Boys who find guns may ignore safety training
Even those coached otherwise will play with weapons

Tuesday, June 5, 2001

By M.A.J. MCKENNA
COX NEWS SERVICE

ATLANTA -- Boys who find a hidden gun will handle it, point it at each other and attempt to pull the trigger, even if they've been given coaching in gun safety and their parents think they can be trusted, according to a study performed in Atlanta.

The study, which is published in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics, was done by researchers at Emory University School of Medicine and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta-Egleston Hospital, and used 64 boys between 8 and 12 years of age.

The boys' parents, who are racially and demographically mixed, had participated in an earlier, larger survey by the same researchers. In that survey, three-fourths of gun-owning parents said that their children could tell the difference between a real gun and a toy, three-fourths said their child would leave a gun alone or go tell an adult they had found one and one-fourth said their child could be trusted with a loaded gun.

To test those assertions, the researchers set up an experiment.

Parents were asked to bring their child, plus a sibling or a playmate, to an exam room that included a one-way mirror. The room had toys scattered around it; there were also, concealed in several drawers, two water pistols and a real .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun. The gun contained no ammunition, but it had been modified with a radio transmitter that made lights flash whenever the trigger was pulled with enough force to fire an unmodified gun.

The kids and their companions, who made up 29 small groups, were left in the room and told the adults would return in 15 minutes, but would be outside the room if the children needed them. They were told they could play with the toys on display; they were not told about the water pistols or guns.

Within 15 minutes, 48 of the 64 boys had found the real gun. Almost half, 30 of the boys, handled it, including pointing it at each other and looking down the barrel. And 16 of the boys, one-fourth of those in the study, tried to pull the trigger.

None of the children knew that the gun was not loaded, and only a few of them left the room to fetch an adult. More than 90 percent of the kids had received some sort of gun-safety instruction from parents or at school before the experiment, and more than half of those who handled the firearm were thought by their parents to have no real interest in guns.

"All of us in this project support the idea of teaching children safety around guns, but this demonstrates that parents should not trust those lessons for a heartbeat," said Dr. Arthur Kellermann, chief of emergency medicine at Emory and a co-author of the study. "Boys are boys. They are naturally curious and adventurous. And given the opportunity, a substantial percentage will handle a real gun if they find one."

The study results underline the need to securely store guns kept at home and suggests making child-proofing guns a priority, Kellermann said. "Since we can't make kids gun proof, why can't we make guns kid proof?" he added.

National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the study used a "pretty puny" sample. "You can certainly assume that the findings are artificial," he said.

But psychologist Kevin Dwyer, a child-violence expert who was not involved in the research, called the results "extremely important." They suggest, he said, that just telling kids that they should not handle a gun is often not good enough.

"It means that we must have external control rather than education control, such as gun locks and reduced availability of firearms in situations where children can access them," Dwyer said.

Of course, your child will be different. You hope.