Pediatric Gun Deaths Are a Massive Problem in the U.S.

School shootings feel random in their location yet predictable in their occurrence. Killers target elementary, high school and college students in urban, suburban and rural communities. The children killed are Hispanic, white, Black, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, transgender and cisgender.

This year school shootings have occurred more than weekly on average, with 27 in 2022 (so far). Many go virtually unmentioned on the national stage, however, until the “unthinkable” happens, and 19 nine- to 11-year-old children and two teachers die unspeakable deaths at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex. Yet these killings aren’t unthinkable. We’ve been here before—at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and too many other schools.

We are researchers and pediatric emergency medicine physicians who study firearm injuries. After many hard, politically fraught years of investigating this subject, we believe that it is our collective responsibility to address, head on, the interlinked issues of gun availability, gun safety, gun regulations and gun violence prevention research—and, dare we say it, the politicization of guns taking priority over public health. With thousands of children killed each year in the U.S. by firearms, we must, as a country, ultimately reckon with the essential question of what is most important: Is it the narrow focus on individuals’ rights or the broader vision of societal responsibility? Read the full article here.