by Dave Workman | Senior Editor
A recently-released study by the Associated Press and USA Today network that claimed there are annually more accidental firearms-related deaths among American youngsters and teens drew immediate skepticism from one of the nation’s largest firearms civil rights organizations.
The report, according to CBS News, used information from the Gun Violence Archive, identified as a “non-partisan research group,” plus news reports and public sources.
What alarmed Alan M. Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, was that the CBS story quoted an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledging that his own agency’s data might be unreliable.
The story quoted Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, stating that the agency’s apparent undercount “is significant and important” but not surprising. According to CBS, Anderson said the CDC “has long suspected that its statistics on accidental firearms deaths are too low.”
“If the Associated Press and USA Today network data is accurate,” Gottlieb observed, “and the CDC actually admits it has questioned its own statistics, this opens the agency up to questions about other data that it produces. It is no wonder that firearms organizations and industry groups have long questioned the CDC in its attempts to make firearms a public health issue.”
Gottlieb called upon the Gun Violence Archive to identify the sources of its funding in order to verify that it is a non-partisan organization.
“Forgive our skepticism, but a study that is greeted by a CDC official who acknowledges that gives us considerable pause,” Gottlieb said. “Add to that the fact that the study reportedly relied on data from the Gun Violence Archive, a group whose title hardly instills a sense of impartiality, is bothersome as well.”
According to the AP/USA Today network report, injuries and fatalities among children under age 5 apparently spike, with 3-year-olds being the “most common shooters.” It spikes again in the 15-17 year age group, the report said.
Accidental shootings frequently happen in homes where handguns are legally owned. But one incident that seemed to be the focus of the CBS report told about two brothers who had been riding bicycles around a motel where they were staying in a $30-a-night room. They decided to go inside “into a room where several adult acquaintances of their parents had been smoking marijuana.” The boys found a loaded .40-caliber handgun and the older child thought it was a toy. He fatally shot the younger boy in the head.
“The most alarming aspect of this report is that it looks like one more attempt to make firearms ownership a public health issue,” Gottlieb said. “And what are the solutions offered by so-called ‘gun safety’ advocates? More gun control. They seem more interested in punishment than prevention; holding people accountable rather than educating people.
“You cannot treat a civil right like a communicable disease,” he said.
But that’s exactly what gun control lobbying groups have suggested. They want laws requiring so-called “safe storage” that punish negligence rather than laws that promote education.
“What about teaching firearms safety as part of the public school curriculum,” Gottlieb wondered. “Why is that strategy never part of an effort to reduce firearms accidents among our youth? If you look up the term ‘gun safety,’ you will find that the leaders in that field are gun rights organizations, not lobbying groups that want to discourage firearms ownership or erode our rights under the Second Amendment.”
