Your Neighborhood Pool is More Dangerous Than a Loaded Gun

While researching information on accidental gun deaths for an upcoming article, I found something astonishing. A swimming pool is far more deadly than a loaded gun to a child. The latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control show that 114 kids died from an accidental gun discharge in the home in 2010, the latest year available, but in the same year 1025 children drowned. In 2009, 980 children died in swimming accidents. In 2008, the number was a staggering 1015. Almost ten times as many children die in drowning deaths each year than from an accidental gun discharge. This is unacceptable. The solution is clear.

We need swimming pool control.

First: Children should not be taught how to swim. No child should be allowed near water deep enough for them to drown. Adults may swim in pools or in the ocean, but children must be strictly forbidden from participating in or learning about swimming. Backyard family pools should be banned. Beaches should be closed to children.

Second: Paintings, television shows, movies, and novels that show children enjoying pools or swimming in water must be censored and the offending images stripped out. Just as Steven Speilberg once edited guns out of his movie “ET,” swimming scenes involving children should be edited and censored. New books, movies and television shows should portray adults swimming, but never children.

Third: We need to have background checks and a permit before an adult is allowed to enter a lesson program and achieve swim certification. Adults need to have their swim certificates with them if they intend to go swimming and they should go through re-certification every year. Eventually, adults might realize that swimming is dangerous and foolish and they’ll abandon it altogether.

Finally: Dare we hope the government will just ban swimming altogether? Let’s make our world a safer place for children. Join me in working for a total ban of this dangerous activity. Let’s ban swimming now.

After all, it’s for the children.

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Image courtesy of Shutterstock: schab