(DCWatchdog.com) – The number of child gun deaths in the United States has skyrocketed to a new high, according to the latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
The study, which was published in the Academy’s “Pediatrics” journal on Monday, uses figures from the mortality database of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The data shows the nation saw 4,752 cases of children killed due to gun-related injuries in 2021, the latest year with available numbers, reports Reuters, as cited by Newsmax.
The 2921 figure represents an almost 9% increase compared with the 4,368 child gun deaths in 2020 and 40% more than the 3,390 cases in 2019.
Reuters stresses that gun violence has been the nation’s biggest cause of child deaths since 2020.
“I never imagined I would take care of so many children with bullet holes in them,” comments South Carolina pediatrician and gun violence prevention researcher Annie Andrews, who wasn’t involved in the AAP study.
“In every children’s hospital across this country, there are children in the pediatric intensive care units suffering from firearm injuries,” she added.
The AAP study found that 67% of the child victims of gun homicides are black, while 78% of children who die in gun-assisted suicides are white.
Reuters notes that the AAP study comes just as Tennessee’s legislature started a special session dedicated to public safety after, in April, a heavily armed “trans man” murdered three 9-year-old kids and three staffers in a local Christian school.
The special session was convened at the behest of Tennessee’s GOP Governor Bill Lee, who knew one of the teachers slaughtered in the Nashville school massacre.
He asked the state legislators to improve what are known as “red flag laws,” which are supposed to prevent people considered a threat from obtaining firearms.
It is noted that many Republican lawmakers in the GOP-controlled state legislature are resisting Lee’s calls. Even so, the special session has sparked concern among advocates of Second Amendment rights.
“While some Republican legislators have said that no Red Flag laws will pass, far fewer have stated that no laws that would have any negative impact on 2nd Amendment protected rights would pass,” declared a statement by the Tennessee Firearms Association issued Tuesday.
