GVPanorama: Nonfatal Firearm Injuries 10 Times More Frequent among Black Americans
Important research compiled from pre-pandemic numbers
This Black History Month comes at a particularly fraught time. As the new Trump administration continues their assault on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, that is the tip of a right-wing iceberg that denies the existence of racial inequality in America.
Today we highlight another concern that directly affects the well being of the Black community, and will no doubt be further exploited.
The gun lobby and conservative legislators have historically made it hard to collect and disseminate gun violence statistics via a number of roadblocks thrown at the CDC, HHS, and other Federal institutions that could — if given full funding and support — supply the stats and solutions to help decrease the disproportionate numbers of firearm victims in the Black community.
As the article below from Penn Medicine News explains, “racial disparities from fatal firearm injuries are well established, but data is limited in explaining the racial breakdown of nonfatal injuries.”
Last July, the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania released their new research that addresses that limitation. Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the study took a close look at “fatal and nonfatal firearm injury rates by race and ethnicity in the United States from 2019 to 2020.”
“There are twice as many nonfatal injuries from firearms as fatal ones, so focusing only on deaths misses a huge part of the impact that firearm injury has on health,” said lead author, Elinore Kaufman, MD, MSHP…. “We want to reduce the number of total injuries from firearms – both fatal and nonfatal – and in order to design interventions and measure their efficacy, we need the full picture.”