Gun Injuries Send 8,000 Children Every Year, A New Study Says

There are an alarming number of school shootings in the United States, but they are also based on a new study published by the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics. The study, led by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found that over 8,000 children in the United States, averaging incidents in the United States.

"While mass shootings garner significant media and social attention, unfortunately they are not a good reflection of the actual burden of firearm-related injuries," Dr. Faiz Gani, the study's lead author and researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told NBC News. "In our study, we found that for every 100,000 teenagers and children arriving at the emergency department, 11 come for a gun-related injury."

The study of data from a national database created by the Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality, a subsidiary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The study honed in nine years – beginning in 2006 and ending in 2014.

Nearly 50 percent of the gun injuries were related to assaults, and 40 percent were from accidental shootings, according to the Associated Press. About 2 percent of the injuries were reportedly related to suicides. Six percent of children who visited the emergency room for gun-related injuries.

Caring for such a large number of emergency rooms with a hefty price tag, according to researchers. The average emergency room cost $ 2,445, according to NBC News, and $ 44,000 if an injured child was admitted to the hospital. In total, 75,000 children visited the study, costing a total of $ 3 billion.

"It's extraordinarily sad because these children grow up in their minds and they affect their ability to feel safe and comfortable at home or in school. It has an enormous ripple effect on child development, "Dr. Robert Sege at Tufts University medicine professor not involved in the research, told the Associated Press. Sege co-authored an American Academy of Pediatrics gun injuries policy.

Everytown For Gun Safety also keeps tabs on shoots in the United States. According to the #NotAnAccident Index on Everytown's website, there have been at least 163 unintentional shootings by children in 2018, as of Monday evening. There have been at least 992 accidental shootings by children since 2015, according to the group's data.

Of those shoots, according to Everytown, 604 were injured and 388 reportedly died. These facts do not necessarily include a child, they do suggest the frequency with which children accidentally fire weapons at other people. And indeed, many of the descriptions for each other that the victim was, in fact, another minor.

These studies underscore the fact that gun safety is not just an adult issue. This is especially the case when the data indicates that children and teenagers are suffering from gun-related injuries each year.