U.S. study: Guns second-leading cause of death among adolescents

Handguns and other firearms cause the deaths of more children in the United States each year than the flu or asthma, according to a comprehensive new report on gun violence and kids (Source: “Guns kill nearly 1,300 children in the U.S. each year and send thousands more to hospitals,” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2017).

Between 2012 and 2014, an average of 1,287 children and adolescents died each year as a result of gun violence, making firearms second only to motor vehicle crashes as a cause of injury-related deaths in that age group.

The new analysis, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, represents an unusually comprehensive look at the toll that guns take on children. It draws from federal databases of injuries and deaths, hospital records, and an effort launched in 2003 to track violent deaths and the circumstances surrounding them in at least 17 states so far.

Between 2010 and 2014, the states with the highest rates of firearm-related homicide among children were largely concentrated across the South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee). Other states near the top of the list included four in the Midwest (Illinois, Missouri, Michigan and Ohio), two in the West (California and Nevada), and three in the Northeast (Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania).