Dear Lord be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small

The Children's Defense Fund Leave No Child Behind^® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. Full Mission Statement »

Congratulations to the CDF-OH 2012 Beat the Odds® Honorees: Josh, De'Von, Indyasia, Amber, and Clara! Learn more about Beat the Odds »
Get the facts about children and guns and take action >>
Find out the rate of child and teen gun deaths in your state with our new fact sheet >>
The Ohio’s KIDS COUNT: 2011 Data Book, provides the most current and accurate data that tracks and compares the well-being of children in Ohio and its 88 counties. Learn more »

Protect Children, Not Guns

For more than 20 years, CDF has produced a gun report “Protect Children, Not Guns” which documents the epidemic of gun violence in America. A child or teen dies or is injured from guns every 30 minutes. Gun violence saturates our children’s lives. More children and teens die from guns every three days than died in the Newtown massacre. The number of children under 5 killed by guns in 2010 was more than the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty that same year. Between 1979 and 2010, 119,079 children and teens died from guns. This is more deaths in 32 years than U.S. soldiers killed in action in the Vietnam, Korean, Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined. Download our new fact sheet “The Truth About Guns”, distribute the most up-to-date key facts on child and teen gun deaths and injuries and take action by getting national, state, and local organizations to sign an organizational sign-on letter to the Senate.