Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,talk.politics.guns
From: [m j p] at [austin.ibm.com]  (Michael J. Phelps)
Subject: Re: References of use of guns for self defense (e.g. FBI report)
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 18:59:49 GMT

In article <>, [j w r 6] at [cornell.edu] (Papa Budge) writes:
|> According to the Children’s Defense Fund *State of America’s Children*
|> report released this week: the number of American children younger than
|> 10 in 1991 who died as a result of firearms was twice the number of U.S.
|> troops killed in the Persian Gulf and Somalia combined; nearly 50,000
|> children between 1979 and 1991 were killed by guns

From Table 3.135, Murders and Non-Negligent Manslaughters known to police
[Bureau of Justice Statistics Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics,
1992]

 For children under 10 years old during 1991:

  personal weapons [1] 341
  other                151
  firearms             103
  Asphyxiation          47
  blunt object          42
  cut/stab              39 
  arson                 39
  strangulation         15
  narcotics              6
  poison                 2

[1] personal weapons are hands, fists, feet etc

In other words, children are 3.3x more likely to be beaten to death with
bare hands than killed with a firearm.

As for the 50,000 figure, thats 4,166 children per year; if we assume that
1991 was a fairly typical year, that leaves 3,063 deaths unaccounted for.
Suicides?  I doubt it - that would be about 20% of all firearms suicides
in the US.  Accidental deaths?  Nope - even if we expand the definition of
child to be 0-14, in 1987, there were about 250 firearms related
accidental deaths [National Safety Council], and a significant percentage
of these deaths were in the 10-14 age bracket, or above the age range
specified (0-10).  The 50,000 number is probably obtained by redefining
child to include up to age 24 or thereabouts, which includes about half
of the group with the highest homicide rates [15-34] .. i've seen HCI
do this, and believe that CDF has done this in the past as well.
  
-- 
Michael Phelps, (external) [m j p] at [vnet.ibm.com] 
                (internal) mjp at kingston
 (and last but not least a disclaimer)  These opinions are mine..       

 "A goverment big enough to give you everything you want is also
  big enough to take it all away" -- Barry Goldwater