Firearm-related deaths increased a lot. As the article mentions, that is a big category that encompasses suicide, homicide, accidents, etc. Clicking through to a supplementary pdf provides a figure that breaks firearm deaths down by subcategory, sex, and race.<p><a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMc2201761/suppl_file/nejmc2201761_appendix.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMc2201761/suppl_fi...</a>
So, the news here is that gun deaths are now the leading cause of death for teens (ages 13-19), but for kids 1-12, cars remain the leading cause of death in the US.<p>Per <a href="https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/12/28/fact-check-many-more-children-die-from-road-violence-than-gun-violence/" rel="nofollow">https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/12/28/fact-check-many-more-...</a><p>> Through age 12, more than 500 more U.S. kids died in vehicle crashes in 2020 than were killed with firearms. But the numbers flip beginning with age 13, and emphatically. For ages 13 through 19, firearms killed more than 1,000 more teens than did traffic crashes.<p>Historically, car crashes are the leading cause of death for both groups combined.
Firearms, motor vehicles, and overdose all jumped large % amounts from 2019 to 2020. One has to wonder how much of this is mental-health related, given that 2020 had a, uh, significant impact on many people's mental health.
In 2013 motor vehicle crashes and firearm-related injuries both trended upwards, and seemed to track each other; in 2019 firearm-related injuries and drug overdoses both increased sharply. Something happened in those two years. I wonder what.
I figured firearms and ODing would be on the rise, but suffocation surprised me. It's still low, but also one of the few that's trending upward. What could be the cause of that?
Firearm related injuries went up accross all ages post pandemic.<p>Is there any info on how many of them were school shootings? how many of them were gang violence related death?
Striking that the top 3 causes are from human inventions (cars/guns/drugs). Makes me wonder what new causes of death have yet to be invented.
Gun advocates tend to add insult to injury by vilifying gun violence victims and their families. I suppose its because those victims manifest the inconvenient truth that the cost of America's gun obsession is paid with the blood of innocents.<p>So if you're a gun owner, please be sure to thank those victims and donate to their families. They died so that you can own your loud shiny tools of effortless assassination.
As others have pointed out, the choice of the age range has a significant impact on the conclusions one is able to draw. In particular, this paper defines "Children and Adolescents" as 1 to 19 years old, which captures a lot of firearms related deaths due to gang violence.<p>Unfortunately, politics and culture war are infused in everything. But, if you want to be informed so that you can make better, persuasive arguments, I suggest looking at the CDC Child Health data here: <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/child-health.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/child-health.htm</a><p>TLDR: non-accidental deaths are weighted heavily towards 15-19 year olds, and due to that cohort's fraction of the 1-19 year population, when 15-19 year olds are lumped together with 1-14 yos, it allows someone to present data that homicides are the leading cause of death for 1 to 19 year olds. The further refinement from homicides -> firearms is presumably disambiguated in the referenced paper.<p>While the authors are obviously free to frame the data and discussion however they please, this strikes me as a paper designed to serve a policy position or perhaps guide political action more so than an even handed look at childhood deaths. Add to it the emotional impact that we're talking about <i>children</i> here, and I find it verging into the emotionally manipulative.<p>**************************<p>CDC data<p>Children aged 1-4 years: <a href="https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D321F178" rel="nofollow">https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D321F178</a><p>- Accidents (unintentional injuries); 8.5 deaths/100k<p>- Congenital malformations, deformations, and chromosomal abnormalities; 2.7/100k<p>- Assaults (homicide) - not broken down by assault weapon; 2.0/100k<p>Children aged 5-9 years: <a href="https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D321F179" rel="nofollow">https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D321F179</a><p>- Accidents (unintentional injuries); 4.1/100k<p>- Cancer; 1.7/100k<p>- Assaults (homicide) - not broken down by assault weapon; 0.9/100k<p>Children aged 10-14 years: <a href="https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D321F180" rel="nofollow">https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D321F180</a><p>- Accidents (unintentional injuries); 4.3/100k<p>- Intentional self-harm (suicide); 2.8/100k<p>- Cancer; 2.1/100k<p>- Assaults (homicide) - not broken down by assault weapon; 1.4/100k<p>Children aged 15-19 years: <a href="https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D332F493" rel="nofollow">https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D332F493</a><p>- Accidents (unintentional injuries); 23.6/100k<p>- Assaults (homicide) - not broken down by assault weapon; 12.8/100k<p>- Intentional self-harm (suicide); 10.9/100k<p>edit: wow, HN really dislikes my efforts at a well-formatted post. hopefully corrected now.