Circumstances* of unintentional firearm fatalities: North Carolina, 1990–94 (n=187)
| Circumstance category (mutually exclusive) | No (%) |
|---|---|
| *Abstracted from case files of all 187 fatalities that occurred during 1990–94, a subset of the 390 total cases that occurred during 1985–94. | |
| “Playing”, “fooling around” | 65 (35.0) |
| Cleaning, repairing, loading, unloading | 23 (12.0) |
| “Went off” | 23 (12.0) |
| Hunting (in the field) | 18 (10.0) |
| Returning to, removing from storage | 13 (7.0) |
| Dropped | 9 (5.0) |
| Demonstrating, transferring | 9 (5.0) |
| Other | 7 (3.5) |
| Defective gun, ammunition | 5 (3.0) |
| Target shooting, firing range | 4 (2.0) |
| Tripping, falling | 3 (1.5) |
| Carrying on person | 3 (1.5) |
| Child picking up gun (<4 years old) | 2 (1.0) |
| Stated unknown/unspecified | 2 (1.0) |
| Argument, fight | 1 (0.5) |
| Total | 187 (100) |