Guns the No 1 cause for children deaths in US

Guns surpassed drug overdoses, car accidents and cancer as the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in the United States in 2020 for the first time in more than 40 years.

Researchers analyzed mortality data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showing that there were a record 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the US in 2020.

Children below the age of 19 accounted for 4,357 of those deaths, 29 percent more than the year before, said a research letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

Jason Goldstick, a statistician at the University of Michigan who led the study and was a co-author of the letter, told NBC News: "In the last 40 years, and almost certainly before that, this is the first time that firearm injuries have surpassed motor vehicle crashes among kids."

The increase in firearm-related deaths among children and adolescents was "more than twice as high as the relative increase in the general population", the letter said.

Although gun deaths rose across nearly every racial and ethnic group, the increase was greatest among black children. In this group, firearms accounted for more than 15 deaths for every 100,000 children in 2020, compared with 12 such deaths in 2019.

Using the mortality data from the CDC, the researchers said murders, rather than suicides, accounted for most firearm deaths of children.

Drug overdose and poisoning was the third leading cause of death among children and adolescents, increasing 83.6 percent from 2019 to 2020. The number of deaths as the result of car crashes has fallen following the implementation of various safety improvements, and there were 3,900 crash deaths among children and adolescents in 2020.

Amid the pandemic, gun ownership soared across the country. It led to more than 5 million children under 18 newly having guns nearby at home or at a relative's house from January 2019 to April 2021, figures from a survey titled "Firearm purchasing during COVID-19 pandemic: Results from the 2021 National Firearms" showed.

In an article published in the journal Pediatrics, Annie Andrews, a pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, called for doctors and other healthcare workers to recognize gun violence and death among youth as an epidemic.

Andrews said it was vital that parents used secure storage to lock guns out of children's reach, as well as unloading the gun and separating it from ammunition.

In March, a 3-year-old boy in Memphis, Tennessee, found a gun and accidentally shot himself dead while in the care of his uncle, according to local news reports and Memphis police.

Regan Williams, trauma medical director at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, said that it treated 38 children for gunshot wounds in the first three months of this year.

He told an NBC News affiliate in Memphis: "We know that about 30 to 40 percent of our injuries to children are from accidental injuries."