Report: Gun Safety Programs for Children Don't Work

By Helen Rumbelow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 19, 2002; Page A24

Gun safety programs aimed at young people do not work and have done little to reduce the toll of 20,000 children killed or injured by guns in the United States every year, according to a foundation report released yesterday.

It found that children's curiosity and teenagers' love of risk make them resistant to efforts such as the National Rifle Association's Eddie Eagle campaign and others run by gun control advocates to keep children away from weapons.

In some cases, it was feared the programs increased the appeal of guns, said the child health specialists who wrote "Children, Youth and Gun Violence" for the Future of Children, a journal of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The report said the easiest way to save young lives would be to make guns more "childproof" with built-in safety devices, although the industry has been slow to adopt these measures.

In the meantime, parents should become the new target of gun safety campaigns, because they leave guns around the house, loaded and unlocked, according to the report. Parents don't take enough responsibility for gun safety because they overestimate the ability of their children to deal safely with guns, it said.

The report claims to be the first to synthesize a wide range of research into gun safety and children.

Two studies showed that children who received gun safety education were just as likely to play with a gun -- and pull the trigger -- as children who had not had the training.

"The empirical evidence shows that these programs aimed at children are ineffective, and by telling children to say no we may even be increasing the allure of guns," said Marjorie S. Hardy, assistant professor of psychology at Eckard College in Florida and an author of the report.

Parents were highly resistant to education about safe storage of guns, she said, although experts were encouraged by the slow but steady success of parent education in other safety campaigns, such as seating children in the back of cars.

Stephen P. Teret, director of the Center for Gun Law and the Public's Health at Johns Hopkins University and another author of the report, said it was shocking how many gun deaths could be prevented by simple safety features, such as an indicator that shows when a gun is loaded. Many teenage boys kill or injure each other by playing with guns they believe are empty, Teret said.

Some parents worry that these safeguards would limit their ability to defend themselves against an intruder, he said, although research shows their family is much more at risk from the gun kept in the house than from an intruder.

"This is a public health issue, like driving. We didn't just warn people about the risks of driving, we made cars safer," Teret said.

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the NRA, said the organization could not comment in detail because it had not had time to study the report.

However, he defended the NRA's Eddie Eagle campaign, which teaches elementary schoolchildren to not pick up a gun. "It is widely taught to children and widely acclaimed and we're confident it is an effective program," he said.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation took issue with the report, saying that the significant decline in youth deaths and injuries from guns in the last decade indicated that gun safety education programs were working. From 1993 to 1998, the death rate from firearms for youths under 20 declined nearly 50 percent, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

The Packard report "doesn't pass the reality test. If safety education doesn't work, how come the numbers of injuries and deaths are going down?" said Paul Erhardt, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

The Packard report noted the decline in fatalities but said the reasons were inconclusive, and could be partly attributed to a reduction in violence caused by an improved economy and falling handgun sales in recent years.

Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Center and the Brady Campaign (formerly Handgun Control), said the gun control advocacy group abandoned its child education program recently because of research showing it had no positive effect. He said the group is now directing education efforts at parents.

"The study's primary recommendations are measures that we have worked toward for years," Barnes said.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company