From the desk of Senator Carl Levin (D. MI)

Washington D.C. – Mr. President, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 3,184 children and teens died from a firearm in the United States in 2006, a six percent increase from 2005. This breaks down to the life of an American child being taken every two hours and 45 minutes by someone wielding a gun. More than five times as many, or nearly 17,500 children and teens suffered a non-fatal gun injury that year, a seven percent increase from the previous year.

The 2009 Children’s Defense Fund’s report “Protect Children, Not Guns” illustrates the problem even more pointedly. The report, which provides key findings on children’s gun deaths, states that more preschoolers were killed by firearms in 2006, than were law enforcement officers in the line of duty.

This type of violence is preventable. It only requires action. The Children’s Defense Fund’s report makes a number of recommendations about how to protect children from gun violence. Among other things, they recommend schools provide nonviolent conflict resolution courses for all students and communities create positive activities for children and teenagers to reduce the influence of gangs and drugs. They also recommend passage of such common sense gun safety legislation as closing the gun show loophole, strengthening the Brady background check system and reauthorizing the assault weapons ban.

We cannot afford to sit and watch as so many young lives are irrevocably destroyed by gun violence. Passage of common sense legislation would help end these types of tragedies.