Gun Safety Not Part of Many Parents' Conversations With Kids

While millions of households across U.S. have guns, a significant number of parents, gun-owning and not, report never discussing gun safety with their children

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As many as one-half of American households have a gun, and each day, nearly 30 children are injured or killed by firearms in the United States - most from guns owned by the child's family or friends.

In August 2010, the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health asked 1,621 parents about gun ownership and if they have talked about gun safety with their children.

The poll found that one-third of respondents with children, age 5-17, report having a gun in the household. Of parents with guns in their homes, 82 percent said they have discussed gun safety with their children — most within the past year. In contrast, only 48 percent of parents without guns in their household have ever discussed gun safety with their children.

Eighteen percent of gun-owning parents say they have never talked with their children about gun safety and 52 percent of parents who do not have a gun at home have never talked with the children about gun safety.

"With firearms in about one-third of the approximately 35 million U.S. households with children under 18, discussing gun safety is something all parents need to consider," says Matthew Davis, M.D., director of the poll and associate professor of pediatrics and internal medicine in the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the U-M Medical School. "Parents in non-gun-owning households simply cannot assume that their children will never encounter a situation involving firearms."

Regardless of gun ownership, parents who have talked to their children about gun safety guidelines are more confident that their kids will practice gun safety than parents who have not talked with their children.

When asked, "How worried are you that your child could get hurt with a gun when at a friend's home?" 19 percent of parents say "very worried." Among gun owning parents, only 10 percent are very worried, compared with 24 percent of parents who do not own a gun.

"When more than half of non-gun owning parents have never discussed gun safety with their children and nearly 1 in 5 gun-owning parents have never discussed gun safety with their children, many children may be unprepared to understand and follow the basics of gun safety," Davis says. "Parents need to learn how to talk to their children about gun safety whether they own a gun or not, to be sure their children are prepared should they ever encounter a situation where a gun is present."

Davis says parents should look for age-appropriate education materials to emphasize the basic principles of gun safety and discuss them with their children. Some basic gun safety tips include:

• Never point a gun at anyone, even if you think it is not loaded.
• Only use a gun when you are with an adult.

Resources for parents: 

http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild//topics/guns.htm

http://www.paxusa.org/ask/index.html

http://www.kidsandguns.org/entryhall/safetytips.asp

http://www.nrahq.org/safety/eddie/

Resources for kids:

http://kidshealth.org/kid/watch/house/gun_safety.html

Data Source: This report presents findings from a nationally representative household survey conducted exclusively by Knowledge Networks, Inc, for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital via a method used in many published studies. The survey was administered on Aug. 13 – Sept. 7, 2010 to a randomly selected, stratified group of parents aged 18 and older (n=1,621) from the Knowledge Networks standing panel that closely resembles the U.S. population. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect population figures from the Census Bureau. The survey completion rate was 57 percent among parent panel members contacted to participate. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 to 6 percentage points, depending on the question.

To learn more about Knowledge Networks, visit www.knowledgenetworks.com.

Purpose/Funding: The C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health – based at the Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Unit at the University of Michigan and funded by the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the University of Michigan Health System – is designed to measure major health care issues and trends for U.S. children.

This Report includes research findings from the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, which do not represent the opinions of the investigators or the opinions of the University of Michigan.

SOURCE University of Michigan Health System