March 2011 Children's Defense Fund

      In researching the Children's Defense Fund's website, I came across a newsletter from March 2011 that just instilled in me the fear of what young children can encounter given the wrong environment, the wrong influences, not enough supervision, or just the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The newsletter entitled, " How many children must die?" (CDF, 2011) was the result of a study released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with the state of America's gun laws and addressed the issue of gun control and violence in young children and teens in America.  The results were extremely saddening to me.  In the years 2008 & 2009, 5,740 children and teens were killed by guns, one child or teen every three hours, eight every day, 55 every week for two years. (CDF, 2011)  If these children were alive today, they would fill 229 public classrooms.  (CDF, 2011) The article goes on to address more staggering statistics.  More children and teenagers were killed by guns in those two years then the total number of U.S. personnel killed in Irag and Afghanistan and the number of preschoolers was double the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2008 and 2009. (CDF, 2011)
     America is the world leader in gun violence and in a study of 23 industrialized nations, 87 percent of the children under age 15 killed by guns lived in the United State.  (CDF, 2011) What sad statistics for the country that we call home?  The article goes on to address that in 2008 & 2009, gun homicide was the leading cause of death amongst Black teenagers 15-19 years while for White teens 15-19 years of age, the leading cause of death was motor vehicle accidents followed by gun homicide and gun suicide.  (CDF, 2011)  And in 2009, these statistics showed that Black males were eight times as likely than White males to be killed in a gun homicide.  (CDF, 2011)
      It would interesting to look at where these studies originated and to see if in the more prominent areas of violent occurrences there is more or less diversity, lower income, and less opportunity for better education or the availability for a moral, healthy, happy start as in part of the mission statement for the Children's Defense Fund. (CDF, 2011)  This article caught my attention for the reason that I felt it addressed unfortunate and preventative issues that affect our children as well as addressing differences in diversity of children researched.  For more information on this newsletter or others from the Children's Defense Fund, the webiste address is:

http://childrensdefense.org/

Reference:

Children's Defense Fund (2011).  How many Children Must Die?  Retrieved from http://cdf.childrensdefense.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=27441.0&div_id=0