To the editor (letter from readers)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released updated official mortality data showing 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the United States in 2020, a new peak.
Although previous analyzes have shown increases in firearm-related mortality in recent years (2015 to 2019), compared to the relatively stable rates of previous years (1999 to 2014), 2,3 these new data show a sharp increase of 13.5% in the crude rate of firearms-related deaths from 2019 to 2020.
This change was largely driven by firearm homicides , which saw a 33.4% increase in crude rate from 2019 to 2020, while the crude firearm suicide rate increased 1.1%. . Given that gun homicides disproportionately affect younger people in the United States, these data call for an update to the findings of Cunningham et al. on the leading causes of death among American children and adolescents.
Figure 1 . Leading causes of death among children and adolescents in the United States, 1999 to 2020.
The previous analysis, which examined data through 2016, showed that gun-related injuries were second only to motor vehicle accidents (both traffic-related and non-traffic-related) as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents, defined as people from 1 to 19 years old. year old.
Since 2016, that gap has narrowed, and in 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death in that age group (Figure 1). From 2019 to 2020, the relative increase in the rate of firearm-related deaths of all types (suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined) among children and adolescents was 29.5% , more than double the relative increase in the general population. The increase was seen across most demographic characteristics and types of firearm-related deaths.
Additionally, drug overdoses and poisonings increased by 83.6% from 2019 to 2020 among children and adolescents, becoming the third cause of death in that age group. This change is largely explained by the 110.6% increase in unintentional poisonings from 2019 to 2020.
Rates of other leading causes of death have remained relatively stable since the previous analysis, suggesting that changes in mortality trends among children and adolescents during the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic were specific to gun-related injuries. fire and drug poisoning; Covid-19 itself resulted in 0.2 deaths per 100,000 children and adolescents in 2020.
While the new data is consistent with other evidence that gun violence has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, the reasons for the increase are unclear and it cannot be assumed that firearm-related mortality will return further. forward to pre-pandemic levels.
Regardless, the increase in firearm-related mortality reflects a longer-term trend and shows that we continue to fail to protect our young people from a preventable cause of death. Generational investments in gun violence prevention are being made, including new funding opportunities from the CDC and National Institutes of Health, and funding for community violence prevention has been proposed in federal infrastructure legislation. This funding momentum must be maintained.
