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Gun-related deaths and suicides among American children soar to all-time high

33 points by zolbrek 3y ago

chung8123 3y ago
I feel like Ars did a better job with the data. I think it is questionable to call 18 and 19 year olds children though. https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/gun-deaths-among-us-children-reached-new-record-high-in-2021-study-finds/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/gun-deaths-among-us-c...
- zolbrek 3y ago
  It is the Daily Mail after all. Thanks for linking the Ars article
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  It says children and teens.
- frail_figure 3y ago
  Is that the only thing you got from the article? How about all the unnecessary death that guns bring?
Rebelgecko 3y ago
2 things worth noting: * Their definition of "children" excludes babies * Their definition of "children" includes 19 year olds If adjust your window to include everyone under the age of 18 and exclude everyone 18 and older, many of the points in the article are no longer true. A disproportionate amount of gun deaths are amongst young adults (not that surprising, since adults can buy guns and children typically can't) Funnily enough, my state attorney general misread a similar article and started making claims yesterday about how gun deaths are the leading cause of deaths in 0-17 year olds, when AFAICT the data doesn't actually say that.
- grecy 3y ago
  "Gun-related deaths and suicides among Americans soar to all-time high" Does that make it better?
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    Is that true, or is it only true for teenagers?
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    No, because your claim is even more misleading. Yes, the absolute number is up. But the absolute number of most types of death are up, because the USA's population has doubled over the last 50 years. If you look at per capita rates, gun deaths have gone up over the last couple years but are still way below the "all time high". We're still below gun deaths rates from the 1990s
    - grecy 3y ago
      > If you look at per capita rates, gun deaths have gone up over the last couple years I am impressed and horrified how casually you're able to dismiss this.
      - Rebelgecko 3y ago
        Cue the quote about tragedies vs statistics. But if you look at the last 50 years, the current local maximum is near the noise floor.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    Reducing suicide to a 'guns issue' is unhelpful.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  Babies aren't wielding guns. They say right up front that 83% of deaths are ages 15-19. If you're looking at causation, it makes sense to look at 2-19 vs. 0-17, as the driving behavior of recklessness, etc doesn't change at 18. Long story short, the younger and dumber you are, the more likely you are to die of an accidental gun death. And not shockingly, access to weapons drives mortality. Poorer and minority people in more permissive states have high mortality.
thsksbd 3y ago
Terns aren't adults. Especially American teens. I hope we can agree to that They're not children either. The title is bait - to make people emotionally think 8 year old are blowing their brains out.
- jimt1234 3y ago
  "...to make people emotionally think 8 year old are blowing their brains out." Which is unfortunately happening all too often ^^^ (IMHO, once is "too often".)
- shapenamer 3y ago
  Well they have the rights of adults. Should 19 year old people not have the rights of adults?
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    If they're too young to drink, smoke or buy a handgun then they're too young to vote, serve in the army or tried as an adult. The age of emancipation is full emancipation or none at all.
digdugdirk 3y ago
Arguments about the level of click bait in the title aside - what can honestly be done at this point about firearm deaths in the US?
- liotier 3y ago
  A great conundrum of our times... Who knows what sets the USA apart from all other Western countries ?
- RankingMember 3y ago
  At this point I honestly don't see any meaningful legislation being passed until gun violence literally breaches the halls of power. If school shootings didn't do it, what else is there? (I hate that I have this view, because it's a reflection of such an ugly and stupid state of affairs)
- mattbrewsbytes 3y ago
  I mean we've tried nearly nothing and it hasn't worked. Seriously though, you need to approach it from a statistical perspective, looking at FBI crime stats, the highest numbers of homicides are from handguns [0]. Yeah there is "firearm, type not stated" that is large but assume the same distribution of the ones stated for the purposes of discussion. What goes counter to that is all the media and political coverage about rifles and mass shootings with them. They are scary and its frightening to think about those happening. However, if you don't talk about handguns you're not going to make a dent in those overall numbers. [0] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
  - chmod600 3y ago
