Mike Levin: “a few weeks ago the Harvard School of Public Health released a study that shows children are dying from gun violence at…”

“a few weeks ago the Harvard School of Public Health released a study that shows children are dying from gun violence at higher rates in States with higher levels of gun ownership. The study, ``Firearm Availability and Unintentional Firearm Deaths, Suicide, and Homicide among 5 to 14 Year Olds,'' appears in the February 2002 issue of The Journal of Trauma. According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics cited in the study, only motor vehicles and cancer claim more lives than do firearms among children 5 to 14 years old. The Harvard study presents evidence of a correlation between the level of gun ownership in a State and the number of gun related deaths on the State level. The study asserts that children living in the five States with the highest levels of gun ownership were more than 16 times more likely to die from unintentional firearm injury, almost seven times more likely to die from firearm suicide and more than three times more likely to die from firearm homicide than children in the five States with the lowest levels of gun ownership. Most fatal firearm accidents and suicides occur when children and teens discover firearms at home that have been left loaded or unsecured. The Child Access Prevention Act is a common sense approach that attempts to address one part of this problem. This legislation would hold adults who fail to lock up a loaded firearm or an unloaded firearm with ammunition accountable.”