Firearms killed a record number of children in 2021, study finds
Firearms killed a record number of children in 2021, study finds
U.S. children and teens are more likely to die because of guns than car crashes, drug overdoses and cancer.
U.S. children and teens are more likely to die because of guns than car crashes, drug overdoses and cancer.
it's a shame guns have so many rights
even protected by god
Welp, I looked it up, and one study focused on 14 and younger, about a thousand deaths by car crash, and one focused on 13 to 19, with about 3000 deaths, so even combined and ignoring the overlap in the age range of the studies and going over the age of 18, 15% more kids in the US are getting killed by guns than car crashes, and that gap is widening each year.
Car crashes, ODs and cancer fatalities among minors are far lower than I thought. Just as an aside.
It might seem low, but when looking at statistics about fatalities, it’s a good idea to keep in mind the many injured and potentially permanently disabled that aren’t included.
Medical professionals can work magic, and that is great. But non-fatal car crash, overdose, cancer, and gun injuries can also be tragic, both short and long term. Diminished mental capacity, loss of limbs or physical abilities, lifelong pain, the list goes on…
I had a friend in high school who accidentally shot himself with a gun when he was a small child. He's in a wheelchair for life.
I’m not American, I’m Canadian. Talking about the statistics is important but holy fucking shit it’s depressing. Any more than 0 accidental deaths is too many.
Just remember guns don’t kill toddlers, toddlers kill toddlers.
Toddlers are lunatics, we're just lucky they're so small and uncoordinated
Let's look at the numbers around NBC's claim here. 4752 children killed by guns (or toddlers with guns) in 2021. There are 73 million children in the USA. That's only 0.0065% of children in America killed.
99.99% of children in the USA were not killed by guns in 2021.
I’m convinced that you think you have made a compelling argument for something.
It's so weird to file 18 and 19 year olds under "children". Aren't 18+ already considered adults and their lifestyle is going to be more risky than an actual child in grade school?
If you kept it at actual "minors", I wonder how this data would look.
It's kind of like saying that car accidents are a major cause of death in children because they drive too fast.
The article discusses this.
Older adolescents, ages 15 to 19, accounted for 82.6% of gun-related deaths in 2021.
Poking around the CDC website adolescence is defined in multiple ways but generally includes ages 12-19, so might be better described as "teens" even though 18+ is a legal adult. I think it's being treated here as more of a developmental stage than a legal one.
Digging into it by age, from 2018-2021 firearms made up 2,149 out of 22,545 total deaths (~9%) for the age range 5-14 in the US. Looking at 15-19 this increases significantly to 13,321 out of 46,323 total deaths (~29%). This corresponds to increases in both homicide and suicide by firearm for older adolescents.
Quoting this just to make the point that firearms do have differing impacts on younger and older children, and that extends to race and income level as well. But whether guns are the leading cause of death for an age group or not, the end result is the same: more dead kids.
I'm more interested right now in the obvious agenda.
I'm not saying that child death's aren't up or that we shouldn't do more to protect them but when citing data this way, I get the very strong feeling that it's being made to look worse than it is on purpose. The majority are from suicides and murder fatalities are extreme in the 18-19 year old bracket.
Why on earth does the metric include 18 and 19 year olds as children if not for making something look worse.
The dictionary defines a child as a person between birth and puberty. Or not having attained the age of legal majority.
It's similar to when a 10 year old gets shot by the police, and then the news conference later has the police referring the 10 year old victim as "a young man" instead of "the child". Does it not feel like they're trying to achieve something?
The numbers are just weird in that article.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
I am going to read it again and see where their data is sourced.Ok, it seems that Pew and NBC used CDC stats. Still, NBC is not presenting data in a very informative way.
Any deaths are bad, but I prefer to see the whole picture and not what is cherry picked for a news article.
Of course they not, because its not about the info or the facts, its about the agenda...
Risky lifestyle goes pew pew pew.
They’re dead 18 year olds. If my 18 year old child died, I wouldn’t debate their age or the statistics.
More than 1 accidental death is 1 too many.
I'm not arguing that though. I totally agree that any loss of life is wrong.
And the use of child in your context is different from the use of child in the context of this discussion.
Yes, but only in the US and in war zones. Actually, usually less in war zones.
