Dangerous to Young Children? Five Gallon Buckets or Guns?

Gun Watch ^ | 18 July, 2014 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Which are more dangerous for young children, five gallon buckets or guns? 

Five gallon buckets result in a small number of fatal accidents for young children; about 27 a year.   The accidents are not tracked as rigorously as those with firearms are.  I found a study that tracked them for six years.  From a pediatrics study: 

 Analysis of Consumer Product Safety Commission data revealed 160 bucket-related drownings for the years 1984 through 1989, representing a mortality rate of 0.367 per 100 000 persons (younger than 2 years old) per year in the United States.

I have not found numbers for bucket drownings for later years, but total drowning numbers have dropped slightly from 1990 to 2005-2009.   In 1990 there were 3,979 total drownings.   In 2005-2009 the average was 3,533.   In 2011 there were 3,556.   From 1990, the total number has dropped about 11 percent.

Drownings of children under five were fairly consistent from 1999 to 2010, so it seems reasonable to believe that drowning in buckets have dropped about as much as the general figures.   That would put five gallon bucket drownings at .89 x 27, or 24 per year.    The number is small enough that no one seems to track exactly how many child drownings occur with five gallon buckets.   It is a rare event, but it happens.

Unintentional Drownings of boys and girls 1-4, compared to motor vehicle traffic. 
Bucket drownings are a small fraction of these numbers.

   

The number of children under the age of five that die in gun accidents is tracked more rigorously.   This is in part because gun accidents are tracked as a separate number, and part because bucket drownings are counted as part of total drownings.    The latest number of fatal firearms accidents per year for children under the age of five was 19, recorded in 2007.    Again, this is a very rare event.   So while both firearms and five gallon buckets are involved in fatal accidents for young children, and the numbers are tiny, five gallon buckets seem to be more likely to be involved in a fatal accident. 

To be fair, both numbers are so small as to be statistically insignificant.  In a country of over 300 million people, these fall into the "noise" category.    That does not help if it is your child that is injured or dies.   In nearly all of these cases, it is adults who made the bad decisions.   The vast majority of the children drowned in buckets were left unattended; the vast majority of the young children killed in firearms accidents were shot by an adult firing the gun.

 In comparison, for 2007,  all fatal firearm accidents for children 0-14 totaled 65, and all drownings for children 0-14 totaled 739.    Fatal firearm accidents for children 1-14 have been fairly flat since 2001, averaging 61 per year.

Drownings account for over 11 times as many accidental deaths as firearms do for children 14 and under.

Swimming pools, considered by themselves, are  six times as likely as firearms to be involved in a fatal accident  for children under the age of 15.   There are 30 times as many guns in the United States as there are swimming pools. 


 ©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.    Link to Gun Watch

[marktwain]

Modern guns are actually quite safe. Accidents are relatively rare; most people know that guns can be lethal. Most gun accidents occur among the small group of people that are chronically irresponsible.

[knarf]

adults should be outlawed

[Raycpa]

We keep our buckets in a safe

[ThunderSleeps]

We keep our buckets in a safe

I keep mine so full of cr... er ... "stuff" in the garage that there's room for neither water nor kids. ;-)

Since my youngest is 18 and over 6 foot tall he'd look pretty silly trying to stick his head in a bucket anyway.

[ansel12]

I have used the paint bucket example for years, but I was turned on to it by an article describing bucket safety, that gave the figure of about 50 one year.

To a toddler, the bucket is about waste high, the light but head heavy toddler goes head first into the paint and that is the end.

[NRA1995]

When five gallon buckets are outlawed, only outlaws will have five gallon buckets.

[HammerT]

So why doesn’t Bloomberg lecture us on commonsense bucket control…

Oh that’s right! Bucket’s can’t be use to resist tyranny… never mind.

[HiJinx]

Oh that’s right! Buckets can’t be use to resist tyranny… never mind.

Now, wait a minute. You're forgetting that famous story about the partisans in WWII. They would take a bucket of water up to a lone sentry and offer to give him a drink, right? And then, when he least suspected it, the partisan would dunk his head in the bucket and drown his sorry backside!

Voila! Now the partisan had a neat-o machine gun or other piece of military-grade hardware with which he or she could take out a whole platoon of fascist meanies, and provide firearms for the rest of the partisans in his village!

See, a bucket can be used to resist tyranny!!

[marktwain]

Buckets can be used to murder people, as well!

These events occurred near the end of 1813. From "Adventures of the Pacific" nonfiction, published 1969 by A. Grove Day, page 216:

The truce during Dafny's errand might have remained undisturbed except for the fatal imprudence of Charlie Savage, a brutal beachcomber who had spent five years in Fiji, and spoke the language well. He yielded to the offers of some Fijians who approached and begged him to descend and debate about a peace. Dillon let Savage go, after first demanding that he leave his musket and ammunition on the hill. Savage, as evil as his name, was led to the seat of the enemy chief, and then the Fijians called out in their dialect to Dillon: "Come down, Peter, we will not hurt you; you see we do not hurt Charlie!"

The appeal was wisely rejected. At once Savage was turned upside down and his head was put in a well of fresh water until he died. At the same time, Luis the Chinese, who had sneaked off the hill in the hope of being protected by one of the chiefs, was clubbed from behind and his skull was knocked to pieces. Scarcely had the two victims died than their bodies were cut up, ready to be baked in the ovens that smoked for a Fijian feast.

So, you can see, a five gallon bucket could be used to murder someone by holding them upside down with their head under the water.

[HammerT]

Well I guess I stand corrected.

But you would have to admit an ‘Assault Bucket’ - those are the black ones with handles and special shoulder thing that goes for exceptional lethality – are only a decidedly ‘short range’ weapon..

[HiJinx]

Oh, no argument there!
We certainly can’t have any assault-buckets left out where the chil’run can get to them!

[BobL]

Damn, now I need a safe for my buckets. I’m going broke trying to protect my kids.