The gun prohibition lobby appears to have reached for a new low in its campaign for stricter gun control laws by launching a new video advertisement called “Toddlers Kill” that shows several images of youngsters with guns.
Although NBC News describes the advertisement as “tongue-in-cheek,” the 60-second message produced by a New York advertising agency for the anti-gun Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is not getting any laughs from Second Amendment activists or firearms safety advocates.
The video, which can be seen here, is available on YouTube and is making the rounds on social media. It comes just days after USA Today reported that “A new analysis from the Associated Press and the USA Today Network has found minors are dying from accidental shootings at a pace of one every other day nationwide during the first half of this year. That’s a far greater pace than indicated by federal data.”
However, according to the NBC News story, “Researchers say that the number of accidental firearms deaths — among children and overall — has been declining steadily,” and it had numbers to back up that statement.
“Shootings involving small children is a tiny percentage of the total number of shootings in America,” NBC News reported. “Of the 33,599 people shot to death in 2014, the last year for which government data is available, 56 were children ages 3 and younger.”
The USA Today/Associated Press study included deaths of children up through age 17. Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he was skeptical about the information on which this survey was based because it came from a group called the “Gun Violence Archive.”
“The most alarming aspect of this report is that it looks like one more attempt to make firearms ownership a public health issue,” Gottlieb observed earlier this week. “And what are the solutions offered by so-called ‘gun safety’ advocates? More gun control. They seem more interested in punishment than prevention; holding people accountable rather than educating people.”
According to the Centers for Disease and Control (CDC), in 2014 there were 33,599 firearms-related fatalities in the United States. Of those, 21,334 were suicides (63.5%) and 10,945 were homicides (32.6%).
That same year, 33,736 people died in traffic accidents, according to CDC data.
“What about teaching firearms safety as part of the public school curriculum,” Gottlieb wondered. “Why is that strategy never part of an effort to reduce firearms accidents among our youth? If you look up the term ‘gun safety,’ you will find that the leaders in that field are gun rights organizations, not lobbying groups that want to discourage firearms ownership or erode our rights under the Second Amendment.”
NBC noted that gun control proponents and gun rights groups argue about who should get the credit for reducing firearms mishaps among children and other age groups. The gun prohibition lobby says it is because some states have passed so-called “safe storage” laws while the National Rifle Association says its own gun safety programs are responsible.
