48 children are now being wounded or killed in the US per day, a gun control group has said.
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Recently released Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data indicates that child deaths in preventable gun accidents are on the increase, and that gun-related deaths are now the second most common cause of child and teen deaths, with only cars killing more kids than guns in 2013. Typically, the guns involved in these incidents belong to a relative or parent, according to The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which campaigns to prevent gun violence, and released an analysis of the CDC statistics this week.
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"Millions of Americans have a gun in their homes thinking that it makes their family safer, but every day in our nation, dozens of these families learn just how dangerous and tragic that miscalculation can be," Dan Gross, president of the Brady Center, said in a statement. "The bottom line is, having a gun in the home dramatically increases the danger that a child will be shot and killed."
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Rebecca Adeskavitz, a researcher at the Brady Center who conducted the analysis, told VICE News that despite a lag in the data, the numbers are grim.
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"One of the other things that people have been focusing on this year is that 2015 is that firearm fatalities are predicted to surpass motor vehicle deaths," she said. "Because of the data is about two years behind, we won't know that for a while, but even from the 2013 data, and currently in some states there are already more gun deaths than motor vehicle deaths."

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