Mass shootings and issues of access to firearms and other weapons continue to be at the center of a national dialogue. Gun-related deaths are the second leading cause of mortality in children and adolescents. One pervasive stereotype is that it is racial and ethnic minority individuals who are more likely to carry weapons and even bring them to school .
This month we are releasing a study by Jewett et al (10.1542/peds.2020-049623) that contradicts this racist prejudice and is a must-read for us to process and share with others.
The authors used data from the 1992-2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System to look at the self-reported weapon carrying of boys across the United States and whether they felt safe at their schools.
The good news is that weapon-carrying has declined over two decades and this decline occurred regardless of race or ethnicity. Across the entire time period, white male youths who were more likely to bring weapons into the schools than Non-Hispanic Black/African American or Hispanic boys. However, racist prejudice have us as a society more concerned about weapon carrying by Black teenage males.
Read more on the original article : https://www.aappublications.org/news/2021/06/24/weapon-carrying-boys-race-ethnicity-pediatrics
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