this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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U.S. children and teens are more likely to die because of guns than car crashes, drug overdoses and cancer.

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[–] theodewere@kbin.social 62 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it's a shame guns have so many rights

[–] UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

even protected by god

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] Changetheview@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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…

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] moistclump@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] 2nsfw2furious@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"people choosing to shoot other people" or, for a very substantial percentage, people choosing to shoot themselves

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Good point. Almost all US gun deaths are intentional, 54% being suicides and 43% being murders, with 3% being accidents, as of 2021

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%2054%25%20of%20all,had%20undetermined%20circumstances%20(458).

[–] markr@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just remember guns don’t kill toddlers, toddlers kill toddlers.

Toddlers are lunatics, we're just lucky they're so small and uncoordinated

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[–] Hardeehar@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] wrath-sedan@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The article discusses this.

Older adolescents, ages 15 to 19, accounted for 82.6% of gun-related deaths in 2021.

Poking around the CDC website adolescence is defined in multiple ways but generally includes ages 12-19, so might be better described as "teens" even though 18+ is a legal adult. I think it's being treated here as more of a developmental stage than a legal one.

Digging into it by age, from 2018-2021 firearms made up 2,149 out of 22,545 total deaths (~9%) for the age range 5-14 in the US. Looking at 15-19 this increases significantly to 13,321 out of 46,323 total deaths (~29%). This corresponds to increases in both homicide and suicide by firearm for older adolescents.

Quoting this just to make the point that firearms do have differing impacts on younger and older children, and that extends to race and income level as well. But whether guns are the leading cause of death for an age group or not, the end result is the same: more dead kids.

[–] Hardeehar@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I'm more interested right now in the obvious agenda.

I'm not saying that child death's aren't up or that we shouldn't do more to protect them but when citing data this way, I get the very strong feeling that it's being made to look worse than it is on purpose. The majority are from suicides and murder fatalities are extreme in the 18-19 year old bracket.

Why on earth does the metric include 18 and 19 year olds as children if not for making something look worse.

The dictionary defines a child as a person between birth and puberty. Or not having attained the age of legal majority.

It's similar to when a 10 year old gets shot by the police, and then the news conference later has the police referring the 10 year old victim as "a young man" instead of "the child". Does it not feel like they're trying to achieve something?

[–] wrath-sedan@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why on earth does the metric include 18 and 19 year olds as children if not for making something look worse.

Honestly, I tried pretty hard to find a good reason and other than the fact that the CDC groups data into <1, 1-4, 5-9, 10-14, and 15-19 age ranges there’s no real explanation. You could go up to 14, and then get individual year data up to 17/18 whatever the cutoff.

I wouldn’t say it’s totally dishonest because it is baked into the data and the CDC considers them developmentally similar, but I think it also an issue NBC wasn’t too interested in fixing because it makes the article’s argument seem more convincing.

[–] Hardeehar@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it's misleading. Especially considering the hot topic use of firearms.

Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on, we can agree that data should be free of the organization present here. The discussion isn't helped by this interpretation of the interpretation and it surely needs helping.

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[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The numbers are just weird in that article.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

~~I am going to read it again and see where their data is sourced.~~

Ok, it seems that Pew and NBC used CDC stats. Still, NBC is not presenting data in a very informative way.

Any deaths are bad, but I prefer to see the whole picture and not what is cherry picked for a news article.

[–] partizan@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Of course they not, because its not about the info or the facts, its about the agenda...

[–] genfood@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

Risky lifestyle goes pew pew pew.

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Yes, but only in the US and in war zones. Actually, usually less in war zones.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago (16 children)

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 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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).

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[–] regalia@literature.cafe 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why the fuck do people feel entitled to carry around literal killing devices on them. They serve no purpose besides murdering someone, and their fantasy of standing up against the government or some shit will literally never happen.

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