Sunday 29 May 2022 01:46 PM Guns are the leading killer of American children trends now
Gun violence is now the leading killer of America's children, surpassing accidents, disease and even drug overdose, a report published last month found, as attention to the topic is raised after a man killed 19 children in Uvalde, Texas, at their elementary school this week.
Researchers at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, write that over 4,300 children aged one to 19 years old died of a firearm related injury during the pandemic's first year - a 30 percent jump from the previous year.
2020 was the first year that gun violence overtook vehicle crashes as a leading killer - both due to a surge in firearm deaths and a rapid fall in vehicle related deaths over the past two decades.
On Tuesday, Salvador Ramos, 18, killed 18 young children under the age of 11, along with two teachers, in a fourth grade classroom at Robb Elementary School, in the west Texas city of Uvalde - another shocking example of the violence hurting America's youth.
Gun violence is now the leading killer off American youth, a research report finds, surpassing motor vehicle crashes (file photo)
Researchers, who published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine on in April, found that there was a record 45,222 firearm deaths in 2020.
Overall there was a 13.5 percent jump in firearm deaths, including a 33 percent jump in gun-related homicides year-to-year.
Jason Goldstick (pictured), a researcher at the University of Michigan, said that there is no specific cause for the increase in gun violence, but it did correspond with a jump in firearm purchases
Suicides carried out by using firearms also increased one percent, remaining around even year-to-year.
The research team writes that after seeing these stats for the overall population, they decided to gather how much of the burden of firearm violence was falling on the nation's youth.
They found that just around six out of every 100,000 U.S. children died a fire alarm related death in
