Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [h--s] at [unity.ncsu.edu] (HENRY E SCHAFFER)
Subject: How old are "children"? (Was Re: HCI Info. Sources)
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1993 01:42:08 GMT

  Even Sarah Brady doesn't seem to know.  She wrote an article for
the Aug. 21-27 TV Guide "TV and the GUN Epidemic" in which she says

    "...  some horrifying statistics - 14 children under the age of
    19 are killed by gunfire every day in this country; firearms
    homocide is the leading cause of death for black men between the
    ages of 15 and 34; ..."

So in the same sentence we have two different statements on whether
people aged 15 - 19 are children or adults.  Which is it, Sarah?  

  Why does this make a difference?  Well, I have some statistics
on NC "Pediatric Firearm Fatalities" courtesy of the Office of the
Chief Medical Examiner (who apparently is anti-gun) which shows
how much the statistics can vary depending on what ages get 
called "children".

  In 1992 there were 81 children in NC murdered with guns.  The
age group for this is 0-19 years.  However there is a chart which
separates out the homocides into two age groups, 0-15 and 16-19.
It appears that (as close as I can read the chart) there were
10 homocides in the 0-15 group and 70 in the 16-19 group.

  So the homocide rate for "children" can vary over an order of
magnitude depending on which of Sarah's definitions we use.  Note
that in each case she uses the definition which will make her result
the most horrifying.

  They break down the 1992 figures for children (0-19 years)
killed in NC with guns

81 murdered
49 suicides
19 killed unintentionally
 2 killed in an undetermined manner

  They don't break down the suicides by age (but my suspicion is
that suicide is significantly higher in the 16-19 age group than
in the 0-15 age group.)  They do give a somewhat of a breakdown of 
the unintentional group, but do it only by listing a breakdown
into categories for 1986 - 1990 of the <16 age group, as follows:
(for the total of 60 deaths in this category for the 4 or 5 years
compared to 19 in 1992 for 0-19.)

Circumstance        %
playing with gun   50
handling gun       28
hunting            20
Russian roulette    2


  For the entire US, they say that 9% are deaths of "children
under the age of 20".

  So it appears that the majority of this 9% are of the age group
which Sarah Brady refers to as "men" when she feel like it.

  It's clear that we need to continue to work to reduce firearms
accidents.  However it is also clear that this idiocy of considering
legally adult people (certainly the 18 and 19 year olds fall into
that category) as "children" in order to play on peoples' emotions
is at best distortion and often an outright lie.

--henry schaffer