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Abstract
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Presaging the recent Presidential action on closing gun sale loopholes, the recent article by Grinshteyn and Hemenway[1] provides compelling evidence of the continuing staggering disparity in rates of firearms-related deaths between the US and other high-income developed countries.
Among all the carefully compiled data presented by the authors, we choose here to highlight unintentional deaths. Total unintentional firearms deaths in the US were 6.2 times that of other high-income countries. When looking at the ratio by age groups, unintentional firearm deaths among children 5-14 years old in the US were 12.2 times that of other high-income countries, guns in children's environment clearly compounding the already heightened risk of accidental death. Prior work has estimated that 110 US children die annually from unintentional firearms injuries; and hospitalization for firearm injury has been estimated to be more than 10 times that figure.
Moreover, looking closely at the firearms deaths in the US, it is noteworthy that for the 0-14-year age group, there are considerably more deaths among boys than girls (ratio around 4:1), agreeing with data from a 2003 cross-sectional study with the same methodology and data sources. These same striking sex differences were observed in the sample of 100 accidental firearms deaths in children (0-14 years) studied during the year following the Sandy Hook massacre, where 77% of victims and 82% of perpetrators were male. The findings merit some pause, as they speak strongly to the transmission of a hypermasculinized culture of firearm use from adult to child, putting boys especially at higher risk of gun play and thus accidental deaths and injury due to firearms....
[1]Grinshteyn, E. and Hemenway, D. Violent death rates: the United States compared to other high-income OECD countries, 2010. Am J Med. 2016; 129: 266–273
Language: en |