GUN VIOLENCE AND CHILDREN IN THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT: NEWS FROM THE OFFICE OF THE CHILD ADVOCATE!

Jamey Bell, State Child Advocate, released today the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) report, "12 Years of Child Gun Deaths and Injuries in Connecticut". The report draws from child fatality data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and child injury data from the Connecticut Hospital Association.

The report provides a look at the 94 Connecticut children aged 2 – 17 who died from guns during the last twelve years, including who they were and where and how they died, in order to inform policy makers seeking to prevent these deaths in the future. The data showed that the highest incidence of fatalities were in boys, aged 15 -17, and that almost half of the fatalities occurred in Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport. Most of the gun deaths were due to homicides.

The report provides a similar look at the 924 children aged 0 – 17 who suffered gun-related injuries in the 12-year period. Of these 924 gun-related injuries, 88.3% occurred among boys, 94% occurred between the ages of 12-17 years, 61.6% of the gun-related injuries occurred to Black children, and 63% of the injuries occurred in Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport.

The OCA urges policy makers to take into account that, from what is currently known, the circumstances of the deaths of the 20 very young children who died in the mass shooting in Newtown and the other 74 deaths are very different. Rather than mass shootings, the other 74 gun deaths, and the vast majority of gun injuries in Connecticut, are single incidents.

 

They also mirror the profile of child gun deaths and injuries across the nation: injuries to and deaths of children from guns are overwhelmingly among male adolescents 15 years old and older, and compared to their proportion of the population, they are disproportionately Black and Hispanic children.  

 

For more information on this report, please click on the following link:

http://www.ct.gov/oca/lib/oca/12_Years_of_Child_Gun_Deaths_and_Injuries_in_Connecticut_Jan__2013_with_charts_in_publisher.pdf