Violence Victimizes All Of Us

 

Today’s theme for National Public Health Week (April 3-9) is violence prevention. Very much like the opioid crisis covered yesterday on The PediaBlog, violence and its tragic outcomes are being felt all across the nation:

National data show gun-related deaths are on the rise: in 2020, the U.S. was home to 19,384 homicides and 24,292 suicides involving guns. Those numbers are the highest documented levels in a decade. About one in three women and one in four men experience some form of intimate partner violence, and one out of every four American women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. In 2020, 618,000 victims of child abuse and neglect were reported to local officials. Not all communities face the same rates or kinds of violence. For example, Black people are two times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts.

 

In the last 30 years, according to a recent study published in JAMA, more than 1.1 million Americans died in an incident involving a firearm. Whether the violence occurred intentionally (homicide or suicide) or accidentally (usually involving children), several important discrepancies regarding the victims of gun violence were uncovered by the data:

• Gender: 86% of firearm fatalities involved males vs. 14% involving females.

• Race & Ethnicity: In terms of numbers, most of the fatalities occurred among White non-Hispanic individuals (60%), followed by Black non-Hispanic (26%) and Hispanic (10%) individuals. Deidre McPhillips digs deeper to find that Black males have the highest risk of dying from gun violence:

The researchers found that firearm homicides [rates] were highest among Black men, and firearm suicide rates were highest among senior White men.

Rates of firearm homicide for both men and women nearly doubled between 2014 and 2021, but men were still more than five times more likely to die than women. Rates of firearm suicide were also seven times higher among men than women in 2021, despite increasing suicide rates among women over time.

The racial disparities are even starker. The homicide rate among young Black men – 142 homicide deaths for every 100,000 Black men ages 20 to 24 – was nearly 10 times higher than the overall firearm death rate in the US in 2021.

Homicide rates among Black and Hispanic men were highest in the 20 to 24 age group. But for White men, the rate was highest in the 30 to 34 age group. When comparing these groups, the homicide rate was nearly four times higher among young Hispanic men compared with White men, and the homicide rate among young Black men was a staggering 22 times higher than among White men.

 

• Zip Code: Homicides from firearms were much more common in urban areas compared to rural areas, whereas suicides from firearms were more common in rural areas.

• Age: Homicides from firearms most commonly involved 20-40-year-old adults (especially black non-Hispanic men), while suicides were more common in older Americans (especially White non-Hispanic men 70 years old and up).

Whether it was because of the increase in sales of firearms, social isolation, economic hardship, or mental illness — alone or in combination — gun violence surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. 45,222 Americans died as a result of firearm violence in 2020 (homicides, suicides, accidental shootings), an average of 124 every day. In 2021, there were 48, 953 fatalities from firearms — the highest number of firearm deaths recorded since 1981 when the CDC first began tracking this data.

 

While firearm fatalities rose to unprecedented levels during the pandemic, the number of people surviving incidents of gun violence also jumped, observes Mike Stobbe:

For every American killed by gunfire, an estimated two or more more survive, often with terrible injuries — a fact that public health experts say is crucial to understanding the full impact of guns on society.

A new government study highlights just how violent America’s recent past has been by showing a surge in gunfire injuries during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the number of people fatally shooting each other — and themselves — also increased.

 

Kids, of course, were burdened disproportionately by the violence:

The number of people injured by gunfire was nearly 40% higher in 2020 and 2021, compared with 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a study published Thursday. In 2022, gun injuries tapered off, but were still 20% higher than before the pandemic.

Gun injuries rose similarly for men and women over the past three years, while the largest proportional increase occurred among children younger than 15, a subset that remains a small fraction of the overall problem.

 

All of us are affected by all forms of violence, whether it is inflicted on us or by us. Tomorrow on The PediaBlog, we will further explore the crisis of gun violence and its impact on young Americans.

 

source https://www.thepediablog.com/2023/04/04/violence-victimizes-all-of-us/