Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
10-15-2016, 11:41 AM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/accidental-shootings-kill-child-every-072529988.html
Accidental shootings kill a child every other day
[Associated Press]
RYAN J. FOLEY, LARRY FENN and NICK PENZENSTADLER
October 14, 2016
https://www.yahoo.com/news/accidental-shootings-kill-child-every-072529988.html
Hours earlier, he was a happy 4-year-old who loved Ironman and the Hulk and all the Avengers. Now, as Bryson Mees-Hernandez approached death in a Houston hospital room, his brain swelling through the bullet hole in his face, his mother assured the boy it was OK to die.
"When you are on the other side," his mother, Crystal Mees, recalls telling him, "you are going to see Mommy cry a lot. It's not because she's mad. It's because she misses you."
And this: "It's not your fault."
But whose fault was it?
Bryson shot himself last January with a .22-caliber Derringer his grandmother kept under the bed. It was an accident, but one that could be blamed on many factors, from his grandmother's negligence to the failure of government and industry to find ways to prevent his death and so many others.
The Associated Press and the USA TODAY Network set out to determine just how many others there have been.
The findings: During the first six months of this year, minors died from accidental shootings — at their own hands, or at the hands of other children or adults — at a pace of one every other day, far more than limited federal statistics indicate.
Tragedies like the death of Bryson Mees-Hernandez play out repeatedly across the country. Curious toddlers find unsecured, loaded handguns in their homes and vehicles, and fatally shoot themselves and others. Teenagers, often showing off guns to their friends and siblings, end up shooting them instead.
Using information collected by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan research group, news reports and public sources, the media outlets spent six months analyzing the circumstances of every death and injury from accidental shootings involving children ages 17 and younger from Jan. 1, 2014, to June 30 of this year — more than 1,000 incidents in all.
Among the findings:
—Deaths and injuries spike for children under 5, with 3-year-olds the most common shooters and victims among young children.
—Accidental shootings spike again for ages 15-17, when victims are most often fatally shot by other children but typically survive self-inflicted gunshots.
—States in the South are among those with the highest per capita rates of accidental shootings involving minors.
Another finding: The vast majority of shooters and victims are boys. A shooting last year in Shreveport, Louisiana, is a case in point.
Cameron Price, 4, and his 6-year-old brother, Ka'Darius, were riding their bikes outside the Levingston Motel, where their family had taken a $30-a-night room.
They decided to go inside, into a room where several adult acquaintances of their parents had been smoking marijuana. A gun was sitting out, and Ka'Darius thought the chrome and black .40-caliber pistol was a toy.
Then a single shot rang out, and the bullet fatally struck the younger boy.
Ka'Darius later told police he "pushed the bad button" and he understood his brother "had a hole in his head," was going to the hospital and not coming home.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 74 minors died from accidental discharges of firearms in 2014, the latest year for which comparable data are available. The AP and USA TODAY analysis counted 113 for that year, suggesting the federal government missed a third of the cases.
While accidental shootings account for only a fraction of firearm deaths in the U.S., gun safety advocates have long argued that they are largely preventable.
They demand stricter laws requiring guns to be kept locked up and unloaded. But gun rights supporters argue those measures make guns less useful in emergencies; citing CDC statistics, the National Rifle Association argues in public statements that such deaths have declined significantly in recent decades and that the chance of a child dying in a firearms accident is "one in one million."
Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, suggested the NRA was citing statistics that underestimate the risk guns represent to children. He said the undercount documented by the AP and USA TODAY Network is "significant and important," but not surprising.
The agency has long suspected that its statistics on accidental firearms deaths are too low, he said.
Gun safety advocates have urged a public health approach that includes more government research, more public awareness and stricter state laws.
That is just what Crystal Mees is advocating in Texas after the death of her son at her mother's house.
Mees had given birth months earlier to a baby girl and needed sleep, so she had taken Bryson and his 2-year-old sister there to spend the night.
