New research estimates that each year, 110 kids in the United States die from gun accidents. But how exactly does a child accidentally get shot with a gun?
In their new study, researchers David Hemenway and Sara Solnick included short anecdotes of how victims of each age were shot. Those stories, some of them included below, are devastating — especially because the data shows these accidental deaths happen more than 100 times each year.
Two-thirds of the shootings involved someone else accidentally shooting the child — almost always a family member or friend. The rest of the shots are self-inflicted.
Hemenway and Solnick looked at 229 cases from 2005 to 2012 spanning 16 states. The data, from National Violent Death Reporting System, only allowed them to look at 16 states, which they used to extrapolate nationwide numbers. The researchers say the demographics of these states are a fair representation of the nation.
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