This episode of Pediacast is brought to you by emergency services at nationwide children's hospital. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Pediatrist.

It is a pediatric podcast for moms and dads. This is Dr. Mike, coming to you from the campus of nationwide children's hospital. We're in Columbus, Ohio. It's episode 576. We're calling this one firearm safety for parents. And we do have an important topic today.

It's one that could easily save the lives of many children and teenagers in the United States.

And I am not overstating that. Like, legit, this is a life-saving episode. And so right out of the gate, asking you to please share this episode far and wide in your

social media feeds and elsewhere.

So we can grab the attention of as many parents and families as possible.

The topic, as I mentioned, is firearm safety for parents.

And it's particularly important because firearm injuries are now the leading

cause of death in children and teenagers in the United States. It was motor vehicle accidents

up until 2020. And motor vehicle accidents, you know, we've really put a focus on making cars safer, you know,

encouraging folks to wear seat belts, airbags, but not letting kids set up front if the airbag

could be dangerous for them based on their size.

You know, just lots of safety features that have made driving safer.

And we, you know, we didn't get rid of cars.

We, you know, have some things that we do to increase the safety of folks traveling in cars.

And it's made a huge difference.

And so the number of injuries and deaths from motor vehicles has gone down.

That was the leading cause of death for kids and teenagers.

So now we kind of have to do

the same thing for firearms and say, okay, you know, they are important in our country. We have a

culture of living with firearms, and, you know, we consider it a right in the United States.

But we do need to think about safety because these firearms are killing kids

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