Carl Levin: Guns and Children

May 22, 2008 -- In a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit in May 1999, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., committed to speak often on the issue of gun crimes. To date, he has made 274 Senate speeches on gun crimes since 1999; his remarks follow:

Children with gun: Photo by j.r.trauben (CC)

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Mr. President, often when we talk about combating gun violence, we discuss preventing criminal access to dangerous firearms. However, we must also focus our attention on the unsupervised access to firearms by our children and teenagers. While firearms in the hand of criminals pose a significant threat to society, many of the fatal firearm incidences in our country occur when children and teens discover loaded and unsecured firearms in their own homes. Over the years, suicides and accidental shootings have claimed the lives of thousands of young people. Sadly, many of these tragedies could have been prevented through common sense gun legislation.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1.69 million children in the United States live in households with unlocked and loaded firearms. Tragically, firearms kill an average of nearly 8 children and teenagers a day. What’s more, the Children’s Defense Fund estimates that at least four times this number are injured in non-fatal shootings.

Many parents believe that simply educating their children about the dangers firearms can pose is enough to keep them safe. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. A study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, involving 201 families who have guns in their homes, found that 39 percent of the parents that stated their children did not know the storage location of their firearms were contradicted by their children. In addition, 22 percent of the parents who believed their children had not handled their guns were contradicted by their children. The study concluded that although many parents had warned their children about gun safety, there was still a significant possibility that they were misinformed about their children’s actions with their guns.

Common sense tells us that when guns are secured, the risk of children injuring or killing themselves or others with a gun is significantly reduced. By passing legislation that would require that all handguns sold by a dealer come with a child safety device, such as a lock, a lock box, or technology built into the gun itself, we could significantly decrease the possibility of a child misusing a firearm. I urge my colleagues to take up and pass such sensible gun safety legislation.

Source: Senator Carl Levin