A new study determined that gun-related deaths in children take place in the setting of intimate partner violence in the home.
Death due to gun violence remains the number one cause of accidental fatality in children and young adults. A study published in the November issue of Pediatrics determined that a large number of these deaths take place in the setting of adult intimate partner violence in the home, or IPV.
The study, carried out at the Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Violence Prevention, reviewed child homicides between 2003 and 2020 in the U.S. They reported over 11,000 deaths during that period in children ages 0 to 17 years. Of those, nearly 6,000 were due to firearms, and of the firearm deaths, nearly 700 occurred in the setting of IPV, where a child was in the line of fire of one partner shooting and killing the other.
Most of the deaths in children included the fatal shooting of a domestic partner, over 90% of which was the child’s mother. In prior studies, over half of gun-related homicides related to IPV coincided with suicide of the perpetrator.