Nearly two-thirds of the deaths in 2021 were homicides, although unintentional shootings have killed many children. No matter how young the victims, pediatric gun-related deaths have left their mark on nearly every corner of the U.S.
More than 80% of the gun deaths were among males 19 and younger. Black male children were more likely to die from homicide. White males 19 and younger were more likely to kill themselves with guns.
We can see two issues here.
First: Suicide rates are rising sharply among white boys. Why?
Second: Crime is rising sharply for black boys. Why?
Removing guns doesn't solve the problems leading to suicidal ideation or the problems that lead to homicide. We have the ability to fix those issues without undermining 2A protections. We know that poverty in dense areas is a strong predictor of criminal behavior, and that education is a strong counterbalance to that. We also know that both parties are choking off funding to poor, urban school districts, albeit for different ideological reasons. (Republicans want to cut all public educations. Democrats want to keep school funding local so that property taxes in wealthy areas aren't funding schools in poor areas, ensuring that wealthy areas have access to better schools.)
Both parties are equally bad, huh?
Democrats want to keep school funding local so that property taxes in wealthy areas aren’t funding schools in poor areas, ensuring that wealthy areas have access to better schools
I’ve seen D’s increasingly propose more state and national funding for schools, exactly the opposite of your claim. That’s in addition to increased state and federal funding for expanding pre-school, for school lunches, for at least some free college
I lived in Chicago. I saw Chicago moving more funding to charter and magnet schools rather than funding schools properly. Charter schools et al. don't have to take all students, so CPS lost the funding, and still had to take the most difficult cases.
I think that the most rational approach is to, first, eliminate all state funding for private education, charter school, magnet schools, etc., ONLY fund public schools. And second, pool all of the tax revenue state-wide--which means that you also need to make property taxes a state issue rather than a local-school-funding issue--and the divide taxes based on the number of students in each school, with allowances made for differences in costs (e.g., it's more expensive for a teacher to live in L.A. than it is in Blythe, so there needs to be some kind of allowance for higher teacher pay in L.A. than in Blythe).
Thank you for a well thought out comment. Ita refreshing to read something like this sometimes. Sometimes it feels like everyone is on their own radical side.
I'd also add strickter punishments for the owner of the firearm if it was used in a crime by their child. I have a kid. I plan to buy a gun. If my kid kills someone with my gun, then as far as I'm concerned I'd be directly at fault. In addition to that I think parents should be legally liable for any violent crime their child does. If the parent has the legal authority over their child, they should also be held liable.
My kid is learning to drive and I was surprised he doesn’t need insurance. But the reason is I’m still the “driver” while he is operating the car. Im responsible for issues, my insurance pays any claim, and of course I can’t have a couple beers despite not being behind the wheel. We have an example
Why can’t we model responsible Gun ownership after cars and driving?
I have mixed feelings about this, because I can see that it would applied in a racial manner by law-and-order Republicans. E.g., black parents in a high-crime area have a gun for protection--since cops don't give a shit--kid steals the gun and shoots someone, and there's an immediate judicial lynching of the parents.
I'm in favor of locking guns up around kids, but I'm generally opposed to laws that mandate it, both because of costs (a gun safe that's worth a damn easily costs $1500, and a good one starts at about $4500), and because some people--e.g. women that are being stalked--may need to have ready access to a gun at all times.
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Gangs have replaced the family unit in many poor areas. Not because the people are more criminal, but because it's a self reinforcing loop. Anyone who can leaves the area, single parent households are common because many of the fathers are in jail or killed. This leaves Gangs as both a source of male role models and income for children, which leads to more getting killed or jailed.
Gangs use children for higher risk activities, because they get lighter sentences if caught. Kids that do time are then more dependent on gangs for support as legitimate work is harder to find.
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Why the fuck do people feel entitled to carry around literal killing devices on them. They serve no purpose besides murdering someone, and their fantasy of standing up against the government or some shit will literally never happen.
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Then they should probably find a new one.
Ideally, it will be a hobby that doesn’t correlate with mass murder.
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Donald O'Biden
more guns
The obvious solution here is to give children grenade launchers. Trust me, I'm an expert.
I wonder how many children would have died if there were no firearms in private hands???
