Patrice Price was fatally shot by her two-year-old son from the back seat of her car. Picture: Andre Price/AP.

In their own homes, in their cots or in the car — 2016 has seen a concerning spike in toddler related shootings than in the previous year.

As the second biggest killer in the country, 23 incidents of shootings that involve toddlers have already happened this year alone. That’s five more than this time last year.

“Millions of Americans have a gun in their homes thinking that it makes their family safer, but every day in our nation, dozens of these families learn just how dangerous and tragic that miscalculation can be,” Dan Gross, president of the Brady Center, said in a statement to VICE. “The bottom line is, having a gun in the home dramatically increases the danger that a child will be shot and killed.”

There has been an increase in shootings involving toddlers this year. Picture: iStockSource:istock

On April 20 a two-year-old boy in Indiana found the gun his mother left in her purse on the kitchen counter and fatally shot himself.

The next day, a one-year-old girl shot and killed herself with her father’s gun while he slept in their Kansas City home.

Fast forward to the following week, and a toddler in Dallas shot himself with a gun he found at home.

The home in Indiana where a toddler found a gun in his mother’s purse and fatally shot himself. Picture: Twitter.Source:Twitter

In Milwaukee the following day, a little boy killed his mother in the car, simply because the handgun “slid out from under the driver’s seat” and he pulled the trigger.

These accidents all came from carelessness and ignorance, because a gun that was supposed to be in the possession of a family member, but instead were loaded and unsecured.

Beyond the raw statistics, it is difficult to determine why there’s an increase in toddler related shootings in the US this quarter compared to last, and that is partly due the fact data is not being authoritatively compiled.

The US Centers for Disease Control once recorded information about the circumstances around such shootings, but has since stopped under funding pressure from Congress.

“There’s a strong belief among many Americans that a loaded gun makes you safer. That’s been disproved over and over again by the evidence,” Associate Professor and founder of gunpolicy.org, Philip Alpers, told news.com.au.

“Studies show that a loaded gun in the home greatly increases the risk of someone in that residence from being shot.”

Children having access to unsecured firearms is on the rise in 2016. Picture: iStock.Source:istock

Since the beginning of 2015, there were 52 shootings that involved a toddler in the US, with at least 13 inadvertently killing themselves with a firearm.

The statistic means there’s at least one toddler related shooting each week across all states, with experts labelling the figure as the “most gut-wrenching of all gun deaths” in the country.

Gut wrenching and preventable, yet the statistic has failed to decrease the number of children accessing firearms in the past five years.

In 2015, at least 756 American children have been killed by gunfire, and 75 per cent of that number were children under the age of 12.

“The great majority of guns in homes in the US are not registered, and the great majority of owners are not licenced,” Mr Alpers said.

“In Australia, there are very few firearms in a person’s home, and when they are in the home, you have much more vetting by the police.”

Because of this lack in qualification, registration and licencing in the US, “a huge portion of handguns are kept unsecured and in places like bedside tables, under mattresses and pillows, and loaded because owners keep them for self protection”.

Pro-gun advocate Jamie Gilt was shot by her four-year-old son in Florida in March this year. Picture: Supplied.Source:Supplied

The ‘American way’ is that a gun in the home makes you safer. In Australia, the belief is that “a loaded, unsecured gun makes the home a lot less safe”.

Australian firearm storage changes from state to state, but generally each jurisdiction requires a very high-range home storage safe that is either bolted to the floor or wall, and the ammunition is secured separately to the gun.

“This is all to help prevent what happens in the US with children gaining access to firearms,” Mr Alpers said.

“To a great majority, the US does not register or licence their handguns. Ownership of a firearm is a right, and not a privilege that can be taken away by the government. That is the opposite to the view here in Australia.

“There would be national uproar if police were able to inspect storage inside an American’s home. That would never be allowed in the US, like it happens here.”

The “American way” is that a gun in the home makes you safer. In Australia, the belief is that “a loaded, unsecured gun makes the home a lot less safe”.Source:istock

Researchers surveyed 201 gun-owning parents at a paediatric medical practice in rural Alabama and found that 70 per cent of respondents believed their children were aware of where guns were stored in their home; the remaining 30 per cent believed their kids were unaware of the whereabouts of the family guns.

But when the adults’ five to 14-year-old children were asked the same questions, the researchers received conflicting accounts. Among the children of parents reporting that their guns were safely hidden, nearly four in 10 reported that they in fact knew where to find them.

The incongruities persisted when researchers asked parents and children about whether they had ever handled the family’s gun or guns. Nearly a quarter of the parents who reported that their children had never touched a household firearm were informed that their kids had, in fact, not just located one, but had their hands on it at some point.

“We have a far lower risk of an Australian dying from unintended shooting because we follow the pillars, including home storage and keeping the gun away from the ammunition,” Mr Alpers said.

Researchers even found that in gun-owning Australian households, “it is more likely that all family members will shoot each other dead before any external aggressor is killed.

“The gun is the agent of harm, and it’s the availability of the agent of harm that is the key predictor of injury or death.”

For more information on gun ownership around the world, and to compare statistics between Australia, the US, and around the globe, head to gunpolicy.org.