    Your first sentence is regrettable in an otherwise informative post. There are tons of laws, and part of the problem is that many laws are just, well, stupid and poorly-implemented. California has some kind of review process for guns themselves, in order to go on the "Roster" from which normal people can buy them. This is a highly restricted list that excludes most new models even if they are functionally the same. It serves no useful purpose and does nothing to reduce the danger of guns in any way, it's just to interfere with lawful gun owners who want more modern models, and cause trouble for manufacturers who need to keep producing old ones. If you were a gun owner, you'd probably think that they really are out to get you, and you may question whether those who passed the law even care about bringing firearm deaths down. That makes it a lot harder to work on legislation that's actually useful. And laws that are actually useful, like those that put violent people in jail (and put them back again if they are caught with a gun after they get out) have been tried and they do work. But a lot of cities are not enforcing those laws consistently. Could more be done? Yes, I think so. But compromise is a two-way street where both sides are trying to create a better balance. As long as "compromise" always means a one-way ratchet of gun restrictions, the other side will resist it with whatever they have.
chmod600 3y ago
Information is hidden when we generalize too much. How many are innocent children (or teens) vs crime-or-drug-involved teens? Note: this is not to say deaths of criminals is somehow OK, just that any policy prescription would be very different. Similarly, mixing homicide and suicide obscures meaningful policy discussion.
manlobster 3y ago
It would be more productive to focus on the appalling suicide rate among young people, rather than the fact that they used guns.
- frob 3y ago
  Having access to a gun increases your chance of successfully completing suicide by almost an order of magnitude. This may not be exact numbers, but to first order, attempting suicide with methods other than guns have about a 10% success rate. Attempting suicide with a gun has a success rate closer to 90%. We can council and support survivors of suicide attempts. We cannot bring a corpse back.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
71a54xd 3y ago
Responsible gun owners lock their guns in a safe and do not provide the code to spouses or children. Maybe the UK should work on their stabbing or grenade attack statistics...
ARandomerDude 3y ago
From the Ars version [1] of this article: > For suicides, white children accounted for 78 percent of the deaths. I see a lot of attention nationally about the other alarming stats in this article, but almost never hear anything about the astronomical suicide rate among white children. It may be time to have a national conversation about how and why we're teaching these kids to hate themselves in such large numbers. [1] https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/gun-deaths-among-us-children-reached-new-record-high-in-2021-study-finds/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/gun-deaths-among-us-c...
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  Suicide can be more than just 'hating yourself', it can also be hopelessness, or other suffering they see no other way of stopping.
- RelativeDelta 3y ago
  Because they're aware they're being scapegoated under the intersectional model. Non-white = you get special treatment and attention. Non-straight = you get special treatment and attention. Non-male = you get special treatment and attention. And they're being taught they deserve this. And as their demographics collapse they lose any chance of reversing the trend non-violently. It's astonishingly clear and predictable. The question is, will they die a slow erosion death or make a last-ditch play? Both options are bad.
klysm 3y ago
Pretty surprised to see a daily mail link on HN - I don’t think their journalistic practices (if you could call it that) are quite up to par
akomtu 3y ago
A 3rd tier tabloid is advertising its rubbish clickbait on HN?
jimt1234 3y ago
tl;dr = I think we should all be skeptical of any gun-related data in the US. I don't doubt the narrative in the article, but I'm skeptical about the data used. For years, my impression has been that gun advocates in the US have done everything they can to prevent any sort of data collection and/or analysis wrt to anything related to guns (ownership, usage, and gun-related deaths). I think this is based on the fear that the data will be used to take everyone's guns (either the FBI will start kicking down doors and seizing guns, or law makers will use the data to help pass gun restrictions). Furthermore, I don't know much about the CDC's "WONDER" database, but I can see where a gun-related death could be reported simply as an "accidental death" or something like that in certain counties, and as such, that wouldn't show up as gun-related in the "WONDER" data.
- torstenvl 3y ago
  It isn't a fear, it's reality. This past winter, the ATF issued a regulation—without any action by Congress—that retroactively turned millions of Americans into felons unless they gave up or destroyed their firearms or applied for a special permit and consented to being tracked by the government. Challenges are working their way through the courts (and so far not friendly to the ATF), but that takes time, and in any case, doesn't change the fact that they are trying to take Americans' guns. You should very much doubt the narrative in the article. Violent crime in the United States is very much trending downward. Even the crazy riots of 2020, while an uptick from 2019, were nothing compared to 1991. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...

