PARENTS CARELESS WITH FIREARMS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 59, 10 March 1945, Page 4

PARENTS CARELESS WITH FIREARMS

NEW YORK. Parents or other adults are largely to blame for the accidental death by firearms of more than 500 American children a year, to the statisticians of a life insurance company. For, they explain, loaded weapons being left where children can get at them cause most of this loss of child life. Children constitute about one-fifth of all the persons accidentally killed by firearms in the United States each year. Most of the children killed in such accidents were injured in their own homes, but there was also a sizable percentage who were mortally wounded in the homes of younger playmates, and a few were killed in the homes of relatives.

"Surely parents must know," the statisticians say, "that children are fascinated by firearms. In spite of this, the insurance records indicate that guns are, kept in places easily accessible to children—in bureau drawers, in desk drawers, on the kitchen shelf, or in a closet, and children come upon the weapons while searching for such things as marbles, pocket knives, flashlights, or other articles."

The remaining one-third of the young victims were accidentally shot while playing on the street, in open lots, in public buildings and other places, or while hunting. Stray bullets fired from an unknown source caused a few deaths, but in most instances the wounds were self-inflicted or were caused by a gun in the hands of a young companion. In the 'teen-age group, a large number of the boys received their fatal injuries while hunting.— Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.