In 2020, guns surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of death in the United States for children. The rate of child firearm death has spiked 42 percent in the last two decades, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and a new Pew Research Center report shows that the crisis is only getting worse: Gun deaths among children and teens in the US rose 50 percent between 2019 and 2021 — the highest increase since at least 1999, the earliest year for which Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data is available.
On Valentine’s Day, fans at a rally celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl win experienced a tragedy that is far too common at sporting events and other public celebrations: the chaos of bullets flying, and people running for their lives. “It was so many children just having to be picked up,” a woman at the rally told the Kansas City Star. “It was a scary sight.” Details of the shooting are still trickling out, but at least one person is dead, and at least 21 others are injured. According to early reports, roughly half of the injured victims appear to be children. “The one word I would just use to describe what we saw and how they felt when they came to us was fear,” the chief nursing officer of a local hospital treating 11 children injured at the event told reporters.
While mass shootings like this one tend to get the most attention, they are only a small part of the overall picture. The overwhelming majority of kids who die by guns are victims of homicide in their homes and communities, suicides, or unintentional injury. Some populations are more at risk than others: According to Pew, boys are more likely to be killed by guns, and Black children are disproportionately represented in the population of victims. The vast majority of Black children and teens who die by gun violence are victims of homicide. The majority of white children who die by guns die by suicide. In Kansas City, gun violence surged so dramatically that in 2020, the Department of Justice launched a special operation aimed at tackling gun crimes. The initiative, called Operation Legend, was named in honor of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed while sleeping in his bed.
Dr. Chethan Sathya, a pediatric trauma surgeon and the director of Northwell Health’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention, has treated children for gunshot wounds, and has made ending gun violence a central focus of his career. Vox spoke with Sathya about his experiences treating children, and what he thinks needs to be done to address a stark — and growing — crisis.
This interview has been edited for........© Vox