Wars and natural disasters are primed with children in different parts of the world.
In a society like the United States, however, it is the number of fatal accidents involving firearms that puts infant mortality on the table. Every two days a child dies in the United States by firearm by accident.
In 2014 alone, 113 children were killed by an accidental shot. with the firearm they usually found at home and usually from one of their parents. We only talk about the numbers of children killed by firearms accidentally.
The age group with the highest risk is that of children under 5 years of age who do not distinguish between a real gun or a toy gun, as expected. The second risk group, when it comes to accidental firearm mortality, refers to teenagers, especially boys, between 15 and 17 years old.
But the figures are devastating, according to the RAND-UCLA study, 22 million children under 18, in more than 11 million homes, have at least one firearm at home but of these homes, the families that have them locked up, unloaded and away from the ammunition of those same weapons do not reach 40%, as advised by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Accidents in more than half of these homes can be fatal and in fact, in some cases, unfortunately they are.
A right and a condemnation
Yes, the second amendment of the US Constitution drafted in 1791, allows US citizens to carry weapons to protect themselves but in the exercise of that right comes this tremendous condemnation that is knowing that in this country, In the United States, a child will die every two days because of an accident with any of these weapons that served to protect him and his family.
They are data from the US Firearms Violence Archive, an independent entity that disputes the official figures that in 2014 were 73 children who according to their calculations died of this terrible and above all avoidable, way.
Given that US citizens are 10 times more likely to die from a firearm than citizens of other developed countries, it is clear that children are also within these sad statistics.
The danger of being a child
In general it is not easy to be a child especially if you were born in South Asia or in sub-Saharan Africa, in those two regions of the planet is where in 2015 80% of child deaths occurred.
And according to UNICEF data, if we continue to do something about it, 69 million children will die until 2030 due to preventable causes. Yes, not because of hurricanes or avoidable catastrophes, but for causes that we could avoid among all.
And why does UNICEF talk about 2030 and not another year? Because that is the deadline to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and to achieve them, it is inevitable that the situation of the most vulnerable children will not continue as before.
