Structural racism implicated in elevated risk of firearm injuries and deaths among children during the pandemic

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While I came across this article through a secondary source that repeated a lot of the usual liberal policy proscriptions for reducing the risk of gun violence to children, the original research article doesn't say a thing about guns or gun control. The only policy proscription is one I think we all agree with and support - addressing systemic and structural inequalities that disproportionately affect poor Americans of Black, Hispanic, and Asian descent.
In this study, child firearm assaults increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic in 4 major US cities. Racial and ethnic disparities increased, as Hispanic, Asian, and especially Black children experienced disproportionate shares of the increased violence.

One limitation of this study is that our design did not assess causes of these changes. However, our results are broadly consistent with research identifying sharper pandemic-associated violence increases in neighborhoods with less racial and economic privilege. Possible explanations include COVID-19’s exacerbation of inequities in access to health, employment, and educational resources.

The concentration of firearm victimization among Black, Hispanic, and Asian children must be addressed at the individual, community, and societal levels. It is critical to focus community safety and mental health interventions in the most affected communities and to target structural racism as a fundamental driver of the US firearm violence epidemic.
From 2015 to 2021, a total of 2672 child shootings were reported in four cities - NYC, LA, Chicago and Philly. The risk of getting shot nearly doubled for children during the pandemic, but not for white kids - the increased risk was almost entirely limited to Black, Hispanic and Asian children. NYC had the worst increase.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamane ... le/2802128

Re: Structural racism implicated in elevated risk of firearm injuries and deaths among children during the pandemic

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We do not see in the article who was doing the shooting. I think emotions may be triggered when we see articles about "gun violence to children," and that triggering may short circuit our rational minds. I would wager that it's mostly "children" (younger than 18) shooting each other in gang violence. If that is the case, certainly we can correlate with the existence of gangs certain root causes like poverty, racism, lack of job opportunities, poor education, lack of access to good food and to health care, and broken and/or fatherless families that may be found in minority communities. When really young kids shoot other kids, another root cause would be irresponsible and unsafe gun storage by the adult gun owners.

CDFingers
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Re: Structural racism implicated in elevated risk of firearm injuries and deaths among children during the pandemic

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wings wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 7:29 am That's exactly the point in the article. The violence is not a function of the weapons, it is a function of the inequality.
And, as much as racism may be a factor, I expect that the key is economics and that the structural racism is why the economics are the direct causal factor. Structural racism is the direct causal fact of the economic disparities.

I keep harping on the 2018 Zach Mortensen article for its hard, statistical evidence and analysis that economic disparity is THE leading causal factor in gun violence:

https://zachmortensen.net/2018/02/20/yo ... -one-will/
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Structural racism implicated in elevated risk of firearm injuries and deaths among children during the pandemic

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Talking with my Dad about this stuff, he told me how the Detroit gangs (he was from Detroit) operated. It was then very much like it is now. The difference is that the kids generally beat the tar out of each other with fists, or worst case, they used knives. The thought of getting a *GUN* to shoot even a rival gang member just wasn't even there, as he described it. Guns, of course, were all over; just about every home had 'em in the household gun rack, including Dad's.

The difference is the introduction of crack cocaine into majority-Black and majority-Latino (brown-skinned, that is) neighborhoods by the CIA back in the early 1980's to help fund Iran-Contra. That's one area where Ronnie "Gun Control" Raygun's administration got caught during the Iran-Contra hearings. I remind everyone that George H. W. Bush had been the CIA Director under President Ford (1976-1977), so the plans clearly were in place to do this by the time Reagan/Bush got to the White House. Notable is that the CIA avoided introducing crack cocaine into majority-White neighborhoods. Interesting....

Note also the sentencing disparities between traditional powder cocaine and the crack variant. Can we say, "restoration of Jim Crow", boys and girls? Seems to me like the thinking there went as follows.

Brown v. Board, Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Voting Rights Act of 1965 abolishing Jim Crow, eh? OK, time for a new strategy. Keep them drugged up and addicted, and you can control them and keep them down. Have disparate sentencing laws that are designed to disproportionately keep those same people incarcerated, and you have one of several available formulas for continued economic disparity. We just have to be careful, as Lee Atwater put it, not to actually say, "nigger, nigger" in public anymore.

I think this is one BIG contributor to what we're seeing with these shootings these days, when we weren't seeing them when my Dad was coming up.
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Re: Structural racism implicated in elevated risk of firearm injuries and deaths among children during the pandemic

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Nowadays, instead of crack, it's meth and fentanyl. Meth is the biggest problem, as users have no discernment about whether it's OK to shoot someone for a dose of meth. Fentanyl anesthetizes and meth energizes. We have to remember that the Nazi soldiers in WWII used meth. Gangs have always had guns, it's just that now, with meth, they find it much easier to shoot than to fight or stab. Stay away from meth and gangs, kids. Bad juju.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Structural racism implicated in elevated risk of firearm injuries and deaths among children during the pandemic

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From the CDC:
Percent of persons aged 12 years and over with any illicit drug use in the past month: 13.0% (2019)

Percent of persons aged 12 years and over with any nonmedical use of a psychotherapeutic drug in the past month: 1.9% (2019)
In 2021, 107,622 lives were lost in the United States due to a drug overdose. This is an average of nearly 295 people per day. Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18-45.
https://www.justice.gov/opioidawareness ... %20others.
Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat facing this country. It is a highly addictive man-made opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. Just two milligrams of fentanyl, the small amount that fits on the tip of a pencil, is considered a potentially deadly dose.
Most of the fentanyl trafficked by the Sinaloa and CJNG Cartels is being mass-produced at secret factories in Mexico with chemicals sourced largely from China.
https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2022 ... ion-deadly

China's huge chemical industry is the main source of the chemicals needed to make fentanyl.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-fr ... operation/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Structural racism implicated in elevated risk of firearm injuries and deaths among children during the pandemic

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You can bet your last yuan, the Chinese Government knows exactly where the chemicals needed to make Fentanyl are being shipped. They probably look at it as retribution for the British (western dogs) introducing opium to the Chinese centuries ago. Just like the CIA doing the same during Iran/Contra.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Structural racism implicated in elevated risk of firearm injuries and deaths among children during the pandemic

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TrueTexan wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 10:57 am You can bet your last yuan, the Chinese Government knows exactly where the chemicals needed to make Fentanyl are being shipped. They probably look at it as retribution for the British (western dogs) introducing opium to the Chinese centuries ago. Just like the CIA doing the same during Iran/Contra.
Yup, weaken the West specifically the US, so China can overtake us economically and militarily. And keep pumping in spies to steal industrial secrets. Opium in China goes back to the 11th century and probably earlier, but yes it was used by the British and western powers to open up the Chinese empire.
Opium proved to be the wedge the Western powers had been seeking to prise open the Chinese market, which had heretofore proven nearly impenetrable. China had many things the West desired, such as silk and porcelain, but wanted little the West could provide, and a massive trade imbalance resulted in the rapid growth of Chinese silver reserves. The opium trade slowly shifted this balance, with long term implications for the Chinese economy and society
https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR ... rigins.pdf
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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