To determine how boys behave when they find a handgun in a presumably safe environment and to compare parental expectations of their child's interest in real guns with this observed behavior.
A convenience sample of 8- to 12-year-old boys was recruited from families that completed a survey on firearm ownership, storage practices, and parental perceptions. Parents were asked to rate their child's interest in real guns on a scale from 1 to 5: 1–2 = low interest, 3 = moderate interest, and 4–5 = high interest. Parents of an eligible child were asked to bring to the exercise 1 of their son's playmates and/or a sibling in the same age range. After informed parental consent was obtained, each pair or trio of boys was placed in a room with a 1-way mirror and observed for up to 15 minutes. Two water pistols and an actual .380 caliber handgun were concealed in separate drawers. The handgun contained a radio transmitter that activated a light whenever the trigger was depressed with sufficient force to discharge the firearm. After the exercise, each boy was asked whether he thought that the pistol was real or a toy. Before leaving, each child was counseled about safe behavior around guns.
Twenty-nine groups of boys (n= 64) took part in the study. The mean age of participants was 9.8 years. Twenty-one of the groups (72%) discovered the handgun (n = 48 boys); 16 groups (76%) handled it (n = 30 boys). One or more members in 10 of the groups (48%) pulled the trigger (n = 16 boys). Approximately half of the 48 boys who found the gun thought that it was a toy or were unsure whether it was real. Parental estimates of their child's interest in guns did not predict actual behavior on finding the handgun. Boys who were believed to have a low interest in real guns were as likely to handle the handgun or pull the trigger as boys who were perceived to have a moderate or high interest in guns. More than 90% of the boys who handled the gun or pulled the trigger reported that they had previously received some sort of gun safety instruction.
Many 8- to 12-year-old boys will handle a handgun if they find one. Guns that are kept in homes should be stored in a manner that renders them inaccessible to children.guns, weapons, firearms, children, childhood behavior, injury prevention.
Comments
Talk about a controlled test- ONE OBJECT.
Repeat the same test with the same number of boys - changing the object - duplicating the exact same environment.
Put a 8 inch hunting knife in the same drawer and watch what happens.
Next, put a 5 inch folding pocketknife in the drawer and watch what happens.
Lastly, put a pocket butane lighter in the drawer.
The same percentage of boys or greater will take the knives out of the drawer and open them, take the lighter out and click it.
The results say lock up the ammunition, not the gun
Leaving aside the question of whether it is even worth a study to determine whether boys will play with a gun in a safe environment or whether parents can infallibly gauge their sons' interests in firearms, there is a critical question of whether the design of this experiment allows the researchers to reach the conclusion that guns must always be stored by locking them up. The study itself suggests a different conclusion and indicates a safer way to keep a gun in a home with young children.
Two questions in any social science study are internal validity (are the results interpretable even in terms of the study itself) and external validity (do the results generalize to the population at large in the real world.) The design of this study fails on both counts. Internally, by not crossing the environments and explicit parental instruction in a two by two design (safe environment vs nonsafe environment and prohibitive instructions vs permissive instructions) there is no way to determine whether verbal prohibitions by the parents will impact the likelyhood of playing with a gun or not. Since the study uses only a single group design, with no other groups to contrast differing experimental conditions, the only valid conclusion that can be reached is that the boys did indeed assume that the clinic setting itself was a safe place and that it was safe to play with anything they found there. This is precisely what they did.
Since the sample was one of "convenience" rather than a random sample, it is impossible to draw any conclusion about the generalizability of the results to the population of boys at large. Even if the results were limited to a clearly specified segment of the the population, the only conclusion that can be drawn that translates to the world outside the experimental setting itself is that it is safe to allow boys to play with unloaded guns, even if they should pull the trigger. This is not, however, the conclusion that the researchers put forth. Instead, the offer a conclusion (e.g., that guns should be locked up around boys of this age range) that goes beyond the results of the study and that makes more sense in terms of its political implications than the observed behavior of the study's subjects.
