Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Gun Death News

Mark Follmon has posted an article on the Mother Jones website.  In "At least 194 children have been shot to death since Newtown," he outlines how and where these children died.  For example, most were shot in their own homes and more were homicides than accidents.  When parental carelessness led to an accidental shooting death they were very seldom prosecuted.  Here is one excerpt:

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, research has shown that when doctors consult with their patients about the risk of keeping firearms in a home, it leads to "significantly higher rates" of handgun removal or safe storage practices. Here, too, the NRA has done battle: It backed the so-called "Docs vs. Glocks" law passed in Florida in 2011, which forbid doctors from asking patients about firearms.
That law may have come with a price: Among the 194 child gun deaths we analyzed, 17 took place in Florida. Seven were accidents, including three involving unsecured weapons in homes. "The children were covered in blood," a shaken witness told a reporter after toddlers in a Lake City home played with a gun and fatally shot an 11-year-old boy in the neck.

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