Report: 265 children accidentally shot themselves or someone else in 2015

One of the first accidental shootings involving children in the greater Harris County area came three days into the new year.

According to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, a man was cleaning his 9 millimeter handgun Sunday at a home on Eastridge Drive in Spring, when he got distracted and put it down.

Then, his 2-year-old son picked it up, and somehow ended up shooting himself in the hand.

"It appears to be an accidental shooting," a sheriff's office spokesman told the Montgomery County Police Reporter. "A small child and a gun ... he was transported downtown - he's definitely been injured."

The incident raised eyebrows, but recently released data from Everytown for Gun Safety shows that it's not that uncommon. At least 265 children accidentally shot themselves or someone else over the course of 2015, the group found, relying on media stories or other reports to identify the incidents.

Seventeen of the incidents occurred in Texas. A full tally of the victims can be read here.

The data follows other research from the Centers for Disease Control which found that between 2007 and 2011, about 60 children age 14 and younger died each year in unintentional shootings, but Everytown found that those numbers significantly under-counted the number of victims of unintentional shootings. From December 2012 to December 2013, for example, the group counted at least 100 children killed in unintentional shootings — or 61 percent higher than the federal data.

A major factor in the shootings involved proper gun storage: about two-thirds of these unintended deaths took place in a home or vehicle that belonged to the victim's family, most often with guns that were legally owned but not secured, according to the Everytown data.

The data follows a grim year for greater Houston. In 2015, at least six children were injured in accidental shootings, four of them fatally.