By Robert S. Levine, Irwin Goldzweig, Barbara Kilbourne, Paul Juarez
In 2003, overall U.S. homicide rates were 6.9 times higher than homicide rates in other high-income countries, while homicide rates among U.S. 15 to 24 year olds were 42.7 times higher.1 Additionally, as noted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its 2011 national Health Disparities and Inequalities Report, the highest homicide mortality for all races, ethnicities, and age groups occurred among non-Hispanic Blacks/African Americans ages 20 to 24 years (109.4 per 100,000 population, in contrast to 6.3 for non-Hispanic Whites).2 Firearms are the injury mechanism for most U.S. homicides in the 15 to 24 year age group, and most homicide victims are males. Specifically, from 1999 to … Read More