As I was rushing around finishing last-minute shopping, picking up ingredients for special meals and wrapping up the dreaded emails and work tasks that separate us from yuletide festivities, I received a message that piqued my interest. A popular story player for children, used frequently by my 4-year-old as one of 900 adjuncts to get her to sleep every night, was being recalled due to a fire hazard. As I read further, I discovered that nine units in the United States and United Kingdom had overheated and melted due to battery issues. The company was recalling over 250,000 units.

I was interested in this recall as a concerned parent who, of course, doesn’t want their child to be burned or their home to catch fire (lest they remove the one precious item that gets my daughter to sleep most nights). But what really caught my attention was the intensity of the response to this issue. Because in addition to being a sleep-deprived yet proud mother of two young children, I am also a pediatric emergency physician and a firearm injury prevention researcher.

It’s fascinating that we have such a strong response to toy malfunctions, which may harm our children in real but minor ways (I remember a recall of a popular toy because children’s fingers could become stuck in it). And while I, the least grinchy of all mothers, wish only the safest toys for our children’s digits, I’m perplexed that as a society we will run news stories, interviews and social media campaigns to remove the dreaded scourge of finger-trapping toys from our streets and yet allow firearms — the leading cause of death among children in the U.S. ages 1-17 for five years running, according to a Johns Hopkins University report — to remain so easily accessible, seemingly without a second thought.

As a pediatric emergency medicine physician, I have witnessed countless tragedies involving children that could have been prevented. The guttural wail that comes from a parent while clutching the body of their deceased child is the most horrific thing you will ever hear. To witness this repeatedly due to preventable firearm injuries is as sickening as it is maddening. Lax firearm regulations, along with a surge in firearm purchasing during the pandemic, have created a perfect storm of access to these deadly items, often left unlocked and easily accessible to curious little ones.

From a public health, rather than a partisan, perspective, if we think of a gun the same way we think of any other object in our home, it is clear: we are failing to ensure the safety of our children. Firearms are not legally required to be stored safely, sold with a safe or lock, or to have a built-in locking mechanism that would allow only the owner to utilize the gun. The firearm producer Glock has known for decades that its firearms are easily modifiable with “switches” that can be cheaply made using a 3D printer to turn a standard handgun into an automated weapon. But Glock states that it has “no responsibility to prevent criminals from misusing its products, and that it cannot change its pistols to make them more difficult to modify.”

While the Consumer Product Safety Commission oversees the sale of practically every other good in the U.S., it has no authority to recall firearms or even to investigate injuries caused by defective firearms. And because there are no repercussions for firearm producers, they continue untouched as the blood of America’s children fills our Emergency Departments, homes and streets.

So, as you think about the gifts you gave this year, remember that because we care more about toy safety than gun safety, many families who lost children or teenagers to gun violence in 2024 (nearly 1,000 as of September) didn’t receive warm hugs from a loved one or hear the squeals of joy as their children unwrapped presents. Rather, they dwelt in the earthshattering silence borne by unfillable loss. With them in mind, I implore you to add one more task to your holiday to-do list — a phone call to your elected representative to ask for stronger protections for our children from the firearms that are so common in U.S. homes.

Rachel Weigert, M.D., is a physician researcher in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Children’s Minnesota and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

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