Missouri has high rate of unintentional child shootings, study says. See how it ranks

Among all U.S. states, Missouri has the fifth highest rate of injury and death from unintentional child shootings, according to a newly released report from the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.

The study examined unintentional shootings by children in the U.S. and found that nearly every day a child gets their hands on a gun and unintentionally kills or injures themself or someone else.

Unintentional shooting deaths by children have increased over 30% during the pandemic in 2020, according to Everytown, and 2021 is on track to surpass that, with the highest number of January to June incidents from the past seven years.

From 2015 to present, there have been at least 96 unintentional shootings by children in Missouri, resulting in 42 deaths and 67 injuries, according to Everytown tracker, which monitors such incidents.

“Almost every day we hear the same tragic story of a child unintentionally shooting themself or others — that’s unacceptable,” said Sarah Burd-Sharps, director of research for Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, in a news release about the study.

“Everytown has spent the last six years tracking and analyzing unintentional shootings by children because we knew there was a need for this type of research. Stories from countless survivor families together with the data show us that it’s not enough to teach your kids not to touch firearms. Guns always need to be securely stored: meaning unloaded, locked, and stored separate from ammunition.”

The study, which analyzed over 2,000 incidents from 2015 to 2020, found that shootings by children are most often also shootings of children and usually happened at a home.

Two age groups — teenagers aged 14 to 17 and children five and younger — account for the largest share of both victims and shooters.

These shootings are largely preventable when at-home firearms are securely stored, meaning locked, unloaded and separated from ammunition, research shows.

The study examined a disparity between states with or without safe firearm storage requirements and rates of gun deaths and injuries.

Missouri doesn’t have any laws requiring safe firearm storage. The state has one law that penalizes gun owners who intentionally or recklessly give a child access to a gun.

The data clearly shows that fewer children die or end up injured in states that require gun owners to safely store their firearms.

The states with secure firearm storage or child access prevention laws had the lowest rates of unintentional child shootings. In states without such laws, like Missouri, the rates were double to triple, the study found.

Ten states, including Missouri, with the highest rates of injury and death had rates more than 12 times higher than the states with the lowest rates.

In the study, Dr. Annie Andrews, associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, said these shootings not only affect the shooters and the victims, but the larger community.

“It’s not just the child who’s injured or killed who is affected by these incidents. It’s their siblings and their cousins and their parents and their entire community,” Andrews said. “Staff at local schools come to us to help work through the trauma in the entire school when one of these incidents occurs. And it affects the medical personnel who treat them as well.”