Citation

Price JH, Khubchandani J. American journal of medicine open 2022; 7: e100006.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022)

DOI

10.1016/j.ajmo.2022.100006

PMID

39035829

PMCID

PMC11256249

Abstract

In high-income countries, approximately 9 out of 10 youths <15 years of age killed with firearms were found to be from the United States.1 In 2019, 3 of the top 10 leading causes of death for youths 1-12 years of age were unintentional injuries (#1), homicides (#4), and suicides (#7), and the leading method of death for these three were firearms. 2,3 In the same year, for the ages 13-19 years, the three leading causes of death were unintentional injuries (#1), suicides (#2), and homicides (#3) with the majority from firearms. 2 Most of these studies on youth firearm mortality focus on the cause of death by race and gender across the nation. 3,4 However, little is known about how these mortality trends have changed over time, overall and within states.
Methods

The Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were analyzed for this study from the years 2010-2019.2 Youths were defined as individuals 19 years of age and younger. Firearm mortality in the database included unintentional firearm deaths, firearm suicides, firearm homicides, and legal interventions/unknown. Data are reported as raw numbers age adjusted mortality rates nationwide per 100,000 for sociodemographic characteristics, crude rates for statewide numbers to account for differences in population size of each state, and percentage differences for each state and nationwide. Year 2000 was used as the standardized year for age adjusting of rates per 100,000.
Results

The overall firearm mortality rate per 100,000 youths increased by 30% from 2010-2019 [Table 1]. The rates of firearm mortality increased the most for suicides (63%), non-Hispanic Whites (45%), and females (46%). The rate increased 52% in the South and decreased by 28% in the Northeast. ...

Language: en