Gun deaths of US kids up 50% in grim new record: Global News

With gun violence rising in the United States, new research shows that the number of U.S. kids killed by gunfire has hit a record high, a concerning trend as the country reels from another mass school shooting last month, reported Global News on Sunday.

Roughly 2,590 gun deaths of children and teenagers under the age of 18 were recorded in 2021, a staggering 50 percent jump since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the news and current affairs division of the Canadian Global Television Network reported, citing a Pew Research Center analysis published last week.

The gun death rate among children and teens also spiked to 3.5 fatalities per 100,000 minor residents over that same two-year period, according to the Pew analysis of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

Both mark the highest numbers since 1999, which is when the CDC started including that data for under-18s in its mortality database, according to the report.

Most gun deaths among children, a total of 60 percent, in 2021 were homicides, while one-third were suicides and the remaining were accidents, it added.