19 American children are killed or injured daily in shootings
In the United States, at least 19 children are killed or injured in shootings. Boys, teenagers and people of colour are most at risk, according to a government study.
The research which paints a bleak portrait of persistent violence analyzed data starting from 2002 to 2014 in the United States and is considered to be the most comprehensive study on the topic, which underscores why researchers view gun violence as a public health crisis, abcnews.com reports.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which involves children and teens through age 17, was compiled by analyzing death certificates and emergency room reports, and some of its main findings published Monday in the journal Pediatrics are:
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— Each year are registered almost 1,300 deaths (approximately 2 out of 100,000 children) and nearly 6,000 nonfatal gunshot wounds (about 8 out of 100,000 kids each year) — most of them intentional.
— Most of the deaths are caused by homicides and suicides, while assaults led to most of the nonfatal injuries.
— Suicides increased by 60% from 2007 to 2014, respectively from 325 to 532. Thus, the suicide rate increased over those years to 1.6 per 100,000. A third of the kids who committed suicide were depressed and most had experienced a recent crisis, from relationship breakups to problems at school. On the other hand, homicides drop, in the same interval, from 1,038 to 699, the rate decreasing by 36 percent to less than 1 per 100,000.
—Most unintentional deaths, which affected especially the bystanders, were caused by playing with guns and unintentionally pulling the trigger. Among kids up to age 10 in this group, more than 40 percent accidentally shot themselves.
However, the research shows also that unintentional shooting deaths may be significantly underreported, as it was highlighted in a report by The Associated Press and USA Today Network, which found that during the first six months of 2016, minors died from accidental shootings — at their own hands, or at the hands of other children or adults — at a pace of one every other day, exceeding what federal statistics indicate.
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