GUN DEATHS WERE THE LEADING KILLER OF US CHILDREN IN 2020

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61192975

THIS ARTICLE APPEARED BEFORE THE MOST RECENT MASSACRES IN BUFFALO, NY, AND UVALDE, TX

According to the article, Guns overtook car crashes to become the leading cause of death for US children and teenagers in 2020, new research shows. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that over 4,300 young Americans died of firearm-related injuries in 2020. While suicides contributed to the toll, the data shows that homicides form the majority of gun-related deaths.

According to the research – which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine – the rise in gun-related deaths among Americans between the ages of one and 19 was part of an overall 33.4% increase in firearm homicides nationwide.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE REPORT:

• Homicides, the study noted, disproportionately impact young Americans.
• Over the same time period, the rate of firearm suicides in the US rose by 1.1%.
• The overall rate of gun deaths of all reasons – suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined – among children and teenagers rose by 29.5%, more than twice that of the wider population.
• “We continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death,” said a research letter published in the Journal.
• In past years, gun-related deaths were second only to car crashes as the leading cause of death among young Americans.
• Gun violence in the US has increased since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020. “The reasons for the increase are unclear,” the research letter said. “It cannot be assumed that firearm-relatedmortality will later revert to pre-pandemic levels”.A separate study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in February, found that 7.5 million US adults – just under 3% of the population – became first-time gun owners during the pandemic between January and April 2021. This, in turn, exposed 11 million people to household firearms, including five million children.

HUNTING IS THE GLARING OMISSION FROM NEWS REPORTS ABOUT RECENT MASSACRES:

C.A.S.H. asks if the proliferation of guns during the pandemic could have been due to the fact that game agencies were promoting hunting as a way to spend time while people were staying home from work. Game agencies saw this “downtime” as an economic opportunity to engage people in the shooting sports.

In New York the Bureau of Wildlife increased the daily shooting hours. They extended hunting by one hour (30 minutes before sunrise and 30 minutes after sunset!).

They extended hunting of big game by six more days calling it “Holiday Hunting” to encourage the entire family to participate.

Prior to that, they had created a 3-year pilot pro- gram that counties had to opt-in to (most did with encouragement from BOW) allowing children 12 and 13 to hunt deer with firearms and crossbows. Now BOW remains relentless at trying to prema- turely turn this pilot program into a permanent condition! Most recently, they recommended adding killing bears, and expanding hunting into highly populated areas close to NYC in order to increase gun usage. Yet no one is looking at hunting as a source of gun acquisition, nor as a source of indifference to taking lives!

We ask when the gun control groups will start to address this important aspect of gun violence. If we just follow the money, we will see that throughout the United States, the excise tax on firearms and ammu- nition goes exclusively to the state bureaus that man- age wildlife for hunting (the USE OF FIREARMS) to kill precious wild animals.

When humans are killed, they are merely collateral damage in the inextricable financial relationship be-tween government wildlife management divisions and the firearms industry.

Managing wildlife for hunting has to stop. It’s the only way to get the firearms industry out of government and provide relief for people and wildlife!