{"id":3040,"date":"2022-06-10T15:06:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T19:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=3040"},"modified":"2022-06-07T15:21:59","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T19:21:59","slug":"guns-are-now-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-american-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2022\/06\/guns-are-now-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-american-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer\u2019s claim that \u201cthe leading cause of death among children is a firearm\u201d is actually MUCH MORE upsetting than you think"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Yes, \u201cthe leading cause of death among children is a firearm\u201d is an extremely upsetting sentence\u2014and also, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/factchecks\/2022\/jun\/04\/charles-schumer\/among-children-firearms-leading-cause-death-2020\/\">a sadly accurate one<\/a> (given that you define children as \u201chumans between the ages of 1 and 19\u201d; infants in their first year die from lots of stuff that doesn\u2019t kill you after your first year; if you include them in this number, then it skews toward premature birth, birth defects, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sudden_infant_death_syndrome\">SIDS<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, the truly upsetting part is buried in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/suppl\/10.1056\/NEJMc2201761\/suppl_file\/nejmc2201761_appendix.pdf\">this chart<\/a> (shown below with a big dumb pink circle to emphasis the &#8220;Mechanisms&#8221; section), which was an addendum to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMc2201761\">original source Schumer\u2019s staff cited<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"923\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Guns-Leading-Cause-of-Childhood-Death-USA-1024x923.png\" alt=\"Guns are the leading cause of death among children, and most of those deaths are murder.\" class=\"wp-image-3041\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Guns-Leading-Cause-of-Childhood-Death-USA-1024x923.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Guns-Leading-Cause-of-Childhood-Death-USA-300x271.png 300w, https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Guns-Leading-Cause-of-Childhood-Death-USA-768x693.png 768w, https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Guns-Leading-Cause-of-Childhood-Death-USA-1536x1385.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Guns-Leading-Cause-of-Childhood-Death-USA-2048x1847.png 2048w, https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Guns-Leading-Cause-of-Childhood-Death-USA-1200x1082.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Population wide, gun deaths are usually ~66% suicide and ~33% homicide.  Among children, that\u2019s now basically flipped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, in America today most gun deaths are suicide, and most adults will die of something else (probably disease). But for kids in America, the leading cause of death is guns, and most of those gun deaths are murders. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, \u201cthe leading cause of death among children is a firearm\u201d is an extremely upsetting sentence\u2014and also, a sadly accurate one (given that you define children as \u201chumans between the ages of 1 and 19\u201d; infants in their first year die from lots of stuff that doesn\u2019t kill you after your first year; if you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2022\/06\/guns-are-now-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-american-kids\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer\u2019s claim that \u201cthe leading cause of death among children is a firearm\u201d is actually MUCH MORE upsetting than you think&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2890,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[95,744,33,71,54,59,572],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3040"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3044,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3040\/revisions\/3044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}