In the three years since a gunman killed 20 children and six staff members at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, children under 12 have died from gunshot wounds at a rate of one every other day, according to an NBC News analysis. That totals to roughly 554 child gunshot deaths, both intentional and accidental, since Newtown — a figure that NBC News suspects is low, since their data relies on news reports and other publicly available information, and child gun deaths sometimes go unreported.
By some accounts, the risk of a child dying from gunfire has even increased slightly since December 14, 2012: In 2014, 460 children and young teens died from gunshot wounds — the most since 1999.
But Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense founder Shannon Watts told NBC that she believes Sandy Hook will one day be seen as a turning point in reducing child gun deaths. "I wouldn't wake up and spend 12 hours a day working on this if I didn't think we were winning... I'm just so saddened by the lives we're going to lose in the meantime," she said.
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