A Guide for Reporters: How to Write About Unintentional Child Shootings

Slate A 10-year-old Northern Michigan boy has died in what local media sources are dubbing an “accidental shooting.” Though details at this point are scarce, bothUpNorthLive.com and 9and10News.com report that Presque Isle County deputy sheriffs responded to reports of an accidental firearm discharge Tuesday night and found the 10-year-old boy dead of a gunshot wound. As of now, we do not know who owned the gun that killed the boy, whose hand was on the trigger when the gun discharged, how the boy came in contact with the gun, or any other details that might help us learn whether this tragedy was truly an accident. These are all things that would be good to know, and it’s information that local reporters are in a position to get. Before stories like these make national news, they first have to be reported by local and regional news sources. These stories can be hard to cover, and might not initially look like stories at all, especially given that local cops tend to characterize these sorts of shootings as tragic mistakes that don’t warrant criminal charges. For those of you who haven’t followed my reporting on this topic, I believe that most accidental child shooting deaths in this country are not accidents at all, but the devastating consequence of a lax approach to gun safety on the part of parents or guardians. The closer you look at stories of this type, the more similarities you find between them—the guns in question are typically left out in the open, rather than in a gun safe; the parents or guardians often overestimate their kids’ expertise with firearms—and the more preventable they appear. Reporters can help raise awareness on this topic by giving these stories more attention than they might initially seem to deserve. Here are a few guidelines on the questions to ask to make this reporting more fruitful.