(snip)
Being a celebrity, Vaughn's opinions on keeping kids safe by getting more guns into more places made the national news, and ignited the Twittersphere. But there's another gun-related phenomenon affecting the nation's children that could also benefit from a celebrity spokesperson. By the numbers, it's not deranged mass shooters who pose the greatest threat to American children; with gun sales booming across the country, and the number of unsecured firearms in closets and glove compartments exploding, these days it's American kids who are shooting themselves, each other and their parents at an alarming rate.
In just the last week, a three-year old boy in South Carolina
shot himself, a Virginia toddler
shot and killed himself with one of his parents' guns, and a four-year-old shot and killed a man at a South Dakota
gun range. The week before, a three-year-old boy in Utah
shot his four-year-old brother, and another three-year-old boy, this time in Florida,
shot his one-year-old sister in the face, in front of their preschool. Day after day, week after week, the list goes on. By a back of the envelope calculation, the death toll starts to look like a Sandy Hook every few weeks.
I should know; I've been tracking these shootings since the beginning of the year, after the story of a two-year-old who
shot and killed his mother with her own gun inside an Idaho Walmart blew up in the national media. This has been part of my research for my satirical play,
Bullets Over Preschool, premiering later this month. I'd say the title was tongue-in-cheek, except that it was inspired by the story of a four-year-old who shot up a daycare center with a 9mm he found in his father's truck.
I also wish it was tongue-in-cheek to say America's children are armed and dangerous, except it's not. It's true.
continued...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/toddlers-are-shooting-each-other-we-don-t-need-guns-in-schools-20150602
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