Asbury Park Press
Most victims of gun violence in 2010 were not on a battlefield or
remote hillside in the Middle East fighting in a war. They were, like
6-year-old Brandon Holt, children and teenagers in America, according to
the Children’s Defense Fund.
Holt was shot in the head by his friend and neighbor, an unidentified 4-year-old boy, on Monday night. He is now also a statistic of gun violence.
In
2010, 15,576 children and teenagers were injured by firearms — three
times more than the number of U.S. soldiers injured in the war in
Afghanistan, according to the defense fund.
And while the number of gun injuries has steadily dropped nationwide, firearm deaths among youths in New Jersey
increased between 2000 and 2010, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. Still, New Jersey has the sixth-lowest rates for
gun deaths among children, according to the defense fund.
Nationally,
guns still kill twice as many children and young people than cancer,
five times as many than heart disease and 15 times more than infection,
according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
“We
see guns as much of a threat in their life as we used to see bacteria
and viruses,” said Dr. Judith S. Palfrey, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics
and the co-author of the New England journal report. “If you look at
what’s actually killing children and disabling children, guns is one of
the major things.”
