[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10343]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      REDUCE KIDS' ACCESS TO GUNS

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, researchers from the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention estimate that 1.69 million children in the 
United States live in households where firearms are kept unlocked and 
loaded. Tragically but not coincidentally, guns kill an average of 
nearly eight children and teenagers each day. In addition, the 
Children's Defense Fund estimates that at least four times as many are 
injured in nonfatal shootings. The vast majority of these shootings 
could be prevented if safe gun storage practices were more widely used.
  Some parents believe that simply educating their children about the 
dangers posed by firearms is enough to keep them safe. Unfortunately, 
this is not the case. A new study shows that parents who keep guns in 
their home may have dangerous misperceptions about their child's 
familiarity with and access to guns.
  The study, which was conducted by researchers from Harvard University 
and the San Francisco General Hospital, compared interview responses 
from 201 families who have guns in their homes. For each set of 
interviews, children were questioned separately from their parents. 
More than 70 percent of the children interviewed for the study said 
that they knew where to find a gun in their home. Surprisingly, 39 
percent of the parents who said their children did not know the storage 
location of their firearms were contradicted by their children. 
Additionally, 22 percent of the parents who said their children had not 
handled their guns were contradicted by their children. These 
discrepancies are troubling and indicate that simply trying to hide the 
location of firearms in the home is not enough to adequately protect 
children from injuring themselves or others with a gun.
  According to recent published reports, an estimated 35 percent of 
homes nationwide include guns. Common sense tells us that when guns and 
ammunition are secured, the risk of children injuring or killing 
themselves or others with a gun is significantly reduced. Last year, a 
study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association 
found that the risk of unintentional shooting or suicide by minors 
using a gun is reduced by as much as 61 percent when ammunition in the 
home is locked up. Simply storing ammunition separately from the gun 
reduces such occurrences by more than 50 percent.
  While educating children about the dangers of guns is certainly 
necessary, the use of safe storage practices is critically important to 
the safety of children and families when guns are kept in the home. We 
should all urge firearms owners around the country to take steps to 
adequately secure their guns and ammunition.

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