As of 2020, car accidents were the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States. There were 4036 deaths this year related to motor vehicles. However, since the start of the corona pandemic, the tide has turned: 4,368 children and young people died from firearms.
According to official data from the health authority CDC from 2020, a total of 4,368 children and adolescents up to the age of 19 have been killed by a firearm. This corresponds to a rate of 5.4 per 100,000 people. Nearly two-thirds of these deaths were homicides.
Gun laws relaxed over the years
The fact that the dead were replaced by vehicles at the top is probably also due to the fact that road safety measures have improved in recent decades. Gun laws, on the other hand, have been relaxed. The trend lines will intersect in 2020 – more recent data is not yet available.
The numbers were published last week in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. This week, 19 more children have been killed in a school massacre in Texas.
Gun violence increased during Corona
The authors of the letter to the journal noted that the new data is consistent with other evidence that gun violence has increased during the coronavirus pandemic for unclear reasons. “However, it cannot be assumed that it will later return to pre-pandemic levels.”
Most gun deaths are suicides. School shootings, such as in Uvalde, Texas, are responsible for only a small proportion of child gun deaths. Boys were six times more likely to die from a gun than girls.
Common in black children and adolescents
The deaths disproportionately affect black children and young people, who are more than four times more likely to die than white children. For them, vehicles still pose a greater threat. By region, the gun death rate was highest in the capital Washington, followed by the states of Louisiana and Alaska.
Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of leading journal Science, called for more research into the public health implications of gun ownership to drive policy change. “Scientists should not stand idly by while others fight this issue,” he wrote.
“More research into the public health implications of gun ownership will provide further evidence of its deadly effects,” he continued. Thorp argued that serious mental illness, often attributed to gunfire in the United States, is just as common in other countries where shootings are not a regular occurrence.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