It began as a typical night. After their baths, Bryson asked if he could hop in bed with his grandfather, who was already asleep. His grandmother, Anna Sperber, said yes, before she fell asleep on the living room couch with the younger girl.
When Sperber got up to get a blanket hours later, she saw Bryson face down on the bedroom floor. She thought he had fallen asleep.
Then she noticed the lump on his head and panicked when she saw the pistol she kept under her bed lying next to him. He had shot himself above the right eye.
Crystal Mees blames her mother for her son's death and no longer talks to her or brings her two children around; she says she had warned her to keep the gun out of children's reach. She plans to push for a "Bryson's law" in Texas to make it easier for prosecutors to bring charges against adults who allow children access to firearms.
Both women attended the funeral, where relatives dressed up as Bryson's beloved Avengers. He was buried with Legos, toy cars and his grandfather's favorite cologne.
___
Larry Fenn is a data journalist for The Associated Press.
Absent is the number of children murdered each day by abortions that are fully supported by these same bleeding heart liberal/dems!
Such blatant hypocrisy should be noted and decried..-TYR
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states?gclid=COGzpYqg3c8CFQwUgQodPWALdQ
2016 US Abortion Facts
Adwww.guttmacher.org/
Laws affecting reproductive health. What's new in 2016.
Abortion in the U.S.Abortion WorldwideAbortion Facts By State
According to WHO, every year in the world there are an estimated 40-50 million abortions. This corresponds to approximately 125,000 abortions per day. In the USA, where nearly half of pregnancies are unintended and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion [1] , there are over 3,000 abortions per day.
--------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states?gclid=CKrP58Sf3c8CFQwTgQodRDgDgg
Induced Abortion in the United States
• Nearly half of pregnancies among American women in 2011 were unintended, and about four in 10 of these were terminated by abortion.[1]
• Twenty-one percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) in 2011 ended in abortion.[2]
• In 2011, approximately 1.06 million abortions were performed, down 13% from 1.21 million in 2008. From 1973 through 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions occurred.[2]
• The abortion rate in 2011 was 16.9 per 1,000 women aged 15–44, down 13% from 19.4 per 1,000 in 2008. This is the lowest rate observed since abortion became legal in the United States in 1973.[2]
• In 2011, 1.7% of women aged 15–44 had an abortion [2]. Half of these women had had at least one previous abortion.[3]
WHO HAS ABORTIONS?
• Twelve percent of U.S. abortion patients in 2014 were teenagers: Those aged 18–19 accounted for 8% of all abortions, 15–17-year-olds for 3% and teenagers younger than 15 for 0.2%.[3]
• More than half of all abortion patients in 2014 were in their 20s: Patients aged 20–24 obtained 34% of all abortions, and patients aged 25–29 obtained 27%.[3]
• White patients accounted for 39% of abortion procedures in 2014, blacks for 28%, Hispanics for 25% and patients of other races and ethnicities for 9%.[3]
• Seventeen percent of abortion patients in 2014 identified as mainline Protestant, 13% as evangelical Protestant and 24% as Catholic; 38% reported no religious affiliation.[3]
• In 2014, some 46% of all abortion patients had never married and were not cohabiting.[3]
• Fifty-nine percent of abortions in 2014 were obtained by patients who had had at least one previous birth.[3]
• Forty-nine percent of abortion patients in 2014 had incomes of less than 100% of the federal poverty level ($11,670 for a single adult with no children).*,[3]
• Twenty-six percent of abortion patients in 2014 had incomes of 100–199% of the federal poverty level.[3]
• The reasons patients gave for having an abortion underscored their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. The three most common reasons—each cited by three-fourths of patients—were concern for or responsibility to other individuals; the inability to afford a child; and the belief that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents. Half said they did not want to be a single parent or were having problems with their husband or partner.[4]
• Fifty-one percent of abortion patients had used a contraceptive method in the month they got pregnant, most commonly condoms (27%) or a hormonal method (17%).[5]
Accidental shootings kill a child every other day
[Associated Press]
RYAN J. FOLEY, LARRY FENN and NICK PENZENSTADLER
October 14, 2016
https://www.yahoo.com/news/accidental-shootings-kill-child-every-072529988.html
Hours earlier, he was a happy 4-year-old who loved Ironman and the Hulk and all the Avengers. Now, as Bryson Mees-Hernandez approached death in a Houston hospital room, his brain swelling through the bullet hole in his face, his mother assured the boy it was OK to die.
