Joy turned to horror in Alabama over the weekend when shots rang out at a teen’s birthday party, leaving four dead and many injured. It was an all too familiar scene, as President Joe Biden noted Sunday.
“What has our nation come to when children cannot attend a birthday party without fear?” he said. “When parents have to worry every time their kids walk out the door to school, to the movie theater or to the park? Guns are the leading killer of children in America, and the numbers are rising — not declining.”
Between 2019 and 2021, the number of children and teens killed by bullets increased 50% in the United States, according to a national study.
The number and rate of children and teens killed by gunfire in 2021 were both higher than at any point since at least 1999, the earliest year for which information about those younger than 18 is available in the CDC’s mortality database, the Pew Research Center determined. The majority of gun deaths among children were homicides, the study found.
Last year in Atlanta, 19 children and teens were homicide victims, according to Atlanta Police Department data. In 2021, 16 Atlanta homicide victims were children and teens. In 2020, the number was 22.
Credit: Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@
Credit: Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@
Firearms the No. 1 cause of death for U.S. children
A 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that “firearms are now the No. 1 cause of death for children in the United States. Shootings, including accidental deaths, suicides, and homicides, killed 4,357 victims ages 19 and younger in the United States in 2020, or roughly 5.6 per 100,000 children.
Atlanta has followed the national trends. One of the first homicide victims in 2022 was a 6-month-old riding in his car seat when his mother’s car was hit during a drive-by shooting.
“These children are bearing the burden and the pain of adults who are choosing to use guns to solve disputes,” Mayor Andre Dickens said after January 2022 incident. “The children are bearing this burden with their lives, and I’m here to ask, and to demand, that it stop right now.”
Credit: Family photo
Credit: Family photo
New year, similar crimes
Three weeks into 2023, Drew Charter School seventh grader Deshon DuBose, 13, was shot to death in southwest Atlanta while leaving the Cascade Family Skating rink. He was struck after gunfire erupted between two groups. The investigation continues.
Credit: Family photo
Credit: Family photo
Asijah Love Jones, 11 was killed by a bullet that pierced the walls of her Spalding County home around 1 a.m. March 14. Kionta Jahaun Parks was arrested a month later.
Weeks later, a 10-year-old boy was shot outside his home in the Grove Park neighborhood in Atlanta, and is recovering. His name was not released.
Over the weekend, a baby was again a victim of gunfire in Atlanta. A family was outside their home in southeast Atlanta’s Browns Mill Park neighborhood around 7 p.m. when the shots were fired from a passing car, his mother told police. A bullet grazed her 10-month-old boy in the ear.
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