Everyone should be careful about interpreting graphs of %s, I hate to say. These trends lines probably match actual trends of numbers and per-capita numbers, but not necessarily. If, say, deaths in vehicles plummeted, dropped by a factor of 3, then gun death could rocket up by % even if their number declined a little bit. It all depends on the total pie size of child deaths. Similarly, if vehicular deaths actually climbed a little bit over the last decade or so, that makes this chart even more alarming than it would appear. I wish graphs like this just had the "raw" per-capita #s. EDIT: Indeed, just looking at kids five and younger at least, we have 2.5x more deaths per 1,000 in 1980 than we do in 2020. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ The pie of deaths has been shrinking overall, (which is great), at least for the pre-K gang.
We do have too many guns but at the same time that childhood death number with firearms is mostly a result of handguns. So a semiautomatic magazine fed rifle ban wouldn't put much of a dent on this number. So the rhetoric of what type of weapons that need to be banned doesn't match the concern over children deaths in the US. But we all know banning handguns is a non viable solution. So that means any rhetoric about assault.rifle bans is nothing more than pandering and showing the appearance of wanting to solve problems. In reality, the US compared to other developed nations has more wealth inequality and that is a larger reason for firearm deaths than the amount of them.
Gun Injuries Among Children Surged During Pandemic, Study Says First 21 months of pandemic saw a more than 50% rise in the number of kids injured by firearms in the U.S., a new analysis shows https://www.wsj.com/articles/gun-in...ays-11671469231?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1 excerpt: While homicide rates among children have risen overall in recent years, they have fallen among some groups since 1999, including girls, children under age 5 and Asian and white children, the study showed. In both analyses, researchers noted stark gender and ethnic disparities. Boys, as well as Black children, were more likely to be injured by guns or die by homicide, the studies showed. Urban children and those age 16 and 17 were at highest risk for homicide. “These are longstanding disparities,” said Lois Lee, a pediatric emergency-medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital who wasn’t involved in the studies. “For urban teens in marginalized communities, this sort of violence hasn’t been addressed at a large scale.” Researchers said psychological stress and other factors associated with the pandemic might have played a role in the rise in the incidence of firearm injuries and homicides among children. “From 2019 to 2020, firearm sales, spousal conflict and parental risk factors like social isolation, job loss, a lack of child care—they really intersected,” Dr. Self-Brown said. more at the link
Not surprising. Result of Covid tunnel vision. That's not how public health is meant to work. Horrible collateral damage of Fauci's actions.
The USA has an issue with firearms, no logically thinking person can argue otherwise. Having said that, NZ is basically an island with less than 5 million people total, so their situation is a lot easier. The reality is that firearms will not be illegal in the USA, but at a minimum they can come down extremely hard on the requirements and costs to own them, as well as the criminal costs of losing them etc.
I'd say another big danger is the fact that 500,000 predators on the Internet pose a threat to kids daily, and one in 25 children will be manipulated into physical contact within a year. Parents need to monitor their child's internet activity and talk to them often about this threat. Kids can be fooled and manipulated by predators easily.
