A new study released in the journal Pediatricsshows that firearm injury emergency department visits for children increased beyond expected pre-pandemic trends.The study looked at emergency room visits from nine hospitals in the U.S. The data showed that firearm injury visits per 30 days increased from 18.0 before the pandemic to 36.1 during the pandemic.
“With the pandemic we saw a drastic increase in firearm purchases, which might have led to the tragic spikes in injuries and deaths from firearms among children and adolescents,” said Dr. Jennifer Hoffmann, pediatric emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.