33 points by zolbrek 3y ago

I feel like Ars did a better job with the data. I think it is questionable to call 18 and 19 year olds children though. https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/gun-deaths-among-us-children-reached-new-record-high-in-2021-study-finds/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/gun-deaths-among-us-c...

zolbrek 3y ago
It is the Daily Mail after all. Thanks for linking the Ars article
MattPalmer1086 3y ago
It says children and teens.
frail_figure 3y ago
Is that the only thing you got from the article? How about all the unnecessary death that guns bring?

Rebelgecko 3y ago

2 things worth noting: * Their definition of "children" excludes babies * Their definition of "children" includes 19 year olds If adjust your window to include everyone under the age of 18 and exclude everyone 18 and older, many of the points in the article are no longer true. A disproportionate amount of gun deaths are amongst young adults (not that surprising, since adults can buy guns and children typically can't) Funnily enough, my state attorney general misread a similar article and started making claims yesterday about how gun deaths are the leading cause of deaths in 0-17 year olds, when AFAICT the data doesn't actually say that.

grecy 3y ago
"Gun-related deaths and suicides among Americans soar to all-time high" Does that make it better?
- EA-3167 3y ago
  Is that true, or is it only true for teenagers?
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  No, because your claim is even more misleading. Yes, the absolute number is up. But the absolute number of most types of death are up, because the USA's population has doubled over the last 50 years. If you look at per capita rates, gun deaths have gone up over the last couple years but are still way below the "all time high". We're still below gun deaths rates from the 1990s
  - grecy 3y ago
    > If you look at per capita rates, gun deaths have gone up over the last couple years I am impressed and horrified how casually you're able to dismiss this.
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      Cue the quote about tragedies vs statistics. But if you look at the last 50 years, the current local maximum is near the noise floor.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Reducing suicide to a 'guns issue' is unhelpful.
Spooky23 3y ago
Babies aren't wielding guns. They say right up front that 83% of deaths are ages 15-19. If you're looking at causation, it makes sense to look at 2-19 vs. 0-17, as the driving behavior of recklessness, etc doesn't change at 18. Long story short, the younger and dumber you are, the more likely you are to die of an accidental gun death. And not shockingly, access to weapons drives mortality. Poorer and minority people in more permissive states have high mortality.

thsksbd 3y ago

Terns aren't adults. Especially American teens. I hope we can agree to that They're not children either. The title is bait - to make people emotionally think 8 year old are blowing their brains out.

jimt1234 3y ago
"...to make people emotionally think 8 year old are blowing their brains out." Which is unfortunately happening all too often ^^^ (IMHO, once is "too often".)
shapenamer 3y ago
Well they have the rights of adults. Should 19 year old people not have the rights of adults?
- thsksbd 3y ago
  If they're too young to drink, smoke or buy a handgun then they're too young to vote, serve in the army or tried as an adult. The age of emancipation is full emancipation or none at all.

digdugdirk 3y ago

Arguments about the level of click bait in the title aside - what can honestly be done at this point about firearm deaths in the US?

liotier 3y ago
A great conundrum of our times... Who knows what sets the USA apart from all other Western countries ?
RankingMember 3y ago
At this point I honestly don't see any meaningful legislation being passed until gun violence literally breaches the halls of power. If school shootings didn't do it, what else is there? (I hate that I have this view, because it's a reflection of such an ugly and stupid state of affairs)
mattbrewsbytes 3y ago
I mean we've tried nearly nothing and it hasn't worked. Seriously though, you need to approach it from a statistical perspective, looking at FBI crime stats, the highest numbers of homicides are from handguns [0]. Yeah there is "firearm, type not stated" that is large but assume the same distribution of the ones stated for the purposes of discussion. What goes counter to that is all the media and political coverage about rifles and mass shootings with them. They are scary and its frightening to think about those happening. However, if you don't talk about handguns you're not going to make a dent in those overall numbers. [0] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
- chmod600 3y ago
  Your first sentence is regrettable in an otherwise informative post. There are tons of laws, and part of the problem is that many laws are just, well, stupid and poorly-implemented. California has some kind of review process for guns themselves, in order to go on the "Roster" from which normal people can buy them. This is a highly restricted list that excludes most new models even if they are functionally the same. It serves no useful purpose and does nothing to reduce the danger of guns in any way, it's just to interfere with lawful gun owners who want more modern models, and cause trouble for manufacturers who need to keep producing old ones. If you were a gun owner, you'd probably think that they really are out to get you, and you may question whether those who passed the law even care about bringing firearm deaths down. That makes it a lot harder to work on legislation that's actually useful. And laws that are actually useful, like those that put violent people in jail (and put them back again if they are caught with a gun after they get out) have been tried and they do work. But a lot of cities are not enforcing those laws consistently. Could more be done? Yes, I think so. But compromise is a two-way street where both sides are trying to create a better balance. As long as "compromise" always means a one-way ratchet of gun restrictions, the other side will resist it with whatever they have.

