By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer (And great-grandfather)
Note: This piece is not about firearms regulation. It’s about ensuring that children do not have access to guns in their homes without direct adult supervision – and how paramedics and EMTs can help in that effort. This article, EMTs, paramedics: You can help prevent firearms death and injury to children, originally appeared on EMS1.com, June 22, 2022 (I’m the original author). The content has been broadened–to include everyone, not just fire and EMS personnel–and the statistics in this piece have been updated with the latest information available.
The holiday season is upon us in the U.S. and Canada and that means children will be spending more time at home as many schools take breaks for the Thanksgiving (U.S.) and Christmas holidays. Thus, I’ve updated my original article and am sharing it today in hopes of preventing an unintentional shooting, especially one involving a child or teen.
Firearms-related death and injury in America is an epidemic. Guns are the leading cause of death among children and teens in the United States.
This is the key focus of Be SMART for Kids, an initiative launched to raise awareness about the importance of secure gun storage. Be SMART emphasizes that it’s an adult responsibility to keep kids from accessing guns, and that every adult, including fire and EMS personnel, can play a role in keeping kids and communities safer.
Know the facts
Far too often in our country, children get their hands on guns, and either shoot themselves or others. In fact, in 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death for children ages 1 through 14 in the United States.
Everytown Research & Policy offers the following statistics from 2024:
• In 2024 there were at least 224 unintentional shootings by children, resulting in 83 deaths and 147 injuries nationally.
• Tragically, 2023 was the worst year on record for unintentional shootings by children, surpassing 400 incidents for the first time since Everytown started tracking in 2015.In either scenario and in practically every reported incident, the child used a gun that was in their home and not stored securely.
To better understand these shootings—and how they can be prevented—Everytown collects information from media reports about incidents in which a child under 18 unintentionally shoots themself or someone else. Details about each incident include the ages of both shooters and victims, date, location, type of firearm, and other information.
Our 2023 report, Preventable Tragedies: Unintentional Shootings by Children, provides an analysis of over 2,800 incidents that took place between 2015 and 2022 with a deeper examination of where, when, and how unintentional child shootings occur and the steps we can take to prevent them.
One of the most effective ways to prevent these shootings is to ensure all guns are stored securely in homes, cars, and elsewhere. The gold standard for secure gun storage is to keep all guns unloaded, locked up, and separate from ammunition. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund launched the Be SMART campaign to raise awareness that secure gun storage can save children’s lives.
What is Be SMART?
The Be SMART framework is designed to help parents and adults normalize conversations about gun safety and take responsible actions that can prevent child gun deaths and injuries. It includes the following steps:
• Secure all guns in your home and vehicle
• Model responsible behavior around guns
• Ask about the presence of unsecured guns in other homes (e.g., before allowing your children to have a playdate at a friend’s home)
• Recognize the role of guns in suicide. Firearm suicide is devastating young Americans between the ages of 10 and 24, who have the fastest-growing firearm suicide rates of any age group over the last decade. Youth suicide has increased every year since 2007 and is the second leading cause of death among young people in the United States.
• Tell your peers to Be SMART
What can Firefighters and EMS personnel do?
Fire and EMS departments are part of the public safety team, and death and injury from gun violence is a public health and safety threat that’s taking a deadly toll on cities and towns of all sizes. Further, the toll of gun violence death and injury involving children isn’t limited to the children who are killed or injured and their families. It affects the mental health of everyone involved – firefighters, law enforcement officers, EMTs and paramedics, and the hospital personnel who respond to those incidents and care for the victims.
This is an all “hands-on-deck” time in our communities, and we need to truly get all hands involved. As firefighters and EMS personnel are typically ranked among the most trusted groups in most communities, we can use that trust to help foster actions to reduce a child’s ability to get their hands on guns.
One way fire and EMS leaders can get involved is to help develop a Be SMART Public Safety Task Force composed of the fire department, law enforcement, EMS, hospitals and social services. This would be a natural fit for any fire and EMS department and community that have or are developing a community risk reduction (CRR) program. But a community need not have a CRR program before establishing a Be SMART Public Safety Task Force.
The Be SMART website is an impressive resource for ideas, strategies and tools that would be invaluable to a community task force.
Here are five examples of the available resources:
- Social media graphics. You can spread the word by sharing prepared graphics, from the Be SMART website, on social media.
- Guide to Secure Gun Storage Devices. Secure gun storage can be a lifesaver. It can prevent theft and access by children, unauthorized users and anyone who may pose a danger to themself or others. The best device is the one that’s most appropriate for the circumstances in a particular household. Download the guide.
- Facts and resources on child firearm suicide. Firearms death and injury has a devastating impact on children in America – and it’s important to know the facts. For example, 30% of child gun deaths are suicides – nearly 700 each year. One study showed that over 80% of children under the age of 18 who died by gun suicide used a gun belonging to a parent or relative. For people of all ages, access to a gun increases the risk of death by suicide by three times. Get more facts.
- Preventable Tragedies: Findings from the #NotAnAccident Index. While unintentional shootings by children are a heartbreaking part of America’s firearms death and injury epidemic, there was previously no centralized database that tracked how many children gain access to unsecured guns and harm themselves or others. Everytown for Gun Sense in America started such a database in 2015 and began carefully tracking media reports to explore this crisis in depth. Read the full report here.
- Shareable videos. Learn more by watching videos that describe the Be SMART mission and the individual components of Be SMART.
A big – but vital – task
Yes, this is a big task, but every day, more children are dying and becoming injured, and more EMTs, paramedics and firefighters are being traumatized by these horrific but preventable events.