The latest shooting took place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last week when a toddler fatally shot his mother from the backseat of the car with a handgun he had found.
A few years ago, this kind of news was considered an anomaly, but it has now become commonplace, says the Washington Post. So far this year, according to the publication, there have been 23 toddler-involved shooting in the United States. For the same four-month period in 2015, there were 16 toddler-involved shootings.
A tally of the shootings this year shows that at least nine out of 18 children who shot themselves died from their wounds, toddlers shot other people five times, with two of those shootings resulting in death. But RT.com is reporting that the Washington Post says the tally could be much higher, especially if you take into account the figures released by Everytown for Gun Safety. Their data shows 77 instances this year, so far, where a child younger that 18 shot someone else accidentally.
An analysis of the states with the most toddler-involved shootings since January 2015 put Georgia, with eight incidents, in first place for the most shootings by children between the ages of one and three-years-old. It is a somber and dubious record, and nothing to be proud of. Georgia was followed by Texas and Missouri with seven incidents each.
It should also be noted that correlating the shootings with population numbers or state gun laws is not that simple, because California and New York, two population-dense states saw only three toddler-involved shootings between them since January 2015. Newser says the Washington Post wonders if it is a cultural thing, but until further study can be done on this alarming trend, no one will really know because Congress has hampered any gun research.