This study is irresponsible on both scientific and political grounds. Scientifically, the results warrant a different conclusion than that put forward by the researchers. Politically, the study seems designed for misrepresentation by the media, who have touted this study to imply that restictive storage laws are "scientifically" justified. Ironically, the study itself supports exactly the opposite conclusion, that the safest way to keep a handgun in a house with children is to lock up the ammunition and not the gun.
No mention is made by the researchers of the hazards of keeping gun purchased for personal protection locked up so that it cannot be used by a responsible adult when it is needed most. Since the study itself demonstrates that this is not necessary in terms of the safety of the boys involved, the only conclusion is that, for the collective safety of all members of the family, adults as well as children, the safest course is to keep all handguns unloaded and make sure that the ammunition is accessible only to an adult.
Okay, but...
The question I have is whether this or any other articles in the future will contribute further to the fact that firearms are dangerous in the hands of children. This is not a political rhetoric but a "fact". What is political is the need for such studies to dissuade gun advocates and the support of such studies by gun-control advocates. I think that there are other venues for such studies other than a rigorous scientific journal even within the AAP, for example, AAP News and the AAP website. Even within "Pediatrics", the article could have been a Letter to the Editor (I wonder whether a study on the danger of a hunting machete in the hands of toddlers will be published as a letter or as an article, if at all). I see that the article has already misled a reader into thinking that just because the article was published meant that the conclusion was scientifically supported and that it would enhance the cause of gun- control advocates. At best, it reiterated an irrefutable fact, at worst, it shines light on the fact that pediatricians are willing to wrap the cloak of science around a political agenda at the risk of weakening other scientifically sound theories and therapies that we employ everyday in clinic. Yes, I believe that the physician should be a contributing voice in community politics but he/she should be careful to delineate whether his/her agenda comes from sound mind, logical thought, and care for children or from true and rigorous scientific endeavor. To put it simply, let us do science and police how science is used but let us not politicize science. Thank you.
The conclusion of the study is too broad.
The authors conclude that "Guns that are kept in homes should be stored in a manner that renders them inaccessible to children". This conclusion is not supported by the study. A correct conclusion would have been "Guns that are kept in hospitals should not be stored in a context that suggests they are playthings, such as in a cabinet with toys that test subjects have been encouraged to investigate".
Keep studying, keep publishing
Thank you for continuing to study the behavioral factors that surround this country's sickening -- no pun intended --obsession with guns.
As a mother of a teen-age boy, I fully expect the medical community and its researchers to continue to study guns, gun safety, gun behavior, gun injury, gun fatalities, gun psychology and all of the associated factors related to guns. And if the end result is a national movement to restrict gun purchases, gun use and gun ownership, then I'm all for it. And if we can't restrict guns, then let's start restricting bullets. That's how serious this issue is to us as a nation. It was only when mothers of children killed by drunken drivers began speaking out about the social/health effects of such behaviors did we, as a nation, get serious about cracking down on drinking and driving.
Now let's turn our attention to the issue of guns and gun violence. When your kid -- or my kid -- picks up a gun and points it at another kid, it's not a political issue then. When my kid ends up in the emergency room or funeral home, it's not a political issue. It's a health issue, a life- and-death issueand I, for one, thank you and your Emory colleagues for your diligence to this health issue.
Boys will be boys - thank God
The fact that boys will be curious about firearms of any sort should come as no surprise to even a casual observer of young people. It is called normal behavior. This so called study fails to adhere to any basic principle of sound scientific dicipline. I suspect it is published more to further a political agenda than to offer discovery to the scientific community or the people in general. It does however illuminate the need for good firearm safety education as offered by the NRA and which is available to all schools for the asking. It has been shown that such safety education is a powerful deterrent to firearm accidents involving children. The safe storage of firearms involves common sense and should be left up to the individual to decide based on the particular situation. It should not be dictated by any government bureaucracy
All medical societies and their journals should stick to medical matters and leave out the pursuit of social or political agendas concerning issues of which they have no expertise.This type of biased commentary has no place in a reputable scientific journal and only undermines credibility. Yours truly, Thomas M. Ryan MD