Gunfire sent hundreds of kids and parents scattering at a flag football game in northern Virginia last Sunday morning. Many took shelter behind trees and bushes near the field.
Josh Horwitz, co-director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said he was not aware of a data set that tracks shootings at youth sporting events, specifically.
Nearly 23% of the more than 45,000 firearm-related deaths that year were of people ages 1 to 19, researchers from the University of Michigan found.a general rise in shootings on school grounds"We are continuing to see more shootings than any prior year in the database since 1970," Riedman said. "So far in 2022, there have already been 109 shootings in the first 122 days of the year.
It's hard to be sure why gun violence is rising, Horwitz said. He pointed to a number of possible factors, including a decrease of social supports associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, rising gun sales, increased alcohol use and an easing of restrictions of carrying guns in public in many states.and using them in an escalating number of murders, suicides and accidental shootings, a USA TODAY report last month found.