"When you are on the other side," his mother, Crystal Mees, recalls telling him, "you are going to see Mommy cry a lot. It's not because she's mad. It's because she misses you."
And this: "It's not your fault."
But whose fault was it?
Bryson shot himself last January with a .22-caliber Derringer his grandmother kept under the bed. It was an accident, but one that could be blamed on many factors, from his grandmother's negligence to the failure of government and industry to find ways to prevent his death and so many others.
The Associated Press and the USA TODAY Network set out to determine just how many others there have been.
The findings: During the first six months of this year, minors died from accidental shootings — at their own hands, or at the hands of other children or adults — at a pace of one every other day, far more than limited federal statistics indicate.
Tragedies like the death of Bryson Mees-Hernandez play out repeatedly across the country. Curious toddlers find unsecured, loaded handguns in their homes and vehicles, and fatally shoot themselves and others. Teenagers, often showing off guns to their friends and siblings, end up shooting them instead.
Using information collected by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan research group, news reports and public sources, the media outlets spent six months analyzing the circumstances of every death and injury from accidental shootings involving children ages 17 and younger from Jan. 1, 2014, to June 30 of this year — more than 1,000 incidents in all.
Among the findings:
—Deaths and injuries spike for children under 5, with 3-year-olds the most common shooters and victims among young children.
—Accidental shootings spike again for ages 15-17, when victims are most often fatally shot by other children but typically survive self-inflicted gunshots.
—States in the South are among those with the highest per capita rates of accidental shootings involving minors.
Another finding: The vast majority of shooters and victims are boys. A shooting last year in Shreveport, Louisiana, is a case in point.
Cameron Price, 4, and his 6-year-old brother, Ka'Darius, were riding their bikes outside the Levingston Motel, where their family had taken a $30-a-night room.
They decided to go inside, into a room where several adult acquaintances of their parents had been smoking marijuana. A gun was sitting out, and Ka'Darius thought the chrome and black .40-caliber pistol was a toy.
Then a single shot rang out, and the bullet fatally struck the younger boy.
Ka'Darius later told police he "pushed the bad button" and he understood his brother "had a hole in his head," was going to the hospital and not coming home.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 74 minors died from accidental discharges of firearms in 2014, the latest year for which comparable data are available. The AP and USA TODAY analysis counted 113 for that year, suggesting the federal government missed a third of the cases.
While accidental shootings account for only a fraction of firearm deaths in the U.S., gun safety advocates have long argued that they are largely preventable.
They demand stricter laws requiring guns to be kept locked up and unloaded. But gun rights supporters argue those measures make guns less useful in emergencies; citing CDC statistics, the National Rifle Association argues in public statements that such deaths have declined significantly in recent decades and that the chance of a child dying in a firearms accident is "one in one million."
Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, suggested the NRA was citing statistics that underestimate the risk guns represent to children. He said the undercount documented by the AP and USA TODAY Network is "significant and important," but not surprising.
The agency has long suspected that its statistics on accidental firearms deaths are too low, he said.
Gun safety advocates have urged a public health approach that includes more government research, more public awareness and stricter state laws.
That is just what Crystal Mees is advocating in Texas after the death of her son at her mother's house.
Mees had given birth months earlier to a baby girl and needed sleep, so she had taken Bryson and his 2-year-old sister there to spend the night.
