U.S. children and teens are more likely to die because of guns than car crashes, drug overdoses and cancer.
Welp, I looked it up, and one study focused on 14 and younger, about a thousand deaths by car crash, and one focused on 13 to 19, with about 3000 deaths, so even combined and ignoring the overlap in the age range of the studies and going over the age of 18, 15% more kids in the US are getting killed by guns than car crashes, and that gap is widening each year.
Car crashes, ODs and cancer fatalities among minors are far lower than I thought. Just as an aside.
It might seem low, but when looking at statistics about fatalities, it’s a good idea to keep in mind the many injured and potentially permanently disabled that aren’t included.
Medical professionals can work magic, and that is great. But non-fatal car crash, overdose, cancer, and gun injuries can also be tragic, both short and long term. Diminished mental capacity, loss of limbs or physical abilities, lifelong pain, the list goes on…
I had a friend in high school who accidentally shot himself with a gun when he was a small child. He’s in a wheelchair for life.
I’m not American, I’m Canadian. Talking about the statistics is important but holy fucking shit it’s depressing. Any more than 0 accidental deaths is too many.
Got it. More depressing is that most of those gun deaths are not an accident.
It’s something like 2%, the other 98% are people choosing to shoot other people.
“people choosing to shoot other people” or, for a very substantial percentage, people choosing to shoot themselves
Good point. Almost all US gun deaths are intentional, 54% being suicides and 43% being murders, with 3% being accidents, as of 2021
It’s so weird to file 18 and 19 year olds under “children”. Aren’t 18+ already considered adults and their lifestyle is going to be more risky than an actual child in grade school?
If you kept it at actual “minors”, I wonder how this data would look.
It’s kind of like saying that car accidents are a major cause of death in children because they drive too fast.
They’re dead 18 year olds. If my 18 year old child died, I wouldn’t debate their age or the statistics.
More than 1 accidental death is 1 too many.
I’m not arguing that though. I totally agree that any loss of life is wrong.
And the use of child in your context is different from the use of child in the context of this discussion.
Just remember guns don’t kill toddlers, toddlers kill toddlers.
Toddlers are lunatics, we’re just lucky they’re so small and uncoordinated
Let’s look at the numbers around NBC’s claim here. 4752 children killed by guns (or toddlers with guns) in 2021. There are 73 million children in the USA. That’s only 0.0065% of children in America killed.
99.99% of children in the USA were not killed by guns in 2021.
I’m convinced that you think you have made a compelling argument for something.
Nearly two-thirds of the deaths in 2021 were homicides, although unintentional shootings have killed many children. No matter how young the victims, pediatric gun-related deaths have left their mark on nearly every corner of the U.S.
More than 80% of the gun deaths were among males 19 and younger. Black male children were more likely to die from homicide. White males 19 and younger were more likely to kill themselves with guns.
We can see two issues here.
First: Suicide rates are rising sharply among white boys. Why?
Second: Crime is rising sharply for black boys. Why?
Removing guns doesn’t solve the problems leading to suicidal ideation or the problems that lead to homicide. We have the ability to fix those issues without undermining 2A protections. We know that poverty in dense areas is a strong predictor of criminal behavior, and that education is a strong counterbalance to that. We also know that both parties are choking off funding to poor, urban school districts, albeit for different ideological reasons. (Republicans want to cut all public educations. Democrats want to keep school funding local so that property taxes in wealthy areas aren’t funding schools in poor areas, ensuring that wealthy areas have access to better schools.)
Both parties are equally bad, huh?
Democrats want to keep school funding local so that property taxes in wealthy areas aren’t funding schools in poor areas, ensuring that wealthy areas have access to better schools
I’ve seen D’s increasingly propose more state and national funding for schools, exactly the opposite of your claim. That’s in addition to increased state and federal funding for expanding pre-school, for school lunches, for at least some free college
I lived in Chicago. I saw Chicago moving more funding to charter and magnet schools rather than funding schools properly. Charter schools et al. don’t have to take all students, so CPS lost the funding, and still had to take the most difficult cases.
I think that the most rational approach is to, first, eliminate all state funding for private education, charter school, magnet schools, etc., ONLY fund public schools. And second, pool all of the tax revenue state-wide–which means that you also need to make property taxes a state issue rather than a local-school-funding issue–and the divide taxes based on the number of students in each school, with allowances made for differences in costs (e.g., it’s more expensive for a teacher to live in L.A. than it is in Blythe, so there needs to be some kind of allowance for higher teacher pay in L.A. than in Blythe).
deleted by creator
Gangs have replaced the family unit in many poor areas. Not because the people are more criminal, but because it’s a self reinforcing loop. Anyone who can leaves the area, single parent households are common because many of the fathers are in jail or killed. This leaves Gangs as both a source of male role models and income for children, which leads to more getting killed or jailed.
Gangs use children for higher risk activities, because they get lighter sentences if caught. Kids that do time are then more dependent on gangs for support as legitimate work is harder to find.
deleted by creator
Gang violence in the three worst cities in America. Usually the statistics include 19yo. When you remove the three worst cities and 19yo, the statics are similar to the rest of the world.
You can’t just remove cities from statistics for better numbers
Uh, well, you can, and do, remove clear outliers in other statistical sets.
No, you normalize the data to account for the higher density of people.
You can’t just ignore the 3 largest cities because they have more people or higher crime rates.
Sure, we obviously have wrong data for 19 yo. Let’s just remove it from the data. And those three cities, clear outliers, 3 cities won’t affect the data noticeably anyway
deleted by creator
Donald O’Biden
Yes, but only in the US and in war zones. Actually, usually less in war zones.
The obvious solution here is to give children grenade launchers. Trust me, I’m an expert.
So let me get this straight. I’m expected to believe more kids are dying from guns than overdose? Based on a “study” that NBC news didn’t even deign to put a citation to in their article?? Iv never met anyone who died of gun violence.Iv And more than 20 who OD’d before turning 18. The verbiage. Not a new study. A “new analysis” of the data that again they dont provide a single citation to. The clear partisan language targeting lack of legislation as the reason for people dying instead of any mention of the real issue. Mental health.
Its NBC news. I dont expect real journalism from these guys.
Removed by mod
Shut up!
But what about the drag queens??
Firearms have no place in a household. Anybody who defends it is just a closeted gun nut.
i don’t remember guns being able to pull the trigger, i thought somebody else had to do that
Yeah remember when Adam Lanza killed 26 people (mostly kids!) with a ball peen hammer? Or how sometimes kids accidentally stab their friends to death with their dad’s chef knife they found unsecured. I hate it when that happens.
Meth can’t smoke itself!
Not many are being shot from walking around saying “bang”.
It’s a shared experience. It’s like a lot things in life. Crack doesn’t smoke itself and wives don’t beat themselves up. It’s almost like their are more complicated things than useless reduction rhetoric of a mindless fool.
You’re exactly right. And notice how instead of trying to eradicate crack from the earth, instead we’re treating people that abuse it and trying to stop people from doing so in the first place.
The same is said for alcohol, cigarettes, etc. Don’t get me wrong - harsher restrictions need to be put in place. But as you said, it’s complicated.
Even though a lot of gunnits certainly behaves that way, guns aren’t actually drugs and can’t be compared to drugs in any shape or form.
Gladius was the one who compared them to drugs. I was just following their analogy.
Thanks for agreeing. It makes my life easier.
It’s hard to trigger a gun that does not exist.
