The current gun control banner is “child safety.”

CDC’s mortality and injury data generator at www.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html gives some interesting stats that counter the frenzy being whipped up about children and gunshot.

Figures for *total* firearm deaths ages 0-14 are 1992=957; 1994=873; 1995=853; 1996=693; 1997=630. That’s a 34% *decrease* in those five years.

Figures for *unintentional* (“accidental”) firearm deaths ages 0-14 are 1993=205; 1994=185; 1995=181; 1996=138; 1997=147. That’s nearly a 31% reduction.

(1997 is the latest year available, but there is no indication that this trend has reversed, especially given other concurrent trends of reduced firearm crime and injury/death.)

Now, could someone please explain A) why government “child safety” action is needed when — without government intervention — deaths were cut by a third in just 5 years. B) how any of the current crop of proposed child safety mandates would do anything to improve this already amazinginly wonderful trend?

Is it possible to reduce child deaths from guns (or from any other product, for that matter) by anything greater than this ~30%/5-year rate? If not, what’s all the “for the kids” noise about?

Are we already at the maximum possible rate of decline, making government action along the “child safety” tack superfluous and unneeded, and as such unjustified?