Reg,
It is easy for anyone, not just criminals, to get a firearm. Even dumb criminals have no problem obtaining one. Often child criminals under 7 years of age have no problem finding one before killing a parent or sibling. About 34% of those children had no problem obtaining one before they took their own lives. Even good people with guns are part of the problem. That is, if it is even considered a problem.
Under The Gun Control Act of 1968, a U.S. Citizen has to be age 21 to purchase a firearm and 18 to purchase a shotgun or long gun. Minors who handle long guns such as Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps can only do so under strict adult supervision. And in most jurisdictions, persons under age of 16 who violate criminal law are juvenile offenders, not adult criminals, with rare exceptions such as capital offenses where judges choose to try juviniles as adults. And gun accidents have gone down over the years due to the same thing that reduces accidents in other human endeavors: spreading knowledge about safety.
Children who possess guns and use them to commit crimes do not do so by any easy legal means and only by adults’ homicidal negligence and/or criminal contributing to the criminal conduct of minors. There is where you should direct your ire and where civil and criminal law should direct it’s wrath, not towards Ed Gaskin’s path of blood-libelling 119 million+ gun owning U.S. Citizens.
You need some leaf-boowing service? There’s an army of dead strawmen here and it’s allergy season.