Economy

Guns Kill More Children Than They Do Police and Members Of Military

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: March 24, 2019 9:22 am

Last Updated: January 6, 2020 6:04 am

A new study shows that in America guns kill more children than they do on-duty police and active members of the military. The study was conducted by researchers at Florida Atlantic University and was published in the American Journal of Medicine.

Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., and Sir Richard Doll Professor at FAU, was the lead author of the study. He summarized the results for the final year of the study.  Hennekens said: “It is sobering that in 2017, there were 144 police officers who died in the line of duty and about 1,000 active duty military throughout the world who died, whereas 2,462 school-age children were killed by firearms.” The entire study covered the period from from 1999 to 2017.

According to other research from the CDC, the cities with the most gun violence tend to the in the South and Midwest

Across the period from 1999 to 2017, 38,942 firearm-related deaths occurred among children 5 to 18 year olds. This included 6,464 deaths among children between the ages of 5 to 14 years old, It also included 32,478 deaths in children between the ages of 15 and 18 years old. The difference between the younger group and older groups of children were dramatic. Average annual death among the younger group were 340 per year. Among the older group the number was, on average, 2,050.

Gun deaths were broken into four categories–accident, assault, suicide, and undetermined–for the 1999 to 2017 period. Among children in the 5 to 14-year-old age group, the causes of death were 12.8% accidental, 29.6 % suicide, assault at 54.8%, and undetermined at 2.7%. Among the 15 to 18 year old children the composition changed signfiginatly.  Among this groups, the cause of death was accidental at 3.5%, suicide at 32.9%, assault at 62.3%, and undetermined at 1.3 percent%.

Race and gender were also major issues. The authors reported, “Blacks accounted for 41 percent of overall deaths, and 86 percent of all deaths were in boys.”  Mortality rates among blacks are also high in the worst cities for black Americans, according to the CDC.

The authors said the research was based on data from the Multiple Cause of Death Files of the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).