Kids’ Gun Deaths In The U.S. Continue To Rise At An Alarming Rate, New Study Shows

Experts hoped that the sharp increase in children killed by guns in 2020 would decline as the initial intensity and stress of the pandemic waned. But a new paper, published in the journal Pediatrics this Monday, shows that the alarming trend is not going anywhere. In fact, the authors found that pediatric firearm deaths rates actually increased in 2021.

“That was a little surprising to many of us, because we thought that that big spike in 2019 and 2020 was due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with things like extreme social isolation and inequity all being worsened. We wouldn’t have expected in 2021 that the numbers would go even higher than they were in 2020,” says Dr. Chethan Sathya, a pediatric trauma surgeon at Northwell and the director of Northwell’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention and lead author of the paper. “This suggests a very dangerous inflection point.”

In addition to the sharp increase, the new analysis also found that not only are the numbers themselves rising, but disparities in which kids are most at risk are widening, too.

Black children are disproportionately affected by gun violence and the disparity is worsening.

Many of the findings of this paper build on known disparities and inequities in terms of who is most affected by gun violence. While showing that not only are more children than ever being killed by guns, existing disparities are worsening. Analyzing numbers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) WONDER online database of public health data, Sathya and his co-authors found that Black children aged 0-18 experienced the greatest increase in death rate from 2020 to 2021 and for nearly half of all children gun deaths that year. Data show that of kids who died by firearms in 2021:

• 84.8% were boys
• 49.9% were Black
• 82.6% were teenagers between 15 and 19 years old
• 64.3% died by homicide

Suicide was also a significant cause of firearm death, with white children accounted for 78.4% of all firearm suicide deaths in 2021, and Black children comprising 14.1%. Authors also found that living in poverty correlates with a child’s risk of dying by firearm, and that correlation was seen to be “most notable” in 2021, indicating that trend may be worsening as well.

“At our level-one trauma center, we saw a 350% increase in 2021 in the number of kids coming with gun injuries compared to the year prior,” says Sathya. “This epidemic is only worsening. There’s no sign of it slowing down.”

Where you live correlates with risk of firearm death for kids.

The paper found that “pediatric firearm deaths varied substantially by geographic location” with Louisiana having the highest death rate per person, and Mississippi and Alabama following closely behind. Authors point to data showing both cases of “worsening clusters of firearm death rates” in Southern states in general, suggesting that “state variability in social determinants of health, inequity, firearm access, legislation, and access to preventative strategies (violence intervention, suicide prevention, firearm safety) may all contribute to these disparities.”

Sathya and his co-authors cite the repeal of universal background checks in Missouri — which correlated with a a sharp increase in firearm deaths the year after — as an example of the type of “state variability” they are considering as a cause of these geographical disparities.

What parents and caregivers can do to decrease the firearm deaths among children.

“A big focus of what we do is reframing this topic as a public health issue, not a political one,” Sathya says of protecting kids from gun violence.

In their day-to-day life, Sathya says that one of the most simple and effective things a parent can do is determine if a firearm is safely stored in a household before you send your kids over to someone’s house. Just asking if there is a gun in the home and how it is stored, he says, must become normalized.

On a big-picture level, Sathya urges concerned community members to consider the known root causes of firearm violence, beyond the gun itself. “Structural racism, social determinants of health, employment opportunities — these have all been shown to be correlated. More in the way of background checks and licensing will make a huge difference, too.”

Studies cited:

Roberts, B., Nofi, C., Cornell, E., Kapoor, S., Harrison, L., Sathya, C., (2023)Trends and Disparities in Firearm Deaths Among Children. Pediatrics, https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/doi/10.1542/peds.2023-061296/193711/Trends-and-Disparities-in-Firearm-Deaths-Among?searchresult=1?autologincheck=redirected

Peña, P., Jena, A., (2022) Child Deaths by Gun Violence in the US During the COVID-19 Pandemic. JAMA, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2794947

Experts:

Dr. Chethan Sathya, a pediatric trauma surgeon at Northwell and the director of Northwell’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention