At least 1 American child is shot every hour - report
A recent research estimates over 10,000 under-18s were shot in the US in 2009 - at least one third died. While infants are mostly injured due to firearms mishaps, teenagers are most often victims of criminal armed assaults.
A study by John Leventhal MD and his team from the Yale School of Medicine, published in the journal Pediatrics, utilizes statistics from the Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID), on children hospitalized in the US with gunshots in 2009, the latest statistics available.
The data is not complete, as the national database on hospitalization of minors published in 2011 covers all but six states of the US, yet still covers 96 percent of the US population.
The facts are sobering. There were 7,391 hospitalizations of children and adolescents (89 percent of them males) with gunshots in 2009 (in 2008 there were from 6,496 such hospitalizations). Of those 453 (6 percent) died in hospitals.
Though it was not the subject of research, the research also mentions that approximately additional 3,000 children die from gun injuries at the scene or were pronounced DOA on arrival at the hospital in 2009.
Overall calculations reveal over 28 kids getting shot in America on a daily basis. One third of them die.