According to a mortality analysis by researchers from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, weapons killed more children and teenagers in the United States in 2020 than any other cause.
According to the estimate, which is based on current mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns replaced vehicle collisions as the leading cause of death in America for those aged 19 and under in 2020.
According to the study, which was published as a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine, this is the first time guns have been the primary cause of mortality for this age group.
According to Jason E. Goldstick, Rebecca M. Cunningham, and Patrick M. Carter, firearm-related deaths from “suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined” causes increased at a rate of 29.5 percent among children and adolescents from 2019 to 2020, which is more than twice as high as the general population.
“While the new data are consistent with earlier evidence that firearm violence increased during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the researchers concluded, “the causes for the increase are unclear, and it cannot be assumed that firearm-related death will eventually revert to prepandemic levels.”
“Regardless, the rise in firearm-related deaths follows a longer-term pattern and demonstrates that we continue to fail to safeguard our children from an avoidable cause of death,” they concluded.
According to a research released earlier this month by the gun control group Everytown for Gun Violence, road rage killings in the United States increased throughout the pandemic.
