Incendiary Image of the Day: Unintentional Injuries Edition

Incendiary Image of the Day: Unintentional Injuries Edition (courtesy

I believe guns should be properly secured. But I’m not an idiot. I know that children will get unauthorized access to firearms as surely as they get unauthorized access to porn and booze and cigarettes. The only gun safety parents can truly count on exists between their children’s ears. If the sprogs know the four rules of gun safety, if they listen to Eddie, if they learn to respect firearms in all situations, that plus secure storage (for little ‘uns) would reduce firearms-related unintentional injuries. At the risk of further inflaming my detractors . . .

Are unintentional firearms injuries and fatalities really worth so much ink and agita? As one of our commenters pointed out, the focus on firearms is down to the media’s mantra “if it bleeds it leads.” Another poisoned child? Another auto-related injury? Ho-hum. A kid shooting another kid with daddy’s gun? BIG NEWS!

That’s just the way it is. Human nature and all. The chart above – sourced from the National Safety Council’s Injury Facts 2015 Edition – lacks the visceral impact of crime scene tape fluttering in the breeze over spent casings on the local news, combined with pictures of a smiling toddler killed or injured by gunfire. But reasonable people use reason to address problems. Education is the smart, sensible way to tackle unintentional firearms-related injuries and deaths.

Here’s hoping the NRA or some other pro-gun group understands that it’s OK to talk about the potential downsides of gun ownership, and educate the public on how to educate their children. Forewarned is forearmed, for both parents and society in general.


  1. avatar Cliff H says:

    You have detractors? Say it isn’t so.

    1. avatar LarryinTX says:

      I have extractors. Is that the same?

    2. avatar Daily Beatings says:

      I have some tractors ( Will that work?

      1. avatar Felix says:

        Hollywood has actors. Do they work?

        1. avatar Benny the Jew says:

          I measure my speed in factors. Can you warp? /bomb

    3. avatar other chris says:

      You know your work is important if people hate you.

    4. avatar dh34 says:

      de tractors….is like da bears?

  2. avatar racer88 says:

    Got a link to the source page for the graphic?

    And, is the graphic about injuries or deaths?

    1. avatar Ben says:

      Link’s in the article guy.

      1. avatar racer88 says:

        Yeah… I followed that link. The graphic is not there (or anywhere I could find on the site).
        That’s why I asked, guy.

    2. avatar ThomasR says:

      What do you want to make a bet it’s a subsidiary of the NRA, I mean it’s initials are the NSC! What do you make a bet the board of directors are members of the NRA, gun makers and Birthers. I’ll go to their web site.

      Darnm it! Not one gun maker, NRA member or other potential terrorists. Just unions, Dupont executives, Exxon people and trade groups.

  3. avatar JR Pollock says:

    It should go without saying that if you have kids in the house, you should have your weapons secured. I’m not in favor of having the .gov mandate HOW I achieve the safe storage, as long as people take responsibility for the consequences of not doing so.

    That being said, States Attorneys have difficulty charging and prosecuting the parents of a child who kills him or herself, given the thinking that a grieving parent has suffered enough, and jurors’ reluctance to further break up a family by convicting and incarcerating one or both parents.

    If you have kids, little ones, either store your gun in a safe, or have it on your body.

    1. avatar Indiana Tom says:

      It seems that there are other items than the guns that people should be concerned about.

  4. avatar Daily Beatings says:

    … unauthorized access to porn …

    What little boy doesn’t want to see some porn? I caught my ten year old looking up a mannequin’s dress to see if it had the correct “parts”. Were there’s a will there’s a way.

  5. avatar Noishkel says:

    You know I best even money that the unintentional rate isn’t even 1% They just put it on the list for ‘reasons’.

  6. avatar JT says:

    Im pro 2A but this chart is misleading. If the data is based only on households who has firearms, then we’re getting somewhere. Please dont play the same games as those gun grabbers whenit comes to data.

    1. avatar Felix says:

      Should we also only count poisons for those houses which have the poisons? This is not as facetious a question as you might think. There are all sorts of poisons. Should we only count kids who drink bleach for houses with both bleach and kids? Should we count falls only in houses with stairs?

      A pox on all that hysteria. Count them among all houses and all people. Anything else just opens up the quibble floodgates.

      1. avatar JT says:

        Thanks for agreeing? We can spin data in any which direction to make these numbers smaller or bigger. Again, this chart is pointless and can be interpreted in whichever way you want.

  7. avatar CrunchBite says:

    I’m more interested in who all these people are that are poisoning themselves. How?

    1. avatar JR Pollock says:

      If you click on the red link, and then click “learn more” the NSF says it’s accidental overdoses of prescription pain meds, starting in the early 1990’s

      1. avatar Daily Beatings says:

        If we had an alternative to pain medication without the risk of overdose wouldn’t that reduce many of these deaths? Something that is readily available and affordable without the associated risks? Maybe something like legalized marijuana? Nah, that would make too much sense.

