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In 2020, a total of 4,368 children and adolescents aged 19 and under succumbed to gunshot wounds, with the rate reaching 5.4 deaths per 100,000 children and adolescents, a table published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows.
Nearly two-thirds of these deaths are classified as homicides. In comparison, 4,036 deaths were due to traffic accidents in the same age group. The difference gradually decreased thanks to a reduction in road accidents, with measures to improve road safety over the years, while in contrast, deaths due to firearms increased.
A small number of deaths were due to "lawful interventions", in other words, police shootings. Disproportionately more young African Americans are victims of firearms: they are at four times the risk of dying from bullets than young whites, for whom traffic accidents continue to be the main threat. The racial group that ranks second among those most affected is, remarkably, that of indigenous people. Young men are six times more likely to die due to firearms than women.
Geographically, the rate of deaths due to firearms is highest in the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C., followed by Louisiana and Alaska.
In another development, Daniel Defense, the maker of the assault rifle used in Tuesday's massacre of 19 children and two faculty members at a small-town Texas elementary school, announced yesterday (Thursday) that it will not participate this year in the largest gun lobby's annual trade show, which runs Friday through Monday in Houston.
"Daniel Defense will not be attending the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention because of the horrific tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, where one of our products was criminally abused," a spokesman told Agence France-Presse. "We feel it would not be appropriate to promote our products this week at the NRA convention," he explained."
Eight days before Tuesday's massacre on May 16, the company had uploaded to its Twitter account - now suspended by the company - a promotional message with a photo of a young white boy holding an assault rifle with a full magazine in front of him. Caption: "train a child to follow the path he should take, and when he grows up, he will not abandon it."
Republican former US President Donald Trump has, however, assured that he will be present and give a speech at the NRA convention in Houston, the Texas metropolis. He dismissed, via Truth Social, the social networking site he founded, "politicking" and "partisanship", thereby seeking, no less deliberately, to show his opposition to his successor, Democrat Joe Biden, who, "disgusted and tired" by the repeated massacres in the country, asked on Tuesday night, a few hours after the Uvalde massacre, "when in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?". The NRA, for its part, has denied, calling the Rob Elementary School massacre the act of an "isolated and deranged criminal," any responsibility for the massacre.
In addition, the husband of one of the two teachers who were killed trying to protect their young students at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where a teenager murdered them, as well as 19 children, died yesterday (Thursday) "of grief," family members said.
Joe Garcia was making funeral arrangements for the woman he had been with since they were high school students and had been his wife of 24 years when she collapsed from a heart attack and died yesterday, relatives explained to the New York Times.
Source: Cyprus Times
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
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