To the Editor:

In February 1996, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (www.cpsc.com) issued guidelines to help prevent children from injury and death due to drawstrings becoming entangled.

In May 2006, CPSC sent letters to manufacturers, retailers, and importers urging them to make certain the garments did not have drawstrings at the hood or neck area which would pose a strangulation hazard. The guidelines endorsed using buttons, velcro, and other materials. The letter urged the firms that the outerwear complies with ASTMF1816 Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Drawstrings on children's outerwear which took effect June 1997.

According to Reuters.com the change may have saved 50 children's lives. Dr Stephen Teach in an article dated July 6, 2012 discussing the case of accidental strangulation was quoted “They were always so tragic because they were preventable and families felt so bad about them.”

Fast forward to 2015. In Tarpon Springs, Florida a father puts his two-year-old in the car and left unattended he finds a .380 caliber handgun in the glove box and apparently pulls the trigger. Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told NBC station WFLA “It's just one of those things where everything lined up wrong, where we had a 2 1/2 year old that was able to take a gun, pick it up, turn it around and he shot himself dead center in the middle of the chest.”

A five-year-old boy in Elmo, Missouri accidentally shoots his nine-month-old brother with a .22 caliber handgun. The sheriff says “There is no reason to believe the shooting was anything other than an accident.”

What has happened to our society that in 2006 we were  concerned enough to do something about deaths due to drawstrings yet in 2015 we're still not interested in correcting the harsh reality of deaths due to guns? Does it have anything to do with the fact that the National Drawstring Association (if such an organization exists) wasn't filling the pockets of our elected officials while the NRA is buying them off left and right.

Following an accident in Arizona in which a nine-year old shot and killed her range instruction with an Uzi, Mark Berman of the Washington Post (September 4, 2014) cited the CDC that  in 2011 there were 591 accidental gun deaths. Of those deaths 102 were for children 18 and younger and 50 percent of those were children 13 and younger.  In a single year, more children (under the age of 13) were the victims of accidental shooting deaths than all the estimated lives saved by altering drawstrings on outerwear from 2006 to present. 

Societies are judged by how they treat their most vulnerable population, and I'm sorry to say that right now we should be ashamed of ourselves. Please stand with so many of us who have pledged Not One More.

Respectfully submitted,

Sheila Cole

9 Scenic View Drive, Newtown                    January 28, 2015