U.S. children and teens are more likely to die because of guns than car crashes, drug overdoses and cancer.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.)

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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).