Among the most heartbreaking aspects of Monday’s mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville—which left three children and three adults dead—was the familiarity of it. Watching the news unfold, I was reminded of the day, less than a year ago, when 21 people were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The updates that popped up on my phone screen caused the same mix of fear and rage to take over my thoughts.
Because of the regularity of gun violence in the US, some health authorities, including the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), refer to it as an “epidemic”—and for good reason: Nearly 50,000 people in the US died of gun violence in 2021, the latest year for which data is available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Tragically, gun violence takes a massive toll on America’s young people. According to data from Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for sensible gun laws, 4.6 million children live in homes where at least one gun is loaded and unlocked, approximately 3 million children witness gun violence each year, and the firearm suicide rate among children has skyrocketed by 66% within the last decade.
However alarming these stats might sound to those of us who don’t work with children, they are figures that America’s pediatricians are all too aware of. “Like almost every pediatrician I know, I’m despondent and want action,” Scott Hadland, MD, chief of adolescent medicine at Mass General Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, tells SELF. Lois Lee, MD, a senior associate in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School, echoes this feeling. “As a doctor—especially one who takes care of kids—I feel both devastated and angered,” Dr. Lee tells SELF.
Below, they weigh in on three consequences of America’s gun violence epidemic for children—and how these may continue to play out until sensible gun laws are passed.
Mass shootings leave long-lasting wounds, both physically and emotionally.
Gun violence is a unique public health problem in the way that it affects and traumatizes everyone, not just those who are harmed or killed by firearms, explains Dr. Lee, who authored the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) policy statement on gun violence. “Firearm deaths leave lasting emotional scars on families and communities in ways other diseases don’t,” she says.
Among other things, people who survive school shootings can experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), acute stress disorder, depression, substance use disorders, and debilitating anxiety, according to the American Psychological Association.
There’s no telling when—or even if—these will ease as a child who’s experienced gun violence grows older, Dr. Hadland says: “I care for patients who were shot as children but survived, and [they] live with lifelong injuries and emotional trauma.”
In the US, more children are dying by homicide and suicide.
Since 2017, guns have been responsible for more deaths among children than anything else, according to the AAP policy statement. Before that, car accidents were the leading cause. (For context: In 2021, gun violence killed more children than cancer and poisonings combined, according to Everytown.)
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This shift doesn’t necessarily reflect that our vehicles are much safer now—instead, it’s in part the result of increased accessibility to deadly weapons. As Dr. Lee wrote in the policy statement, this has led to rising rates of firearm suicides and homicides, particularly among people 15 to 24 years old in the US.
Despite this, the rise in these particular kinds of gun deaths—suicides and homicides among young people—tends to go overlooked, Dr. Hadland explains: “More than 120 firearm deaths occur daily in the US, [and], even though mass shootings are what make news, gun-related homicides and suicides are the cause of most of these deaths,” he says. From 2018 to 2021, about 2,451 children died by homicide involving a gun, about 1,295 died by suicide involving a gun, and about 138 were killed by a gun unintentionally, according to Everytown.
“Sensible gun laws can prevent these deaths,” Dr. Hadland says. Legislative initiatives that could save children’s lives, he adds, would specifically entail background checks, limits on access to guns for perpetrators of domestic violence, implementing mandatory waiting periods for people looking to buy guns, and child-access prevention laws.
Some communities are affected by gun violence more than others.
As with so many health issues in the US, identity-based disparities exist in America’s gun violence epidemic. “Marginalized communities [are affected by firearm violence] at much higher levels,” Dr. Lee says. “Firearm homicide disproportionately affects Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Hispanic youth at much higher rates than white youth,” she explains. According to Everytown, Black children are 17 times more likely than white children of the same age to die by gun homicide. (These disparities only worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to the CDC.)
However, it’s a myth that this epidemic only affects certain communities—and that it can’t, or won’t, worsen in regions that have had historically low rates of gun violence. “Repeatedly, we are seeing firearm violence affect communities across the US,” Dr. Lee explains.
For these reasons and more, pediatricians say politicians need to strengthen gun safety laws immediately. “I am angered because many of these firearm deaths could be preventable if we had sensible laws preventing firearm access to those at risk of harming themselves or harming others,” Dr. Lee says.
In the meantime, Dr. Hadland says, he and his peers keep pushing for better environments for our children. “We pediatricians owe it to them—and the many other young lives who have been lost forever because of our lawmakers’ inaction—to keep working to get federal and state governments to enact laws to keep us safe.”
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