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 That's largely because youth 15 to 19 years in cities are almost
eight times more likely than rural teens to be hospitalized after
firearm assaults, which account for the majority of gun-related
injuries for urban youth.
In the U.S., more than 5,500 urban teens are hospitalized for gun
injuries every year, at a rate of about 15 a day, researchers report
in Pediatrics.
Younger children in cities, however, have less than half the risk of
gun-related hospitalizations than their rural peers. The bulk of
these cases for children 5 to 14 years old occur in rural areas and
involve accidents, not assaults.
"We knew that overall risks for firearm injuries included male sex,
nonwhite race, and late adolescent age, and that the highest rates
of hospitalization for firearm injuries occurred in late adolescent
males in urban areas because of assault," said senior study author
Dr. James Dodington, an injury prevention specialist at Yale School
of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.
"This study shows again that the highest rates of hospitalization
for firearm injuries are in adolescent males in urban areas but that
in younger age groups, specifically ages 5 to 9 and 10 to 14,
accidental firearm injuries are most common and in fact, the rates
of hospitalization are higher in rural populations compared to their
urban counterparts," Dodington said by email.
Dodington's team examined nationwide data on 21,581 hospitalizations
for firearm injuries in patients under 20 years old in 2006, 2009,
and 2012.
Across communities of all sizes, the vast majority of gun injuries
occurred among males and youth ages 15 to 19.
While African-American youth accounted for 56 percent of firearm
injuries in cities, white children and teens accounted for about 71
percent of gun injuries in rural areas.
About 2 percent of gun injuries in cities involved kids under five
years old, compared with 4.3 percent of rural cases.
Children ages 5 to 9 accounted for slightly less than 3 percent of
gun-related hospitalizations in cities but more than 8 percent of
rural cases, the study also found.
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Similarly, kids ages 10 to 14 were involved in 9.5 percent of gun
injuries treated in urban hospitals but more than 24 percent of
cases in rural hospitals.
Rural communities had higher rates of pediatric hospitalizations for
gun injuries involving accidents as well as suicide attempts or
episodes of self-harm, the study also found.
The study wasn't a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how where children live might directly impact their risk of being
hospitalized for gun injuries.
Another limitation is that the national database of pediatric
firearm injuries used in the study might not always have accurate or
complete information about the circumstances surrounding these
cases. In some instances, results from police investigations might
not have concluded whether a case involved assault, and in other
situations suicide attempts might be recorded as accidents, for
example.
Even so, the results highlight differences in the risk of gun
injuries faced by youth in cities and in rural communities that
might help shape prevention efforts, noted Alex Piquero, a
criminology researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas who
wasn't involved in the study.
"Assaults may be more common gun injuries in urban areas because
those areas tend to suffer disproportionately from violent
(especially firearm-related) crimes compared to rural areas due in
large part to the intersections between gangs, drugs, guns, and
offending and victimization more generally," Piquero said by email.
"On the other hand, accidents may be more common in rural areas
because these factors are less likely to exist in rural compared to
urban areas and hospitalizations for younger children (under 15) in
rural areas may be occurring because of differential gun storage
patterns and/or easy access to hospitals," Piquero added.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2lNNrJu Pediatrics, online July 2, 2018.
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