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Comment by k2enemy | Hacker News Reader

Firearm-related deaths increased a lot. As the article mentions, that is a big category that encompasses suicide, homicide, accidents, etc. Clicking through to a supplementary pdf provides a figure that breaks firearm deaths down by subcategory, sex, and race.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMc2201761/suppl_fi...

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> that is a big category that encompasses suicide, homicide, accidents

according to the document, there were more than twice as many homicides as suicides, and other causes (including accidents) were vanishingly few.

For ages 1-19.

That's the age range defined in the article, is it not?

Yes. Just noting. I also wonder how many people would classify 17-19 year olds as children or adolescents.

According to the AAP[0], even up to 21 would count.

[0]https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/140/3/e20172...

If the cutoff was 18 , 21, or even 25 I wouldn't bat an eye. But a cutoff of 19 suggests manipulation of the statistic to achieve a desired outcome.

18 - Old enough to vote, join the army without parental permission.

21 - Old enough to drink and buy cigarettes. Also the age used for numerous firearm purchase/carry laws, when that age isn't 18.

25 - Popularly claimed to be when the human brain reaches maturity, or something like that.

19 - ....has "teen" in the word?

Yes, the standard is 19 because that's when you stop being a teenager. It's a pretty common range.

That's the most arbitrary of those four age ranges, set by a fluke of English terminology and not aligning with any laws or social norms.

It aligns with the WHO definition of adolescence (10-19).

then you would expect the groups to be 1-9 and 10-19

My guess is that 19 is when a cohort is 100% out of school. If you cut off at 18 you'd miss many highschool seniors, and therefore lots of school shooting deaths.

That would require an incredible slant towards exclusively 18-year-olds being killed in school shootings, and an exceptional overestimation of just how many school shooting deaths there are per capita for it to make that kind of difference.

They are likely adopting the WHO definition of adolescence as ages 10-19: https://www.who.int/health-topics/adolescent-health#tab=tab_...

This makes sense for international comparison. The supplemental material of the 2016 version compares with other countries: https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMsr1804754/suppl_f...

> 10-19

But that's not the age range they used.

Because they combine children and adolescents (1-19). In their 2018 publication [0], you can see they actually do distinguish between younger children (1-4), older children (5-9), and adolescents (10-19). Your complaint was that 19 is an arbitrary cutoff, or even in bad faith, but it’s actually a common established definition in health contexts.

[0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1804754

It got a cocked eyebrow from me when I saw the range too, "children and adolescents" makes me think "up to 15-16". I wonder if there's a breakdown by age range?

You say this like the conclusion I’m supposed to draw is that it doesn’t matter that they died from firearms.

I think the conclusion is that the group definition matters: a group of people age 1-19 is different than 2 groups. 1-17 and 18-19.

If you use 1-19, firearms are the leading cause of death, if you use 1-17 they are not. In almost every other context we consider 18-19 adults.

this looks like something peculiar happens when you age up to 18.

suddenly adult privledges, and expectations are now part of your life, and if you can make it past year one adulthood, this window is passed

That age range would probably make KIA the leading cause of death for “children” during the Vietnam war.

Sure, but we’re not in the middle Of a large scale land wars at the moment.

I guess that includes a lot of young gang members in troubled areas.

Came here to point this out. Unfortunately everything is politics. As another commenter mentioned this includes a lot of gang stuff and suicide when someone is old enough to purchase a gun.

I’ll update this comment when I find the source but I believe if you use the definition of minors that we usually use elsewhere (under 18) firearms are not the leading cause of death.

I'm surprised that by expanding like that it changes the stats that much - are gang members waiting for someone to turn 18th birthday before commencing in gang related murder?

No, but the window of gang-related violence doesn't really start until, say, 14†. Or some other age >> infancy.

So it looks like a tiny change in range when you're going from 0-17 to 0-19, but the peak of the curve already lies near the end of those ranges, so the effect is similar to comparing the range of 14-17 vs. 14-19.

† I chose this somewhat arbitrarily, but the idea is the same. The "natural" bottom of the range isn't 0, it's older.

That's true, I imagine there aren't a lot of 6 year olds doing drive-bys, but given the other major cause of death is motor vehicle accidents I'd expect that too to rise at the same age as inexperienced drivers gain independence behind the wheel for the first time.

It doesn't change the stats that much. Guns and vehicles are both deadly. In rates per 100k, FA=Firearm, MVT=Motor Vehicle Traffic:

           1-17 FA   1-17 MVT | 1-19 FA   1-19 MVT
    2019     2.5       2.8    |   4.3       4.2
    2020     3.3       3.1    |   5.6       4.7

Motor vehicles are also more deadly to 18-19 year olds than younger children, as you might imagine.

