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Comment by maartenscholl | Hacker News Reader

Firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the US. That is not the case in other wealthy countries. According to this article

https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-a...

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Fentanyl makes a much larger impact. There were around 14,000 non-suicide firearm deaths in 2018, the most recent year with stats. Fentanyl killed around 110,000 in 2022.

Both issues disproportionately affect small segments of the population though, rather than being general hazards. Driving deaths for example tend to be more evenly distributed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_S...

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/18/1176830906/overdose-death-202...

I think we get an apparent contradiction because of how we stratify the data. According to the CDC/KFF study, firearms are still the leading cause of death for people age 1-19, and substance use is only 6th in the list for that age group. If you instead interpret "young age" as another age range, then indeed other causes of death may appear more prevalent.

Some of their metrics include adults ages 18-19, not just children. Still a serious problem, but the headline is deceptive.

How is the headline deceptive? If you can trust the source, the statistic holds for individuals aged 1-17, as is written in the first sentence: "In 2020 and 2021, firearms contributed to the deaths of more children ages 1-17 years in the U.S. than any other type of injury or illness"

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