[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Page 25649]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             FIREARM DEATHS

  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, according to the latest data from the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, 3,184 children and 
teens died from a firearm in the United States in 2006, a 6 percent 
increase from 2005. This breaks down to the life of an American child 
being taken every 2 hours and 45 minutes by someone wielding a gun. 
More than five times as many, or nearly 17,500 children and teens 
suffered a nonfatal gun injury that year, a 7 percent increase from the 
previous year.
  The 2009 Children's Defense Fund's report ``Protect Children, Not 
Guns'' illustrates the problem even more pointedly. The report, which 
provides key findings on children's gun deaths, states that more 
preschoolers were killed by firearms in 2006 than were law enforcement 
officers in the line of duty.
  This type of violence is preventable. It only requires action. The 
Children's Defense Fund's report makes a number of recommendations 
about how to protect children from gun violence. Among other things, 
they recommend schools provide nonviolent conflict resolution courses 
for all students and communities create positive activities for 
children and teenagers to reduce the influence of gangs and drugs. They 
also recommend passage of such common sense gun safety legislation as 
closing the gun show loophole, strengthening the Brady background check 
system and reauthorizing the assault weapons ban.
  We cannot afford to sit and watch as so many young lives are 
irrevocably destroyed by gun violence. Passage of commonsense 
legislation would help end these types of tragedies.

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