It began as a typical night. After their baths, Bryson asked if he could hop in bed with his grandfather, who was already asleep. His grandmother, Anna Sperber, said yes, before she fell asleep on the living room couch with the younger girl.
When Sperber got up to get a blanket hours later, she saw Bryson face down on the bedroom floor. She thought he had fallen asleep.
Then she noticed the lump on his head and panicked when she saw the pistol she kept under her bed lying next to him. He had shot himself above the right eye.
Crystal Mees blames her mother for her son's death and no longer talks to her or brings her two children around; she says she had warned her to keep the gun out of children's reach. She plans to push for a "Bryson's law" in Texas to make it easier for prosecutors to bring charges against adults who allow children access to firearms.
Both women attended the funeral, where relatives dressed up as Bryson's beloved Avengers. He was buried with Legos, toy cars and his grandfather's favorite cologne.
___
Larry Fenn is a data journalist for The Associated Press.
Absent is the number of children murdered each day by abortions that are fully supported by these same bleeding heart liberal/dems!
Such blatant hypocrisy should be noted and decried..-TYR
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states?gclid=COGzpYqg3c8CFQwUgQodPWALdQ
2016 US Abortion Facts
Adwww.guttmacher.org/
Laws affecting reproductive health. What's new in 2016.
Abortion in the U.S.Abortion WorldwideAbortion Facts By State
According to WHO, every year in the world there are an estimated 40-50 million abortions. This corresponds to approximately 125,000 abortions per day. In the USA, where nearly half of pregnancies are unintended and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion [1] , there are over 3,000 abortions per day.
--------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states?gclid=CKrP58Sf3c8CFQwTgQodRDgDgg
Induced Abortion in the United States
• Nearly half of pregnancies among American women in 2011 were unintended, and about four in 10 of these were terminated by abortion.[1]
• Twenty-one percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) in 2011 ended in abortion.[2]
• In 2011, approximately 1.06 million abortions were performed, down 13% from 1.21 million in 2008. From 1973 through 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions occurred.[2]
• The abortion rate in 2011 was 16.9 per 1,000 women aged 15–44, down 13% from 19.4 per 1,000 in 2008. This is the lowest rate observed since abortion became legal in the United States in 1973.[2]
• In 2011, 1.7% of women aged 15–44 had an abortion [2]. Half of these women had had at least one previous abortion.[3]
WHO HAS ABORTIONS?
• Twelve percent of U.S. abortion patients in 2014 were teenagers: Those aged 18–19 accounted for 8% of all abortions, 15–17-year-olds for 3% and teenagers younger than 15 for 0.2%.[3]
• More than half of all abortion patients in 2014 were in their 20s: Patients aged 20–24 obtained 34% of all abortions, and patients aged 25–29 obtained 27%.[3]
• White patients accounted for 39% of abortion procedures in 2014, blacks for 28%, Hispanics for 25% and patients of other races and ethnicities for 9%.[3]
• Seventeen percent of abortion patients in 2014 identified as mainline Protestant, 13% as evangelical Protestant and 24% as Catholic; 38% reported no religious affiliation.[3]
• In 2014, some 46% of all abortion patients had never married and were not cohabiting.[3]
• Fifty-nine percent of abortions in 2014 were obtained by patients who had had at least one previous birth.[3]
• Forty-nine percent of abortion patients in 2014 had incomes of less than 100% of the federal poverty level ($11,670 for a single adult with no children).*,[3]
• Twenty-six percent of abortion patients in 2014 had incomes of 100–199% of the federal poverty level.[3]
• The reasons patients gave for having an abortion underscored their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. The three most common reasons—each cited by three-fourths of patients—were concern for or responsibility to other individuals; the inability to afford a child; and the belief that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents. Half said they did not want to be a single parent or were having problems with their husband or partner.[4]
• Fifty-one percent of abortion patients had used a contraceptive method in the month they got pregnant, most commonly condoms (27%) or a hormonal method (17%).[5]