  8. avatar Out_Fang_Thief says:

    Before children can speak, they do the one thing they can do, they watch….everything you do. Any parent that doesn’t know this, is waiting for a tragedy. They see you get things from a 5 gallon bucket, they want to get things from a 5 gallon bucket. Tragedy. They see where you store you gun….they want to go where you store your gun.
    Tragedy. The basic reality is this,….we primates learn more from mimicry than we do from our animal instinct.

  9. avatar Ralph says:

    For the sake of the children, lock ’em up. Preferably in a soundproof room.

    1. avatar JR Pollock says:

      I see what you did there, Ralph..

      In all seriousness though, the graph might be accidents of all age groups. I have Firefox as my browser, and one of the add ons is called Thmbnail Zoom Plus. If you move the cursor over the graph, it magnifies it and displays a caption. In this case it says “courtesy if”, which is the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

      Here in Florida, drownings are far more common occurrences than shootings, at least for small children.

  10. avatar Bob says:

    If the .gov really cared about unintentional firearms injuries they would offer a $500 credit for gun safe purchases when you do your taxes.

    Put you money where your mouth is. (I know what that’s supposed to mean but it read as perverse when I typed it)

    And JAFC, Mother Nature takes the same number of children with heat and cold as firearms.

  11. avatar Indiana Tom says:

    So why does Mommies Demanding Some Action not complain and highlight about pain killer deaths and accidents? Oh yeah, they are part of the Bolshevik Bloomberg umbrella to instate a dictatorship of the proletariat.

  12. avatar Indiana Tom says:

    I have posted this before, but my cousins and I grew up in a time and places where the guns and ammo were not locked up and some places that the guns were loaded and ready to go. I was told where the guns were and that they were loaded. Grandparents and Great Uncles who were born in the 19th century did not put up with the nonsense and hysteria of today’s society.

    1. avatar Jody says:

      Yep, they were behind any door close to an exit at my grandparents house and usually loaded. We knew what they were and that they were off limits . . . never touched them.

      That being said, I’ll keep mine secured/unloaded anyway because it doesn’t take that long to throw a shell in the chamber for critters outside.

    2. avatar Raul Ybarra says:

      Some of don’t put up with it today, either. Yes, the guns are locked, but the ammo isn’t. And my son (age 11) knows how to get access. He’s been taught gun safety, marksmanship and responsibility since his first Nerf gun at age 4. The locks are accident preventers for visitors because too many kids aren’t raised with the respect for guns than my son has.

      Hiding the guns is a mistake. Not teaching them how to shoot is also a mistake. He sees how I handle firearms and he knows how to use them, himself. Most important, he knows firsthand what a gun can do. There isn’t a curiosity factor to get him in trouble.

  13. avatar Former Water Walker says:

    Apples & oranges…I guess I am in a distinct minority here. There should be NO firearm injuries(outside of criminals/gangbangers). Glad my kids are grown because both sons swallowed stuff and had accidents-but they never shot themselves.

  14. avatar Chip Bennett says:

    Every dollar spent trying to prevent child mortality due to accidental firearm discharge is a dollar not spent on preventing something that causes ten or a hundred times greater child mortality.

  15. avatar CGinTX says:

    The only surprise there was drownings which I thought were significantly higher in % terms and certainly higher than firearm-related deaths!

  16. avatar Bob in Calif says:

    Adding up the total percentages, I come up with 101%. If we drop the 1% for firearms, will everything be right with the world again?

  17. avatar Phil LA says:

    We’re gonna have to ban a lot of stuff…
    For the children.

  18. avatar Chris Mason says:

    Mike “the Gun Guy” over at HuffPo likes to claim that simply teaching kids about gun safety doesn’t do anything other than make them curious about guns and, thus, more likely to try and play with your guns. If I remember correctly, he never cites a source in support of this (big surprise). I know that the burden of proof is on them, but does anyone here know if there’s any veracity to his claims or, better yet, evidence to the contrary?

    1. avatar rhampton says:

      That’s one of the main reasons why some parents want abstinence only sex-education (or none at all). Teaching kids about contraceptives and such will only make them more likely to try sex, so the thinking goes. Personally, I don’t buy the argument.

    2. avatar Raul Ybarra says:

      In a way, he’s right. “Get away, they’re dangerous” is certainly going to stoke the curiosity. It’s like saying, “Something bad will happen if you don’t enter the number sequence…” How long will it take before someone decides to type 4, 8, 15, 19, 23, 42 just to see what happens?

      If you don’t want the kids to be dangerously curious, then teach them to shoot.

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