Firearm incidents have surpassed road traffic accidents as the leading cause of death in the United States for young people aged 19 and under, according to one calculation. More than 4,300 children and young people died from firearms in 2020 – for example in homicides and accidental killings, researchers at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor report in the “New England Journal of Medicine”. The authors around the physician Patrick Carter analyzed data from the US health authority CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) for the age group from 1 to 19 years.
Around 3,900 children and young people died in traffic accidents in the same year. The third most common cause of death was poisoning and drug overdoses: there were more than 1,700 deaths among young people – this corresponded to an increase of more than 83 percent compared to the previous year. The scientists also calculated that firearm deaths in the age group increased by 29 percent from 2019 to 2020. “The rising rate of fatal firearm incidents is a longer-term trend and shows that we continue to fail to protect our youngest population from a preventable cause of death,” said epidemiologist Jason Goldstick, lead author of the study.
According to the researchers, more than 45,000 people in the United States died from firearms in 2020 – an increase of more than 13 percent compared to 2019. In particular, the number of homicides increased by more than 33 percent. Traffic accidents have long been by far the leading cause of death among children and young people, says Carter. “But as vehicles and their drivers have become safer, these types of deaths have decreased dramatically over the past 20 years.” (dpa/AnL)