Child gun deaths after arrival in pediatric emergency rooms doubled during pandemic

Child gun deaths and injuries after arriving at pediatric hospital emergency rooms have doubled during the pandemic, according to a national study of data from nine U.S. pediatric hospital emergency departments.

The research, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, included 1,904 gunshot wound visits by children younger than 18 to emergency departments at nine U.S. urban hospitals participating in the Applied Medicine Research Network registry. pediatric emergency care. There were 694 pre-pandemic visits for firearm injuries before the pandemic and 1,210 visits during the pandemic from March 2020 to November 2022.

Emergency room/hospital deaths increased from 3.1% before the pandemic to 6.1% during the pandemic, according to the study results. Before the pandemic began, 18.0 pediatric emergency room visits for firearm injuries occurred every 30 days. During the pandemic, emergency room visits for firearm injuries increased to 36.1 every 30 days, twice the expected rate based on extrapolated pre-pandemic trends, with an observed rate ratio: expected 2.09.

The authors blamed increased gun sales during the pandemic as one of the main factors responsible for firearm injuries and deaths.

With the pandemic, we saw a drastic increase in gun purchases, which may have led to tragic spikes in firearm injuries and deaths among children and adolescents, said the lead author of study, Dr. Jennifer Hoffman, a pediatric emergency physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Childrens Hospital in Chicago and assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Black children, in particular, suffered the highest number of injuries and deaths, according to the study.

We found that more than half of all firearm injury visits were to Black children, both before and during the pandemic, Hoffman and colleagues wrote from pediatric hospitals across the country.

During the pandemic, Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black children have experienced a disproportionate increase in firearm injuries, with significant increases above expected levels, Hoffman said. Some studies have identified no change in the racial and ethnic distribution of firearm injuries among children during the pandemic, while others have found a post-pandemic increase in the proportion of firearm injuries among children. black children only.

The doctors and researchers hope their study will help develop evidence-based policy solutions to address the gun violence crisis.

To prevent firearm injuries among youth, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends enactment and enforcement of child visitation prevention laws, as well as universal background checks, buyer regulations , extreme risk protection orders and bans on military-style semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines, Hoffmann said.