This is disturbing. Iva Barmina/Shutterstock
Last year, a Washington Post analysis found that toddlers were finding guns and shooting people at a rate of about one a week. This year, that pace has accelerated. There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year.
In the vast majority of cases, the children accidentally shoot themselves. That's happened 18 times this year, and in nine of those cases the children died of their wounds.
The Post notes that pinpointing the exact cause of the shootings is difficult because Congress has sharply limited the Centers for Disease Control's ability to conduct research on the public health crisis of gun violence.
