As terrible as the tragic events at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut were, the public is ignoring the 180 children, 11 years of age or younger, who were killed by a firearms in 2010, according to the most recent report on violent deaths from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC breakdown: 41 deaths were classified as unintentional, 127 as homicide, four as suicide, and eight from an undetermined intent.
Most of those deaths occur at home. And most of the weapons used are found in the home. In 2009, among 16 participating states in the National Violent Death Reporting System, over 86% of all firearm deaths of children 11 or younger took place in or around a home. If we add in the number of teenage deaths, the number dramatically increases. Children ages 5 to 14 in the United States are 13 times as likely to be killed with guns as children in other industrialized countries
The point is that schools are safer than homes where guns are kept. Before we request additional legislation to ban semi-automatic weapons, and extended magazine clips, we need to do something to insure that all guns kept in houses where children reside, be kept in locked cases as well having trigger locks on all weapons.