According to a University of Michigan analysis, gun violence overtook vehicle accidents as the main cause of mortality among children and adolescents in the United States by 2020.

The discovery was published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine as part of a longer-term study effort by the university's Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention (IFIP).

According to the researchers, a study of mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found an almost 30 percent rise in gun-related fatalities among Americans under the age of 19 between 2019 and 2020. Suicides, unintentional shootings, and killings account for the majority of these deaths, with homicides exceeding the other two categories.

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Since 2016, the number of deaths from automobile accidents and gun killings among newborns, children, and young people has been increasing. The researchers discovered that drug overdoses and poisoning climbed by more than 80% between 2019 and 2020, becoming the third top cause of mortality among this population.

Dr. Jason Goldstick, a researcher with IFIP and associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan stated that he was "surprised" by the increase in only a year, adding that he "can't remember ever seeing that before."

The increase in gunshot fatalities among the nation's youth is part of a greater surge in homicides over the same time period. According to the analysis, gun murders in the United States would increase by 33% in 2020.

 According to FBI data released in the fall of 2021, while accounting for 14 percent of the US population, Black Americans accounted for over half of the nation's homicide fatalities.

Although 2020 was the first year in which more children and teenagers were murdered by firearms than in automobile accidents, according to CDC data, gun violence has been the leading cause of death among Black teenage boys over the age of 15 for at least a decade. These teenagers were not killed in high-profile mass shootings.

Andre Robinson Jr., 19, was one of the young people slain in 2020 when he was shot in the back while delivering breakfast to his girlfriend's home in Oakland, California, on November 8, 2020. Aaron Pryor, a football player, was shot and died on September 27, less than a month after his 16th birthday, in the same city.

In December 2021, California teenagers told The Guardian that an increase in gunshots had shaken their communities. They reported paranoia, despair, and helplessness at the loss of their peers to gun violence, both as victims and as perpetrators.

Samantha Walton, a 17-year-old from San Francisco says "we have to see that violence every day...Nothing should be so serious to where everybody is just killing each other. We’ve got like little kids, sisters, and brothers out here that don’t even make it to 18.”

Goldstick, the University of Michigan researcher, says the numbers are "horrible, especially because these are such preventable deaths, but until very recently research has been chronically underfunded."

Just last Easter weekend, the US saw three separate mass shootings in Pittsburgh and South Carolina. 

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