Accidental shootings account for just 1% of overall shooting incidents in Wisconsin, but that number jumps to 5% for children.
These shootings can often play out in a predictable and terrifying way: a parent or guardian has an unsecured gun in the home, a child finds the firearm, and then shoots themselves or another person. But the fallout from these incidents can add more devastation, especially here in Milwaukee, where the parents and guardians responsible are routinely charged with felonies.
This issue is at the heart of a piece recently published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by investigative reporter John Diedrich.
"In Milwaukee, we have roughly half of these incidents in the state. So while Milwaukee County is big, that's an oversized number, a disproportionately high number," says Diedrich. "Since 2017, almost every one of these cases were charged as a felony, regardless if the child died or was injured."
Diedrich found many of the people charged with felonies after an accidental shooting have no prior criminal records. In some cases when they're charged with the felony, they'll end up pleading guilty to a lesser charge. This can result in probation, which may not sound significant, but can be life changing. In his article, Diedrich highlights a woman who was charged with a felony after the accidental shooting of her child and ended up losing her job in the aftermath.
Child Access Protection Laws or safe storage laws have spread across the country since the 1980s. The idea was to have some kind of consequences for when a child gets ahold of a firearm and that would result in parents giving more consideration to safely storing a gun. Early research found it worked. But Diedrich talked to a different researcher who found a lack of evidence that the laws are effective in preventing accidental shootings because often parents don't even know about them.
"At this point, where it lands, is that there are these efforts to pass the law and to enforce [the laws] which are having some downstream significant affects on folks and I think some of the reconsiderations ... are should we be thinking more preventative, getting upstream rather than putting all of our effort into the laws themselves," Diedrich concludes.
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