Posted by Phil Lee (208.19.133.132) on December 03, 2001 at 13:31:
One oft heard refrain is to keep guns out of the hands of children because 12 are killed daily. Well, we know that isn't true (the peak deaths in 1993 would amount to only about 8 juveniles per day), but more interestingly, even if it were true, keeping guns out of the hands of juveniles will not save juveniles killed with guns!
You see, most children are killed by adults -- around 75% of the killings are by adults where the perpetrator is known. I ran across a Dept. of Justice report with this data shown in a figure at:
http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/2000_5_2/child_01.html
The figure is a bit hard to read precisely, but in 1994 it appears that 500 children under the age of 17 were killed by other children whereas around 1400 (= 1900 - 500) were killed by adults only. There appears to be another 700 offenders who are unknown. Still, of the known offenders, almost three times the number of killings of juveniles were by adults.
So, even if you could keep firearms out of the hands of juveniles and, thereby, prevented murders that otherwise would have happened (we all know that's not likely) -- most of the murdered juveniles would continue to die at the hands of adults.