Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S.
Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer CountriesFirearms recently became the number one cause of death for children in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those caused by other injuries. This brief examines how gun violence an…KFF
Answer one or more of these questions:
1) How does the US differ from other countries in terms of gun violence? What implications does this have for child development in the US?
2) What are some developmental factors (mentioned in this article or drawn from other valid sources) as to why children may be frequently dying from firearms?
3) Given the statistic that 6 out of 9 recent mass shootings were committed by men in the 'emerging adulthood" stage, what are some developmental and/or gender reasons this may be happening?
llenges that may have contributed to the lack of a generally accepted definition. Regarding the BM, the authors highlighted the difficulties in distinguishing terrorism from other forms of political violence, such as insurgencies, guerrilla warfare, and civil wars. Terrorism also encounters literal and analytical STs. While literal STs are a product of the author’s geographical or psychological distance from the terrorist act, which ultimately determines what event is tagged a terrorist act, or an uprising; analytical STPs occur as a result of over generalisation of the concept. Collier and Mahon described it as follows:
When scholars take a category developed for one set of cases and extend it to additional cases, the new cases may be sufficiently different that the category is no longer appropriate in its original form. If this problem arises, they may adapt the category by climbing the ladder of generality, thereby obeying the law of inverse variation. As they increase the extension, they reduce the intension to the degree necessary to fit the new contexts (Collier & Mahon, 1993, p. 846).
Thus, on the one hand, terrorism could stretch to the point of abstraction or require the invention of a new word that would represent a broader set of actions (Weinberg, Pedahzur and Hirsch-Hoefler (2004, p. 779).
Irrespective of these challenges and in recognition of the vast range of benefits which a consensual definition of terrorism would yield, scholars have continued to explore different approaches towards combating the definition menace. Although, no consensus has been reached, the efforts by the authors have yielded some degree of success. On the one hand are authors who emphasise the psychological element of terrorism, on the other are those, who recognise the empirical deficiency of such a route and have adopted, safer, observable components in crafting their definitions. An examination of two separate studies will serve to elucidate these differences, as well as highlight the merits and demerits of each stance. The researcher’s expression of terrorism as a politically motivated tactic involving the use or threat of violence, with the primary purpose of generating a psychological impact beyond the immediate victims or object of attack in which the pursuit of publicity plays a significant role, is a product of the merits of the definitions proposed by the authors in these studies.
Towards resolving the 30-year terrorism definition conflict, Weinberg, Pedahzur and Hirsch-Hoefler (2004) compared Schmid’s definition, (see excerpt below), a product of a survey in which 22 definitional elements were identified in the 109 definitions of terrorism retrieved from 200 participants; to the application of the concept in three terrorism-based academic journals: Terrorism, Studies in Conflict and Terroris
Sample Solution
In the KFF brief, it is revealed that firearms have recently become the number one cause of death for children in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those caused by other injuries. This puts the US far ahead of all other developed countries in terms of gun violence, an issue which has severe implications for child development.
For starters, according to research conducted by Hemenway (2015), US states with weaker gun regulations have higher rates of both firearm mortality and non-fatal injury among children. This suggests that more stringent laws may be necessary to protect young people from danger posed by firearms. Additionally, increased access to guns can lead to unsafe behaviors like playing with them or even accidental discharge which can result in severe physical & mental harm if not addressed properly.
Moreover, due to a variety of factors such as poverty or lack of access to quality education there are also disparities in who experiences gun violence most frequently within certain communities thus making this problem even greater when trying to ensure adequate protection for everyone particularly at-risk youth (Tovar et al., 2018).
Therefore, while this issue is complex there are viable solutions available through advocacy & legislation that seek better public health outcomes plus safety initiatives aimed at reducing incidence rates such as safe storage campaigns may ultimately help us reach our goal towards eliminating these needless tragedies.