Shootings Due To Domestic Violence Make Home Three Times More Dangerous to Children Than School

A new survey reveals that the home is no longer the safest place for children.

Over 67 percent of parents in the United States worry about guns being brought inside schools and that at any time, another shooting can happen at their children's schools, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

However, it has been discovered that the home can be a "far more dangerous place" for the children, with 866 kids ages 17 and below shot in domestic violence from 2018 to 2022, and 621 of these children died, as reported by The Trace, a nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.

In that same time, 268 kids were shot at school, 75 of them in fatal conditions, as data from the CHDS School Shooting Safety Compendium, a federally funded tracker launched following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last 2018, revealed.

With all that information, children are shot three times more in domestic violence incidents than in school shootings. Further, and alarmingly so, there are eight times more kids who died at home, with the majority of them intentionally shot by a parent, stepparent, or guardian, the very people they expected to give them protection.

Domestic violence

In 2020, a 49 percent increase was seen in the number of kids and teens under 18 years old killed due to domestic violence shootings, while the number of wounded children increased twofold.

Data showed that it was due to the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which USA Today described as "deadly," as there was a 61 percent increase in the number of kids shot in domestic violence from 2019 to 2020, almost double the 35 percent overall increase in child shooting victims during that one year.

Domestic violence is "lethal for kids." Children who are domestic gun violence victims are more likely to die than to survive because the shooter does not fire indiscriminately. Instead, the shooter has chosen and points the gun at the victim. Further, they are more likely to shoot at a closer range.

"If someone intends to kill their family, they will make targeted shots and make sure they kill," associate professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health April Zeoli expressed.

Seventy-two percent of kids have died because of their gunshot wounds, The Trace reported.

Lesser media attention than school shootings

The median age of the children killed in domestic violence for the five-year period was ten years old. Out of the 866, there were 167 that were younger than five years old, with one victim a newborn.

According to The Trace, many domestic violence incidents were hidden, receiving much less attention than school shootings, and sometimes not even finding their place in the headlines.

Last February 8, 2022, a father killed his nine-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter in Miami, Florida, an hour after he posted a photo of them three on Facebook, WSVN reported. The mother found their bodies.

On April 17, 2021, a man killed his 11-year-old daughter and himself in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Hours before the incident, his brother received a text message from him stating that he was upset that his girlfriend was at a party without him.

On June 23, 2020, a man from Yoder, Colorado, pointed his gun at his three children, asking them if they wanted him to kill them. He eventually shot his six-year-old son in the neck.

On October 31, 2019, a man killed his wife and 12-year-old stepdaughter in New Paris, Pennsylvania, using a gun he had bought that morning. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment, and the judge called his actions "pure evil."