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Before 2020, firearm injuries seen at hospitals had been declining for five years in the U.S.. But as the COVID-19 pandemic raged, firearm-related injuries steeply rose, particularly for children and in minority communities, according to a study from the University of Michigan published this week.
Researchers had predicted prior to the pandemic that the steady decline of firearm-related hospitalizations seen in the U.S. from 2015 to 2019 would continue. But instead, there was a 34% increase in firearm-related hospitalizations from 2020 to 2021. More than 12,000 more hospitalizations were documented than researchers had anticipated.
U of M researchers have studied how the COVID-19 pandemic permeated through society well beyond the virus itself, performing studies on education inequities amid the pandemic, the impact of the pandemic on mental health and examining increases in rises in violence during the pandemic.
In the study released Monday, researchers found that just as firearm-related hospitalizations had been on the decline, with peaks and valleys throughout each year from 2015 to 2019, firearm sales had been declining, as well. And while researchers noted that they can’t directly link sales and hospitalizations, the trends from 2015 to 2021 mirror each other as gun sales saw the same steep increase early in the pandemic that firearm-related hospitalizations did.
By summer 2020, firearm hospitalizations had reached the highest peak than what was seen in the previous five years, occurring after a rapid increase in firearm sales in the first months of 2020.
“Taken together, our findings raise new concerns about the sustained increase in firearm-related injury, and in particular the disproportionate increase in younger, low-income and Black individuals,” Dr. Raymond Jean, the lead author of the study, said in a news release from the university.
A different study U of M released in 2023 found that individuals who bought firearms in the first year of the pandemic had higher rates of recent suicidal thoughts, perpetrating intimate partner violence and other harmful behaviors than other firearm owners or those who didn’t own firearms.
Of those hospitalizations reviewed in the firearm-related hospitalizations study, the gap between the expected number of hospitalizations and how many actually occurred was steepest for children, Black patients and individuals who were covered by Medicaid for disabilities or for low-income coverage. Each group had more than 40% more firearm hospitalizations between 2020 and 2021 than was predicted to occur pre-pandemic with an expected continuation of decline.
And although the study doesn’t examine hospitalizations based on exact locations to cross-reference what gun safety policies are in place for a certain area or other factors, Jean said in the news release he hopes further research can be done to build off the study in order to inform policy efforts aimed at reducing gun violence.
As a surgeon, Jean said studying how firearm injuries occur is work worth doing.
“I have seen firsthand what bullets can do to the human body, and worked to save the lives of those who have survived long enough to reach the operating room,” said Jean, an assistant professor in the U of M Medical School’s Department of Surgery. “That drives my interest in understanding the scope of this issue, and trends over time, through advanced data tools.”
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