Gun Deaths in the U.S. Are at Their Highest Rates in Decades, CDC Says

Gun deaths in the U.S. have reached a record high, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the research, 39,773 people were fatally shot in 2017, a figure that has grown by more than 10,000 people since 1999. CDC data going back to 1979 shows that last year had the highest rates of gun deaths in nearly 40 years. The new data comes as a community in Newtown, Conn. reckons with the sixth anniversary of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, during which 20 children and six adults died. Tim Makris, co-founder and managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, a group that formed in the wake of the shooting to prevent gun-related deaths, issued a statement calling the CDC results “heartbreaking and beyond unacceptable.” Makris noted that the number of school shootings and minors who have been fatally shot continued to rise in 2018, citing research from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, which said there were about 96 school shootings this year. (That number can fluctuate depending on how it’s counted.) “After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary six years ago today, so many people overwhelmingly said ‘not one more,’ yet over 3,200 youth and teens have been killed or injured by gun violence this year alone — including more than 90 incidents at schools,” he said. “This is the biggest spike that we have seen in a decade.” But while mass shootings get headlines a...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Guns onetime public health Source Type: news