Guns And Kids

How many households with children have guns?

Because we don't keep rouge records or any records for that matter on who has guns or where those guns are, it's tough to have a different number. The American Academy of Paediatrics has done some studies. They estimate that approximately 8% of the households where there are children and adults, about 8% of those homes have guns in them. They also estimate that about 1.7 million children are in homes where there are unlocked available guns.

Can guns be safe for children?

Guns pose a very significant threat to children. A person under the age of eighteen is killed every four hours with a gun in this country. Every week we hear a story about a child finding a gun in the home and thinking it's a toy, thinking it's unloaded, pulling the trigger and harming himself, herself, or their friends. Children find these guns and they go off accidentally. Children find these guns and they shoot them improperly. Children, young people find these guns and they're depressed and they commit suicide with them. They take them out and they sell them. They allow their friends to know about them. One of the things that we need to be asking in this country, before we send our children out, is to see, does that home have guns, are the guns protected, do the people know what they're doing with them? Guns pose a real threat to children in the United States.

How many children die from guns?

Every year, about 2,000 children are killed by guns. Additionally, about 10,000 children every year are seriously injured by guns. In every four hours, a child in this country is killed by a gun.

What is the Million Mom March?

Million Mom March was a group of mothers and others who in 2000 as a reaction to Columbine and other violence in our communities, organized a march that brought about 750,000 people to the National Mall in Washington and another 250,000 people to marches around the country in 2000 to protest gun violence in this country. They merged with the Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence a couple years later in 2001, 2002, and so now the Brady Campaign is actually united with the Million Mom March, there are chapters across the country, there are grassroots activists around the country. They help organize things in local communities, they help lobby in different states, they help get the word out that we can do something about gun violence in this country and hopefully get that message to the elected officials and to the media.