This new show on CBS starts with lots of politically correct themes. In the second episode, the new female police chief’s daughter is distraught over the fact that her mom has a gun in the home. Even though the gun is locked up, Over the last five years that data is available from the Centers for Disease Control (2013 to 2017), the average yearly number of accidental gun deaths involving children under age 10 was 42.
While this clip stresses the concern that the child in the home will accidentally get a hold of the gun and shoot themselves, past research indicates that most of those accidental shootings are by an adult male, most with a past criminal history and drug or alcohol problems who accidentally fire the gun. Scaring people into not owning guns or making them lock up their firearms so that they are not readily accessible is also associated with increased criminal invasions into homes and more successful criminal attacks. Indeed, mandating that people lock up their guns is associated with increased total deaths.
With over 40 million children in that age group, that comes to a rate of about 1 per million children. Note these numbers are as low as they are despite gun control advocates claiming that 54 percent of owners are supposedly not storing all of their firearms “in a locked gun safe, cabinet or case; locked into a gun rack, or stored with a trigger lock or other lock.” Given that probably half of households with children have guns, even if those households are more likely to lock up their guns, that is still a lot of households with children in homes that aren’t locking up their guns. Yet, the accidental gun death rate is extremely low.
(CBS Tommy Season 1, Episode 2, Thursday, February 13, 2020)
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