Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll

New York Times: Children shot accidentally -- usually by other children -- are collateral casualties of the accessibility of guns in America, their deaths all the more devastating for being eminently preventable. They die in the households of police officers and drug dealers, in broken homes and close-knit families, on rural farms and in city apartments. Some adults whose guns were used had tried to store them safely; others were grossly negligent. Still others pulled the trigger themselves, accidentally fracturing their own families while cleaning a pistol or hunting. A Times review of hundreds of child firearm deaths found that accidental shootings occurred roughly twice as often as the records indicate, because of idiosyncrasies in how such deaths are classified by the authorities.