http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/02/05/conservative-media-attacks-abc-news-for-telling/197941
The National Rifle Association's radio show and other conservative media are baselessly attacking an ABC News special that highlighted how gun accidents can occur when children access unsecured firearms.The ABC News 20/20 special, hosted by Diane Sawyer and titled Young Guns, reported that 1.7 million children live in a home with an unsecured and loaded firearm, 98 children under the age of 18 died in accidental shootings in 2010, and 80 percent of accidental shooting victims are boys.The January 31 Young Guns special centered on a psychologist-designed experiment that placed children in an empty classroom that contained an unsecured firearm. According to 20/20 "nearly all" of the 44 children in the experiment had been taught not to touch a gun and half of those children were shown the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" gun safety program to reinforce the lesson.But when an unloaded firearm was left in the classroom, many of the children still touched and played with it. Some even pointed the weapons at themselves or other children and pulled the trigger. The NRA declined repeated requests by ABC to participate in an interview for the special.As pediatric psychologist Marjorie Sanfilippo noted in the special, "These three-year-olds who shoot themselves in the head, for whatever reason it's the natural thing to look down the barrel," and added, "You can't educate curiosity out of a child."Indeed, 20/20's experiment reached similar conclusions to a 2001 experiment published in the medical journal Pediatrics that found 63 percent of 8- to 12-year old boys who found a gun touched it and 33 percent pulled the trigger, even though 90 percent had received gun safety training.Conservative media offered a nonsensical criticism of the special, which they termed "anti-gun," "a classic case of a news outlet making the news instead of reporting it," "ridiculous propaganda piece about kids with guns," and "the sort of sensational journalism that is not really journalism."On the January 3 edition of NRA News show Cam & Company, host Cam Edwards sarcastically askedguest and Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich, "Do you know any parents who are gun owners who store their firearms in their kid's toy box?" Pavlich, who called the Young Guns experiment "totally asinine and ridiculous," asked,"So are we going to start putting our rat poison next to our kid's candy boxes?" In a rebuttal to the special, The Blaze host Dana Loesch argued, "ABC producers irresponsibly conclude that we have an epidemic of accidental shootings involving children because these producers placed guns around play areas and children looked at them."
they defend the presence of guns in the home but do not mention the 194+ kids killed by guns since Newton massacre,
that shows you where their concern is defending the gun not your children, those members with kids where's the noise? rat poison that is ridiculous and an asinine non comparison.
nothing has changed for NRA or republicans guns mean more than those lives taken that they defended so rabidly when they were in te womb, 2 faced?
As Young Guns demonstrated in a segment following the experiment, young children often know where firearms are stored in the home and can gain access to them, often to the surprise of the children's parents.The special also featured a woman who openly stored her loaded firearm on the kitchen table in reach of her young daughter and the tragic story of a toddler who fatally shot himself with a firearm stored on top of a five foot dresser in his parent's bedroom. The child's parents still do not know how he managed to access the gun.Reality also undermines this attack on Young Guns. A December 2013 report by Mother Jones found that at least 84 children aged 12 or younger died after accessing unsecured firearms in the year following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school in December 2012.According to a September 2013investigation by The New York Times, a "review of hundreds of child firearm deaths found that accidental shootings occurred roughly twice as often as the records indicate, because of idiosyncrasies in how such deaths are classified by the authorities." A recent study in Pediatrics counted 2,149 hospitalizations of children for accidental shootings in a single year.
i would say to NRA and enthusiast as sad and needless as these deaths are, at least you still have your guns, but do you have children, do they know where it is, can they get to it, and last but not least do you guys have a quota before you act responsible?
