One thing the Million Mom March achieved is a desire among many people (I hope) for actual information -- you know, FACTS -- about how dangerous guns are relative to other things.

An interesting bit of data is that LACK OF BREASTFEEDING is apparently far more deadly than guns are, based on CDC data. In this case, we're talking about accidental shootings of children under 10 (not just infants) vs. -- well, infant formula, evidently. See for yourself (references at bottom) --

Side Effects of Not Breastfeeding Newborns

The disadvantages to infants, children, and adults of not being breastfed include:

Gastrointestinal Illness: At least 400 infants die annually in the US from diarrheal disease; an estimated 250-300 of these deaths are attributed to not being breastfed.

Respiratory Illness: Between 500 and 600 infants die annually in the US from acute respiratory disease attributed to not being breastfed. The risk of fatal or nonfatal respiratory infections is two- to five-fold higher among formula fed infants.

Otitis Media: Ear infections occur more frequently in infants who are not breastfed.

Bacteremia and Meningitis: There is a fourfold higher risk of bacteremia and meningitis among babies who are not breast-fed.

Juvenile Diabetes: More than 100 studies indicate that breast-feeding can delay or prevent the onset of diabetes in children.

Malignant Lymphomas: A six- to eight-fold increase in the risk for lymphomas among children younger than 15 years has been found in children who were not breastfed for at least 6 months.

Breast Cancer: Having been breastfed as a child reduces breast cancer risk in women over 40 by more than 25%.

-- Pediatric News 33(1):37, 1999

CDC Data

Compare the hundreds of babies who die annually from "not being breastfed" with this table showing the numbers of children under 10 who die from accidents in the U.S. annually:

CDC data for Causes and Numbers of Accidental Deaths of Children Under Age 10 (1997)

Rank	Cause	Quantity
1	Motor vehicle	1,783
2	Traffic	1,626
3	Drowning	750
4	Suffocation	577
5	Residential fires	570
6	Struck by or on something	89
7	Falls	87
8	Cycling	78
9	Poisoning	58
10	Firearms	48

A much larger and more detailed table may be found at the Centers for Disease Control website -- "10 Leading Causes of Death, United States 1993-95" -- at http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/osp/leadcaus/ustable.htm. This CDC page is a huge, multi-layered spreadsheet, and is broken down by age groupings as well as causes of death. When looking at the numbers, keep in mind that THREE YEARS of data are being shown.

By Specific Age Group, United States 1993-95; Age Group <1

Rank Cause	Deaths
1	Suffocation	1,146
2	MV traffic	536
3	Fire/burn	285
4	Drowning	207
5	Adverse effects	90
6	Unspecified	85
7	Natural/environ	68
8	Fall	49
9	Poisoning	40
10	Other specified/classifiable	23
11	Pedestrian, other	17
12	Struck by, against	12
13	Transport, other	11
14	Firearm	2
15	Cut/pierce	1
16	Machinery	1
17	Other specified, NEC	1
	Total	2,574

Homicides are not listed for the under-1 age group, meaning they are not in the top ten causes of death for the group. The top cause of death in this group is "Congenital Anomalies" with 20,537 victims in the three years. The FDA's long-time refusal to allow vitamin companies to notify pregnant women that folic acid dramatically reduces birth defects -- since reversed, althought the previous damage cannot be -- certainly caused more deaths than

Between age 1 and 4, firearms are the 12th leading cause of accidental death, with 82 deaths in the three-year period -- about 27 per year. For the same age group, firearms are the third leading method of homicides, with 205 deaths in the three-year period; just over 68 per year.

Ages 5 - 9, firearm accidents are the 6th leading cause of death with 95 victims in 3 years (more than six times as many children of this age drown), and 242 homicides. From here to the age group 45-54, guns are the leading method of homicide.

It's 392 accidental gun deaths (in 3 years) for the 10-14 age group, and 995 homicides. The next group is 15-24, and only here -- where gang activity and the war on drugs supply much, possibly most, of the homicides, do we see (in three years of data on a ten-year age span) impressive (or depressive, if you will) numbers: 1554 accidental gun deaths (vs. 31,310 traffic deaths) and 20,319 homicides.

The accidental death numbers are low across the board, and homicides by gun drop dramatically after the 15-24 age group. Homicide numbers -- by ANY method -- fall off the top-ten list (and thus are not shown on this table) by the 45-54 age grouping, and remain off the list for all later age groups.

Are guns dangerous? Well of course -- that is why they are useful. 2.5 million Americans stop a criminal in his/her tracks with a firearm each year, almost always without a shot being fired; states with liberal concealed carry laws have lower rates of murder, rape, and other violent crime. If guns couldn't inflict injury and death, how many criminals would be deterred by them? For more on these facts -- and how gun-control "moms" ignore said facts in favor of uninformed opinion -- see Ann Coulter's recent column. Are thousands of children dying from guns every year, as the anti-gun nuts keep telling us? No. Not according to the federal government's own data.

Every source of reliable data shows that gun dangers are vastly overstated (called "lying" when your mom caught you doing it) by those who want to cancel the human right to self-defense.

This fact needs to get the widest possible exposure, and quickly.

Glen Allport

gallport@internetcds.com

Notes:

The information from Pediatric News was posted at Lactations.com: Daily Inspiration for the Nursing Mother. (And it's worth keeping in mind that these are only physical problems as seen by doctors. The emotional damage from not being breastfed is quite real, as well). I have not confirmed the item with Pediatric News; if they have a web site, I haven't found it. Plenty of similar, supporting data can be found in Ashley Montagu's classic TOUCHING: the human significance of the skin, and in Arthur Janov's new book The Biology of Love. The first, small CDC table is from Anita K. Blair's article. The three-year table quoted extensively above is, as the URL shows, directly from the CDC site.