Playing with Firearms: injuries among children

BrooklynDodger is back to firearms as a public health issue. This paper
combines public injury data bases. CPSC maintains a data base for injuries
treated in emergency rooms, NEISS. This is even remotely searchable, and
provides a sample of injuries which can be extrapolated to the full nation. The
National Vital Statistics data base provides information on fatalities by cause.

The summary is largely descriptive, although the purpose of quoting it here is to suggest that off-the-job injury
and family safety programs have to address guns, and that gun control efforts
since 1993 have had some success.

“From 1993 through 2000, an estimated 22 661 or 4.9 per 100 000 children
14 years old or younger with nonfatal FA injuries were treated in US
hospital EDs. Assaults accounted for 41.5% of nonfatal FA injuries,
and unintentional injuries accounted for 43.1%. Approximately 4 of
5 children who sustained a nonfatal, unintentional FA injury were
reportedly shot by themselves or by a friend, a relative, or another
person known to them. During this period, 5542, or 1.20 per 100
000 children 14 years old or younger died from FA injuries; 1 of
every 5 children who were wounded by a firearm gunshot died from that
injury. Most FA deaths were violence related, with homicides and
suicides constituting 54.7% and 21.9% of these deaths, respectively.
[For homicides, data on location of incident and person causing the
incident was sparse.] For individuals 14 years old or younger the burden of
morbidity and mortality associated with FA injuries falls
disproportionately on boys, blacks, and children 10 to 14 years old.
Both fatal and nonfatal injury rates declined more than 50% during
the study period.”

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PEDIATRICS Vol.
113 No. 6 June 2004, pp. 1686-1692

Nonfatal and Fatal
Firearm-Related Injuries Among Children Aged 14 Years and Younger: United
States, 1993–2000

Gabriel B.
Eber, MPH^*, Joseph L. Annest, PhD^*, James A. Mercy, PhD and George W. Ryan, PhD^*

Office of Statistics and Programming,
National Center for Injury Prevention
and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia

Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia

Objective. To provide national
estimates of fatal and nonfatal firearm-related (FA) injuries among children

14
years old and to examine the circumstances under which these injuries occurred.

Methods.
For nonfatal FA injuries among children, we analyzed data on
emergency department (ED) visits from the National Electronic Injury
Surveillance System for 1993 through 2000. National estimates of
injured children who were treated in hospital EDs were examined by
selected characteristics, such as age, gender, race/ethnicity of the
patient, primary body part affected, intent of the injury, the
relationship of the shooter to the patient, where the injury
occurred, and activity at the time of injury. For fatal FA injuries
among children, we analyzed mortality data from the National Vital
Statistics System for 1993 through 2000. Data from both sources were
used to calculate case-fatality rates.

Results.
From 1993 through 2000, an estimated 22 661 (95% confidence interval

[CI]: 16 668–28 654) or 4.9 per 100 000 (95% CI: 3.6–6.2) children

14
years old with nonfatal FA injuries were treated in US hospital EDs.
Assaults accounted for 41.5% of nonfatal FA injuries, and
unintentional injuries accounted for 43.1%. Approximately 4 of 5
children who sustained a nonfatal, unintentional FA injury were
reportedly shot by themselves or by a friend, a relative, or another
person known to them. During this period, 5542, or 1.20 per 100 000
(95% CI: 1.17, 1.23), children

14 years old died from FA injuries; 1 of every 5 children who were
wounded by a firearm gunshot died from that injury. Most FA deaths
were violence related, with homicides and suicides constituting 54.7% and 21.9% of these deaths, respectively. For individuals 14 years old, the burden of morbidity and mortality associated with FA
injuries falls disproportionately on boys, blacks, and children 10 to
14 years old. Both fatal and nonfatal injury rates declined >50%
during the study period.

Conclusions.
Although rates of nonfatal and fatal FA injuries declined during the
period of study, FA injuries remain an important public health
concern for children. Well-designed evaluation studies are needed to
examine the effectiveness of potential interventions aimed at
reducing FA injuries among children