Firearms top cause of death for children, up 29.5% in 2020; drug deaths up 84%; how and why do rural kids carry guns?

Chart from New England Journal of Medicine also shows 84% rise in deaths from drug overdose and poisoning.

Firearms surpassed car accidents as the top cause of death among children and teens, according to an analysis of federal data recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that firearm-related deaths for people aged 1 to 19 increased 29.5 percent from 2019 to 2020, the first year of the pandemic, University of Michigan researchers found. That's more than twice the rate of increase in the general population. In raw numbers, that's about 4,300 minors who died in 2020 from all causes of firearm-related deaths.

The increase, and those in some other causes, appeared to be pandemic-related. "Drug overdose and poisoning increased by 83.6%," making it the No. 3 cause of death in children, the researchers write. "This change is largely explained by the 110.6% increase in unintentional poisonings from 2019 to 2020. The rates for other leading causes of death have remained relatively stable since the previous analysis, which suggests that changes in mortality trends among children and adolescents during the early Covid-19 pandemic were specific to firearm-related injuries and drug poisoning."

The gun-death rise was seen across most demographics and types of firearm death. However, gun deaths increased much more than gun related suicides, among minors as well as in the population overall, the researchers found. The university launched a $10 million Firearm Injury Prevention Research initiative in 2019 to overcome the lack of federal funding for such research.

A recent University of Washington study, meanwhile, looked at youth ages 12 to 26 in rural areas who carry handguns, and found six distinct patterns in the age of initiation, duration, and frequency of when they carry guns. The researchers used self-reported data from youth and young adults in 12 rural communities across seven states. Though most rural youth rarely or never carried, the likelihood of handgun carrying tended to increase steadily with age, with no peak through age 26. Among urban youth, in contrast, youth were most likely to carry at age 21, and likelihood declined after that. Overall, researchers said their findings suggest that rural communities should begin promoting handgun safety early, and that safety programs need to be tailored to rural contexts.