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Essay On Youth Gun Suicide

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Youth gun violence continues to be a significant topic of research. However, youth suicides with a firearm need to be taken more attention of as the U.S. has the highest rate of youth suicide with a firearm among all of the industrialized countries (Webster et al., 2004). More importantly, the prevalence of youth gun suicide is evident, as it is the third leading cause of death among youth aged 10 to 19 years old in the U.S. (Webster et al., 2004). Past studies found that youth suicide is an indicator of gun prevalence and the existence of illicit drug market in the community (Blumstein, 2002). In addition, high rates of suicide among youth with a firearm shadow mental illnesses such as depression and other mood disorders (Pelkomen et al., …show more content…

(2002), they examined the association between the rate of violent death among 5-14 year olds from the 50 states from 1988-1997, and the availability of firearms corresponding to the rates of suicide, homicide, and unintentional firearm deaths among this group of individuals in each state (Miller et al., 2002). To determine the association between the two variables, they collected the number of suicides from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) mortality files (Miller et al., 2002). The files suggested that deaths caused by undetermined intentions constituted less than 3% of all firearm deaths in this population (Miller et al., 2002). More specifically, they found a positive and statistically significant association between gun availability and state level rates of unintentional firearm deaths, homicides, firearm homicides, suicides, and firearm suicides among children at the state level (Miller et al., 2002). Meanwhile, at the regional level, this trend is present regardless of the proxy chosen to run through a test (Miller et al., 2002). Hence, the authors argued that the association between gun availability and violent deaths among youths remained significant. Moreover, this association indicated that firearm availability will increase the likelihood of unwanted deaths among

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