As many as 13 children up to 3 years of age killed themselves in the United States in 2015, while two killed other people. An additional 18 injured themselves and 10 wounded other people.
The most frequent weapon involved was a handgun. Stories involving toddlers shooting someone appear in the media roughly once per week. It's mostly boys who do it: The Post only found three cases involving girls.
Geographically speaking, the shootings have been unevenly distributed. In Missouri, for example, there have been five cases recorded, while in one of the most populous states, California, there have been none so far.
Some experts claim that the main reason for the frequent occurrence of shootings involving toddlers in the US is its abundance of privately-owned firearms, which number in excess of 300 million in a country with approximately 322 million people.
Nearly one in every three Americans owns a gun, according to a study published in July of this year in the journal Injury Prevention; however, its authors underscored a broad regional variation in gun ownership — from as low as 5.2% in Delaware to a whopping 61.7% in Alaska. According to the researchers, this variation was due to everything from local and state firearm laws to cultural and social norms.
