Access to guns plays major role in increasing deaths of US youth by suicide, homicide

By Marivir R. Montebon

New York – Parents and political leaders, here’s a cause for concern and action.

Young people in the US have been dying at unprecedented increasing rates over the last few years due to suicide, homicide, drug overdoses, and car accidents.  The access to guns has primarily been seen as playing a major role in youth deaths. Experts say this is unique to an advanced country like America, which is mired by sociocultural problems and racism.

Dr. Steven H. Woolf, MD, MPH, a professor of Family Medicine and Population Health at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine said that the number of children who were killed by guns has risen by 50 percent over the past two years. The staggering rate has undermined the US’s advancements in pediatric research that has curbed child morbidity and mortality.

Woolf during the EMS media forum “Why are more US Kids Dying: Alarming rise in mortality rates of children and adolescents”

Woolf made his presentation in a nationwide ethnic media forum conducted by the San Francisco-based Ethnic Media Services titled: Why are more US kids dying? Alarming rise in mortality rates of children and adolescents” on April 21, 2023.

According to Woolf, firearms played a dominant role in the increase and not Covid-19. Between 2019 and 2021, all-cause child mortality rose by 10.7% and 8.3%, respectively, the largest increase in decades.   

In this three-year period, deaths in ages 10 to 19 years old increased by 39% for homicides, 114% for drug overdose deaths, and 16% for car accidents. Firearms played a dominant role in this increase, Woolf noted.

“This is very unusual. It's not occurred very much at all in the last half century. And the increase that's recently occurred in 2020 and 2021 is of a magnitude that we have not seen probably since the influenza pandemic of 1918. So, basically a century that we have not seen an increase of this magnitude,” Woolf said.

Suicide, Homicide, School Shootings

The Pew Research Center noted that homicides are the most common type of gun death at 60% for ages 10-19 and 32% were suicides. Black children and teens are far more likely than white, Hispanic, and Asian children to die from gun related injuries. In 2021, most gun deaths to black children were homicides, whereas most gun deaths to white children were suicides.

Kim Parker, Director of Social and Demographic Trends at PEW Research Center, said during the EMS forum: “Our survey found that the top concern for parents by far was mental health. About 76% of parents said they were at least somewhat concerned that one of their children would struggle with anxiety or depression at some point, and 40% of parents were extremely or very concerned about that.”

Kim Parker

The Pew Research also showed that 22% of parents were extremely or very concerned that a child of theirs might be shot. Forty-two percent of Hispanic parents said they were extremely or very worried about that. About a third of black parents expressed that same level of concern. Almost 70% of parents are at least somewhat concerned that a shooting could happen in their child's school.

Social and Mental Health Services

Mayra Alvarez, president at The Children’s Partnership Research Center said: “We must make it easier for families to enroll in public benefits programs and access the health, the food, the housing and other supports that they need. Because all those issues that impact the mental health of our families - the stress, the depression, the greater anxiety - that comes when parents can't afford a child's meal, when parents can't afford to pay their rent, when parents can't take their child to the doctor. Those are all issues that are interconnected and related to the struggle of poverty and what poverty is doing to contribute to these numbers today.”

During the EMS forum, Alvarez noted that the wellbeing and safety of children is upheld as a universal value, which America apparently has left behind. 

Mayra Alvarez

“It is understood that children deserve special status and need to be protected and taken care of, not only by their parents, but by all of us in society. We really have reached a tipping point where these deaths are so high that it's offsetting many of the incredible gains our country, our world has made in treating pediatric diseases.”

Dr. Woolf noted that access to mental health services and substance abuse counseling is inadequate in the US and has been so for many years and has been deeply inadequate for pediatric populations especially in the rural areas.

“Politicians seeking to sidestep the issue of gun violence often blame mental health of the person pulling the trigger. But when the cameras leave, the same politicians often do little to fund mental health services or take other steps to strengthen resources for mental illness or addiction disorders,” he quipped.

Fueled by white supremacist culture

Kelly Sampson, senior counsel and director of Racial Justice for Brady United, maintained that the prevalence of firearms in the US is related to white supremacist culture.

“Part of the reason why we have a society that is so dependent on firearms and in many ways is an outlier among other countries is related to our history and ongoing white supremacist culture. A lot of it is related to our history of white supremacy and racism.”

Kelly Sampson

She cited, for example, the Supreme Court which has taken a departure “to turn the Second Amendment from a civic right in defense of the state to a private right related to self-defense. And self-defense is racially coded in American culture.”

“Oftentimes when we talk about self-defense and good guys with guns and citizens, those are all coded as white and often male. For example, there was an article in Nature that looked at how society codes people carrying guns in public, and white men were coded as patriots and black men were coded as threats,” Sampson explained at the EMS forum.

With the continued accessibility of firearms and increased economic and social problems, America must rethink its gun control policies and socioeconomic programs, now that the crisis has turned towards its young people. #