Accidents: Few and Getting Fewer
(excerpted from
http://home.speedsoft.com/theashes/koppel.html)
How many children die in senseless gun accidents? One of America's leading gun control advocates, a physician, puts the figure at "almost 1,000 children" per year. The National Safety Council, however, reports a considerably lower figure. In 1988, 277 children under the age of 15 were killed by accidental firearms discharges. In 1990, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number fell to 236.
Most of the children who are involved in fatal accidents are older children. In 1990, the most recent year for which data are available, 34 children under the age of 5 died in gun accidents. Among children aged 5-9, there were 56 fatal gun accidents; and among children aged 10-14, 146 fatal accidents.
In recent decades, the American firearms supply has risen, and now stands about 200 million guns, a third of them handguns. But as the number of guns has risen, the number of childhood gun accidents has fallen sharply, declining by nearly 50% in the last two decades.
Notably, the overall fatal gun accident rate for the American population has been declining faster than the rate of most other types of accidents, such as car accidents or work accidents. From 1968 to 1988, the rate of fatal gun accidents fell from 1.2 per 100,000 population per year to 0.6 - a decline of 50%. In the same period, the motor vehicle fatal accident rate fell from 27.5 in 1968 to 20.1 in 1988 - a 27% decline. Work deaths declined 47%.