Study: Guns sent 20 children to U.S. hospitals every day

Twenty children or adolescents were hospitalized for firearm-related injuries every day in 2009, and 453 died of their wounds, a new report says.

The study provides one of the most comprehensive recent efforts to tally the number of children hurt nationally in gun-related incidents. It was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

A national database of patients younger than 20 who were admitted to hospitals in 2009 shows that boys represented nearly 90 percent of the total, and that the rate of gunshot-related hospitalizations for African-American males was 10 times that of white males.

Blacks ages 15 to 19 were 13 times more likely than their white peers to be injured by gunfire. And 70 percent of all black children hospitalized for gun injury (compared with 32 percent of all white children injured by firearms) were classified as victims of assault. Latino children and adolescents were three times likelier than white children to be hospitalized with a firearm-related injury.

Hospital care for youths injured by gunfire cost $147 million in 2009, according to the report, but that is a fraction of the overall cost of the injuries. It doesn’t include physician-related services, rehabilitation and ongoing care and re-hospitalization, and does not take into account many victims’ loss of future productivity. (Past research has found that almost half of children hospitalized for gun-related injury are discharged with a disability.)

The latest estimate boosts the number of those younger than 20 hurt by firearms in 2009 to 7,391, from 6,496.

For years, public health researchers have relied on the National Epidemiological Injury Surveillance System to track gunfire-related injuries in the United States. Though that system is to be expanded under an Obama administration initiative launched last year, it has based its national estimates of all kinds of injuries – including those resulting from gunfire – on a yearly sampling of 66 hospital emergency departments across the country.

The database used in the latest research samples a larger number of hospitals and is thus likely to generate a more accurate accounting of firearms’ toll on children and adolescents. The database covers all but six states, covering 96 percent of the U.S. populace.

In the latest accounting, researchers from the medical schools of Yale and Boston universities asserted that decades of aggressive injury-prevention efforts have driven down the pediatric toll of poisonings, household fires and drownings. By contrast, they said, “there have been no robust public health efforts to reduce firearms injuries.” They suggest that is largely because, since 1996, federal law has essentially blocked the use of taxpayer dollars for research that might bolster calls for gun control measures.

Meanwhile, the researchers wrote, gun-related injuries have followed a pattern of inequality seen elsewhere on the American health landscape: Victims are far more likely to be poor and members of an ethnic minority than they are to be white and affluent.

Victims ages 15 to 19 made up 84 percent of the children brought to the hospital with gunshot wounds, and two-thirds of those injuries were attributed to assault. Among these older children, roughly 24 percent of the cases were considered unintentional. Suicide attempts accounted for 239 of 4,143 of those firearm-related hospitalizations.

Among younger children, accidental firearm injuries were most common. Of the 378 children under 10 brought to the hospital in connection with a firearm injury, roughly three-quarters were considered victims of an accidental or unintended shooting. Thirty-one children younger than 5 and 47 children ages 5 to 9 were injured in gun-related assaults in 2009.

Among Latino youths, firearm-related injuries were three times higher than among white children, the data show. And African-American girls were more than six times as likely as their white counterparts to be injured by gunfire.

Suicide attempts accounted for 3.7 percent of the gun-related hospitalizations – a total of 270 kids in 2009 (25 of whom were younger than 15). One-third of these children and adolescents died, a fatality rate roughly eight times higher than that of assault or unintentional-injury victims.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

A firefighter stands in silence before a panel bearing the names of L. John Regelbrugge and Kris Regelbrugge during the ten-year remembrance of the Oso landslide on Friday, March 22, 2024, at the Oso Landslide Memorial in Oso, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘Flood of emotions’ as Oso Landslide Memorial opens on 10th anniversary

Friends, family and first responders held a moment of silence at 10:37 a.m. at the new 2-acre memorial off Highway 530.

Julie Petersen poses for a photo with images of her sister Christina Jefferds and Jefferds’ grand daughter Sanoah Violet Huestis next to a memorial for Sanoah at her home on March 20, 2024 in Arlington, Washington. Peterson wears her sister’s favorite color and one of her bangles. (Annie Barker / The Herald)
‘It just all came down’: An oral history of the Oso mudslide

Ten years later, The Daily Herald spoke with dozens of people — first responders, family, survivors — touched by the deadliest slide in U.S. history.

Victims of the Oso mudslide on March 22, 2014. (Courtesy photos)
Remembering the 43 lives lost in the Oso mudslide

The slide wiped out a neighborhood along Highway 530 in 2014. “Even though you feel like you’re alone in your grief, you’re really not.”

Director Lucia Schmit, right, and Deputy Director Dara Salmon inside the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
How Oso slide changed local emergency response ‘on virtually every level’

“In a decade, we have just really, really advanced,” through hard-earned lessons applied to the pandemic, floods and opioids.

Ron and Gail Thompson at their home on Monday, March 4, 2024 in Oso, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
In shadow of scarred Oso hillside, mudslide’s wounds still feel fresh

Locals reflected on living with grief and finding meaning in the wake of a catastrophe “nothing like you can ever imagine” in 2014.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, left, introduces Xichitl Torres Small, center, Undersecretary for Rural Development with the U.S. Department of Agriculture during a talk at Thomas Family Farms on Monday, April 3, 2023, in Snohomish, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Under new federal program, Washingtonians can file taxes for free

At a press conference Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene called the Direct File program safe, easy and secure.

Former Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy Jeremie Zeller appears in court for sentencing on multiple counts of misdemeanor theft Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Ex-sheriff’s deputy sentenced to 1 week of jail time for hardware theft

Jeremie Zeller, 47, stole merchandise from Home Depot in south Everett, where he worked overtime as a security guard.

Everett
11 months later, Lake Stevens man charged in fatal Casino Road shooting

Malik Fulson is accused of shooting Joseph Haderlie to death in the parking lot at the Crystal Springs Apartments last April.

T.J. Peters testifies during the murder trial of Alan Dean at the Snohomish County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Bothell cold case trial now in jury’s hands

In court this week, the ex-boyfriend of Melissa Lee denied any role in her death. The defendant, Alan Dean, didn’t testify.

A speed camera facing west along 220th Street Southwest on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023 in Edmonds, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
New Washington law will allow traffic cams on more city, county roads

The move, led by a Snohomish County Democrat, comes as roadway deaths in the state have hit historic highs.

Mrs. Hildenbrand runs through a spelling exercise with her first grade class on the classroom’s Boxlight interactive display board funded by a pervious tech levy on Tuesday, March 19, 2024 in Marysville, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Lakewood School District’s new levy pitch: This time, it won’t raise taxes

After two levies failed, the district went back to the drawing board, with one levy that would increase taxes and another that would not.

Alex Hanson looks over sections of the Herald and sets the ink on Wednesday, March 30, 2022 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Black Press, publisher of Everett’s Daily Herald, is sold

The new owners include two Canadian private investment firms and a media company based in the southern United States.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.