While the country has been engaged in yet another debate about how to quell the epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings perpetrated by (mostly) young men, an even grimmer reality about the dangerous combination of guns in the hands of young people has been uncovered.

According to the Washington Post at least one person a week has been shot by a toddler so far in 2015. The latest incident involved a 2-year-old South Carolina boy who accidentally shot his grandmother with a .357 revolver he found in the back seat of her car.

Based on a search of news reports, the paper found at least 43 instances this year where someone was shot by a child 3 years old or younger. In 31 of those cases the child found a gun and shot themselves, with 13 of those children killed by self-inflicted wounds. That's an average of nearly 1.5 fatal toddler shootings a month this year.

And those numbers are probably an undercount, the paper said, since there are likely "instances of toddlers shooting people that result in minor injuries and no media coverage" or a child shooting a gun and the bullet not striking anyone.

Post Reporter Christopher Ingraham told MTV News he'd noticed a number of stories about toddler shootings over the past year and began wondering how often this kind of thing happens. "There's not really any reliable federal daw on this, so we dug it up ourselves," he said. "I was a little surprised and I didn't really know what to expect because it's such a weird, isolated thing.. you don't think of 2- or 3-year-olds wielding guns."

Once he had the data in place and looked at it, Ingraham said the numbers weren't what you typically think of when you think of gun violence in this country. "Whether 13 [deaths] is too much or like Jeb Bush you think, 'things happen,'" he said. "Or if this is a consequence of having as many guns as we do in this country and the culture around them."

The shootings have taken place in 24 states, with Missouri leading the tally with five incidents, Florida with four and Texas with three. And these numbers don't even include the amount of toddlers who are shot, on purpose or not, by older kids or adults, according to the Post.

To put it in perspective, Gawker noted that Japan had six gun fatalities for all of 2014 and 11 in 2007, meaning American toddlers have killed almost as many people this year as people with guns did in two years in Japan.

Here's a link to the entire Post report.