On March 4, the Huffington Post claimed rendering guns inoperable, via a “trigger lock,” or inaccessible, via a safe, could save lives.
They make this claim after “two young children” in Harris County, Texas, were killed via “accidental self-inflicted wounds,” and another child, age 6, was hospitalized after being shot by his brother.
The HuffPo then claims that what happened in one week in Harris County is “happening all over the country, albeit at a less rapid pace.” And they cite statistics from 2012 to prove it.
They quote a study from the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) which claims “81 children under five” died in firearm-related incidents in 2012. The CDF provides no direction citation to substantiate this number, rather, they provide a link at the end of their study with the caveat that “all child and teen data are for ages 0-19 and exclude deaths for interaction with law enforcement.”
Breitbart News previously reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a total of 36 children under the age of 10 were killed in firearm-related incidents in 2010. That’s a age window five years wider than the CDF cited for 2012, yet we see 45 fewer lives lost to guns.
Of course, if we were to add in ages 15-19—ages which are prime for gang-related activity—that number would certainly increase exponentially.
Moreover, the HuffPo does not address the low estimate of 760,000 defensive gun uses (DGUs) each year—that’s 2,082 a day. Nor do they grapple with the number of lives each of those DGUs might save. Instead, they push on, urging states to mandate that guns in the home be rendered inoperable without thinking about how many of the annual DGUs might be erased in the process.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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