Numb to Gun Violence? Twenty Kids a Day, One Kid an Hour, Harmed or Killed By Guns

While we know way too many children and teens are killed by guns (last count: 11,000 people, many of them younger than 12, in 2013, according to Slate, which took up the accounting after Newtown), did you know that almost one child or teen an hour is injured by a firearm seriously enough to require hospitalization?

 Michelle Healy at USA Today reports that a new study shows that six percent of the 7,391 young hospitalizations analyzed resulted in a death, quoting February's Pediatrics, released today.

 "Every day, 20 of our children are hospitalized for firearms injury, often suffering severe and costly injuries, clearly shows that this is a national public health problem," Robert Sege, director of the Division of Family and Child Advocacy at Boston Medical Center and a co-author of the study, tells Healy.

 I don't know about you but I have a horrifying thing to say.  I am becoming numb to all the mass murders and drive-by shootings of innocent children who just happen to be sitting in their strollers as bullets spit from a car passing by.  This weekend, again, in Maryland at a mall.  Two at separate New Jersey malls at Christmas. And don't even mention all the school shootings.  It seems like one a day.

 Where are we going with all this? I'm tired of hearing -- and writing -- about gun control, sickened by people's desperate clutch on rights they feel guaranteed to them (in a different world, a different place, a different time 200 years ago), over the right of the rest of us to go to the mall, or church, or school, without being killed.

 I don't believe kids need iPhones, especially in school, but I'm thinking seriously of getting my middle school son one so I can text him if something happens at his school, which, although the school does everything it can to keep the students safe, seems almost like a given.

 How did we get to this place where a mom just assumes her son is going to be in a deadly shooting spree?

 But if people are allowed to carry guns into movie theaters and shoot and kill someone texting just because it was annoying him, I feel there's no hope for any of us to go safely anywhere there are people.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don't Wash Your Chicken and Other Food Safety Myths

I remember when I first heard this.  Don't wash your chicken , before you cook it?  I ignored it.  But over time, I began to realize it's true.  Washing it spreads deadly (or at least sick-making) bacteria.  Really. “You should assume that if you have chicken, you have either Salmonella or Campylobacter bacteria on it, if not both,”Dr. Jennifer Quinlan, an associate professor at Drexel University, told newswise.com.  These two bacteria, she noted, are the leading causes of food-borne illness. “If you wash it, you’re more likely to spray bacteria all over the kitchen and yourself," she said. And the rinse water you've been using? It's not hot enough to kill bacteria anyway. Washing raw poultry was a common unsafe practice in all the groups she studied for a documentary on safe cooking conditions, with some minor cultural differences in the method of washing. People are very attached to the idea of washing raw poultry, she told newswise.com. “Some think they’re
Read more

Take Herbal Supplements? Even Green Tea Extract Can Lead to Liver Damage

Take herbal supplements? You might want to listen up. A new study is warning that new information is showing that some supplements may damage the liver, along with over the counter drugs and even those prescribed by physicians, according to newswise.com. The rate of drug-induced liver injury (DILI), a rare adverse drug reaction which is challenging to diagnose -- and which can lead to jaundice, liver failure and even death -- is increasing more and more.  Experts put it down to the overwhelming use of herbal supplements and other drugs in the last 10 years.  “A lot of consumers have a preconceived notion that if it’s a natural product, it must be safe. But that is not necessarily the case,” the Web site quotes Herbert Bonkovsky, MD, FACG, co-author of the guidelines. “Most of these products are not well-regulated and have very little oversight. Traces of heavy metals and prescription drugs have even been found in some herbal and dietary supplements. We encourage patients to
Read more

Need the ER? Pray Your Doc Plays Video Games

We're all so used to picking on our kids for playing video games but the next time he's in the ER, you just might be happy that doctors do it, too. According to new research, video games improve doctors' recognition and triage of severe trauma patients, newswise.com reports. Playing an adventure video game featuring a fictitious, young emergency physician treating severe trauma patients was better than text-based learning at priming real doctors to quickly recognize the patients who needed higher levels of care, according to a new trial led by the  University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine .  The results held, even though doctors assigned to the game enjoyed it less than those assigned to traditional, text-based education. This indicates that if game enjoyment can be improved, the already favorable results might be enhanced, the web site notes.  “Physicians must make decisions quickly and with incomplete information. Each year, 30,000 preventable deaths occur
Read more