When Toddlers Kill, It’s No Accident
More toddlers kill Americans than foreign terrorists
Children regularly access their parents’ unsecured guns and pull the trigger, killing themselves, their friends, or members of their family. Not only are parents rarely held accountable, but gun manufacturers aren’t required to make guns with manual safeties that could help prevent trigger pulls. How can this be? [This is an excerpt from the longer analysis on lax American gun laws, entitled: “It’s the System, Stupid.”]
“4.6 million minors in the US live in homes with at least one loaded, unlocked firearm.” — [Giffords]
Child Access Prevention (CAP) Laws
According to [Giffords], “Child access prevention (CAP) and safe storage laws take a variety of forms. Generally, CAP laws impose liability on a gun owner after they have failed to keep a gun inaccessible to a minor.” In those 26 states that have CAP laws on the books, the laws are often weak. The school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas is one such example.
According to [Giffords], “Child access prevention (CAP) and safe storage laws take a variety of forms. Generally, CAP laws impose liability on a gun owner after they have failed to keep a gun inaccessible to a minor.” In those 26 states that have CAP laws on the books, the laws are often weak. The school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas is one such example.
The Santa Fe High School shooter took his father’s easily accessible guns and murdered eight students and two teachers. Although Texas has a CAP law, he was 17 and not considered a “child” in Texas, thus exempting his father from any responsibility.
Illinois, with a stronger CAP Law, is following a different path and is [prosecuting] Bobby Crimo’s father, Robert Crimo, Jr., once a mayoral candidate in Highland Park, site of the July 4th parade massacre. As discussed earlier, the shooter, Bobby, had a history of suicide attempts, including one by machete, and threatened his family. In 2019, he was too young to apply on his own for a gun license in Illinois. Just a few months after a family member called police to report Bobby had a collection of knives and had threatened to “kill everyone,” his father sponsored his son’s Illinois Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) application.
By 2021, Bobby had purchased at least five weapons including a Smith & Wesson M&P15 assault rifle; a folding, easily concealable Kel-Tec 9mm Sub-2000 pistol carbine; high-capacity magazines; and other guns. He would use that AR-15 style assault weapon to murder 7 and wound 30 more at his community’s 4th of July parade. Robert Crimo, Jr., is being charged with seven counts of reckless conduct in connection with the shooting.
Will Robert Crimo be held accountable? History shows prosecutions and convictions are rare as jurors must be convinced of of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Illinois, as one of the states with a CAP law, [prosecuted] Jeffrey Reinking, 59, the father who gave his mentally-ill son the AR-15 he used to kill 4 in Nashville Waffle House mass shooting. The shooter, Trevor Reinking, was a patient at the Mental Health Unit at Methodist Medical Center of Illinois. As a result, his Firearm Owner’s Identification card had been revoked in the summer of 2017. When Trevor decided to move to Tennessee later that year, his father gave the guns back. Dad was sentenced to 18 months.
Manual Trigger Safeties
Beyond holding parents accountable, gun makers also play a role. One area gun makers should address is gun design, “safeties” in particular.
There are different types of safeties, including “drop safeties” that prevent a discharge if the gun is dropped. This doesn’t prevent a child from pulling a trigger and “accidentally” killing mommy.
A manual safety or safety decocker is a button or lever that disables the firing mechanism of a gun, so that when a trigger is pulled, the gun doesn’t fire. Gun manufacturers aren’t required to make guns with manual safeties to prevent trigger pulls that could save the lives of these children, their siblings and their parents. Despite this rather simple function, gun makers have little reason to improve the safety of their products.
Gun Maker Immunity
The threat of civil liability and punitive damages promote consumer safety. Think of the many products, from airplanes and cars to cribs, that used tragedies (and resulting recalls and lawsuits) to improve safety through better design.
The Consumer Products Safety Division offers these tips for crib design aimed at preventing babies’ heads from getting stuck between the crib’s slats leading to suffocation:
- No more than 2 3/8 inches (about the width of a soda can) between crib slats so a baby’s body cannot fit through the slats; no missing or cracked slats.
- No corner posts over 1/16th inch high so a baby’s clothing cannot catch.
- No cutouts in the headboard or foot board so a baby’s head cannot get trapped.
Despite knowing the statistics of children “accidentally” pulling triggers, gun makers face no repercussions for not making safety improvements that could help prevent the deaths of so many children and their families, such as manual trigger safeties mentioned earlier. Unlike other industries, the gun makers enjoy broad immunity justice system and any accountability.
Gun makers were exempted from the 1972 Consumer Product Safety Act and, faced with mounting lawsuits, they launched a successful lobbying campaign leading to the passing of the [Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA)], which President George Bush signed in in 2005. The Act further expanded on gun maker immunity from lawsuits. But the expansion of gun maker immunity is also seen at the state level. According to [Giffords], “33 states provide immunity to the gun industry in a way similar to PLCAA and/or prohibit cities or other local government entities from bringing lawsuits against at least some gun industry defendants.”
Understanding the Death Toll
As of this November 23, 2022 update, there have been [over 600 mass shootings] in the United States in 2022. Our sordid and uniquely American history with gun violence and mass shootings is an international embarrassment.
The United States is unique among developed countries in its murder rate. Since 1968, over 1.5 million Americans died by gun, over 40% by homicide. The U.S. sees an average of over 40,000 gun-related deaths each year. This is a staggering number considering the combined death toll from all U.S. wars since 1775 is 1.3 million.
More Americans have died by gun violence in 2020 and 2021 than were Killed in Action in the entire Vietnam War:
- 47,337: American Deaths by Gun in 2021
- 43,850: American Deaths by Gun in 2020
- 40,934: Americans Killed in Action in the Vietnam War
[Everytown] noted that “more than 110 Americans are killed with guns and more than 200 are shot and wounded.” They added: “The U.S. gun homicide rate is 26 times higher than other high-income countries. In 2020, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries, 54% were suicides (24,292), while 43% were murders (19,384).”
“A study of mass shootings from 2000 to 2017 found that killers who used assault rifles caused 97 percent more deaths and wounded 81 percent more victims than those who used handguns.” — [The Week]
Perhaps the most disturbing [statistic] is that gun violence is now the leading cause of death in children and teens 1–19. exceeding motor vehicle crashes for the first time in 2018.
When toddlers kill, it’s no accident. Sadly, while gun makers enjoy immunity and lack incentives to design safer weapons, negligent parents are rarely held accountable even in the few states where CAP laws exist. This must change.
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