At 18 it's easier to obtain guns/ammo and gang membership is more common in 18-19 year olds than, for example, 5-6 year olds.

> are gang members waiting for someone to turn 18th birthday before commencing in gang related murder?

I wonder how many "undocumented" gang members would claim to be minors to get tried as a child instead of an adult. Remember the fastest 14 years old in Sweden? [0]

[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3422000/Just-old-th...

This is not true anymore. For ages 1-17, there were 2,571 firearm deaths in 2021. That's now ahead of motor vehicles (2,348).

Source: https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D332F520

I'll add some nuance here and its possibly a separate debate on its significance but according to that data, total firearm deaths surpass vehicle deaths but if you look at the split between homicide suicide its like 60-40 homicide-suicide. We would be talking about motor vehicle deaths a lot differently if half that number were kids stealing their parents keys to run into a wall at 100mph.

Here is another bit from the NEJM using CDC data from 2016: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1804754

Whats interesting is that the gun deaths were higher in 2016 than they are now (roughly 2900). What this suggests is that firearms becoming the leading cause of deaths is not because of a rise in firearm deaths but because the number of vehicle deaths have been dropping off as well - which should be evident based on how little people drove over the last few years.

Edit: also alarming that the per capita rate is increasing as overall gun deaths are still on the decline. That can't be good (if our youth population is declining that rapidly).

Going back in time isn't going to change the more recent figures. Nor are factually incorrect statements about motor vehicle deaths.

From 2018-2021, firearm deaths went up from 2.5 to 3.3 to 3.7 per 100k 1-17 year olds.

During the same time, motor vehicle traffic deaths also went up from 2.8 to 3.1 to 3.4 per 100k 1-17 year olds.

https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D332F520

> As another commenter mentioned this includes a lot of gang stuff

I wonder what these stats would look like for legal vs illegal weapons.

The fact that nobody seems to be publishing these figures should be a pretty good indicator of what they would tell us...

... or maybe — just maybe — they are figures that are impossible to determine in any sort of comprehensive or reliable manner.

It's not a conspiracy.

> impossible to determine

Not really. For homicide cases the weapons are often recovered.

Take what you can get reliably, use it as a sample and try and extrapolate out making adjustments if the sample population differs from the overall population.

This is SOP in god knows how many fields.

Which if any fraction of the “illegal” weapon didn’t start out as “legal”? Thus the distinction is pointless.

Depends on which area of the country that you are in but along the southern border a lot of gangs bring in guns.

Then there is the fact that our incompetent government does things like Operation Fast and Furious (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal) and, no, the ATF using private businesses to funnel guns into the hands of people who would not otherwise be able to acquire them is not the same as firearms that were once legal.

Bring in guns? From where

When you see literal shoot outs in the streets between the Sinaloa cartel and the Mexican armed forces, you don't honestly think the cartel members drove to AZ and walked into a Cabela's, do you?

Just like drugs, humans, etc, guns are also trafficked. The vast majority of gun homicides are done with handguns and largely gang related. Not all of those guns weren't at one point legal guns in the US - where the gang member either stole them from a law abiding citizen or walked into a gun store. All handguns in the US require background checks and you have to be 21 years old to buy.

The way the comment was phrased makes it sound like they're bringing in the guns from outside the country.

I think the problem is multi-faceted: - some guns were legally acquired in the US then stolen - the government has done gun running operations from the US into Mexico and then some of the guns have ended up being used in crimes back in the US - some gun running does acquire guns outside of the US and brings them in

The thing I am objecting to is the notion that if an illegally used gun was used in a crime it must have once been a legally possessed gun, and (the implicit policy prescription) that the way to curb illegal gun possession is by limiting legal gun possession. While that last part probably tracks, because of my ideological beliefs, I'd rather we exhaust all other options before limiting legal gun ownership. And even then, again because ideology/convictions, curbing legal gun ownership is probably not a thought I'd entertain at the ballot box.

Or actually enforcing laws on the book to prevent legal guns to becoming illegal guns. Saw this a lot growing up in the south. Jimbo is gonna get charged with some crime that will take away his ability to own a gun, so Jimbo sells/transfers the ownership of the gun to his brother/best friend bob. Bob now legally owns that/those guns, but those guns never actually end up in Bob's ownership. 5 years later, Jimbo still has the guns in his closet.

Nearly all guns used for crime in the US were once legally owned

https://archive.md/qymWJ

> I’ll update this comment when I find the source

So... you gonna update your beliefs in light of the changing landscape? We have the source; you probably heard it when it was true, but things have gotten worse. Or are you just going to seek alternative ways of supporting your pre-existing beliefs?

Everything is politics, indeed.

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