[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10433]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           GUNS AND CHILDREN

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, often when we talk about combating gun 
violence, we discuss preventing criminal access to dangerous firearms. 
However, we must also focus our attention on the unsupervised access to 
firearms by our children and teenagers. While firearms in the hand of 
criminals pose a significant threat to society, many of the fatal 
firearm incidences in our country occur when children and teens 
discover loaded and unsecured firearms in their own homes. Over the 
years, suicides and accidental shootings have claimed the lives of 
thousands of young people. Sadly, many of these tragedies could have 
been prevented through commonsense gun legislation.
  The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1.69 
million children in the United States live in households with unlocked 
and loaded firearms. Tragically, firearms kill an average of nearly 
eight children and teenagers a day. What's more, the Children's Defense 
Fund estimates that at least four times this number are injured in 
nonfatal shootings.
  Many parents believe that simply educating their children about the 
dangers firearms can pose is enough to keep them safe. Unfortunately, 
this is simply not the case. A study conducted by the Harvard School of 
Public Health, involving 201 families who have guns in their homes, 
found that 39 percent of the parents who stated their children did not 
know the storage location of their firearms were contradicted by their 
children. In addition, 22 percent of the parents who believed their 
children had not handled their guns were contradicted by their 
children. The study concluded that although many parents had warned 
their children about gun safety, there was still a significant 
possibility that they were misinformed about their children's actions 
with their guns.
  Common sense tells us that when guns are secured, the risk of 
children injuring or killing themselves or others with a gun is 
significantly reduced. By passing legislation that would require that 
all handguns sold by a dealer come with a child safety device, such as 
a lock, a lock box, or technology built into the gun itself, we could 
significantly decrease the possibility of a child misusing a firearm. I 
urge my colleagues to take up and pass such sensible gun safety 
legislation.

                          ____________________