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Philorandroid

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

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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.

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