The shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which left at least 19 children dead, serves as a harrowing reminder that firearms became the leading cause of death for young Americans in 2020.
The leading cause of death for young Americans in 2020 was firearm-related deaths.
In 2020, firearm-related deaths overtook motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death for Americans ages 1 to 19 according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data analyzed in a research paper published in the New England Journal Medicine.
Gun-related deaths became the leading cause of death for all Americans regardless of age in the year 2017, according to a paper published in the New England Journal Medicine in April.
The authors of the paper argue that the decline in motor vehicle deaths can be traced back to the Dickey Amendment, which was introduced in 1996.
The ban on federal funding for this research was lifted in 2020 after Congress approved $25 million in funding for the CDC and National Institutes of Health to study the issue.
From 1996 to 2020 there was no research funded to prevent or solve gun violence.
David Hemenway, the director of Harvard University's Injury Control Research Center and one of the authors of the paper, told Forbes in a phone interview that the lack of good data is caused by the Dickey Amendment.
Even today, federal funding is not comparable with the problem of firearm-related deaths, Hemenway said.
In an email to Forbes, Lois Lee, an associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School who co-authored the study with Hemenway, said that motor vehicles are not a politicized issue like firearms. Building the same kind of oversight and research infrastructure will have more barriers than motor vehicles. We can assume nothing can be done and that the deaths of firearms are inevitable.
The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, is the deadliest school shooting in the nation since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut. The deaths of 4,368 Americans ages 1 to 19 in 2020 were caused by firearm-related injuries, compared to 3,988 motor vehicle deaths, according to CDC data. Homicides were the leading cause of death among gun deaths, according to a University of Michigan researcher. The shooting in Uvalde prompted calls from the left for stronger gun control laws led by President Joe Biden.
More than 400 million. According to estimates from the Small Arms Survey research group, there are more than one million civilian-owned firearms in the U.S. According to the Small Arms Survey, the U.S. has the most civilian-held guns in the world.
Here is what we know about the victims of the Texas school shooting.
Guns are the leading cause of death in children and youth.
Can new gun violence research find a path to politics? The New York Times.
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