chmod600 3y ago

Information is hidden when we generalize too much. How many are innocent children (or teens) vs crime-or-drug-involved teens? Note: this is not to say deaths of criminals is somehow OK, just that any policy prescription would be very different. Similarly, mixing homicide and suicide obscures meaningful policy discussion.

manlobster 3y ago

It would be more productive to focus on the appalling suicide rate among young people, rather than the fact that they used guns.

frob 3y ago
Having access to a gun increases your chance of successfully completing suicide by almost an order of magnitude. This may not be exact numbers, but to first order, attempting suicide with methods other than guns have about a 10% success rate. Attempting suicide with a gun has a success rate closer to 90%. We can council and support survivors of suicide attempts. We cannot bring a corpse back.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

71a54xd 3y ago

Responsible gun owners lock their guns in a safe and do not provide the code to spouses or children. Maybe the UK should work on their stabbing or grenade attack statistics...

ARandomerDude 3y ago

From the Ars version [1] of this article: > For suicides, white children accounted for 78 percent of the deaths. I see a lot of attention nationally about the other alarming stats in this article, but almost never hear anything about the astronomical suicide rate among white children. It may be time to have a national conversation about how and why we're teaching these kids to hate themselves in such large numbers. [1] https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/gun-deaths-among-us-children-reached-new-record-high-in-2021-study-finds/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/gun-deaths-among-us-c...

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
Suicide can be more than just 'hating yourself', it can also be hopelessness, or other suffering they see no other way of stopping.
RelativeDelta 3y ago
Because they're aware they're being scapegoated under the intersectional model. Non-white = you get special treatment and attention. Non-straight = you get special treatment and attention. Non-male = you get special treatment and attention. And they're being taught they deserve this. And as their demographics collapse they lose any chance of reversing the trend non-violently. It's astonishingly clear and predictable. The question is, will they die a slow erosion death or make a last-ditch play? Both options are bad.

klysm 3y ago

Pretty surprised to see a daily mail link on HN - I don’t think their journalistic practices (if you could call it that) are quite up to par

akomtu 3y ago

A 3rd tier tabloid is advertising its rubbish clickbait on HN?

jimt1234 3y ago

tl;dr = I think we should all be skeptical of any gun-related data in the US. I don't doubt the narrative in the article, but I'm skeptical about the data used. For years, my impression has been that gun advocates in the US have done everything they can to prevent any sort of data collection and/or analysis wrt to anything related to guns (ownership, usage, and gun-related deaths). I think this is based on the fear that the data will be used to take everyone's guns (either the FBI will start kicking down doors and seizing guns, or law makers will use the data to help pass gun restrictions). Furthermore, I don't know much about the CDC's "WONDER" database, but I can see where a gun-related death could be reported simply as an "accidental death" or something like that in certain counties, and as such, that wouldn't show up as gun-related in the "WONDER" data.

torstenvl 3y ago
It isn't a fear, it's reality. This past winter, the ATF issued a regulation—without any action by Congress—that retroactively turned millions of Americans into felons unless they gave up or destroyed their firearms or applied for a special permit and consented to being tracked by the government. Challenges are working their way through the courts (and so far not friendly to the ATF), but that takes time, and in any case, doesn't change the fact that they are trying to take Americans' guns. You should very much doubt the narrative in the article. Violent crime in the United States is very much trending downward. Even the crazy riots of 2020, while an uptick from 2019, were nothing compared to 1991. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...