So let me get this straight. I'm expected to believe more kids are dying from guns than overdose? Based on a "study" that NBC news didn't even deign to put a citation to in their article?? Iv never met anyone who died of gun violence.Iv And more than 20 who OD'd before turning 18. The verbiage. Not a new study. A "new analysis" of the data that again they dont provide a single citation to. The clear partisan language targeting lack of legislation as the reason for people dying instead of any mention of the real issue. Mental health.
Its NBC news. I dont expect real journalism from these guys.
But what about the drag queens??
Firearms have no place in a household. Anybody who defends it is just a closeted gun nut.
Does this include gang deaths of seventeen year olds? I'm pretty sure it does.
Gun homicides committed on 17-year olds 2018-2021 = 1,659
Gun deaths for ages 1-19 2018-2021 = 15,803
Source: https://wonder.cdc.gov/Deaths-by-Underlying-Cause.htmlSo even if we disregard your rampant disrespect for the lives of children, you have successfully described (at most) a little over 10% of child gun deaths, so I'm sure the families of the other 90% will totally agree with you.
Shut up!
i don't remember guns being able to pull the trigger, i thought somebody else had to do that
somebody
Yup. But you know who doesn't shoot kids? The people that don't have guns.
Yeah remember when Adam Lanza killed 26 people (mostly kids!) with a ball peen hammer? Or how sometimes kids accidentally stab their friends to death with their dad’s chef knife they found unsecured. I hate it when that happens.
To be completely fair about it, we have to remember that the overwhelming majority of minors killing and being killed with guns are directly involved in criminal gangs. Accidents are rare; school shooting deaths rarer still. Adult gang members are calling on these kids to commit violent acts on their behalf. These kids killing and being killed with guns are doing exactly what is expected and demanded of them by the "role models" in their lives.
It is rather disingenuous to blame the guns when their "mentors" are putting them in their hands and demanding they use them.
Gun violence is a symptom, not the disease. Trying to solve it by taking away the guns is like trying to cure tuberculosis with Robitussin. It hasn't worked, doesn't work, can't work. At best, it masks a symptom while the disease spreads. You need to eradicate the infection to cure the disease. If we want to tackle kids killing and being killed, we have to target the conditions that lead to them to associate with the violent, criminal gangs that actively seek these murders.
Meth can't smoke itself!
Aside from natural disasters that tends to be true for a lot of things that kill people. And I'm pretty sure we still talk about those.
Almost like we put outrageous exceptions on guns vs all other kinds of dangerous tools we use.
It's hard to trigger a gun that does not exist.
Not many are being shot from walking around saying "bang".
It's a shared experience. It's like a lot things in life. Crack doesn't smoke itself and wives don't beat themselves up. It's almost like their are more complicated things than useless reduction rhetoric of a mindless fool.
You’re exactly right. And notice how instead of trying to eradicate crack from the earth, instead we’re treating people that abuse it and trying to stop people from doing so in the first place.
The same is said for alcohol, cigarettes, etc. Don’t get me wrong - harsher restrictions need to be put in place. But as you said, it’s complicated.
your ignorance isn't important
So I’m going to explain this to you like you’re the 5 year old I assume you are.
Guns don’t pull their own triggers. That’s correct. It is because they are what people call an “inanimate object.” What is an inanimate object? Glad you asked.
And inanimate object is something that does not and cannot move on it’s own. Such as, a pitcher of PBR, or an unused toothbrush.
Now, with this new knowledge, we can arrive at the point where we understand how a gun cannot pull its own trigger. And not only that, but we csn understand how not only thinking so is wrong, but to think anyone would think it’s even possible… is wrong as well.
(Bonus lesson: This is also known as a bad faith argument! But don’t use these. They’re easily to spot and make you look incredibly foolish)
Now that that is out of the way-
It’s because of the fact that people are dying in record numbers- DESPITE guns not being able to pull their own triggers- that it is suggested that stronger laws need to be placed on the PEOPLE that are firing them at one another, instead of the guns themselves, which as we just learned, are inanimate objects that are incapable of firing themselves.
Savvy?
Your trusted mentor puts a gun in your hand and tells you to kill a rival. You do it, and your mentor praises you for it.
Is the problem the gun? You? Or is it the gang mindset learned by your mentor and shared with you?
The overwhelming majority of kids killing and killed with guns are associated with criminal gangs, whose leaders are actively seeking these murders. Taking all the guns on the planet will do nothing to stop adult criminals leading children to slaughter.