Guns are now the leading cause of death among American children, overtaking car crashes for the first time, The Week reports.
An analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 1 and 19 was car crashes.
That changed in 2020 when firearm-related injuries overtook all other causes of death.
From 2019 to 2020, “firearm-related deaths of all types (suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined) among children and adolescents [jumped] 29.5 percent — more than twice as high as the relative increase in the general population," the researchers said.
Most of those deaths were homicides.
School shootings:
Very few of the 4,500 youth firearm deaths in 2020 were in school shootings but, after a teenage gunman killed at least 19 children in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, the number of children killed at school (24) now outnumbers the number of police officers who have been killed this year (20).
"There have been dozens of shootings and other attacks in U.S. schools and colleges over the years, but until the massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School in 1999, the number of dead tended to be in the single digits," The Associated Press reported. "Since then, the number of shootings that included schools and killed 10 or more people has mounted. The most recent two were both in Texas."
Active shooters rise:
The FBI on Monday released a report showing a steep rise in “active shooters.”
The report found that 61 “active shooter” attacks in 2021 killed 103 people and injured 130 others.
The total represents a 52% increase from 2020 and a 97% increase from 2017.
“All but one of the 61 active shootings last year were carried out by men, ranging in age from 12 to 67; two wore body armor; 30 shooters were apprehended by law enforcement, 14 shooters were killed by law enforcement, four were killed by armed citizens, 11 shooters committed suicide, and one remains at large,” The New York Times reported.
