TITLE: Firearm Injuries of Children and Adolescents in 2 Colorado Trauma Centers: 2000-2008 (2013).
SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). 2013, 309(16):1683-1685. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.3354.
AUTHORS: Drs. Sauaia, Miller, Moore, & Partrick
LINK: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1681402
BITLY STATS: http://bit.ly/148146m+
RESEARCH FOCUS: Childrens injury rates from guns.
FINDINGS: (1) There is a real public health concern for children with access to guns. (2) firearm injures are more likely to result in a death or a treatment in the ICU than other injuries (50.4% of children injured with guns, 50.4% required intensive care, compared with 19.3% for other trauma-related injuries. Some 13.2% died, compared with the 1.7% injured in another way.)
NOTES: data includes period between two mass shootings in the Denver area — the 1999 one at Columbine High School and July’s mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora.
Read Dont Shoot! 
The public health concern is lack of education, and a lot of it is refusal to accept guns as part of life by their own parents. There is a real interest in guns by children. I am a firearms instructor and my son CANNOT have video games where people are shot. I also censor the shows and movies he is able to watch. Why? Not because I am denying him his 1st amendment rights, NO because he is a child and is not mature enough to separate reality from TV movies and games. NO child is prepared for this. I will handle his education, not the media, or the unregulated and uneducated film industry or video game designers.
It is the responsible firearms owners job to instruct and educate every child, even those with “anti gun” parents. (They need classes too) Anti gun parents reading this need to realize that firearms are here to stay, yes even if you take them away from lawful owners, they will still be here. We will all be subject to the criminal with the gun. Then you can wait 20 minutes for law enforcement to arrive, good luck with that. Your child will encounter a firearm, like it or not and you won’t be there to supervise. What will they do? Who taught them about firearms safety? You, a person that fears firearms and firearms owners? Then certainly they are more likely to get hurt or injured.
I especially encourage those that appose firearms to seek firearms safety classes for themselves and their children. Look around. At age six, children are exposed to massive amounts of misinformation about firearms. Who is teaching them? Tell me about those “high capacity clips” again please… they are called magazines, and every time we “the gun people” hear it, we know that you speak of something that you no nothing about. I am not writing about heart surgery, because i don’t know a thing about it… understand the logic there. At least take some quality training classes for you and your families safety and quite reading misinformation off the internet.
There is no reset button on life. Children need to be educated about the safe use of firearms and how dangers PEOPLE are. Surprise, surprise, guns do not just go off. Again, guns don’t just go off. They REQUIRE human intervention. What intervention happens is determined by education. Who’s job is it? The parents.
They don’t need a warning and a video to tell them that guns are dangerous. That might work for a six year old, but they will get curious.They need hands on firing of guns, and real safety training to realize their potential and to take away the mystery of guns and that is put in their face every minute that the entertainment industry can.
Real training is not your uncle’s friend’s cousin’s best friend that has a gun.
Carpenters cut their fingers off every year with circular saws due to lack of education, ignorance of safety. We call that an accident. The circular saw is no different than an revolver. The saw requires human intervention in order to become a destructive tool. It is also a constructive tool. Circular saws don’t save lives, but guns do.
Have a great holiday weekend. Take your children to a qualified instructor and learn gun safety, hands on. It might save their lives once they leave the nest.